Sharon and Hrag discussing how to live and sustain a creative life at Strand Bookstore tonight. Looking for inspiration? Check out Sharon's new new book 'The Artist as Culture Producer,' a collection of 40 essays by visual artists breaking down how they extend their practices outside their studios. We got to hear some impactful stories first hand and now looking forward to reading the book and passing it around the studio!
Attention Patrons of the Arts!! Casino Night Press Release!
Thank You NJ Council on the Arts!
Thank you to the Hudson County Cultural Affairs office and the NJ State Council on the Arts for the inspiring Public Board Meeting and luncheon today! Congrats to our fellow Hudson County Local Arts Program Grant winners (shown in this pic) as well as all the Hudson County NJCA individual grant winners!
Board member and friend Austin Thomas and I spent the afternoon with NJ's top creative thinkers setting a plan for 2017 to ensure the National Endowment for the Arts voice is heard. Folks from the NJ Council, Art Pride NJ and Hudson County spoke passionately about how we need to be the voices of the future now more than ever! If you are an artist, you are a truth seeker!
Did you know that the return in investing $146 million into the NEA annually is $700 billion?! $700 billion dollars generated through economic and social growth annually because of the arts. Get out there, visit the galleries, exhibitions and theaters in 2017 and show congress how important the arts are to your life! Meanwhile here are some helpful links that can get you more involved:
NJ Council on the Arts
- http://nj.gov/state/njsca/index.html
Hudson County Cultural Affairs
- http://visithudson.org/
NJ Art Pride
- http://www.artpridenj.com/
National Endowment for the Arts
- https://www.arts.gov/
Cabinet of Curiosities: The Whimsical World of Carlos DeMedeiros
All Things Plexi and Intro to Etching Workshops this past Saturday!
Check out this #montage from yesterday's very sexy "All Things Plexi" workshop with @jeremycolemansmith and an intro to etching workshop with @dr_spitz
#newjersey #supportthearts#guttenbergarts #intaglio #monoprint#printmaking #etching #workshop #nj
Park Wonder by Matthew Jensen
Since the Fall Paper Crown Press has been working closely with the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey on a wonderful book project called "Park Wonder". This book documents the photographic diary of artist Matthew Jensen journeys through 4 national parks in New Jersey. The book covers NJ locations like the Passaic River, Sandy Hook, Watchung Reservation and the Great Swamp that are total hidden gems. This project is supported in part by an award
from the National Endowment for the Arts. You can read more about this project here:
http://www.artcenternj.org/blog/2017/02/01/matthew-jensen-park-wonder/
Welcome Winter 2017 Residents!!
We are so excited to have these great artists take part in our Winter Space and Time Residency Program!
From Left to Right: Joseph Martin Gabriel, Milcah Bassel, Jeremy Coleman Smith, Ryan Schroeder
Made Here: Fall 2016 Press Release
Giving Tuesday Silent Auction @ Chelsea Wine Vault
Thank you to Chelsea Wine Vault and everyone who attended our Giving Tuesday Silent Auction!
Congrats to our Winter STAR 2017 Fellows!
RYAN SCHROEDER
My paintings are relics that reflect reality. Through paint, I am exploring space as a phenomenological experience in that the subject matter is assembled through firsthand exploration. I paint abandoned spaces that resonate with me. Some paintings are made perceptually, and others from photographs. However, my main focus is finding a means to visually transmit the dominant psychological feeling of a person or place. I am attracted to spaces that possess a residue of occupation, the visceral sensation of a human presence. These structures provide a frameworkthrough which I am able to have a conversation about decay, neglect, and what it means to be forgotten.
MILCAH BASSEL
My work explores the phenomenology of body-space relations, questioning where experience and imagery converge and crossover. Focused on the space between things the work glides between dimensions, disciplines, and media seeking always to expand the spatial imagination. Ongoing themes intersect the body with architecture and with graphics, the most recent body of work focuses on the body intersecting the grid. Examples for this can be seen in the Body Lexicon series, in A Little Book of Polar Coordinates, and in Grid Piece.
Drawing on countless modernist and contemporary works about the grid by visual artists, writers, and scientists, Grid Piece, a performative sequence spins a poetic, whimsical, and philosophical tale. The imagery, produced over the summer, is an extensive time-lapse sequence where I am seen physically interacting with a large-scale grid. After drawing the grid I proceed to cut into it, performing within as I go along, cutting away until the grid melts into something almost figurative and is then completely diminished; The actions occurring both metaphorically and literally between dimensions.
JOSEPH MARTIN GABRIEL
My curiosities draw upon the boundaries and subtle nuances between what we regard as natural and artificial. Through reconfiguring and reimagining landscapes, I observe the physical environment in different vantage points, from macro to micro-level. Incorporating seemingly incompatible conditions, experiential to experimental encounters, I probe on the tactile, spatial and conceptual topologies within our natural and built environments; putting premium on those that affects how we shape our immediate spaces and how they shape us.
By creating, altering and overlaying various peculiarities, I allow my works to intervene or converse within the context of a given space. Most of my works exist in a temporal condition, producing sculptural installations and images that generate emphasis and contrasts between fragile and rigid; familiar and uncanny; concrete and liminal. My works reflect on the idea of existence and ephemerality where a simultaneous tension is created between something that exudes life and something that shows the lack or absence thereof.
JEREMY SMITH (Key Holder)
My work investigates the relationship between people, objects of display and the interior spaces where they interact. In an effort to describe ourselves, we adorn our personal spaces and develop an image of self through the contents we choose to display in a room. The presentation of these objects helps fabricate an image of the occupant and becomes a depiction of self-narrative. The relationship between the object and its possessor becomes entangled; the memory of the self becomes replaced by the memory of the object and leaves one to question which is ultimately the curiosity? On an intimate level, we are comforted by the objects that we choose to live with, and on a public level, we represent ourselves through the fabricated images we share with others.
The materials used in my work are overlooked, ephemeral and are considered to have little or no value. As I apply my experience with craft to materials commonly dismissed as disposable, these materials lose their insignificance, suggest the elegance of others and appear to be ready-made. Corrugated cardboard, paper and ink are used in various printmaking processes that create a manicured surface that helps transform these trophies or totems from common utility to objects of desire. The surface and form of these objects have separate histories, but come together to have a combined existence in the context of this display. By relying on the power of the original, the representation assumes that character or value through this process of mimesis.
Sentimentality develops into a need or desire that must be sustained or reinforced by the presence of objects. My work questions what we cherish more, the image of the object, the idea of the experience or the object itself? I believe that this desire can be satisfied through multiple sources, but how one displays or expresses this satisfaction is what my work explores.