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Dancers
Aaron Morrill

Grants Totaling 900k Awarded to Arts Groups from Trust Fund

June 2, 2022/0 Comments/in header, Latest News, Narrate, News, Performing Arts, Visual Arts /by Aaron Morrill

Mayor Steven Fulop, the City Council, and the Arts and Culture Trust Fund Committee have announced nearly $900 thousand in grants to 89 artists and arts organizations throughout Jersey City. The grants were made possible through the creation of The Arts Trust Fund, which was approved by voters in November 2020.

“Jersey City’s investment in the arts is an investment in our entire community.  The short- and long-term social, educational, and economic impacts generate a wide range of opportunities for our residents and businesses,” said Mayor Fulop.  “We recognized the need for sustainable funding early on, and Jersey City voters understood the magnitude of our burgeoning arts community, so it is especially exciting to award these much-needed grants to so many talented artists and arts organizations so that they can further expand their positive influences in our society.”

The brainchild of the Jersey City Arts Council and Mayor Fulop and then promoted by a wide range of artists and organizations, the fund can draw on a property tax levy of up to 2 cents per $100 dollars of assessed value for every home in Jersey City. In 2021, the assessment was a much lower quarter cent.

Robinson Holloway, founder of the 14c Art Fair and one of the original proponents of the fund, was cheered by the announcement. “I’m really pleased to see so much money going into the arts. I hope it will be transformative.”

Grant recipient Cynthia Renta, Executive Director of The Educational Arts Team, said “The Educational Arts Team is honored to receive an award from the Jersey City Arts Relief Fund.  This award will allow us to offer our Family Literacy and arts education programming to more children, specifically from low-income communities, who might not otherwise have access to the arts.”

The grants of up to $25 thousand included 38 Program Grant Awards, 8 Arts Education Grant Awards, 23 Operating Grant Awards and 20 Individual Artist Fellowship Grant Awards.

Christine Goodman, Director of Jersey City’s Department of Cultural Affairs called the grants “a historic moment for our arts community, one that we’ve been working towards for several years.”

The Jersey Journal has posted a list of the recipients.

 

Mayor Steven Fulop Jersey City
Aaron Morrill

Mayor Calls Refund of Property Tax Overcharge a “Tax Reduction”

September 27, 2021/in header, Latest News, News /by Aaron Morrill

As the saying goes, when life delivers you lemons, make lemonade.

In a Facebook post this morning, Mayor Fulop announced some “good news” for taxpayers.  As part of the administration’s ongoing efforts to “lower taxes & of course our public facing city services,” the city would be giving the average homeowner an “$88 further reduction in their taxes” on their fourth quarter property tax bill.

In fact, some residents are arguing that the mayor should have called it what it is, a tax refund. In the post, the mayor, it seems, described a refund made necessary by an overcharge on third quarter property tax bills as a tax cut. Said Maria Ross in response to the mayor’s post, “what a whopper of a story from Fulop!”

The overcharge was first picked up by John Ross on nextdoor.com.

“Hey fellow JC home owners, so no new taxes if you look top right of your recent RE tax bill you will see you are being charged a art & culture Tax. While this was being pushed for I asked repeatedly How much! All of city hall and prominent members of the art community all said don’t worry it will be in line with the open space tax, they would only offer reassurance without facts. Looking at my tax bill I see I’m paying $12 for open space & $250 for Art Tax Even in simple math not Comparable.”

Robinson Holloway, one of the architects of the Arts Trust Fund, then confirmed Ross’s suspicion. “It looks like there was a mistake in the Arts Tax – that they assessed the maximum possible amount, 2 pennies, instead of the 1/4 penny amount that the City Council approved earlier this year. The City is aware and looking into it. So your actual Arts & Culture tax should be what was promised – about $25/year for property worth $1million.”

In November of last year, 64% of Jersey City residents voted in favor of the creation of the Arts Trust Fund. Similar to the Open Space Trust Fund, money for the fund would was to come from a new tax on property owners. In March, the city council agreed upon a tax assessment of a quarter of a cent per $100 of assessed value, approximately one eighth the amount charged on the third quarter property tax bills. That assessment was to raise approximately $1 million to support local artists and arts education.

This is the second time in three months that the administration was compelled to undo a charge to Jersey City residents. In July, the mayor was forced to rescind the unpopular “water tax.”

 

 

 

Jersey City Nutcracker
Elizabeth Morrill

Nimbus Dance Seeks Youth Dancers for Nutcracker

September 8, 2021/in Latest News, News, Performing Arts /by Elizabeth Morrill

Jersey-City-based Nimbus Dance company is holding auditions Saturday, Sept.11, for youths aged twelve to eighteen for its annual production of “Jersey City Nutcracker.” In addition, children aged 4 to eighteen are needed for many small roles in the show.

The production, billed as “Jersey City’s largest, most zany holiday show,” is an adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s timeless classic, which follows two school-age friends from very different backgrounds who share experiences of magic and adventure. In a “Jersey City twist,” all scenes take place in recognizable local spots, such as city hall. The sets also feature construction sites, abandoned shopping carts, even a “magical” Downtown manhole cover.

Tryouts for the leading roles of Maria and Christopher (or Christina) offer “an unprecedented opportunity for growth and exposure,” according to the company’s press release. Children aged four to eighteen are sought to play the non-lead roles of Cookies, Liberty Angels, Rats, Bullies, and B-Boys and Girls.

All roles involve dancing and extended choreography. The roles of Maria and Christopher require the dancers to be emotive and expressive through their faces and posturing but do not involve any speaking. Advance preparation for the tryouts is not necessary; indeed dancers of all backgrounds are encouraged to audition. Tryouts will include some choreography from the show and some acting exercises.

Auditions for Maria and Christopher/Christina will be held at the Nimbus Arts Center (at 329 Warren St. in Downtown Jersey City) on Sept. 11 from 5:30 to 6:30 pm.

Information on how to obtain one of the non-lead roles can be obtained by contacting the company directly. Altogether, three casts will be assembled that will put on numerous matinee and evening holiday shows in December.

The Nutcracker is just one of numerous performances and programs offered by Nimbus. Founded by Artistic Director Samuel Pott in 2005, the organization boasts both a professional dance company and a dance school for children. Pott himself will direct and choreograph Nutcracker with fantastical with animated scenic projections by Jersey City-based video artists Laia Cabrera and Isabelle Duverger and a delightful libretto co-written by playwright Alysia Souder.

Rehearsals for all cast members will take place on Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons starting the week of September 13 and during certain weekends (yet to be determined) in November and December. Participants are asked to pay a “performance fee” of $350, but installment plans and “robust” financial aid are available. Absolutely no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

All performances of “Jersey City Nutcracker” will take place in Nimbus’s new 14,000-square-foot state-of-the-art dance center.

For more information on rehearsal times, role descriptions, and registration, visit www.https://schoolofnimbus.org/jc-nutcracker.

Photo by Jennifer Brown
Homeward by BLUSTERONE
Tris McCall

“Walls To Smalls” at Deep Space Gallery

July 8, 2021/in Eye Level, header, Latest News, News, Visual Arts /by Tris McCall

Approach Deep Space Gallery (77 Cornelison St.) from the south, and you’ll probably pass the ancient, crumbling Parodi Cigar Factory building. Should you pause in front of the warehouse, you’ll notice that the entire first floor, once barren, has been blessed with spray paint. Some of the same artists who’ve tagged the exterior of the building have also contributed pieces to “Walls To Smalls,” a show that extends our local fascination — and continued legitimation — of outdoor art. Deep Space has always championed our most prolific local street artists, and “Walls To Smalls,” which opened only a few weeks after a city-authorized Mural Festival and will run through July 25, brings their work indoors.

This is nothing new for Deep Space, which has set up shop in one of the most heavily redecorated areas of the city. The post-industrial blocks west of Grand have been marinated in street art: murals, abstract paintings on bricked-up windows, handsome tags in museum-orderly array on the cinderblock walls of Fairmont Ave. factories, slapdash graffiti on the concrete dividers across the street. Deep Space often feels like a reflection of the peculiar energy of its immediate environs, and “Walls To Smalls” captures and successfully miniaturizes a scene that feels, with each new mural, like a movement.  If you want a crash course in regional street art, or if you just want to get a better handle on what’s happening on the bridges, Turnpike underpasses, apartment-building walls, and corrugated iron loading dock doors all over town, this show has got you covered.

That’s because the interior of Deep Space is presently looking a lot like the exterior of Jersey City. Even if you don’t know these artist’s names, there’s a very good chance you’ll recognize the characteristic elements of their work: Mustart’s combination of floating eyeballs and impersonal tower blocks, 4SAKN’s thick, black angled lines and curved fields of brilliant aerosol, DISTORT’s near-Medieval anguish and austerity, Clarence Rich’s box-like, rainbow bismuth-inspired recesses. This is all part of the landscape of the city now, as deeply integrated in the visual experience of Jersey City as brickface, aluminum siding, traffic cones, and drywall. JAHRU, who participated, as many of these artists did, in the Mural Festival, contributes a pair of small oil paintings of faces that seem to be breaking apart into fractals; RU8ICON1, who had a solo show at Deep Space in 2019, adds four not-dissimilar canvases of figures represented as if seen through shattered glass. The distinctive, driving rhythms of Hudson County streetscapes, the peril experienced by the body as it interacts with the urban environment, the aggressive color and recontextualization characteristic of hip-hop — this is the state of street art in Jersey City at the moment, even if the art here isn’t done at the scale of the murals, and even if it isn’t, technically, out on the street.

It’s also a promising sign that some of the best and most energetic work in a show that consistently foregrounds its liveliness wasn’t contributed by the usual names.  BlusterOne’s subway scenes in acrylic and magic marker toss their human figures on orange seats and uncomfortable wooden benches; some of his characters are nothing but an amalgam of thick red lines in a human shape. His representations of dislocation, facelessness, and physical soreness is painfully trenchant and deeply sad.  The black and white facial-feature jumbles in oil marker by Duel RIS stare off in all directions, with brows, tongues, and lips all overlapping, or touching. It’s a crowd condensed into a small, framed piece of paper, humanity pressed together on a busy corner, waiting for a stoplight to change. Some of the pieces here are cartoons with recurring gonzo characters who stand for their creators, which is another long-standing hip-hop tradition. Sometimes this gets a bit cutesy — Chris Rwk’s friendly, waving robot, heart in hand, feels a bit too eager to please and ready to be merchandised. BARC the Dog, on the other hand, is blue and toothy and more than a bit recalcitrant. He manifests both as a handcuffed miscreant with balled fists and his mind on larceny, and as a resin statue that leads with a serrated grimace.

What’s common to all of these pieces is the desire by the artists to capture the emotional experience of life in the city, and that particular amalgam of self-assertion and powerlessness that urbanites share. If faces look distressed and shattered but a sense of swagger comes through anyway; if the landmarks seem imposing, but also oddly inviting; if the textures are simultaneously rough and butter-smooth; if everybody depicted seems to be staring, but nobody is looking at you directly; well, you live here, don’t you?  No doubt you’re familiar with the tone, and the attitude, and maybe some of the characters and colors, too. Murals are imposing beasts: they shout loud enough for the entire block to hear. They do not, however, always get across the subtlety of the artist’s storytelling. Sometimes the message gets lost amid the rumble of the traffic. Sometimes it helps to go small.

 

Featured image: “Homeward” by BLUSTERONE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News Briefs

Mayor Steven Fulop joined Public Safety Director James Shea and Fire Chief Steven McGill today to announce two brand new fire companies and officially launch a newly created specialized response team, the JCFD High-rise Unit, to respond to all high-rise fires and all working fires as a Rapid Intervention Crew (RIC).  The last fire company added to the Jersey City Fire Department was in 1937.

The Hudson County Board of Commissioners has provided $195,000 for services provided to inmates through the Housing and Reintegration Program of the Hudson County Department of Family Services. The program provides services that inmates can use for housing, substance abuse treatment, clinical care, mental health, obtain medications and go to job training and job search services.

This program also provides the County Department of Housing and Community Reintegration access to 40 transitional housing beds. The program runs from June 1, 2022 through January 31, 2023.

Mayor Fulop has announced the creation of a $20 per hour Living Wage Statute for all full-time Jersey City employees. As part of the City’s 2022-2023 fiscal year budget, the Living Wage Statute will boost salaries for hundreds of current and future Jersey City residents and workers from $17 (already one of the highest minimum wage rates in the nation) to $20 per hour – which is $7 more than New Jersey’s current hourly minimum wage.

 

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12:30 am, July 1, 2022
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