Index Auction Friday; Metro 29 Closes Saturday

This wall of a studio shared by artists Lisa Conrad and Daniel Brophy on the same floor as Index, is used by the ArtBound program, mentioned below. Lisa explained that on the blackboard are listed some qualities of Newark that the students came up with, some positive, some negative, some neutral. If you can't read it easily, try the closer view below.

Index Art Center ("IAC") holds its annual fundraiser Friday, and City Without Walls ("cWOW") closes the Newark run of its 29th annual Metro show on Saturday. Here's the IAC emailed announcement.

Index Fine Art Auction
Reception and silent auction: Friday, February 15, 6-11pm
Bidding ends at 10pm

Index is proud to announce our 4th Annual fundraiser and silent art auction.
Come join us for a good cause, and a great party!!

With the success of this event we hope to continue to bring you monthly exhibitions and our yearly film and video screenings "Filmideo", featuring[ ] local, national, and international contemporary talent. We are also very happy to be launching our newest program "Art Bound". The ArtBound program is a free art program that offers Newark High School students the opportunity to engage in a series of workshops in papermaking, printmaking, and bookbinding.

Index’s Fine Art Auction will present a unique opportunity to collect works of art by emerging and established artists. [Listed here.]

Here is a closer view of the blackboard above.

Index Art Center
585 Broad Street
Newark, NJ 07102
www.indexartcenter.org
index.gallery@gmail.com
862-218-0278

ALL EVENTS SPONSORED BY
27 MIX AND KILKENNY ALEHOUSE

Metro 29 Closes at City Without Walls February 16th. cWOW's annual exhibition of small-format artworks in various media opened November 30th, when I took the fotos I show today.

The Metro shows get a good crowd. Unfortunately, the liting in the middle of the gallery is not brite enuf for my camera to handle well, and the colors here are off.

The 29 in the name refers to the 29th year of this exhibition. cWOW is nothing if not tenacious. This is the spirit that kept Newark going thru the bad years to emerge into new good years.


The descriptions at cWOW's website have changed, but here is part of one.

cWOW's annual Metro Show is one of the oldest and most respected juried small works exhibitions in the metro region. "Metro" or[i]ginally referred to our tradition of moving the show by rail to its many host cities. Today, we use all forms of transportation, while maintaining our original commitment to bring challenging contemporary art into people's everyday lives.

Maggie Fehr's History II.

The exhibition is to travel for a year, but the cWOW website does not presently show the venues other than cWOW itself.

[This year's jurors were:] Jared Ash, Curator, [then] Newark Public Library Special Collections[; now, the library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan]
Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, Curator, El Museo del Barrio [Manhattan]
Lawrence Cappiello, Executive Director, Arts Guild New Jersey

The description that specified the size limit for works is not presently on the cWOW site, but I preserved it in my blogpost of November 29th, 2012 within a quote from the email announcement about the opening reception the following day: "Works in all media are under 13  inches in all dimensions."

These two summery pieces are by Adam Richard Nelson Hughes.

Two-dimensional works predominate, but there are some 3D works as well. Some are entirely freestanding sculptures, of varying size, here, fairly large for a small-works show.


Here, smaller.


And here, tiny. They reminded me of the first show I attended at the predecessor to Index, Red Saw Gallery, "Lilliput: Tiny Art for Big People", August 2007. There were plastic magnifying glasses for visitors to see details in the smallest of those works.


This piece, Rocco Scary's 31 W 26th, looks 2D from the front, but is actually 3D, with the stairway in particular jutting toward the viewer.


And this three-dimensional array of wires is William Oliwa's Victoria Occilator. ("Oliwa" is, I believe, said much like "Oliver".)


This piece by Lisa Conrad (a principal of ArtBound) was Best in Show. My camera didn't autofocus well, which is a common problem autofocus cameras seem to have with flat surfaces.


After I made a quick circuit of the room, I ran into James Wilson, who was a mentor in last year's ArtReach program and had been a mentee in the debut program, 18 years earlier (which you might find hard to believe, looking at the picture of him below). I told him I saw his entry in this show, and asked him to pose by it. A young woman he had met at the reception was happy to be included.