Metal Ribbon at Nite

The wet pavement reflects glare and exaggerates the briteness of the liting in this view. But I was there when the street was wet, so that's what you get. It still indicates how faint the liting of the sculpture is, as does not draw attention from afar.

I showed here September 20th some fotos of a ribbon sculpture along 250 feet of the Ambulatory Care Center at UMDNJ. I then alerted the sculptor, Mac Adams, to that blog entry and asked for more information, such as the gauge of the metal and whether the description of it as powder-coated metal meant like a car, whose paint is baked on.

He liked the pix, and asked:

Do you have one at night I don't think I have seen it at night. Its designed in 10ft sections and half inch thick . yes powder coating is like baking as in car bodies. I can tell you a little story the day I started installing it July 12, 2005 my wife's birthday and the day she was taken to UMDNJ with a very serious spinal cord injury. [I (LCS) am happy to report that she is better now.] It was a very bad day. However lucky for me my crew was very good, Between running in and out of the hospital they did a great job. It has not good memories for me. Its ironic the sculpture is a narrative about a journey through illness. One has to walk the length and observe it on the side of ones vision. Its a meditative walk. The ribbon works a little like a stripe of film reflecting real time in it.

It does have an anonymous quality. The way you found it is the way it should be found, by chance.

Maybe more people will see it after your blog.

I certainly hope so. I replied that I did not have any fotos at nite but would take some. So I did. In the middle of the nite tonite, after the worst of the rain (a thunderstorm shortly after midnite) had stopped, I drove to that area, and parked in the Bergen Street Pathmark parking lot (I also had to get some things from the store), and the lines in the middle of the nite are generally very short, if indeed there are any). Before I made the turn into the parking lot, I looked for floodliting at the base of the Ambulatory Care Center but saw none. Was it turned off already? I know that the floodlites on the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart used to go out at around 2am, tho I have seen them on later, recently. So maybe the lites on the sculpture are set on a timer and go out in the middle of the nite. But when I looked more carefully, I noticed that there were indeed patches of lite on that wall, but blue, not white. Ah. That's why I hadn't noticed floodliting, because it's blue-lite special liting, not your typical floodliting.

I crossed the street and took pix of the sculpture from some of the same places I had shown in the daytime. The intermittent liting, which hilites only parts of the sculpture in brite lite, produce a discontinuity in the sculpture that daylite does not.

But it also adds another layer of lines to brite-daylite's two, the sculpture itself and the shadow it throws. At nite, there is a faint blue line of reflected lite against the wall as well.

The sculpture is reflective not just of the lite thrown up by the blue spotlites but also of street lites around.

I experimented with the Nite Scene setting, and the regular Landscape + Portrait setting, and resting the camera on the fence, using the self-timer so my finger wouldn't move the camera in poor lite. But when I changed scene, the camera set itself to the Auto exposure setting and triggered the flash (more than once; silly me for not thinking of that each time I set a new mode). I kept those pix, tho, because they show a different aspect of the sculpture in its place. Note that in the flash fotos, there aren't any shadows in the central focus area, just the ribbon. So that's already different from what you would see on a sunny day. I don't know about a cloudy day. Can you tell that I just love this thing, in every type of liting I have yet encountered? Go see for yourself, then tell me what you think of it. I'll publish here the most insightful remarks (let me know, at ResurgenceCity@aol.com) if I can use your name and location). Some people don't "get" abstract art like this, and regard as a humungous waste of money and prominence displays of something like a metal ribbon. Others think them sublime. Count me on the side of the "sublime" vote in the case of this extraordinary (Newark) sculpture.

The dark areas of the wall are merely wet spots from tonite's rain.

Paper, Not Plastic. After I took these pix, I went into the Pathmark to get a bunch of things, working from a list but walking thru much of the store to see if the indexes at the aisles reminded me of anything, checking specials on display, etc. When I got to the (single) line for the register, I discovered that something was wrong with Pathmark's connection to the service centers for debit and credit cards. Not even the ATM's in the corner were working, so some people couldn't get anything like what they intended to. I checked my cash, did a ruf tally of what was in my cart, then headed back thru the store to put back things I didn't have enuf for. Fortunately, I had enuf cash on hand to get most of what I had put in the cart, but not enuf to keep me from having to go back sooner than I had intended. Maybe I'll do so on a cloudy day and see if the ribbon throws a shadow or stands alone against the wall.

I remarked to the cashier, a slender, mature black woman ("mature" means someone around my age, as distinct from "elderly", anyone older than I am), that paper (green paper) worked even if plastic did not. She said she had to tell people about the problem as they arrived at the register, and she was plainly flustered. I reminded her that she could make an announcement over the public-address system, and a lite went off (picture the lite bulb in a thought bubble in a cartoon). She had been so beset and upset that she had completely forgotten that. So she picked up the phone and made an announcement. And then all she had to do was make another announcement when new people arrived. The people then there were not happy, since we have come to rely upon the supermarket not just for groceries but also for "cash back", a sort of 24-hour bank branch without ATM fees. This problem would have been inconceivable when I was born. You'd have had a hard time even explaining to people what it is.

What Is Wrong with Shoelaces? Before I stood up in getting out of my car to take pix, I had to retie the shoelace on my left shoe. By the time I got back into the car, it had come undone again. This happens time and time again every day. What have they done to shoelaces? I think they must be made of some kind of unyielding synthetic fiber that doesn't compress and then bounce back as would create a tite knot. We didn't have this problem in The Olden Days (when I was a child). Aren't things supposed to get better over time? I have knee problems. I can't bend down easily to retie shoes I have already tied ten times today. Do I have to get dress shoes with Velcro closures? Is there even any such thing as Velcro Dressports?

'From Wall Street to Main Street'. You have doubtless heard this expression many times in recent days. I thought, "Hm. I don't know of a Main Street in Newark. I know there's one in East Orange, but I don't know of one in Irvington or Harrison. I'll have to check that on Mapquest." I did. Did you know that there IS a Main Street in Newark, a north-south street in the Ironbound. Only three blocks long, it lies between Magazine Street on the west and St. Francis Street on the east. It starts at Ferry Street on the north, and ends at Kossuth Street on the south. Why on Earth is such an inconsequential nothing little street called "Main"?

Note the shadow of the elegant fence on the wall.

Irvington, near me, has no Main Street. Harrison has none either. By the way, how many major cities have a major street called "Market"? I think Philly's equivalent of Newark's Four Corners is Market Street and something or other. I see from Wikipedia that Philly actually does have a Broad Street that would intersect with Market except that City Hall, on a superblock, stands at that point.

The High Street was the familiar name of the principal street in nearly every English town at the time Philadelphia was founded. But if Philadelphia was indebted to England for the name of High Street, nearly every American town is, in turn, indebted to Philadelphia for its Market Street.

The other Market Street I have noticed in my travels is that of San Fran, the main drag of downtown. I, of course, a Vailsburger (no one says that, do they? Why not?), regard Market Street as an eastward extension of South Orange Avenue, western Newark's main drag. By the way, if ever you need to travel SOA west around sunset, put on your sunglasses first, because the sun is almost exactly dead ahead.

Of History and Weather

Ruins of Old South Park Presbyterian Church opposite what was originally South Park but is now Lincoln Park. All of the color fotos shown today were taken on the Newarkology walking tour of MLK Boulevard thru Lower Broad Street on August 10th (an unfortunately gray and dreary day).

I got an email in response to my post about Newarkology walking tours last Wednesday.

I just checked out your blog, and found your coverage of the recent tour of High Street and the Krueger-Scott Mansion very interesting (great pix).

(Beer has been so good to Newark, and provided it with some prosperity and notable landmarks.)

It got me to wondering, what with the history of the Mansion--owned for awhile by Louise Scott-Roundtree and proposed for a time to be an African-American Cultural Center--how come all the folks on the tour are white, and why is it, do you think, that there seems to be so little interest among Newark's many African Americans on the history and earlier culture of their own home town--even when it involves their own people?

All the contact and view of Newark I have these days are the few blogs (including "Old Newark") and the show on A&E, "Jacked," which documents the work of the Essex County auto theft unit, which mostly runs down car thieves in Brick City--number one again in America for stolen cars!

Anyway, what about it? Why so few African-Americans on these tours and so little interest in local history?

Here you can see scaffolding recently erected for repairs to the church façade, the only part of the building that remains after a fire destroyed it in 1992. The scaffolding rises about where Abraham Lincoln said a few words during a stop in Newark in 1861. After his assassination, South Park was renamed Lincoln Park. The small tree(s) atop the right steeple remnant will presumably be removed as part of this renovation. It would be great if it/they could be planted at the curb or in the park, but removal might prove fatal.

I replied:

Actually, if you look at my picture of the crowd rounding the corner of MLK onto West Kinney Street, you will see that two of the first four tour participants are black, and there's another black guy at the corner and a few others elsewhere. While the crowd was mainly white, it was not exclusively white but had members of all three classical races, white, black, and Oriental.
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Many of the people on the tour were from white families that had moved to the suburbs. People who live here may feel they already know the history that outsiders need a guide to. Or maybe black present residents didn't see the notice in the Star-Ledger, or they didn't feel that $10 per person was a good use for their money, especially if they are economically pressed. They might also not have been interested in the history of WHITE Newark, and not realized that the Mansion was occupied for a while by a black millionnairess. [That is to say that they'd have had to know already some of the history that was to be discussed, to know that it was relevant to black history.] I'd like to see more interest from black Newarkers in Newark's history, but how interested would white Newarkers be if Newark's early history were all black?

Well, wouldja looka here! Black people on the tour.

As for car theft, this is a widespread crime and Newark's car-theft rates are actually down for at least three years in a row (as at 2007), and I see on the Internet different places named as "car-theft capital", including NYC in [1993] and Modesto, California in 2005. These things vary over time, but I have no reason to think that Newark would move back into the No. 1 position, inasmuch as a great many cars stolen in California are for export to Mexico and points south, or to Asia, both of which areas are much more easily accessed via the West Coast than the East.
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I had never heard of a TV show called Jacked, and had a lot of trouble finding even information about it, from working websites. When I finally did, however, find some episodes available online, I watched the beginning of the first episode, where one would expect such info to be given by way of introduction, and it does NOT say that Newark is the car-theft capital of the Nation, at least not in the first few minutes. And the program is NOT about Newark, not about Essex County alone, but about a "Union/Essex Auto Theft Task Force" (shown plainly at the top of a form held, on camera, by one of the officers), spanning TWO COUNTIES of North Jersey, cities and suburbs alike. Also in the first few minutes of that first episode, a black officer is heard saying "At one point, it was terrible" in Newark, which plainly means that that is no longer the case. Cheers.

And here's another black tour participant. Golly. The hole in the partition is the start of revamping the structure to serve as backdrop to an outdoor concert space, a project of the Lincoln Park Coast Cultural District.

We are reminded during Black History Month that black history is American history (too). Quite so. But to many black Newarkers, the history of Newark before about 1960 is like most other "American history", stories about dead white guys. They feel disconnected from a history they don't think they are part of. Or during which they were ill-treated. Fortunately, not all black New Jerseyans feel that way. The director of the New Jersey Historical Society, right here in Newark, is in fact a black woman. She addresses some Newarkers' lack of engagement in the Society (NJHS, that is, not American society at large, tho there's some of that too):

She admits that most residents may not even know the society is based in Newark, but hopes signage or other measures can be used to capture the attention of people. "They don't know it's for them," she said. "They don't think there is anything in these walls for them."

Lobby of Divine Riviera Hotel, Clinton Avenue and MLK Boulevard.

White Americans start "American" history with the arrival of the white man in "America", an entire continent named for one Italian guy (Americus Vespucius, in Latin), who was never anywhere near the present-day United States but explored only South America and, according to some accounts, part of Central America. Some geographers count Central America as North America, in which the bulk of the U.S. lies (tho Hawaii is not part of "America" but Oceania). Other geographers, especially in Latin America, tend to draw the line between two Americas at the Rio Grande. Still other geographers regard "America" as a single continent with a very narrow waist, just as a wasp is a single insect. When Europeans first arrived on this continent, there were already lots of people here, mostly in the warmer regions, due to the state of agricultural technology at the time. Only settled agriculture allows large populations. The claims of some alienated people that there were hundreds of millions of people here who were killed off by a combination of, first, Old World diseases to which they had no resistance and then by active genocide seems to me baseless conjecture. Simple question: where are the bones? The existing burial sites we know of do not support the theory of mass death. And Canada, which is never accused of genocide, has fewer "natives" than the United States, which is smaller in area. No, the distribution of native peoples was heavy toward the center, and thinned substantially toward colder regions. We can only guess at the number of non-white "native peoples" (by any name: Indian, American Indian (as in the militant American Indian Movement), Amerind(ian), natives, aboriginals, whatever), because aside from some Meso-American peoples, writing was unknown in this Hemisphere. History comes in two varieties, oral and written. Both are subject to error, but writing is necessary to long-term study of even oral history, transcribed. We know little of "pre-Columbian" history for any Amerind culture that had no writing system.

Fuzzy foto of portraits of Father Divine and his wife, high on a wall in the lobby of the Divine Riviera Hotel. My (autofocus) camera just could not take a good picture of these portraits in available lite, and I didn't want to seem rude for using flash.

One reason we don't know more, is that we don't care. White people, and black, are not interested in the past of other peoples even in the same place. Maybe we need a "Red History Month" (but would that be acceptable to Eskimos?). November would seem the appropriate time for that, given that Thanksgiving, the Nation's largest nonreligious holiday, occurs toward the end of November, and the Thanksgiving story relates to Indian history. So too does Newark's history relate to Indian history, as you can see from the bas reliefs on the Clinton Avenue Presbyterian Church I showed yesterday, and from the list of Indians on the Settlers (or Founders) Monument in Fairmount Cemetery from whom land was purchased, which I show in the 6th picture of my blog entry of November 24th, 2007.)

The Riviera is still a functioning hotel. Here's the front desk.

White people aren't interested in the history of this continent before white people arrived, so why should black people be interested in the history of Newark before black people arrived? BUT when, exactly, did black people arrive in Newark? Very early:

From 1664 to the early 1700s, colonial New Jersey had inherited slavery from the Dutch.* The southern half of the state [s/b "colony"] passed pro-slavery laws, among the most draconian in the nation, and the northern part simply omitted the word slave from statutory law on matters of citizenship, tacitly legitimating chattel. In 1800 the number of slaves in the state peaked at 12,422, mostly employed in rural areas for small-scale agriculture. One extant source indicated that white residents of Newark owned approximately twenty slaves in the antebellum era. The total black population of Essex County, including free African Americans, numbered only 375 to 445 until the nineteenth century.

(Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America by Kevin J. Mumford (NYU Press, 2007), pp. 15-16)

Bust of Newark historian Charles Cummings, which was unveiled June 26th in Gummere Park, Downtown.

[The reference to "the nation" before the Revolution was to no such thing but to the British Empire's colonies in this area. The United States did not exist, even on paper, until 1776, and "United States" was the name of a wartime alliance of what were effectively separate countries, like the "United Nations" in World War II, which alliance won for all 13 colonies (nations) their separate independences. Only after the Constitution of 1787 could the United States be considered a single Nation.]

So blacks have been here for a long time, albeit not in large numbers until World War II and after. Mumford notes:

In less than a decade [the Fifties] the black population more than doubled, from 68,316 to 142,600, while the white population declined by almost 100,000, from 348,856 to 255,800.

We know what happened in the Sixties, but how about a snapshot of Newark well before the conflicts of the Sixties?

Black and white foto of black and white kids playing on the streets of Newark around 1950 (Copyright © Julius Spohn 2008).

That is a foto taken by Jule Spohn of the Old Newark Group — he was always a shutterbug, it would appear — of his playmates some 17 years before you-know-what. That's 58 years ago. So yes, maybe black Newarkers should be more engaged in Newark history, because they've been part of it longer than most people realize.

Weathercams. AOL was malfunctioning late this afternoon, and I couldn't get the weather forecast the usual way. So I did a Google search and it produced the Weather Channel. Once I'd filled in my zip code, 07106, I scrolled down thru the information produced and found a clickable link to webcams in this area. One of them is a "haze cam" that shows a high view from the NJTransit HQ in One Penn Plaza East over the Jackson Street Bridge and Passaic River to the visually combined Manhattan and Jersey City skylines. The main site's foto is updated every 15 minutes, but there's also a gallery of a clear day, a couple of differently-polluted days, sunrise, and sunset, from a vantage point most of us will never get to in person. Check it out. (There are also webcams of other geographic areas than ours. But I didn't check them. Some other time.)
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* A copy editor should have caught the logical error in that sentence, "From 1664 to the early 1700s, colonial New Jersey had inherited slavery from the Dutch." No, 'colonial New Jersey inherited slavery from the Dutch, who brought slavery to the area before the English takeover in 1664.' NJ didn't inherit slavery only between 1664 and the early 1700s. You see why it takes so long to write? Every word in the sentence was correctly spelled, there were no dangling participles or other glaring grammatical errors, but the sentence just didn't make sense as written. And that got thru however many layers of editing NYU Press subjects a book to.

By the way, this statue was created by what appears from a foto in the Star-Ledger to be a black sculptor, Helene Massey-Hemmans.

Clinton Avenue Presbyterian; Saving the Star-Ledger

This "Church Sunday" at Newark USA, I have some fotos but very little information (other than as appears in the fotos) to offer about the Clinton Avenue Presbyterian Church (761 Clinton Avenue, 07108-1226; (973) 372-8404). The website for the church shown at one directory page produces a page-not-found error. I phoned the number above but got voicemail, whereupon I left a request for info as to a website. I also sent email to the general information email address of the Presbytery of Newark. Should I get any more info, I'll update. For the remainder of today's entry, I intersperse fotos of the church with text about something else.
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Saving the Star-Ledger, Part 2. I mentioned here last Wednesday that the owner of the Star-Ledger and Trenton Times (which turns out to be Advance Publications, not McClatchy Newspapers, which was misleadingly mentioned in an apparently unrelated item within the story I first saw), is threatening to shut both papers down in early 2009, and that may not merely be an ugly bargaining tactic to win concessions from unions. Daily newspapers are being hit very hard by the competition from 24-hour news channels on both radio and television, and by the wide array of news and features available free online. Management of the S-L has apparently not found a way to make its own online presence profitable, which is odd, in that advertising is the main income source of any newspaper, and advertising supports many commercial operations on the Internet; but the costs of publishing a hardcopy newspaper are hugely greater than the costs of running a website, even a luxurious, profusely illustrated website, with large, decorative fonts and full-color fotographs. So I have to wonder how well thought-out the S-L's online presence has been, and how it might win regular readers for the hardcopy newspaper.

One thing I suggested is that on the last day of the month the S-L could publish a foto calendar for the next month with a big foto of something beautiful in Newark (or, less appealing, in its metro region), on quality paper, not newsprint. I was thinking of that again today because Tuesday is the last day of the month, and, it's probably too late to publish an October edition of such a calendar. I was also thinking today about what to do with the back of that full page sheet. Plainly it could serve as a mini-advertising supplement for the sponsor of that month's calendar. That is, the front would bear the newspaper's name (in its familiar antique lettering, in type you could read easily from several feet away but which doesn't blare at you), at, say, the upper right. Then there would be a big, beautiful full-color foto that people are not going to be able to find elsewhere, specific to Newark. Then big boxes for the days of the month, with preprinted notations about key items. For instance, on October 11th, "Westinghouse Project art show opens, 5-11pm, NJIT: www.gosser.info". October 18th, "Essex County Computer & Electronics Recycling Day: www.essex-countynj.org/fall2008computersflier.pdf". October 19th, "iDraw, iPaint, iSculpt, iPhotograph show opens, 2-5pm, Pierro Gallery: http://pierrogallery.org/exhibits.asp". October 25th, "Westinghouse Project films, 7:30-10pm, NJIT: www.gosser.info". And then there are the many events surrounding the Newark Arts Council's big arts weekend, the 23rd-26th. Concerts at NJPAC, Symphony Hall, Prudential Center. Sports events at PruCtr. Newarkology Walking Tour of Mt. Pleasant Cemetery October 5th. Special events at the Newark Museum, Aljira, Gallery Aferro, Seed Gallery, etc., each with a URL and/or fone number. In fact, there is so MUCH going on in October that the Star-Ledger would be well advised to print a calendar even if it does not include the first several days.
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The advantage of print then becomes clear: you don't have to be online, but can consult a hardcopy resource any time. The advantage of a single sheet also becomes clear: you don't have to flip thru a many-paged newspaper but can put a single calendar sheet on the frij, held in place by a couple of refrigerator magnets, which most households already have. If they don't, they could get, on request, a pair of tasteful little S-L magnets just strong enuf to hold the Star-Ledger's calendar.

At the bottom of the sheet would be a notation such as:

Check [URL on the Ledger's website] for an updated events schedule. This month's calendar is brought to you by [full name of advertiser]. Please see reverse for more information about [shorter name of advertiser].

On the reverse would be a comprehensive advertising mini-supplement. For instance, if the advertiser were Prudential, it would start with some headline, such as (in these parlous financial times): "Prudential, Solid as a Rock, for Newark" alongside a glorious picture of the top of their white-marble headquarters building with the Rock logo large. Then some text, by way of introducing Prudential: "You may have heard that Prudential Financial is one of planet Earth's largest financial-services companies, but what exactly does that mean? It means insurance, real estate, ...". And then each division would be described in brief, as to what it does, in layman's terms. If a given division is tied to a particular Newark locale, a foto of that building would be shown. Or some appropriate visual would appear to liten the text. At the top (larger type) and bottom (smaller) of that division's description would appear the URL on the Prudential website and/or the appropriate toll-free number for more information.
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Somewhere, perhaps at the very end of the page, the origins of the Rock logo would be given. "Did you know that our Rock logo occurred to a New York advertising executive when he passed Laurel Hill in the Meadowlands on his way to Prudential one day? Laurel Hill (also called, less pleasantly, "Snake Hill" by some), was then much larger and taller, for not yet having been used as a quarry. It seemed to him emblematic of the solidity of the company and the importance of insurance, rising above the uncertainties of life that a marsh suggests. But since few people outside North Jersey knew of Laurel Hill, we adopted a bigger version of Laurel Hill, known worldwide, the Rock of Gibraltar. But, be it Laurel Hill or the Rock of Gibraltar, the Prudential is solid as a Rock. We've been here, in Newark, for 133 years, and we're not going anywhere."
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An online version of the calendar would of course have clickable links where the printed version has URL's. And the online version of the advertising supplement would have clickable sections alongside indicative fotos or other graffics (for instance, a foto of the HQ building for intro; a foto or artist's rendering of the original HQ building, or the lions that now stand by the Lake in Branch Brook Park but originally stood outside a Prudential building, for "History of the Company"; the original Rock logo for a history of the logo).

"Activites?" Granted that "Activites on Friday Nites" would rhyme, it's still not right.

The Star-Ledger's editorial policy should be unabashedly Newark-boosterist, to appeal to civic pride, a huge asset for any Newark-based publication. Don't hide the faults, of course. But don't be ashamed to tell anybody who's listening that Newark is a great city, with a long and distinguished history, and tell everybody you can reach why we're so proud. Hold City government and corporate citizens to the highest standards, and if things need doing, land hard on the responsible parties and hold their feet to the fire to find a fix, soonest. The Star-Ledger should be the tireless champion of Newark and its people: defender, promoter, fierce critic whose intent, however, is never to demean but always to work to bring out the best in people. And to show the good and hopeful things that get too little press and airtime elsewhere.

What can the Star-Ledger do that no one else is doing, or can do as well? Find it. Do it. You have two great resources: your employees and Newarkers. Ask. Brainstorm. You need to cut costs? Ask the people who do the work. If there's money to be saved in production, they're the ones who'd know, and not just supervisors or foremen but the ordinary person in production. He or she is the one who sees waste or wasted steps. They're not stupid.
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What do your current readers want to see? What would make them buy a hardcopy paper, or click on an ad? There's been a major mistake, I think, in regarding the Internet and hardcopy publications as entirely different things to be approached and laid out entirely differently. Why should an ad on a website be visually uninteresting, and have to irritate the reader by bouncing and blinking? Why not a tasteful, pretty picture and a little intriguing text in a handsome font, within a box you can click on? Why not columns of comfortable width, instead of a single wide column the eyes can get lost on? Adjustable font style and size? Some people may want Arial, others Times Roman, others Optima. And it's not just old people who like large type.

Why not a Star-Ledger website independent of NJ.com? I think NJ.com is fundamentally misconceived. Newarkers aren't interested in Trenton, or vice versa. Sure, keep a skeleton NJ.com for people who are outside any given region within the state, but the bulk of the Star-Ledger's content should be on a Star-Ledger website, with a discreet Star-Ledger logo — not NJ.com logo — atop every webpage.

People can get all the national and world news they want from the 24-hour cable channels. They crave local. Even News 12 New Jersey, which used to brag, "As local as local news gets", isn't local enuf, but tries to cover the entire state. Newarkers aren't much interested in downed trees and power lines in Freehold. Give us neighborhood news organized by neighborhood. If we pass an accident on 280, see fire engines racing down Stuyvesant Avenue or cops from four police cars rousting several guys on Avon Avenue, we want to know what that was all about. But we usually can't find any information anywhere.

Speaking of accidents, the day I was by the church, this traffic lite wasn't working. I hope it has since been fixed or, if it has been replaced by another I didn't notice, the old one should be removed to avoid confusion.

Give us Newark-specific features, like the old history columns by Charles Cummings, and the 22-part series about George Washington in Newark, 1776, that ran in summer 2001. Give neglected segments of the community a feature specific to their interests: gay men, Hispanics, lesbian women, Orientals, people from the Indian Subcontinent, Irish expats, adoptees trying to find their natural parents. Think who ISN'T in most papers, and specifically in the Ledger, and think how you might include them. Go heavy on the arts, visual and performing. And pictures, pictures, pictures. Good pictures. They don't all have to be in color, but at least the artistic ones and those of people being honored should all be available for print-on-demand, framed and mailed. Think of all the yellowed clippings of fotos and news items about themselves, their team or organization, their family and friends that people cut out and hold onto for years. Offer them for sale on quality paper and framed for a modest fee. Accumulate a lot of tiny profits into a big profit. Even if a person prints out a news item on their home printer, if they want to frame it, they then have to go out and buy a frame, take it apart to put the item in, maybe trim edges to avoid wrinkles, reassemble the frame — and still, after all that trouble, have it yellow after a few years. They might much rather spend a couple of bucks to have it printed on quality, semigloss paper and mounted neatly in just the right frame, all the work done for them.

I have found, in my own modest, boosterist efforts, that there is a vast Newark Diaspora, near and far, who want to hear and see good things about Newark. Some of these ex-Newarkers are gone for good, in retirement in the Sun Belt or in careers that keep them away. Some are now or soon will be "empty nesters" who might be lured back to the city to contribute to its repopulation and resurgence in all things. Some were here only for college, and have returned to their original homes in other states, even other countries, but have fond memories of Newark and want to be apprised of the good things now happening. But even many of us who are far away and entrenched in different lives, are tired of having people's noses crinkle in dismay when they hear that we're from Newark. "Newark?! Uch. How awful for you." (They may only indicate that, not say it aloud. But we know what they're thinking.) We want to be able to react, "No, how wonderful. You don't know Newark. I do. And here's proof that Newark is nothing like what you think it is", then throw some fotos, news stories, and historical features in their face. But nicely.
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So the Star-Ledger has two audiences with two different sets of needs. The first is the audience in Newark and around Newark who need to know what's going on that might affect them. The second is the Newark Diaspora, people who want to be proud of Newark but need proof that such pride is warranted. A newspaper that uses the resources of a major metropolitan daily to show Newarkers that yes, we've still got problems — and, like all places, large and small, we always will — but we can solve them and that things are better than they've been in decades and getting even better, can have a future as brilliant as Newark's.

Robeson Gallery Shows

Three-dimensional assemblage ("A brittle hell", 2007) by Alison Weld on gallery floor.

The Newark art season opened Thursday, September 11th (which struck me as an odd choice of date; but I went anyway). Actually, I should perhaps say that the season opened September 11th as far as I know. I'm not sure I know of everything going on in the Newark art scene, there being so many programs and venues now, and I may not be on the mailing list of all of the city's arts organizations.

In any case, I did get an invite to the Rutgers-Newark galleries' opening shows at the Robeson Campus Center, five shows in various locations around the building. The main gallery, on the main floor, comprises one big room, perhaps 35 feet long by a little less wide, plus a small room off it, the Rumble Room, where videos are shown.

I suppose other things could be shown there too, but that's what it's being used for this time.

Then, on the second floor, there are two small satellite galleries (Orbit I and II), where a few works of other artists are shown.

Orbit I show title.

There is also another space, the Pequod Deck Gallery ("first floor, near Starbucks") that I did not get to. In fact, I did not see a Starbucks, so still don't know where that gallery is. I had the postcard in my pocket and didn't look at it, so didn't think to look for that gallery. Duh. Note to self: if you carry a hardcopy of something, remember to look at it. My father got me in the habit of not bothering to remember things you can write down, but you have to look at that writing or it doesn't do much good. In any case, the show there is entitled "Cultivating Tomorrow's Global Leaders: Rutgers Newark Students Journey to Senegal" (September 2-January 29; so I have time to get there).

The bulk of these pix are dark and "moody", in b&w. I don't know if that is an inevitable artifact of the pinhole technique.

It's not a large group, but enuf to cover two walls of a small lounge with plush upholstered chairs.
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The Orbit II Gallery holds three large paintings by Fausto Sevila, one of which I showed here September 11th. Here are the other two, shown in relation to each other.

Here's the biographical caption about Mr. Sevila.

To his list of sterile places enlivened by his works, add the straight-line little Orbit II Gallery. Here's a closer view of his complex work, 2 People and Six Conversations (2005, acrylic on canvas). I don't know if there is any significance to the differential treatment of the numeral "2" and word "six".

The Main Gallery's show is "The tenacious gesture of Alison Weld".

Flash was on when I took this foto. I then turned the flash off and intended to take a second foto without flash. But forgot. Silly me. I must have been distracted by something. Yeah. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Here's an overhead view of that show, as seen from the second floor overlook. Note the horizontal works on the floor (not pedestal tables).

This is the view heading into the main gallery.

The bulk of her works on the walls are impasto ("the thick application of a pigment to a canvas or panel in painting ; also : the body of pigment so applied"), but some also have oil stick applied on top. Alison said, when I asked what an oil stick is, that it is like a fat crayon, "Cold wax 50%, oil paint 50%." I did not know that. Live and learn. But I'm a little ahead of the story.

Between the four paintings on the left in the foto above and the one on the right is this little sign:

This next foto shows the intersecting wall to the right of the view above.

Here's a closer view of the works on the right in the foto above. The rounded object above the large painting is a turtle shell. The smaller painting to the right of the shell is, I think, a found work, not one of Alison's own.

Then comes the group ending at the entrance to the Rumble Room, shown above. Past that and to the right is this wall.

Beyond that wall and to the right is this group. They seem to be of a different type and medium than the others.

Anonda Bell, Associate Curator & Interim Director of the Robeson Galleries, introduced me to the artist, who graciously consented to pose for the camera. I generally ask the artists I meet to pose by their favorite work. Some, like Alison (I met her once and dare to call her by her first name; we are so democratic in the United States), say they don't have a favorite, but usually select something they'd prefer to be seen by, as here. "But I really don't have a favorite." Mind you, she moved from the left side of the (north?) wall, to the left of the turtle shell, over to the right side, near the Rumble Room.

It's alrite, people. Artworks are not children. You can favor one over the other, even if only at the moment asked. And now, I'll close this blogpost as I started it, with a foto of one of the horizontal assemblages ("God Is Japanese", 2008), on the floor of the Main Gallery.

The Alison Weld show runs thru October 30th, as do the three Saya Woolfalk videos. The other shows, Jampol, Sevila (Orbit Galleries) , and Senegal (Pequod Deck), run thru January 29th. Hours: "Main Gallery & Rumble Room, Monday-Wednesday 10am-5pm, Thursday 12 noon-7pm[;] Orbit Galleries and Pequod Deck are accessible whenever the Campus Center is open."