744 Show 2007

Last Sunday, the available-space part of the Newark Arts Council's Sixth Annual Artists' Studio and Available Space Tour took place on the sixth floor of the National Newark Building, 744 Broad Street. Oddly, last year's big group show was on the same floor of the same building. Is it the same space, still unoccupied after a full year? That would be depressing. Let's hope NAC has to find another place for the big show next year because the sixth floor of 744 will be occupied by a paying business.
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Last year I regretted not having taken a picture of the elegant brass doors to the elevator, so this year I endeavored to fotograf one. Easier said than done, given the inadequacy of the existing lite and the reflective nature of the metal. I stepped off to the side, which reduced but did not eliminate the glare from the flash.

When I got to 6, I saw no diagram of the space, with numbers for the specific works keyed to an index. Nor did I see plaques by works to identify the artists, and a review of my fotos doesn't reveal any. So I can offer very little information about specific works. They will have to speak for themselves. Perhaps the organizers just didn't have everything ready at the opening of the show but will have identifying cards in place for the bulk of the run (thru December 9th).

The ship in the foto above reminds me of the cluster of three agglomerative sculptures at the NJIT show (fifth picture). This next foto shows a rectangular hanging pavilion of sorts made from white rosaries.

Since I took too many fotos earlier in the weekend, I resolved to take relatively few pix, and only to show representative scenes and works, mainly with flash, because I was tired of fuzzy, unusable pictures. If someone from the staff told me that is not permitted, I'd stop, and of course I would be careful not to blind anyone. So I took fewer pix, but a larger proportion of them proved usable to give you a sense of the event, and not just of the art on display.
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There were some political works, but not as many as one might have expected in a time of war. Some social observers have commented that altho the war causes people concern, it doesn't really make much of an impact on them. This is a very different situation from the Vietnam era, when avoiding the war was not as easy as simply changing channels. Protest was everywhere, whether you wanted to see it or not.

One artist set up a ladder early in the evening, to start work on a blank wall.

There were some ambiguous pieces that may or may not have been political.

The show was entitled "Red Badge of Courage", the name of the best-known work of Newark-born author Stephen Crane. But I saw no overall theme, nor any real connection with Crane except one large display of several items that I did not connect to him until I checked Wikipedia to make sure that Stephen Crane was the Crane born in Newark (not Hart Crane, who I see was born in Ohio). While looking quickly thru Stephen Crane's biography, I saw this passage:

In Florida Crane met Cora Stewart-Taylor (July 12, 1865 - Sep 4, 1910), the proprietress of a Jacksonville brothel, the Hotel de Dream. In 1897 or 1898 they were married.

"Hotel de Dream" is the title of an area of the current show based, yes, on a brothel. I took no pictures of that and find it a distasteful thing to put in an art show for general audiences. The name struck me as odd, since "de Dream" mixes languages, so I'm sure it's the same thing, the one connection with Stephen Crane that I noticed. The pieces in that grouping also seemed at best undistinguished and at worst crude (in the sense of amateurish rather than lewd).
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The exhibit occupied several interconnected rooms, but there was one very large room across an architectural gap from the main display that had nothing in it. I found that odd. You could look out the windows from that empty space across open air to the windows of the main display area.

Part of the area devoid of artworks was used for food, drinks, music, and, quite late, a performance-art piece. The food table was beautifully designed, by David Ellis Catering. And the catering staff was very courteous and efficient.

I especially liked the basketry stands on which serving bowls rested. Here, I deliberately included my beer bottle to indicate the size of these things. Question: Where did they get hyacinths at the end of October?

I don't know what some of these other decorative things were, but they were at once striking and appealing.

I myself wasn't in the mood to eat, but others seemed to enjoy the offerings.

There was a jazz band at the front of the empty area. As you can see, there is a giant space behind them not filled with art. Did the Arts Council not invite enuf people to submit their work? Or do we need to attract a lot more artists to Newark? Come one, come all. Look at the space we have for you to exhibit in!

In the foto above, the band has four members: a trumpeter, drummer, conga drummer, and keyboardist. I got the name only of the trumpeter, James Gibbs III, whose MySpace page says:

Throughout his career James has met and/or performed with T.S. Monk, Herbie Hancock, Roberta Flack, Wynton Marsalis, Terrence Blanchard, Jon Faddis, George Benson, David 'Pic' Conley of Surface, Cecil Brooks III, John Lee, and many other great musicians and personalities.

Born in Newark, Gibbs now lives in Irvington (which I'd like Newark to annex). He has a very snazzy website, but did not reply to my email request for the names of the other members of his group. I posted an almost 5-minute video of part of the performance of a slitely reduced group (the keyboardist had another gig in the latter part of the evening, so had to go) on Blip.tv. The sound, as picked up by my tiny camera, is a bit tinny. If the graphical player below does not work, you can nonetheless get to the video via the link above.

Click To Play

This is the view from behind the band looking toward the portion of exhibition attendees in the food and drink area at that point in the evening.

When the band finished/took a break, a very peculiar performance-art couple, one male (but verging on transvestite), the other female, performed a very peculiar mini-drama apparently based on horrendous news reports of crazed women cutting open the belly of pregnant women to steal their baby. Except here the knife-wielding man, in abstract costume that covered his head, pulled out a stuffed animal rather than baby. Bizarre. I'll say no more than that this is the second performance-art piece I saw that weekend that escaped me.

There was at least one video, running in a side booth in the show. I didn't watch much, since it seemed from what I did see to be thematically dark, perhaps to tie in to Halloween, then soon to arrive.

More to my taste visually was this group of chiaroscuro paintings/fotos(?) that showed people in various postures of distress, but theatrically. The works seemed to me like distillations of opera angst.

While wandering about, I saw a few people I know: Evonne Davis, co-owner of Gallery Aferro; Matt Gosser (curator of the NJIT show the nite before); Rupert Ravens (host of the gallery opening Friday); the bartender from the Ravens gallery who sympathized with me over my fender-bender; and Patrick Doyle, the artist from Rochester whose spherical sculptures I liked. I asked Patrick if his hat was Chinese, Vietnamese, what? He said it was actually from West(?) Africa.

I noticed that Patrick was wearing his small Sphericity-style globe around his neck, but it looked a little different from the first time I saw it. Here's what it looked like against a lite shirt, at Rupert's gallery Friday.

At that time, I thought it was solid. But when I saw it against a darker shirt at 744 on Sunday, it looked hollow. I said I wanted to take another picture and Patrick asked if I had a macro setting on my camera. I do, and the camera has a built-in guide as to how to get to various features, so I was able to use macro to get closer in the foto below than in the foto above.

The sphere is hollow. I asked if he sells them and he said that it's one of a kind now, tho he might make others later. He said there is a product called "silver clay" developed in Japan for use in making jewelry. Particles of silver are suspended in a malleable material that burns off during firing in a kiln. The resulting object shrinks somewhat but has the fine luster of his globe. Inside that globe is a piece of colored glass that the heat formed into an irregular shape. Like his pendant, Patrick is one of a kind. (And yes, Patrick, that is a good thing.)

I asked Rupert if he had anything in the 744 show and he said no, a tad emphatically. I followed up, 'So you're only showing at your own gallery now', which he confirmed. Understandable.

I looked out the windows to see if the view of the top of 1180 from that vantage point was fotoworthy, but couldn't see it at all. Too close.
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I don't know the point of this next work, a bunch of vinyl records with hair suspended from the spindle holes. But somehow it reminded me that my parents had some one-sided records, that is, there was a recorded surface (whatever that might have been made of in those days) on only one side but paper or cardboard on the "flip" side. I thought they were from World War II and due to materials shortages, but I see from a couple of items on the Internet that they might just have been very early recordings, before the public demanded two-sided records.

Not far from that piece was the completed drawing that the guy with the ladder had started earlier. It's a political cartoon.

Other pieces are more pretty than strident.

I've saved the best for last. Taste is, of course, highly variable, but of all the pieces I saw at 744 (and I may have missed a few or hurried past some that deserved more attention), my favorite is this big blue two-dimensional thing in the midst of some three-dimensional origami-style sculptures. I call the blue work a "thing" because I'm not sure what it is. The surface is glossy, smooth, and flat, but when you're close, it looks as tho it holds hundreds of little origamis embedded in blue plexiglass. It's very striking, but was too big for me to fotograf whole and unobstructed. You have to see it to get a sense of how brilliant and deep it is. It's plainly not a hologram but might almost as well be.

As I headed out, I took a foto of the glorious brass mailbox in the lobby, having to cope with the same problem with flash as with the elevator door, above.

744 is Newark's tallest building, but as you can see from the elevator doorways and this mailbox, it is no stripped-down, speculative office tower. It was built expressly for the National Newark & Essex Banking Co., which wanted quality to attach to its name, and quality is what they got.
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When I hit the sidewalk, I saw that the wind was lifting the flag on the Liberty Pole at the southern tip of Military Park, so I tried again to get a picture of the flag flying high between 1180 and 744.

The "Red Badge of Courage" show runs thru December 9th, on the sixth floor of 744 Broad Street in Downtown Newark. I might, before it closes, check back to see if I missed anything; to see who the artist is who created that blue thing; and to see if it really does have depth or just appears to. Shiny.

Before Heading Home

On my way to the NJIT show Saturday I saw something new in the skyline: 1180 Raymond Boulevard has floodlited its Art Deco top, joining a bunch of other buildings proud to draw attention to themselves, and thus to Newark as seen from the highways that carry millions past the view. I don't know when 1180's floodliting began, but Saturday was the first time I'd seen it. So after I left the NJIT show I decided to head to Military Park to take pix. I knew I was going to be in that same area the following nite anyway, but the forecast was for temperatures to be a bit chillier then, and I was impatient.

I got the picture above after I took some others that proved less satisfactory. I had to wait for a breeze for the flag to extend even this far, tho of course before I had my tripod ready, the wind whipped it out to full extension. I waited a bit, but the wind seemed unlikely to pick up.
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So much for that perspective. I wanted to get a wider view, so walked toward the far end of Military Park, fully extended tripod, with camera atop, in hand. I saw a cop ahead, presumably posted there to protect decent people from bad guys. But as I was about to pass him, he said good evening and stopped me to ask what I was doing. I deeply resent that. I told him I was taking fotos (as tho that weren't perfectly obvious) and he asked why, as tho (a) there is something insane about taking fotos and (b) it's any of his business what fotos a private person takes in a public place. I remained civil, tho furious. I told him I have a fotoblog about Newark. He either didn't know or feigned not knowing what a foto/blog is, so I explained, and handed him my card. I showed him, in the monitor, the last picture I took, so he'd have an idea of what I was trying to accomplish.
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He asked for my ID, and tho I asked why — 'Right now, because I asked for it' — I produced it. He expressed concern that terrorists have taken fotos of their targets, and used the foolish example of the 9/11 attacks. I replied that they didn't need fotos to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center. All they had to do was fly anywhere nearby and they'd see the towers sticking up in the sky. No foto necessary. Officer M. BRANON was unyielding, and got on his walkie-talkie to call for a captain in a cruiser to come by.
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It took several minutes for the captain to find us. All the while, I'm standing there, annoyed. At least I wasn't cold, because I was hot under the collar. But I didn't say anything. And I didn't lose the lite. (On my one trip to Paris, I was lining up a shot of the Place Vendôme obelisk lited up at nite, but before I could snap the shot, the lites went off!) When the car arrives, Branon goes over and tells the man inside what's what. I stand, fuming, out of earshot. After several more minutes, Branon returns, asks for my ID (driver's license) again, even tho I had handed him my card, which has the same info, and he had already compared the info on the card with that on my driver's license. He makes some notes on a small spiral-bound pad, then says, 'Have a good evening.' Well, I had been having a good evening until hassled by a policeman who held me up for 20 or 25 minutes — for no good reason whatsoever.
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I am so tired of this nonsense. Newark is not a special target for terrorism, and people have a right to take fotografs in public. I had less trouble taking pictures in the SOVIET UNION than in Newark — I was stopped once before, when taking a picture of the Hall of Records at nite. At least that was a government building. 1180 and adjoining lited towers are not government buildings. But we still have the right to take pictures of any building, government or otherwise, from a public place. That's called "freedom", what the present Administration keeps assuring us we're fiting for (in the various wars that it has already launched and wants still to launch).
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As for Newark in particular, shouldn't we be encouraging tourists to come here, look around, and take pictures to show to the folks back home, to disprove, 1,000 words per pic, that Newark is not the bombed-out urban hellhole they think it is? How are tourists supposed to take pix and feel good about Newark if cops harass them? This has got to stop.
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The management of 1180 and other buildings that have gone to the considerable expense of arraying the equipment and paying for the electricity to illuminate their buildings at nite have every reason to expect that people will want to take pictures of those buildings, and public relations is what it's all about. These building managers should tell the city to tell the cops to lay off tourists and other fotografers. Many people, from the U.S. and elsewhere, are not going to want to visit a police state.
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In any case, I did thereafter find a good spot from which to show the new addition to the nitetime skyline, 1180 next to 744 next to Prudential.

NJIT Show

On Saturday I attended the opening of the latest show at the New Jersey School of Architecture Gallery on the NJIT campus. These things are always enjoyable.
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A few minutes after I arrived, Matthew Gosser, director of the gallery, stopped by and said, "Craig, right?" We had met several times over many months, but I wasn't sure he remembered my name. People skills are, naturally, part of what the curator of an art show has to have. I said I half expected to see him at the Ravens gallery opening the nite before, but didn't. He replied that he was indeed there but could stay for only about a half hour because he had to tend to last-minute preparations for his own gallery's show the following day.
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One reason I went to the first NJIT show I saw is that it concerned the old Hoffman soda bottling plant/Pabst brewery on South Orange Avenue that used to have a giant bottle as its water tower. I had passed by it hundreds of times on my way Downtown and back home. Matt showed, in that exhibition, some furniture he made from objects found at the brewery site, but he didn't have anything of his own in the second NJIT show I attended. He just curated. This time, he had two pieces I saw, and liked. (Any others?) Here's the first, "Table Lamp", made from found objects from the site that is the focus of this show (see below). The lantern that encloses the litebulb is an inverted roof drain.

Titled "The Modified History of Downtown Newark", the exhibition focuses on an area of Downtown cleared for the Arena and other big projects:

The approximate 22 acres of land in question contained many artists’ lofts, residential brownstones, small businesses, an 18th century church graveyard paved over in the 1950’s, Newark’s lost Chinatown, the abandoned Central Railroad terminal and the only active neighborhood firehouse situated in the downtown core. For the greater good, hundreds of individuals were forced to find new places to live, work or reestablish as their place of business. Hopefully, the Newark of the future will appreciate the sacrifices made of the past.

Not everything was torn down, of course. I liked this Anker West stoneware piece, "Central graphic arts building sculpture". It's perhaps two feet long.

I had thought that building, which looks like a warehouse more than a printing-trades center, was going to be demolished for the Arena, but either the Arena was re-sited or I was misinformed, and the plan did not initially contemplate that building's destruction. I did an unsuccessful Internet search for what exactly the building had been used for. In the process, however, I found a brief New York Times story from April 2, 1989 about a different use that the building was to have been put to by 1991:

One of the largest developments in the recent history of downtown Newark has been approved by the city's Planning Board, and construction of the $130 million project, named One Penn Center, is to start this summer. The project involves construction of a 33-story tower with 750,000 square feet divided into office space, retail space and a 300-room hotel. The project also will incorporate the Central Graphic Arts Building, a seven-story Renaissance Revival building erected in 1907. The existing building will be topped with four new stories of office space, while interior renovation will create a garage for 1,000 cars. * * *

The Newark Planning Board also has approved a fifth Gateway Center building, a 27-story office tower.

None of that happened. I didn't think The New York Times went in for April Fool's jokes. (The story appeared on April 2nd, and the Times is a morning newspaper, so the event presumably occurred April 1st.) Here's what the building looked like on October 14th of this year, before the Arena parking lot, in the foreground, was paved.

This is the other Gosser piece, "Neo-Prometheus", seen here front and, in the reflection, back. I tried to fotograf the description alongside, but the picture didn't turn out. Too dim.

The next three pieces are by an artist who, like Matt Gosser, works with found objects. I don't know what these agglomerated sculptures are, but they're colorful and intricate, so you might spend a lot of time with them and still see something different each time you view them, up close or from across the room.

This next piece is explained in the card shown in the picture below it (so I don't have to type). If you don't see a picture but only text, that is because the foto is of a white card.

Most of the exhibit is on the first floor, but there are some items, mainly fotos, on the second. Looking down from there, you can see the layout of much of the room. What you can't see, and what some visitors even on the first floor might miss, is a 'fallout shelter' in an almost hidden room directly under where I was standing when I took this picture. (What appears to be someone lying down on the floor is a soft sculpture.)

Ordinarily I would have taken a picture of the band, but the first band stopped playing and packed up to go, shortly before I had finished touring the exhibit, and the second band had not yet set up by the time I left. I was tired from a long nite Friday. So, no band picture/s this time.
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Perhaps the richest tones in the show appear in this work, "Golden Age Ruins", by Maria Mijares.

The camera was a bit dazzled, so sees double around the roofline of the building in front.
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My absolute favorite thing in the show — no offense intended to the other artists' works — is this, which is explained in the card shown in the next foto below it.

The scene is meant to recreate the west side of Mulberry Street between Lafayette Street and Edison Place (the last-named of which was apparently, from maps in the exhibit, called Mechanic Street before Thomas Edison became a giant in national esteem; from "Mechanic" to "Edison" seems a very reasonable leap). That is the exact site of the Arena/Prudential Center today. Let's close, then, with Maria Mijares' painting of the Edison Place façade of the Arena, "To the Future".

The exhibition can be seen 9am-4pm, Monday-Friday until December 2, 2007, at 116 Summit Street, on the campus of the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Science Park/Downtown Newark. (I see no mention of an admission fee, so perhaps it's free. The opening was.)

Greatest Gallery

Yesterday I focused on the largest art gallery, as such, in Newark. Today, "Church Sunday" at Newark USA, I'll show a few fotos of the largest display space for art in Newark, the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart. I've shown pix of this great edifice on other occasions, and will show more in the future. This thing of beauty is indeed a joy forever. Next week I'll return to showing more modest churches, but on this huge arts weekend, the greatest artwork in the city (and probably the entire state of New Jersey) deserves the place of honor.

Architecture is the king of arts, and Newark has some other great buildings, but whereas the lines of the structures comprise most of the art of most buildings, the Cathedral has rich ornamentation on almost every major surface, inside and out. Part of that ornamentation is stained glass portraiture and visual storytelling. Another part is statuary (here, the figures at the doors of the east transept).

This next picture shows the Chapel of Saint Boniface. The statue represents Boniface himself. The windows show Sts. Gertrude, Henry, and Walburga. That chapel demonstrates the importance, at the time the Cathedral was built, of the Germans, because all those saints were specially connected with Germany.

Here's a closeup of the St. Gertrude window. My mother's name was Gertrude. (She was half German.) For most of her life, she was called "Gert" for short. Then she visited my sisters in California and decided to introduce herself to their friends as "Trudy". That's one reason so many people in this country move to distant places, so they can reinvent themselves. The "Trudy" thing didn't last very long. She returned to NJ (and sanity). Would she have remained "Trudy" if she had moved in with my sister/s? We'll never know. Thank goodness.

The foto below shows the double row of chandeliers running down the nave to the rose window on the south.

This great building is expensive to maintain. It has an enormous pipe organ, 27th largest in the world. Perhaps they could hold frequent organ recitals by the world's best organists, or the best students at conservatories such as Juilliard who would be thrilled to play such a magnificent instrument, and charge a modest fee for admission. I was once present, briefly, while the Cathedral's regular organist was practicing, and can aver that the sound in that great, reverberatory space was magnificent.

The last foto today is of the west transept rose window and its setting.

Ravens Gallery Opening

Note: This is a very long entry, some 4,500 words, 38 fotos, and two videos. It's a pity that browsers don't allow one to leave a bookmark specific not just to a webpage but also to a particular point within a page so one could go away, come back later, and pick up exactly where s/he left off. You'd think some browser would have come up with such a bookmark by now, wouldn't you?
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The big event yesterday was the opening of Rupert Ravens Contemporary art gallery, Downtown. The evening started off with a bang. Literally. I was running late, and left my driveway a little after 6:30pm, in the rain and dark. I don't like to drive at nite or in the rain, and doubly dislike driving in rain at nite, because of lowered visibility and glare in my eyes, but it couldn't be helped. At the corner of my block, traffic going west was heavier than usual, and two buses blocked my view of eastbound traffic, into which I had to turn, which was not as heavy. There is no traffic lite at my corner, which is usually not a problem. Tonite it was. I thought I detected a lull in traffic in the lane beyond the buses into which I would have to make a left turn, so I nudged the nose of my car out tentatively, hoping to see the glare of headlites if anyone were coming. Bad move that I'll never make again. A car was coming, and altho it had just rounded the corner one short block away, that block is steeply downhill and the car picked up more speed than I anticipated, the driver saw me too late to beep, there was a parked car so she couldn't swerve, and the pavement was wet. Result: the classic fender-bender, first time I had ever had such an accident.

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Some of the fotos below are a tad fuzzy because I was working without a tripod and mostly without flash. But they should suffice to give you a good sense of what they show, which may or may not relate to the adjoining text.

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We pulled over and I walked back to see if the other driver was alrite. She was. We both conceded aloud that the accident was nobody's fault, since there wasn't much either of us could do to avoid it, since neither of us could see the other. It was much like a blind-driveway situation, or a hedge or tree at a corner blocking the view. Neither of us knew if we had to call the police for an accident report, so I called 911 and asked. The woman who answered said we probably did, since the damage might have exceeded $500, and connected us to dispatch, which took our location. (Tho I called from Newark, I was connected to East Orange Police because, said the officer there, I called from a cellphone, and that's how such calls are perceived.)

So we waited. I lent Takiya (the other driver) my cellphone to call a friend in the meantime. Tho it seemed longer, it took about 23 minutes for the (very polite) cop to get there, briefly survey the situation and ask if we were alrite (we were). We both stated to the officer that it was no one person's fault. He took the registration, insurance card, and license for each of us, filled out a report to submit, and gave us the number by which we could request that report after three or so business days. Then I was able to head Downtown, after a 3/4 hour delay. "Haste makes waste", indeed. Because there were other buses in the pipeline coming up the hill and I didn't just sit and wait for 3 minutes, or however long it would have taken for sightlines to have permitted me to proceed safely, I lost 45 minutes, plus a lowbeam headlite, and added a dent to my car. (I told Takiya that I don't mind a dent, as long as it doesn't interfere with my operating the vehicle. The car is old, and I don't want a car that looks too good, as might tempt car thieves. Car theft in Newark is way down from levels a decade ago, but I sometimes park on the street in Manhattan.)
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I found 85 Market Street easily, since it's in the same block as Gallery Aferro, which I've been to more than once. 85 used to house The Furniture King, but a host of furniture stores in this vicinity have closed in recent years. As I observed here February 13th, the good news is that there are now some large venues for new businesses, like art galleries, to cater to an increased student residential population and visitors from out of town. I thought to myself that all he had to do is change "Furniture" to "Art" on the big sign still on the building.

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At the front left of the main floor is what looks like some things left over from the Furniture King days. I didn't think, that that could not be, until I looked closely at the clutter and saw "CA" on an aquamarine wall but "SHIER" on a perpendicular red beam. Aha. Art.

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This is the great big gallery mentioned in an important New York Times article May 6th ("Not Hot Just Yet, but Newark Is Starting to Percolate"), which contains this passage:

Last month Mr. Aratow helped deliver — rent free for at least a year — a 30,000-square-foot furniture warehouse on Market Street to Rupert Ravens, a curator who will turn it into New Jersey’s biggest gallery. Mr. Ravens, who helps coordinate the city’s annual artist studio tour, dreams of a Newark Biennial to rival art extravaganzas in Berlin, Venice and Miami.

“This is the first time in my life I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time,” he said.

It certainly seemed like the right place on opening nite.

After taking a look around the front of the first floor, I found the refreshment area at the back and asked the bartender what kind of white wine they had. Pinot grigio. I said I'd heard of it but not tried it before but would now. He said, "There's a first time for everything", which somehow caused me to say I'd had my first auto accident tonite (as to say, so why not try pinot grigio?). He offered a very gratifying, "Ahhh" in sympathy.

Then I headed downstairs, to "Innovations: Brodsky Center", a spare exhibition in a windowless space.

Here are two closer views of the piece in that area that I liked best. The central feature seems to me to combine a cross, a sword, and a religious Virgin figure pierced by the sword.

Here's a closer view of the top (marred slitely by a reflection of the fluorescent lites). Cuban currency makes up much of the center of this work: the three-peso note with a portrait of Che Guevara on it.

I think this next work, a hologram, is in the Brodsky area too.

The lavatory is in the basement, but there's only one, so we had to wait. As three men stood in line, a woman joined the line and said now we know what it's like (to have to wait for a public lavatory, as women so often do). A blond (British?) man said it's not unusual for galleries to be very short on lavatories; added that in Manhattan there are places where several galleries share a single lavatory; and mentioned one by name, "Proposition" in Chelsea. The woman said that's not true of that gallery, because she is affiliated with it. I asked her name. She said "Grace Graupe-Pillard". I was startled, so introduced myself. She was a little startled too, because we had exchanged emails after last year's arts week. I showed a foto of one of her works as the 14th foto in my blog entry of October 23rd, 2006, and she wrote to introduce herself and express her appreciation. I asked for her card, but just then the door to the lavatory opened and she didn't want to hold up the line so said she'd find me later.

I then headed upstairs, heard music from the second (aboveground) floor, and headed further upstairs. There I saw another of the things I showed here last year (12th foto), a great big sphere made from metal strips. Here's the view thru and past it, from the back of the room.

It's a crappy picture — I should have used flash, since there was nobody to blind or annoy in that area at that moment — but I wanted to show it again. Nearby, I think, was a kinetic sculpture by Mark Esper, which I captured in a 22-second video. If the video player for either of the videos below does not work, just click on the link in the paragraph before it.

Click To Play

Then I walked further forward, and took this view of the front of the room and the band, Lil' Bastad.

The entire right side of this view shows a series of fotoshopped fotos of soldiers and warfare superimposed on local New Jersey scenes. (More on that later). The metal sheets on the floor puzzled me at first. I couldn't tell whether they were an artwork or some kind of repair to the floor. Only when I noticed that there were embossed numbers, one per panel (1, 2, 3, ...), did I know for sure that it was art, apparently a metallic hopscotch court.

As I went for a refill of wine, I saw a man who I suspected (from the description the bartender had given me) was Rupert Ravens himself, so asked. He said yes, and I introduced myself. To my surprise, he also knew of my blog (perhaps because I showed two of his works in an NJIT show last year. I asked if he'd pose for a picture. As we chatted while I lined up the shot, I said "So, now you're the Furniture King." And before I could say more he corrected me, "The art king". Darn. He stole my thunder. In any case, I took one picture without flash but asked if it would be OK to take one with flash. I didn't want to blind him but I did want to play safe. The second turned out; the first, not so much. (The faint round spot on the lower end of his jacket is not on the jacket but only the foto. I think somehow the briteness of his watch produced a visual echo. I don't know what else it could be, since it wasn't on the foto before or the foto after.)

I mentioned that I didn't see many plaques identifying the artists, and he said that they would be up soon but he was rushing to get everything ready for the opening, and not everything got done. As we were speaking, a woman walked up. "Ah, here's my mother." She was beaming with pride at how well everything was going. I spoke with her at some length later. But for now I returned to viewing and fotograffing other parts of the exhibit.

I found these elephants with intertwined trunks appealing, except that there are exposed spinal bones extending from the rear of the heads. I think there is something deep in the human creature that predisposes us to like elephants and horses. I particularly like African elephants, with their bigger ears, like these. In African elephants (but not Indian/Asian), both male and female have full tusks, which complicates determining whether these animals are fiting or caressing.

I liked these paired canvases, tho I don't know why they are touching the floor, nor whether the objects in them represent buildings or books. Paired as they are, they could be book-bookends. When I went to fotograf this next work I liked, a little girl who also apparently liked it decided she'd like to be in the picture. So here she is.

This next foto shows the front left window area as seen from the side. I wondered if the wooden sphere was by the same artist as the metal sphere on the second floor.

About then, I heard loud mezzo-soprano(?) singing and the ringing of a bell from the back of the room. Clarina Bezzola, a performance artist, was procéssing, in costume, pulling a long train (like a wedding dress's train, not a choochoo train) on a roller.

I don't know in what language (if any) she was singing, nor, consequently, what, if anything, she was saying. But she has an amazingly powerful voice. In the foto above, she strives to pass by a tall sculpture on the left and low sculpture on the right. Helpful people lifted up the left side to allow it to pass. That was the trip toward the front. Here she is on the way back, in the other half of the room.

I do not pretend to understand what she was expressing. I will, however, show you the "Jeff" (short) sculpture that is pair to the "Mutt" sculpture Ms. Bezzola had trouble getting past. The two appear to be sheets of slate (rock, or something made to look like slate) held up by a strong iron grate on four legs. The one below is perhaps 2½ to 3 feet tall. The one in the second foto below is the one Bezzola passed, and is perhaps 10 feet tall at its upper edge, so tall that I couldn't get the peak into the same picture as other pieces I wanted to include.

After the Bezzola performance, I was chatting with a couple of young ladies who were most impressed by the power of her voice. I asked the one holding a camera if she got pix of the performance. She was unhappy to report that the battery had given out before then. I remarked that that was a common problem, so I carry spares, then checked to see how many extras I had with me, pulling out first one, then two, then three spare lithium batteries. In outdoor fotografy in cold weather, I have had all four (including the one in the camera) drain to uselessness.

I asked if either of these girls would be willing to pose in a chair within a fiber-optic tent on the second floor, and one of them, Mia Cassell, agreed. This first foto is a wide view, as shows the anchor for the fibers on the floor and the view of Market Street thru the window beyond.

Here is a closer view, showing the effect of lite in and on the fibers.

Thank you, Mia.

The foto above shows one of the few works clearly labeled, "Blake Illuminated Print" 2003 by Alastair Noble. It appears to be the same subject in two forms, two- and three-dimensional. If there are differences, I didn't notice them. I was tempted to show a nearby abstract painting at this point, but I forgot whether I was holding the camera horizontal or vertical when I took the shot, and did not dare showing it the wrong way. I'd never hear the end of it, not that I know that many artists to be complained at by. That may change.
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I saw Grace Graupe-Pillard sitting with a couple of people so approached to get the card promised earlier. She gave it to me (and I discovered on reading it later that she lives in Keyport, not far from where I grew up, in Middletown Township (both in Monmouth County)). I asked if she had anything in this show, and she said yes, hers were the several fotos combining military images with local landmarks on the second floor — which I had already fotograffed. I said, "Oh, the ones about the war brought home?", and she said "Exactly". I told her I had tried to get a closeup of the particular one that included the façade of the National Newark Building. I had to turn on flash because the pix without flash had been unusably fuzzy. But the surface is reflective, and even after I moved far to one side to avoid reflection of the flash, a reflection from lites above marred the upper portion of the scene.

Antiwar viewers will see this group of images as saying, "See what we have done? How would we like it if what we are doing in Iraq were happening to us at home?" Supporters of the war, seeing the identical situation, the war brought here, would say, "This is why we have to fite in Iraq, so this doesn't happen here!" Two-edged sword — or plowshare.

The conversation in the small group of us turned to whether such works were salable, and she said she has sold some abroad but not one here. Yet. But as Rupert said, everything in this show is for sale, so who knows? Most of the works on display, like the lace medallions above (doilies for Titans?), are not controversial.

Grace started to introduce me to three other artists who had works in the show. It turns out that I had already fotograffed the works of two of them, which happen to be in the same area, above. Patricia Leighton's visual megaliths flank Miriam Brumer's biological fantasmagorias.

In the close foto above, you can see some of the detail of Miriam's pieces. In the 4 minute and 24 second video below, she discusses these works. (I apologize for the liting in the video, which sometimes shows and sometimes obscures her face. I'm working with ambient lite only. And the sound picks up the lively crowd in the background. I have no unidirectional microfone to screen out everyone but her. But, then, you wouldn't hear my questions.)

Click To Play

In any event, here's another view of the works of the two artists Grace did introduce me to.

Patricia Leighton is originally from Scotland but now lives in New York. She says that these works are covered in sisal, a natural fiber most of us know from the coarse twine with fraying fibers that we get from Mexico. The twine is the fiber's natural color, blond, but Patricia dyes it darker.
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By the time I returned to where Grace was sitting, the third artist she was going to introduce me to had moved on, but I chanced to catch up with him (Roy Crosse of Baltimore) later and asked which was his work. It just happened to be right nearby, a soft wall hanging with fotos on bricks below, called "Wailing Wall". At first he just stood by it, but I induced him to hold his arm out, as to present it to the viewer.

I didn't realize until I reviewed the fotos that that made it look like he was holding up the central circle with his hand. Here's the first foto, as he had originally wanted to be seen.

And here is one of the bricks imprinted with sad/gruesome fotos, at the foot of the fabric.

I suspect these opening receptions — parties — are really important to artists, whose work is mostly solitary, and not just because it keeps them human (the human creature being a social animal), but also in letting them see people's reactions to their work. Some artists, of course, are married and have families, but the people closest to you are often not the best judge of your work. Some are too kind, others dismissive: "No man is a prophet in his own land." Rupert Ravens seems to enjoy the full support of his family. Certainly his mother was effusive in her pride, and said that Rupert's (late) father, also named Rupert, was very proud and supportive of all four of his children (and all of them are doing very well today). A couple of times Lucille, who is ancestrally Italian, pronounced Newark "New Ark", but she explained that she has spent a lot of time in Delaware, and that's how it's pronounced in Delaware. Understandable. In this foto, Lucille is joined by her grandson, Rupert's son Gavin Rupert, a well-mannered young man who seemed very happy to be at the opening with his father and grandmother.

These receptions also give artists a chance to see not just other people's work, which they could do in a visit to a gallery outside the reception setting, but also the reactions of a large number of visitors to other artists' work, which they would not usually get from an independent tour of a gallery during regular business hours. There are other people, like writers, whose occupations also require them to be alone for extended periods of most days. They could use a good party every now and then too.

These gatherings also allow musicians and performance artists to reach an audience they might not otherwise reach. It occurs to me that dance has been absent from the receptions I've been to, save that the Ravens gallery opening did have the steppers from Shabazz High School. I missed them yesterday, due to my fender-bender and resulting delay, but trying to get to the gallery in time to see them is one reason I was too impatient simply to wait at my corner until I could clearly see that the way was safe. I had seen the Shabazz, and Weequahic, High School marching bands at an African Heritage Parade (pix toward the end of the second foto gallery on my Resurgence City website; search for "Shabazz") some years ago, so I have an idea of what I missed yesterday.

I managed to meet another artist on my own: Patrick Doyle of Rochester, NY. He was near the wooden sphere, and it turns out he made both it ("Spherical Octahedron 8") and the metal sphere shown above and last year ("Sphericity"). I got an answer to a question I posed last year. The metal sphere does have only triangles and pentagons, no other shape. We spoke with a couple of Newarkers who seemed to appreciate the wooden sphere.

As the party wound down, I noticed that an addition (above) had been made to the works toward the front of the room. Here is what that area looked like early on.

As I left the gallery, it was still wet out. Raindrops keep falling on my lens, but my camera is largely weatherproof, so I took this one last foto of the view looking in from the street.

Then I walked to my car and drove into Manhattan to meet friends. It was a very good nite.