Jersey City Art School Reception

I later found out that it was Make My City week, a city-wide promotion to encourage folks to buy in Jersey City. I didn’t know I needed such a promotion to support local products until I found out that bodega-made sandwiches didn’t count. Regardless, I saw that Jersey City Art School was hosting a cocktail reception and art show featuring the work of the schools instructors and contributors, including Thomas John Carlson, Keith Van Pelt, Christi Harrington, Kiva Ford and Joanne Simmons. I decided to stop by. I’ve been having a good old time attending the schools J.C. Film Forum, its Sunday evening cineaste society meetings and film screenings/discussions, here and here.

The J.C. Arts School is on Fifth street, a wonderful space. The vibe is friendly and without pretension; there’s a feel of productivity. Just as the workshop space is turned into a screening room for the Film Forum gatherings, I enjoyed the make-shift gallery invention in that same space. Sometimes art can seem so removed from the work of creating it. The workshop aspect of the school, so apparent in the corners and perimeters of the space turned into a gallery for the reception, erased that distance.

The online promo piece promised: “sip a little wine, nosh on some crudites, meet the artists, and then stroll on back and relax in the garden.” I’m not sure what a crudite is, some form of raw vegetables for snacking apparently. There were sliced tomatoes and Italian bread, no crud in site. We’re in the peak of Summer and Friday night was just one of those humid heat wave jersey evenings, where you had to get out and about, even though in less than five minutes perspiration drenches your shirt. Even the best air conditioning falls short. Items were for sale and I even saw a transaction or two being made but it seemed that for the time I was here, it was really just an informal out-reach to the community. It was a low-key party, artists and art appreciators gabbing. I had fun. In fact, the conversations were so interesting I forgot to take representational photographs of the event, I didn’t talk to all of the artists. You want full coverage of an event I suggest you go to... All right, I don’t have a suggestion. The local press has been pretty good promoting before hand. Follow up coverage & reviews, not so much. I guess you have to supply your own context and you have to be there to do that and if you’re not there you don’t really know what you missed.

"Silver and Photography, I work in those two mediums and those two mediums are enough, Joanne Simmons told me. I met her here, another gallery show where her photographs were exhibited. This is her jewelry.

Kiva Ford calls himself an Artisan Glassblower. Some really remarkable work, objects de art. I love the glass animals encased in glass. By the way, he told me that Kiva was his Russian grandfather’s name, a derivation of Kiev. His website is cool .

“…then stroll on back and relax in the garden,” read the invite. I came back here when it was still a work in progress.

I angled this shot to include the pile of bricks and the plastic flamingos, which seemed to suggest a meaningful juxtaposition, pragmatic and artifice. Flamingos always remind you Florida, and the birds seemed right at home on this sultry Friday Night. At noon, sun blazing down, humidity is pretty much torture. But after work is done, the weekend in front of you and the sun close to setting, even New Jersey humidity can seem exotic, even sensuous. Everyone seemed a little giddy, commenting how you don’t feel like you’re in Jersey City back here. It’s right alongside the embankment, and you could walk through the shed-like structure in the very back of the yard and go into the alleyway and the south wall of these industrial era railroad trellises, ivy shrouds draped on the stones. The Artisan Glassblower in residence at Jersey City Art School noticed a rope about half way up and could resist attempting scaling the wall. He didn’t make it to the top. There’s an opening to the embankment, but that’s a couple of blocks away, on the Sixth Street Side.