For the first time in over a year the Jersey City Art Studio Tour returns Thursday. The pandemic isn’t quite over, but between the hope that vaccinations and observing safety measures are enough, dozens of doors to arts offerings around the city are open for visitors. If you look at the JCAST map, however, there are noticeably fewer offerings south of McGinley Square, heading toward Bayonne.
The galleries at New Jersey City University, 2039 Kennedy Blvd., and the Bethune Center, 140 Martin Luther King Dr., will have works on show by great artists in their venues that can easily be overlooked – much like the Jackson Hill Pop-Up, which has the only JCAST offering in Bergen-Lafayette.
There, at the small business incubator across the street from the City Hall annex , the artwork of Angela Huggins will be on display from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Jackson-Hill Pop-Up at 351 Martin Luther King Dr., featuring Huggins’ varied homemade dolls. Huggins’ dolls are distinctly multicultural, crafted by someone who teaches dollmaking as an approach to healing and as a way for collectors to add to their own. In the African-American community, dollmaking has a deep history – with the need to literally form and make positive representations in a society that offered very few. (Learn more about Huggins’ work at www.angelhugs4all.com)
One of the unique elements about a studio art tour is people making their homes and non-traditional venues available to the public, and just south of Bergen Lafayette, there are three offerings like that.
Non-profit temple NJ Arya Samaj will be showing the unique perler bead work of artist Alpana Mittal billed under her artist name Tejaswini, at 191 Woodlawn Ave., Friday and Saturday from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m., not far from the Bethune Center.
This temple is in the mold of a reformist branch of Hinduism that values merit over worth according to what caste one is born into. Each Sunday they hold a prayer session called havan.
Tejaswini, who is the co-chair of the membership committee at Pro Arts Jersey City, said the temple, where her husband also volunteers as a priest, has been a big supporter of her work – which elsewhere is on show at 150 Bay Street (suite 265, with other Pro Arts artists) and in international venues.
The kind of intricate beadwork on canvas Tejaswini will be showing is reminiscent of pixel art. It’s a style that utilizes the simplicity of scaled-down graphics for renditions of images that are very evocative, partly because of the sheer work that goes into it. Tejaswini’s work like this was partially inspired by a bead kit she gave her daughter one Christmas, but she’s also familiar with pixel art.
“In fact I got familiar with it looking at my children’s games, and I realized that my work is like placing each and every pixel individually by your hands and creating an image or art,” Tejaswini said earlier this week. “I believe this art gives us a very vast area to think and create. It’s a slow process, we see images growing slowly but in the process, there is much fun looking at the image getting shaped up. Creating geometrical designs is another fun process. There are geometrical shapes everywhere, or it’s my mind which sees them everywhere.”
Tejaswini isn’t a resident of Jersey City anymore, but she still feels very much a part of its art scene.
Her time with Pro Arts Jersey City has helped her grow as an artist because of the proximity of the wonderful artists around her from the city.
“It actually adds up to my growth as an artist and my creative process,” Tejaswini said. “It’s a push to be your best and do your best being around this artists community.” Learn more about her work at tejaswiniart.com.
For several years now, Project Greenville coordinator Elizabeth Deegan has made sure the group has had a constant presence in the JCAST and JC Fridays entries. She continues to do so with “It’s a Family Affair,” at 128 Winfield Ave. The show features musings on the subject from artists who include Donchellee Fulwood and Jim Legge; and the works of “familial artists,” like Aaron and Raylie Dunkel, the Sienkiewicz family, and Christine Dzierzynski (with Jason Dzierzynski),
This year, a few blocks from Project Greenville, Danielle and Moises Haskins, will be returning for their second studio art tour at their Pearsall Avenue home (206 Pearsall Ave., to be exact) with “Lights and Pedals II @ Moisessions,” from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m Saturday.
Their entry, curated by Danielle, is unique – part-jam session of experimental music, along with a similar approach to lighting design.
“This show is a product of Moisessions Studios, which is my project studio and production company,” Moises said earlier this week. “The nature of the show will be a five to six-hour exploration of unpredictability through generative music (and) through self-oscillating guitar pedals, with a few of my musician friends – Tara Stafford Ocansey on vocals, sax and synthesizer; and Wyl White on vocals guitar and violin.”
Among the many influences Moises and his friends have for this Moisessions Studios (@moisessions) session are the works of ambient music pioneer Brian Eno. The work of Amon Tobin also got Moises into projection mapping during his many years working as a lightning designer for a dance company.
“It is very important to us to represent a part of the city that hasn’t had much representation in the past,” Danielle said. “Our last JCAST show in 2019, was held in our apartment in McGinley Square (by the West Side Avenue section), but we bought a house during the pandemic. We love the West Side Avenue area and still consider ourselves a part of the vibrant, creative community there. But while we were looking for a place to call our forever home, the perfect house for us, within the confines of our price range, happened to be located on Pearsall Avenue in South Greenville. So here we are. In many ways, this neighborhood is the underdog of the city. But we take pride and want others to see the beauty and community that we have experienced.”
Danielle Haskins recounted reaching out to Project Greenville after her family moved to the area.
“We love Project Greenville!” she said. “They allowed my husband and some other musicians he frequently collaborates with to perform at their gallery space during one of their JC Fridays events. The crowd had such a warm, welcoming vibe. We hope it helps to make this area seem more like a viable art destination, due to the close proximity of multiple destinations. We also hope it will inspire other artists in the neighborhood to consider showing their work locally, rather than feeling like they must go somewhere else. It’s near the Danforth Avenue Light Rail station, multiple bus lines and has a much better parking situation than most of the city, so it really isn’t the no man’s land it is often viewed as.”
Deegan originally started Project Greenville as a venue for civic-minded people in the area to connect.
Otherwise, she said, those people end up just hiding in their homes while what has prevailed for too long goes unabated.
Deegan, gearing up for this weekend, noted that she wished there were more venues participating in the Greenville/Bergen-Lafayette areas. She thinks that would happen more if people realized, or were made aware, that whatever enterprise they’ve got going on would get free promotion out of this. While Deegan thinks it’s an uphill endeavor to get people to enjoy art in her area when, aside from what she sees as spotty transportation options on the weekend, it’s so much easier and more carefree to do it elsewhere. At least on her side of the city, the more dots on the map means the more places for the civic-minded to gather.
"artist" - Google News
September 30, 2021 at 12:13AM
https://ift.tt/3zRcZsJ
Jersey City Artist Studio Tour returns; don’t mind the gap - NJ.com
"artist" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2FwLdIu
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Jersey City Artist Studio Tour returns; don’t mind the gap - NJ.com"
Post a Comment