You don’t have to be squeamish or euphemistic to think of the lavatory as the reading room. Bathrooms guarantee a kind of solitude that can be hard to find elsewhere in the apartment, and reading requires concentration. If you’re in the loo, you’re (probably) not on the computer. As literacy continues its agonizing decline, the […]
Visual Arts
Posted inVisual Arts
Diana Schmertz: An Artist Takes on Book Banning and American Politics
If they’re sufficiently harsh, words can leave an impression. Lately, some of the harshest and most wounding have come from state legislatures. Certain lawmakers have framed non-straight Americans as a threat to children, and they’ve sought to excise their stories from school curriculum. Book banning — once thought of as a relic of a more […]
Posted inArts and Culture
Alone in Deep Space, Clarence Rich Takes on the Ancients
It is arguable that Clarence Rich is the best known visual artist in Jersey City, even if most of the people who’ve seen and appreciated his work wouldn’t recognize his name. In a town of hundreds of muralists and spray-paint taggers of middling quality and questionable imagination, he’s the real deal — a street artist […]
Posted inPerforming Arts
Arts and Culture Fund Awards $1 Million to Artists and Organizations
The Jersey City Arts and Culture Trust Fund announced April 28 the granting of $1 million to 88 local artists and arts organizations that the city says “expand the impact and inclusiveness of the arts in Jersey City, build community connections through art, and develop creative and economic opportunities for artists.” Funded by a property tax […]
Posted inVisual Arts
Review: “50 Years of Beats and Sneaks” at MANA
Everybody has seen sneakers dangling from phone wires by tied-together shoelaces, but no consensus on their meaning has ever been reached. Do they indicate a place to buy drugs? Are they a marker of gang territory? A tribute to a lost child? Do they signify that someone nearby has graduated college or gotten married? Less romantically, […]
Posted inVisual Arts
Three Shows To See Now in the Powerhouse Arts District
Like an ocean liner or a flying saucer, Art House Gallery (345 Marin Blvd.) is full of portholes. These do not look out the sea or a starry sky. Instead, they’re peeks into a frosty netherworld — one that is brightly illuminated, but where the light is refracted through so much haze that it’s sometimes […]
Posted inNarrate
The Earth Temple at SMUSH Gallery Rocks
The persuasive utility of lamentation is overrated. In America, we like to back winners. Cry too hard and people will assume that the milk is already spilled. This has put environmentalist-artists in a bind. Anybody who cares about the fate of the earth has a lot to be sad about. But shows that lean too hard into desolation leave […]
Posted inVisual Arts
Art Against Disaster: “Colors of Hope” at IMUR
Those who live on the Anatolian peninsula are accustomed to getting a good shake. Two major slip faults run through the Turkish bedrock, both capable of delivering terrible shocks. Earlier this year, an earthquake leveled buildings and killed tens of thousands on both sides of the Turkey-Syria border. More than a million survivors were left […]
Posted inVisual Arts
Art in the Home and Studio: Lambert, O’Leary, and Evening Star
Looking at an abundance of artworks: that’s what makes the Studio Tour fun. But visiting artists’ houses during the Tour is almost as rewarding. Artists’ homes and studios often resemble the work the artists are doing, and a visit can feel like stepping into a painting. Private galleries and home studios exist at an intersection between architecture […]
Posted inVisual Arts
The Wonders of the Powerhouse Arts District in Four New Shows
Luis Muñoz Marin Boulevard is not considered a place where pedestrians go on purpose. Nevertheless, there’s a new Australian bakery just north of Morgan Street, and a café, open air seating, and a bandshell outside of the big tower on the northwest corner of the Bay Street intersection. Right in between the two, Art House Productions has […]