I hope that Anthony E. Boone will not take it as a grievous offense when I suggest that his artwork could easily hang in a corporate atrium. (Perhaps it already does somewhere.) The sinuous quality of his lines, the soothing feeling of his juxtapositions of color, and his studied sense of composition add up to a […]
Visual Arts
Posted inVisual Arts
Jersey City Artists Show at Manhattan’s Ivy Brown Gallery
Call it coincidence or call it causal. Either way, it can’t be denied that the neighborhoods of Manhattan that are most saturated with art, and art galleries, are the easiest ones to access from Jersey City. The PATH train stops in Chelsea twice. The first platform in Manhattan is right on Christopher Street. Depending on […]
Posted inUncategorized, Visual Arts
Color and Influence at New Shows at Firmament Gallery and Hamilton Square
Serious artists hope that their work will be influential. Few artists, however, would call themselves influencers. In 2023, we’ve come to understand the term as a bit of a slight. An influencer isn’t necessarily a creator. She’s a person who uses new media to compel her following to make a particular choice — a consumer choice. […]
Posted inVisual Arts
Images of the City from Jim Fischer and Project Greenville
Jim Fischer loves snow. Pictures of it at least; the Jersey City artist may not appreciate shoveling it, but he’s a sure hand at depicting it. Snow swirls through the pleasantly proletarian “Forty-Eight Views of Brownstone Brooklyn” — a show that is exactly what it sounds like it would be. It lays heavily on the […]
Posted inVisual Arts
The Sacred Heart Beats Fiercely at the Curious Matter Holiday Show
True Christianity is not for the squeamish. Even the tamest versions of the faith ask believers to contend with a gruesome event: a human being nailed to a cross and left to suffocate in the sun. From the Pieta to the Passion to “The Last Temptation of Christ,” many famous works of art make Jesus’s suffering manifest […]
Posted inVisual Arts
The Jersey City Arts Awards Continue to Confuse and Confound
Onstage at White Eagle Hall, a woman read a poem beside a flock of white birds. The birds were statuettes: pigeon-sized trophies given to the winners of the 2022 Jersey City Arts Awards. The woman was Professor Ann Wallace of the English Department at NJCU, cancer survivor and long COVID sufferer, and the newest Jersey […]
Posted inLatest News
Jersey City Arts 2022 — What Happened?
On some mornings, we bound out of bed. On others — especially if we’ve been under the weather — it takes a while to get going. Perhaps we stretch, perhaps we blather. We may knock a glass off the end table. Though we’re technically up, we may feel we’re still in a dream. Such was […]
Posted inVisual Arts
The Eleven Best Jersey City Art Shows of 2022
If an art show was mounted in Jersey City in 2022, I caught it. I didn’t write about everything I saw, but I hit this space every week with a reaction to a different exhibit. Comprehensive coverage doesn’t guarantee insight, but it does give the benefit of perspective to the person who put in the time. You, […]
Posted inVisual Arts
A Theater is Missing at Art House and “Are You There?” at SMUSH
During the 2022 Studio Tour, the Gallery at Art House Productions was, ever so briefly, open to the public. Curator Andrea McKenna put together a crisp show that highlighted many of the Art House Productions’s favorite creators, including several who’d exhibited strong work at the organization’s old gallery on 17th Street. Here was a reminder, in […]
Posted inOpinion, Visual Arts
The Pompidou Centre is Unnecessary
A European star was coming to Jersey City. Rem Koolhaas, a Pritzker Prize-winning architect and one of Time Magazine’s 2008 picks for the world’s most influential people, announced his intention to build a fifty story tower on the lot that was once home to the Arts Center at 111 First Street. Architecture News wrote that Koolhaas’s interest […]