There aren’t too many cowgirls in Jersey City. But it’s probable that everybody in Jersey City has an idea about what a cowgirl acts like. A cowgirl is strong, resilient, direct, and maybe righteously impertinent, too. She’s is nobody you’d want to mess with, lest you get tangled up in a lasso or threatened with […]
Columns
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Art Fair 14C Moves to Liberty State Park, Absorbs JCAST
For its fifth year, Art Fair 14C has a new home. The rapidly expanding fair, which ran at the waterfront Hyatt in 2020, the Glass Gallery at Mana Contemporary in 2021, and the Jersey City Armory in 2022, moves to another picturesque setting in 2023: the CRRNJ Terminal in Liberty State Park. If you follow the […]
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Six Rewarding Gallery Shows on View in Jersey City
If you attended JC Fridays, you know: we’re currently in a time of riches. There are rewarding shows on view all over town. It won’t always be this way. So in the interest of getting you out on the town while the offerings are hot, I’m breaking this down as simply as I can. Why are these […]
Posted inOpinion
JC Fridays: Our Picks
2022 was not kind to Jersey City artists. It was defined by hesitancy, half-measures, and a doozy of a pandemic hangover. 2023, by contrast, is off to a roaring start. Our early-blooming shows have been glorious. If the first JC Fridays event of the year is often a survey of the scene and an indication […]
Posted inPerforming Arts
Two New Jersey Albums: Kena Anae and American Watercolor Movement
Kena Anae Hold On! Electric Songs of Protest Vol. 1 Study Group Records What sort of revolution is Kena Anae after? Certainly not a bloody one: this is a soul man with a disposition so sugary that he’s inclined to take political advice from a fortune cookie. Though Hold On! Electric Songs of Protest Vol. 1 lays on […]
Posted inPerforming Arts
“The You Voice” Closes at MANA With a One-Of-A-Kind Multimedia Performance
In the middle of a circle of black chairs, a woman struggled with an imaginary object. She pulled it toward her, and then pushed it away, and then brought it back to her body. With each shove, she inched one foot closer to her invisible target. The other remained fixed. Her muscles tensed, and her […]
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Deep Space Looks Into the Future With “The Art of Divination”
Even if Pamela Coleman “Pixie” Smith and A.E. Waite hadn’t designed the modern prototype of the Tarot deck in 1909, people would’ve still used cards to tell fortunes. It just wouldn’t have been as fun, or as illuminating, or as spooky. The Rider-Waite deck (which really ought to be called the Smith-Waite deck) concentrated mystical […]
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Postpartum Mental Illness: When Mothers Kill
On January 24th, 2023 Lindsay Clancy, a 32-year-old labor and delivery nurse from Massachusetts, killed all three of her children before slitting her wrists and jumping out of a second-story window. She survived. On June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates a 37-year-old mother in suburban Texas, drowned all five of her children in their bathtub […]
Posted inVisual Arts
Strong Shows in Tight Corners at 150 Bay Street
There’s nothing inside Gallery number 265 at 150 Bay Street. It’s still easy to see into the room — those doors are made of glass — but these days, the only things visible in there are white walls and a brown cement floor. The blank space is a reminder of one of the more unfortunate occurrences […]
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Anthony E. Boone Thrills at Commuter Gallery
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 […]