Newark USA
http://newarkusa.blogspot.com/
A fotojournal about LIVING in Newark USA, New Jersey's largest and most cultured city, by the author of the foto-essay website RESURGENCE CITY: Newark USA.
posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM links to this post
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Open Doors '09, Day 3, Part B: Catfish Friday
Catfish Friday, a Newark women's art collective, held its second annual group show at Space 972 Gallery (972 Broad Street, near the Rodino Federal Building), with a reception the evening of Saturday, October 24th. This year, the show ("Search for the Real") included two men!
The name of the show is explained in this screen capture from the group's website. The webpage is in some odd format I could not save, not as text, not as a picture. So I did a screenprint to the memory buffer (Alt-PrtSc), then called it up into my graffics program and resized it for this blog. It's a little fuzzy, but I was not about to retype all that text. I type quite enuf, thank you very much. When I tried to save that webpage to look at the source code to figure out why I couldn't block copy text, only the header info stored, so I don't know what webmaster wizardry was performed on that page — nor do I know why the webmaster (webmistress?) would want to keep people from lifting text to inform people about Catfish Friday's work.
The Newark arts scene is very collegial, and over time you get to know a fair number of the artists, curators, and other movers-and-shakers. But Catfish Friday takes Newark warmth a step further. It's an arts version of the TV show Cheers, "where everybody knows your name". Alrite, not EVERYBODY knows your name, and you don't get to know every one of their names, but it's a much higher percentage than elsewhere.
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Not every member of the collective lives in Newark, which again speaks to Newark's central position. Sadee Brathwaite, for instance, is originally from Hawthorne, NJ, but now lives and works in the arts in Kingston, NY — which is not near. A couple of hours before the start of the reception, previously dreary but lite rain turned into a downpour, and I could picture Sadee stuck on the Thruway (or 9W; I don't know which she uses to get here), barely able to move for minimal visibility, so I wasn't sure she'd make it to the reception. She did. When I mentioned my concerns, she said she was more than halfway to Newark when the torrential rains began, or she would have turned back.
Her works in the show had already been set up, in any case, but it's always good to have the artist on hand. (Above are four of her five paintings in the show. The fifth, Between you and me, is shown in the first foto today, and in this next foto. And yes, that's Sadee alongside it.)
When I arrived, a masked woman was performing what I assume was supposed to be a comedic clown-like act — entirely in Spanish. I can understand most of the national evening news in Spanish (Univisión and Telemundo), but anything other than simple declarative statements, and I'm lost. Catfish Friday has what strikes me as an excessive attachment to Spanish. I suspect that most of the audience at CF events, understands even less Spanish than I do. I am in no position to judge whether this performer was funny, and am left wondering, again, about Catfish Friday's "thing" for Spanish. In Newark, if there is to be special treatment for any 'foreign' language, perhaps it should be Portuguese (tho the Portguese-speaking community does not as yet seem well integrated into the arts community). My Portuguese is even worse than my Spanish, but Hispanics are not automatically able to understand Portuguese. How would they like it if an act or poem were performed entirely in Portuguese, and they were expected to applaud something they do not understand? For all we know, the Spanish text that woman performed said "Die, anglo bastards! Die!"
The bulk of the visual art (Catfish Friday includes some literary artists, in Spanish and even English) was nonlinguistic (contrast Loren Munk's works in Rupert Ravens' current show), comprising many different styles.
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Space 972 is not a big space, but it is adequate for the collective's current members (and, in this show, male guests).
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A side room contained small works for purchase by several of the member artists. Here, on the right, are little doll pins by Janice Anderson, and on the left, some paintings and such by Sadee Brathwaite.
This year, Lynn Presley also had some things on offer.
Among the things for sale were small versions of her major work in the show, which is quite different from the other things of hers that I have seen on prior occasions. 
Diagonally across from that were two sculptures by Kevin Blythe Sampson, whose mural on the Tucker Center I discussed yesterday. This first is untitled and does not look representational of anything I recognize. Kevin combines many different types of found objects to create his sculptures.
This second piece of Kevin's is called "Untitled (Helmet)" — so it sort-of is titled.
I don't know what objects he has used in his sculptures, but they leave the viewer thinking s/he has seen something bejeweled.
CITY: Newark USA.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
OD '09 Day 4, Part A: 744 Show
On Sunday, October 25th, the fourth and last day of Open Doors 2009, I was to meet my friend Ingé for the Studios Tour at 744 Broad Street at noon but she called and said she couldn't get there by noon. I didn't know for certain whether there was more than one trolley, as there had been for the murals tour on Friday. So I said, 'Meet me at 744 anyway. If there are other trolleys, we'll catch a later one. If not, there's an art show at 744 and I know some of the venues that will be open, so we can walk or drive to others on our own.' So she headed out (from Orange) a bit after I left Vailsburg. I arrived first, and called her to say that as of that moment, there were two parking spaces pretty close in. Then I went in and looked around at the 744 show, "Freestyle", curated by Jeanne Brasile — another of the Newark arts people who don't like me. I don't know why; but she did not want to be fotograffed by her work at an NJIT show and has ignored me when we have run across each other at other shows. I'm not one of those insecure people who agonizes over why some people don't like him. Given 6.7 billion people on Earth, I can easily just move on to others.
This first painting in closeup is by Maya Gatewood, a member of Catfish Friday. I had seen a couple of her works in that show the nite before, but they were hard to fotograf (for being very lite gray), and people were in the way. So I was glad to see a darker one when there was no one in the way.
I tried to identify the works in the 744 show by taking pix of the label right after the picture of the work, but my camera has enormous difficulty (auto)focusing on small type on flat surfaces, especially in less than brilliant lite, so some of those fotograffed labels were unreadable. Where I have artist info, I provide it.
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In the foto below, the large, intricate painting on a 12' x 6' piece of vinyl is Un Bello Mondo (A Beautiful World) by Roselle (Park?) artist Pasquale Cuppari. The 3D work is Charlee Swanson's MT Hood (broken glass, barbed wire, plaster). From across the room, I thought it looked like an open shopping bag, but it is actually a jagged box with an open top end, when seen up close.
This next, deeply reflective piece, Cairo, looks like it would make a great coffee table top, and thus conversation piece. It's one of a series, "Topographicals", by Egyptian-born Jersey City artist Rodina Mikhail.
The video playing on the monitor when I was there was of metal shavings being formed by hand into a glistening, compact mass by the hand of the artist (label didn't come out; looks like Greg L-something).
This next small work, midway on the stairs to the lower level, was so reflective that I had to show it from above, which distorts the rectangular shape. It is Two to the Top, Too by GJ Lee.
The two floors in which this show was held are part of the "Available Space Tour" aspect of the Open Doors event, which shows off places available for retail or office rental. These two areas are joined by a winding stairway.
This next piece is a foto of a staged art event by Anne Dushanko Dobek, who has a studio in the Riker Hill Art Park in Livingston, which is part of the Essex County Parks system.
Sarah Granett's Furl II is acrylic and dye on a 97" x 68" piece of sheeting.
This next foto includes three artists' works. The dog (?) with the ham-and-cheese sandwich head is No Mustard, by Ryan Higgins. That is a tragedy. Ham and cheese but no mustard? Somebody call the cops. In the background, left, is a piece by Ivan Petrovsky (label foto is unclear; Alienation 101?); and on the right are four fotos from Polina Zaitseva's "Russia" series.
The viewer's prior experience creates layers of plastic into ham, cheese, and, what? — lettuce? This might be a great draw for a "Green Dog Sandwich Shop". The owners could sell postcards.
Reanna Fisher's We Watch Through the Night uses the inescapable patterns of wires that interfere with so many pictures in Newark, as the focus thru which the sky is to be viewed. She has made visual lemonade out of the lemons that fotografers are tempted to Photoshop away.
Sarah Petruzziello's This Little Princess Has Built Her House of Cards on a Quagmire was featured in an interview with her in the premier entry of Nancy Tobin's blog "West of Chelsea", April 29, 2009. In checking Google for that blog, I found one of Ms. Petruzziello's own, which mentioned that the Pierro Gallery in South Orange had an art reception on October 25th too. Was that in cooperation with Open Doors, or in competition with it? Yes, it would be nice to draw the 'burbs into Open Doors, but that would really push the limits of the trolley system as now conceived.
Speaking of the trolley system, I mentioned to a tall, thin (black) man who seemed to be on staff at 744, that my friend and I weren't sure there was more than one trolley because that information was nowhere shown on the materials for Open Doors 2009. I told him that my friend almost didn't come Downtown because she was afraid she'd missed the only trolley. He said he appreciated the feedback and would see to it that next year, the way the trolleys work would be stated clearly. I learned later that day that he is Linwood J. Oglesby, Executive Director of the Newark Arts Council. So I guess word will get back to the Council.
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In this next wide foto of part of the main floor of the 744 Show, the three horizontal pieces comprise Islamic Mosaic by Steve Rossi — made from Fruit Loops (cereal rings) arranged in geometric patterns and separated by color into appropriate parts of the mosaic design. It worked. Even if it didn't work, he needn't be a starving artist because he could eat his work. Writers are sometimes made to eat our words, but they are nowhere near as nutritious.
In the right background was this grouping (called something like "Souvenirs" or "Mementos", I think) of little ceramic(?) plaque miniatures of what appear to be iconic works by various artists, tho the only ones I know or would even guess at are (upper left, partly obscured by a reflection) Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World; a Rembrandt self-portrait (the man in the hat at left); the man with his hand on a bust (another Rembrandt, Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer — which I found by typing "rembrandt hand on bust" — the painting that made headlines in 1961 as fetching the highest price to that date for a painting, $2.3 million); and what I thought might be a Goya or Velazquez at lower left, but which turns out to be William Merritt Chase's Ring Toss. I found that online only because "ring toss" is the game the girls are playing and happens also to be the name of the painting. Someday we will be able to put an image into a search engine and it will find the artist for us. That day has not, to my knowledge, yet arrived.
This next foto shows Nadine La Fond's dramatic Rebirthing Kiskeya. "Kiskeya is a Taíno name for Hispaniola, the Caribbean island now occupied by [the] Dominican Republic and Haiti. Kiskeya is usually spelled Quisqueya in Spanish."
This next group of what look to me like aluminum mushrooms is Cloud by Tracy Hemelberger (?? — my label foto is too fuzzy to read).
The trolley arrived, and Ingé and I boarded for the next stage of OD '09. I apologize to readers who aren't as keen on Newark arts as I am, but I have been told by others that they really like the art stuff. Good thing, because there's still more from this year's Open Doors art extravaganza to discuss. I figure three more posts will be needed to cover the remainder of Sunday adequately.
posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 AM links to this post
Friday, November 06, 2009
Free Museums This Weekend
The Bank of America's "Museums on Us" weekend this month is this Saturday and Sunday (November 7th and 8th). In that program, holders of a BofA credit or debit card (and matching foto ID) gain free admission to over 100 museums across the country, including 8 in NJ. In Newark, Aljira (closed Sundays) and the Newark Museum are the free museums. In Jersey City, the Jersey City Museum and the Liberty Science Center are free. The Montclair Museum of Art and Morris Museum are the other institutions in our area. I don't know that I'm going anywhere, after all the art I've seen lately, but if I were to go anywhere, it would probably be to the Liberty Science Center. Science for a change, not art.
If, however, you have not yet made it to Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton (near Trenton), I can enthusiastically recommend the trip. It is fully as much a luxuriant garden as an art museum.
Tho the weather is expected to be a little chilly Saturday, the art park is open, and indeed has special programs this Saturday.
Saturday, November 7th
Artists' Spotlight
Time: 11am – 4pm. Free with park admission.
Enjoy the fall weather and foliage in the park at the Artist’s Spotlight. This year’s featured artist is Grounds For Sculpture’s artist-in-the-park, Dana Stewart. Take part in our Young Artist Workshops, inspired by Stewart’s work, listen to a special gallery talk with the sculptor himself, and enjoy artistic desserts at Rat’s Café and Restaurant created by Pastry Chef Peter Max Dierkes. The Museum Shop will be offering a sale on Dana Stewart publications on this day only. To view a list and description of the Young Artist Workshops offered on this day, please click here.
Sunday's weather is supposed to be pretty warm, and sunny, ideal for a walk in a sculpture/botanical garden.
posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM links to this post
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Open Doors '09, Day 3, Part B: Catfish Friday
Catfish Friday, a Newark women's art collective, held its second annual group show at Space 972 Gallery (972 Broad Street, near the Rodino Federal Building), with a reception the evening of Saturday, October 24th. This year, the show ("Search for the Real") included two men!
The name of the show is explained in this screen capture from the group's website. The webpage is in some odd format I could not save, not as text, not as a picture. So I did a screenprint to the memory buffer (Alt-PrtSc), then called it up into my graffics program and resized it for this blog. It's a little fuzzy, but I was not about to retype all that text. I type quite enuf, thank you very much. When I tried to save that webpage to look at the source code to figure out why I couldn't block copy text, only the header info stored, so I don't know what webmaster wizardry was performed on that page — nor do I know why the webmaster (webmistress?) would want to keep people from lifting text to inform people about Catfish Friday's work.
The Newark arts scene is very collegial, and over time you get to know a fair number of the artists, curators, and other movers-and-shakers. But Catfish Friday takes Newark warmth a step further. It's an arts version of the TV show Cheers, "where everybody knows your name". Alrite, not EVERYBODY knows your name, and you don't get to know every one of their names, but it's a much higher percentage than elsewhere.
+
Not every member of the collective lives in Newark, which again speaks to Newark's central position. Sadee Brathwaite, for instance, is originally from Hawthorne, NJ, but now lives and works in the arts in Kingston, NY — which is not near. A couple of hours before the start of the reception, previously dreary but lite rain turned into a downpour, and I could picture Sadee stuck on the Thruway (or 9W; I don't know which she uses to get here), barely able to move for minimal visibility, so I wasn't sure she'd make it to the reception. She did. When I mentioned my concerns, she said she was more than halfway to Newark when the torrential rains began, or she would have turned back.
Her works in the show had already been set up, in any case, but it's always good to have the artist on hand. (Above are four of her five paintings in the show. The fifth, Between you and me, is shown in the first foto today, and in this next foto. And yes, that's Sadee alongside it.)
When I arrived, a masked woman was performing what I assume was supposed to be a comedic clown-like act — entirely in Spanish. I can understand most of the national evening news in Spanish (Univisión and Telemundo), but anything other than simple declarative statements, and I'm lost. Catfish Friday has what strikes me as an excessive attachment to Spanish. I suspect that most of the audience at CF events, understands even less Spanish than I do. I am in no position to judge whether this performer was funny, and am left wondering, again, about Catfish Friday's "thing" for Spanish. In Newark, if there is to be special treatment for any 'foreign' language, perhaps it should be Portuguese (tho the Portguese-speaking community does not as yet seem well integrated into the arts community). My Portuguese is even worse than my Spanish, but Hispanics are not automatically able to understand Portuguese. How would they like it if an act or poem were performed entirely in Portuguese, and they were expected to applaud something they do not understand? For all we know, the Spanish text that woman performed said "Die, anglo bastards! Die!"
The bulk of the visual art (Catfish Friday includes some literary artists, in Spanish and even English) was nonlinguistic (contrast Loren Munk's works in Rupert Ravens' current show), comprising many different styles.
+
Space 972 is not a big space, but it is adequate for the collective's current members (and, in this show, male guests).
+
A side room contained small works for purchase by several of the member artists. Here, on the right, are little doll pins by Janice Anderson, and on the left, some paintings and such by Sadee Brathwaite.
This year, Lynn Presley also had some things on offer.
Among the things for sale were small versions of her major work in the show, which is quite different from the other things of hers that I have seen on prior occasions.
Diagonally across from that were two sculptures by Kevin Blythe Sampson, whose mural on the Tucker Center I discussed yesterday. This first is untitled and does not look representational of anything I recognize. Kevin combines many different types of found objects to create his sculptures.
This second piece of Kevin's is called "Untitled (Helmet)" — so it sort-of is titled.
I don't know what objects he has used in his sculptures, but they leave the viewer thinking s/he has seen something bejeweled.
This next foto depicts an intricate combination of art and text (not readable at this resolution), by Shirley Panton Benjamin.
The two pieces below are also by SPB.
Hands play a notable role in this show, as in last year's. In the room where food was set out, the piece on the wall, by Toni Thomas, is made from handprints.
So is her piece on the left below. Toni stands between it and a work that represents the shape of a teepee (which she insisted on spelling "tipi", which we argued about back and forth two or three times) when it is laid flat.
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