Karen E. Gersch – “CIRCUS LIVES: Hovering Above, Balancing Below”

January 9, 2022 – February 27, 2022

To highlight its current exhibition “Washington St.” and to bring attention to the prestigious circus school that once operated there in the late 1970’s, the Hoboken Historical Museum is bringing a visual spectacle to its Upper Gallery. 

“CIRCUS LIVES: Hovering Above, Balancing Below” by celebrated circus artist Karen E. Gersch opens January 9th and runs through February 27th, 2022. On opening day Sunday, January 9 at 3:30, Gersch will present a slideshow/talk about the Circus Arts Center. She trained there as an acrobatic base or ‘understander’ before spending 30 years “running around rings and stages with a woman on her head. It was – like painting has always been for me – very centering. I miss it now.” She will be joined by many of her colleagues from those days and images of their acts will be shown.

The multi-media exhibit will feature dancing horses, performers on tight wire and trapeze, alluring backlot scenes and portraits of jugglers, balancers and – the remarkable Russian couple who founded and ran the Circus Arts Center at 412 Washington St. 

For Gersch, who holds a BFA from Pratt Institute, the tented world has remained a passion since childhood. She grew up in what was then rural Rockland County as an athletic tomboy who sketched from life. Her art portfolio garnered her a scholarship to Pratt at 16.  After graduating the school with Honors, she studied ballet in Manhattan, then met the duo who would become her Master Teachers: Nina Krasavina and Gregory Fedin. Gersch says, unapologetically, that she has always “juggled” parallel careers: that of performing and painting. 

She was already featured in shows here and abroad, especially for Warner Bros. Records and Henson Associates, before becoming a founding member of the Big Apple Circus and of Vermont’s Circus Smirkus. Most of the acts that composed the first two years of BAC were her fellow students: all of them chose to leave the show to keep working at the Circus Arts Center. 

During the decades when Gersch traveled extensively with three-ring shows throughout the country and one-ring shows in Europe, her art materials were her constant companion. By day, she practiced and performed, by night she sketched and painted – several pastels and line drawings from life on the road are included in the exhibition.

She works in a multitude of mediums (although oils are preferred), and is in private collections around the world. Highlights of her exhibition history include having had several works in “Dusty Glory: The Circus in American Art” at the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Massachusetts, alongside legendary circus artists Chaim Gross, Walt Kuhn and Reginald Marsh. In 2017, ten of her paintings were chosen to be part of the Smithsonian’s FolkLife Festival: “Circus on the Move” in the Arts and Industry Museum.

Gersch still remembers vividly commuting from her loft/studio on the Bowery in Manhattan to Hoboken every day. “There was something magical about stepping out of the terminal from the Path train and taking back streets, many still cobblestone, with laundry lines hanging from open windows. It felt almost European in contrast to the bustle of NYC.”

Hurry, hurry, hurry – step right up! Come bask and delight in a panorama of daring, grace and physical artistry – that which the world of circus exemplifies.

For more of Gersch’s work, visit her website at www.artbykarenegersch.com. To learn more about the physical arts teaching programs she has created, see http://www.facebook.com/artofbalancebykeg. To view the short film “I Control the Balance” of Gersch interviewed by Creatives MX,  click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-p0l5U7vY4

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.

Frank Hanavan – “The Sidewalk is the Studio”

November 14, 2021 – January 2, 2022

Frank Hanavan’s last exhibition in the Hoboken Museum’s Upper Gallery showcased his temporary departure from painting with acrylics into working with watercolors. The resulting series of watercolors were beautiful, but he has since returned to painting with acrylics – always en plein air, French for painting on site in front of the subject – for his latest exhibit, The Sidewalk Is the Studio, which opens Sunday, Nov. 14, with a free opening reception from 2 – 5 pm. The exhibit will be on view until Jan 2, 2022.

Hanavan says that even his brief foray into painting with watercolor was transformative. His style in acrylics has changed – he’s painting many of the same subjects, sidewalk scenes in Hoboken – and his canvases are still recognizably Frank Hanavans, but his brush strokes are looser and more experimental.

“Working in acrylics, I found my technique was getting tighter and tighter,” he says. “But working with the watercolors helped loosen me up.”

What he means by tight, he says, is that for every brush stroke he would usually make, he would go back and dab a couple more strokes around it to refine and blend each stroke to achieve the realistic impression he was going for. He says the resulting paintings were more precise renditions of the scenes he was depicting, but they could be stiffer, with less implied motion than in real life.

Now, he says, “Each brush mark has its own personality, they’re more “messy” or gestural, and each brush stroke has to do more of the work.”

“I feel better while painting — more in the moment. Each painting goes more quickly, and I have to paint with more confidence and awareness, instead of second-guessing and third-guessing each stroke.” Even though he calls his new style “messy,” he likes the new paintings, and he’s finding people are responding well to his new style.

“Working this way makes conversations with passersby more disruptive,” he says, as he has to focus more. “It’s sort of like a juggling act, keeping all the balls in the air at once, for a couple hours a day.” While he misses the frequent conversations with random strangers, he is now waking up for each day of painting with a renewed sense of enthusiasm, he couldn’t wait to get back to work.

Hanavan has been a fixture on Hoboken’s sidewalks for over two decades now, but he has been painting more New York City and Jersey City scenes over the past few years. This summer, in preparation for the exhibition at the Hoboken Museum, he spent more time in Hoboken, and kept seeing people he hadn’t seen in years, from former Mayor Dave Roberts to his former landlord and people he knew from his favorite Hoboken drinking hole.

Most of the 16 – 17 paintings in the exhibit are of Washington Street, which was purely coincidental to the current Main Gallery exhibit, “The Avenue.” He was particularly taken with the sidewalk café umbrellas as a subject. A few paintings are of night scenes, which, in contrast to the plein air paintings, were painted in his home studio from photographs.

For one painting, he returned to a classic image of his: A Mr. Softee truck. The new painting features the Empire State Building in the background and Hoboken in the foreground.

When he’s not painting, Hanavan indulges his fascination with all things nautical. He has served as a volunteer at the South Street Seaport Museum working on restoring old sailing ships, and has become an expert in nautical knots. Lately, he’s been creating hand-sewn canvas bags with nautical themes, sewed with old sail cloth in the time-honored techniques that were used to stitch sturdy sails in the olden days, which he learned about from a book. For more of his work, visit his website at www.frankhanavan.com.

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.

Joan Michel – “Cavemen Built My Skateboard”

September 19, 2021 - November 7, 2021

Joan Michel is an award-winning professional photographer-filmmaker with an impressive list of clients in the fashion world and other businesses. After starting her photography studies at School of Visual Arts in New York nearly a decade ago, she recently completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at New Jersey City University, majoring in Media Arts with a concentration in film making.

Jersey City born and raised, Michel began pursuing a passion to interpret the world through a lens in high school, when she bought her first digital SLR camera. While at SVA, she learned to appreciate the unique qualities of working with analog film, which informs the way she shoots even when using digital equipment.  

Her final thesis project, completed earlier this year, was inspired by her interest in skateboarders. She produced a fascinating film, “Cavemen Built My Skateboard,” about a young skateboarder, Iggy Manzanero, whom she met in Jersey City. Impressed as much by his warmth and openness as by his dedication to perfecting his skills, Michel captures this special young man’s character in a short film that showcases her skills with a variety of shooting styles and techniques. Her artist’s statement about the project appears below.

The show in the Museum’s Upper Gallery is based on stills from the film, which can also be viewed on YouTube. Learn more about Michel’s work by visiting her website at www.joan-michel.com.

My project, “Cavemen Built My Skateboard,” has been a process from March to August 2021. The subject was a 16-year-old named Iggy Manzanero.

During Covid-19, my therapist recommended that I do something my younger self always wanted to do and I told her I always wanted to skateboard. So going to the skate park is where I met Iggy in 2020 and he encouraged me to go out there, skate and have fun. I was taken aback because I was just a stranger to him at first and he showed his kind-hearted personality, which to me was the total opposite of the stereotypical skater. I believe it’s rare to meet kind people, so if you do, you keep them close because it’s a cruel world out there—or maybe that’s just me being traumatized.

I kept an eye on him for months at the skate park and then approached him about this project. It’s not about being the best skater for me, it’s about the importance of being a good human. He mentioned he has never worked on something like this, and because he is a minor, I had to ask his mother for permission to document him. 

I did my research and bought many photo books related to skateboarding. I’ve even contacted other photographers/directors who film skate videos to ask for advice on how to capture and print the photos I want. Artists who inspired me were Greg Hunt, Rafael Gonzales, Spike Jonze, French Fred, Ari Marcopoulos, and many more. I even reached out to pro skaters, and talked to the local skaters in Jersey City to practice when I wasn’t photographing/filming Iggy.

I recorded him on 16mm, Super 8 motion picture film, and also captured him on color and black-and-white film. It was a struggle doing everything by myself and at times I had to shoot with multiple cameras so I wouldn’t miss the shot. It taught me how to multitask in a way I never knew I could accomplish. It was also a pretty expensive production, so I ended up creating a crowdfunding campaign for the first time. I was able to raise $7,500 in a month! It opened my eyes to how many people out there believe in my vision and want to see what I make come to life.

I’m very thankful for Iggy’s patience with my process and with doing tricks over and over again until he landed them. Sometimes under the hot sun, it would get tiring and exhausting even for myself but we kept going. Especially when we both got physically hurt, we still kept going, and I think that’s what people admired the most as they were witnessing the process of filming and taking photos for this project. There was a lot of preparation in figuring out what film stocks to use, in which locations, and factoring in the weather and our schedules.

After every weekend, I would go to the lab and drop off my film, then pick it up, and scan the images at home. I would study what I needed to improve on and what was missing in the sequence of my photos. I would then plan out how to execute and capture the missing pieces for the next shoot. I decided to photograph with film stocks such as Kodak Colorplus and Portra for color film, because it offered the greatest saturation, since I usually shoot during a sunny day. I felt the vibrant colors worked with the action and movement I was trying to capture as he skated.

Despite all the work and struggles, it was rewarding to see the results in the end. It was also exciting for me to see the images come to life in print. Being in the darkroom created an even deeper connection for me with my work. I had to look closely at all the details to do the color correction and adjust the sharpness to get an accurate image. I felt sentimental when the project finally came to a close.

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.

Donna O’Grady – “Light at Play in Hoboken”

August 1, 2021 - September 12, 2021

Perhaps because she has traveled so much, Donna O’Grady sees the warm glow of community everywhere she looks in Hoboken. As she walks with her dog Asher from her apartment in uptown Hoboken to her studio at the Neumann Leathers complex, she says, “I find it refreshing to take different routes. I always discover something that inspires me to paint: like the way light is reflected on the brownstones, on gardens, stairs, through the gates and fire escapes.”

Born and raised in Jersey City, O’Grady later lived in North Haledon and Ringwood, New Jersey, then she put down roots in Hoboken nearly two decades ago. “I like the feeling of community as an artist with a studio in the Neumann Leather Building. I thrive off of the energy of other artists around me and find inspiration through their works. Although my studio mate and I work quietly on our own, I enjoy being able to share thoughts and ideas with another artist. There is a comfort in working in the presence of another artist’s creativity.”

A prolific painter, O’Grady has enjoyed many exhibitions of her oil paintings — on canvas as well as on repurposed tin ceiling tiles — in Hoboken, Jersey City and other galleries, in addition to an exhibition at the Hoboken Museum in 2016. 

Her love of living in Hoboken inspired her latest series of about a dozen paintings, including some nocturnal scenes. She explains, “I love the warm and inviting feeling I get from the glow of strung lights outdoors at restaurants, that soft, intimate spotlight cast on tables where friends gather at the end of the day at the local ‘streeteries’ to share a meal.” 

She adds, “When dusk approaches, I like to catch the glimmer of street lights darting through the leaves of trees as they flick on. Later, when voices and patrons drift homeward, a serenity washes over Hoboken revealing another side, a different light that spills out from windows. This is what inspires me to paint a series of nocturnal scenes of Hoboken.”

“The scenes I paint are urban, but on a deeper level they are a captured moment of community that makes Hoboken so special to those of us who call this city our home.”

“Light at Play in Hoboken: New Paintings by Donna O’Grady” will be on view in the Upper Gallery of the Hoboken Historical Museum from August 1 – September 12. Click here to learn more about the artist in a recent interview on the Museum’s YouTube channel. View more examples of her work at www.donnaogrady.com.

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.

Gary Spector – “Portraits of Essential Workers – Hoboken Hospital 2020”

May 2, 2021 - July 4, 2021

A silver lining of the Covid 19 pandemic has been the opportunity for artists to focus on personal projects while their work routine was disrupted. Freelance professional portrait photographer Gary Spector credits the pandemic lockdown for giving him an incentive to turn his talents to a passion project: A portrait series to raise awareness about the efforts of essential workers in Hoboken.

Through an introduction by a close friend who is a physician in town, Spector secured the necessary permissions to go into the Hoboken University Medical Center and recreate a photo studio in a large meeting area there, with a subtle painted backdrop and dramatic lighting. Given the restrictions in place, and safety issues, it was logistically easier and safer to do it on site, and it gave him access to more people there. The hospital helped him recruit the individuals and work around their schedules.

Spector’s one request going into the project was to have access to all workers at the hospital. “I wanted to photograph all personnel, from doctors and nurses to administrators, porters and security guards – everyone who was essential in the fight against Covid 19,” he explained. 

“I ended up photographing 39 essential workers,” he said, “who represent all the various jobs at the hospital, and all of whose work was critical during the pandemic.”

“I asked people to bring an object with them that reflected what they did at the hospital,” he added, noting that “some brought things, others did not. I ended up using only a few objects, as the experience of the pandemic was so obviously reflected in the faces that I was photographing.”

At first, most of the subjects were a bit uncomfortable in the setting, he said. “Many were surprised by the set-up involved, but once the subjects were on set, I simply asked them if they could reflect a bit on what the past few months had been like for them. Once we began to talk, almost everybody relaxed and shed any apprehensions about being photographed. Through each person’s stories, their body language simply became part of the image.”

In the course of these 20-minute sessions, Spector learned a lot about what the pandemic has meant for Hoboken’s front-line workers. “What I learned was how incredibly focused and caring the staff at HUMC truly are. So many of the people in the project have been working there for twenty-plus years, and have a real connection with the people of Hoboken.” 

“They were all dedicated to the people of Hoboken during this unprecedented year, despite the risk that was obvious to them, and they did so with the utmost care and compassion,” he explained. “There was a lot of demand on the staff, and many of them found themselves doing jobs that were not part of their daily protocol. Everyone I photographed was generous with their stories and with their time, and they embraced the importance of this project.”

Spector himself has lived in Hoboken for almost 40 years, having moved here while a student at The School of Visual Arts in New York. He only planned to stay here until he could afford to move into New York City, “but I quickly fell in love with the town,” he remembered. “There was a lot going on here in the early 80s; lots of artists and creative people were here at the time. It was affordable, with a fun nightlife, good restaurants, and a unique vibe, with so many different people from so many different backgrounds.”

He and his wife decided to buy a place here 25 years ago, and his son was born and raised here. Now in college, his son “loved growing up here, and is very proud to be a kid from Hoboken, NJ!” The town has changed a lot since those days, Spector said, but his roots are here now, with wonderful friends, and a great sense of community. This is Spector’s second exhibition at the Hoboken Museum, following a 2018 show of his Hoboken Halloween portraits, and he has also been photographing burlesque performers for the past few years. 

He’s been a professional working photographer for 30 years, opening his first studio in NYC in 1991, specializing in portraiture, first in the music industry and editorial work, and transitioning along the way to more corporate work. To view his online portfolio, visit garyspector.com. The exhibit will remain on view through July 4.

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.

McKevin Shaughnessy – “The Hidden Faces of Hoboken”

March 14, 2021 - April 25, 2021

Mascarons. That’s the term for an architectural ornament in the form of a face — realistic, idealized or mythical — adorning a building facade. They are omnipresent, but easily overlooked by people hurrying along, amid the profusion of signs and other visual stimuli in a dense urban environment. 

Artist and graphic designer McKevin Shaughnessy says he hadn’t really taken note of them until recently. He has lived in Hoboken since the mid-1980s, but he started only noticing how many faces are embedded in Hoboken’s cityscape when his work commute shifted from Manhattan to Hoboken’s Southwestern corner.

What began as an idle way to entertain himself as he walked through Hoboken became an obsession and a pandemic project: Documenting over 550 (and counting) faces throughout Hoboken. With more free time over the winter and the trees bare of leaves, Shaughnessy’s project blossomed into an attempt to catalogue every “hidden face” he could spot from the sidewalk. 

“The overall variety is staggering,” he says, “from family portraits to mythical griffins, bald eagles, lion heads, imaginary beasts, viking warriors, a sultan, numerous kings, a wolfman, the wolverine, a birdman, princesses and goddesses, cherubs and the like.”

He thought it might make a nice art project, so he started counting the faces along his usual walking routes, photographing every hidden face that revealed itself to him, taking notes on their locations. 

“Once you start looking it’s like an avalanche, especially some corners and neighborhoods,” Shaughnessy says. “Originally, I hoped it might be possible to find 26 such examples to create an A to Z listing.”

“What I have found, though, is truly mind-blowing,” he explains, “and it starts as soon as one sets foot in Hoboken. In fact, there is even a bronze lion head drinking fountain inside the Lackawanna Terminal.”

Between the train terminal and City Hall, he has counted nine separate building sites sporting over 100 heads. At first, he thought that seemed like a really high number, but then he discovered one corner in Hoboken with two separate sites facing each other. “Their combined total is 135 heads!” 

To date, he has recorded 89 separate sites around town for a total of 557 individual faces. (His son Ian found the latest two.) The heads are as far west as Monroe Street (eight heads carved into white marble columns) and as far north as 14th Street — which features 18 mermaids, by the way. (A careful observer will find the 19th mermaid, he hints). Some heads are hidden below eye-level or behind shrubbery. He even spied one on a chimney way up high, an outrageous face with a wide-open mouth, and ribbons for ears. 

Why so many? According to the Louvre’s catalogue, mascarons originally were meant to frighten away evil spirits, but after the Enlightenment of the 18th and 19th centuries, they gradually became merely decorative elements featuring realistic or idealized faces, depending on the fashions of the times. The use of faces in architecture spans many cultures, and it’s likely that Hoboken’s immigrant population saw them as a touch of elegance — and perhaps as a way to differentiate one row home or bank building from the next.

“One historic home on Hudson Street, dated 1892, is adorned with 19 exquisitely ornate heads. There are even three heads on the Theta Xi Fraternity house on the Stevens campus.”

He knows there were even more, once. He has found some images on Google Maps showing where some heads used to be. He speculates that some may have fallen, and others may have been removed or covered up during renovations. For that reason, he’s glad he’s documenting them before any more disappear. He is currently compiling these into a book project, along with a “pared down” version for a walking tour map. Mostly, though, he hopes his fellow Hobokenites will look up and start noticing them, too.

“The Hidden Faces of Hoboken,” which opened on March 14, features about 20 framed images he’s taken and printed in black and white, with several more in color. In addition, the Museum’s Artist’s Talk with Museum Director Bob Foster, which is now archived on YouTube, will be available on a monitor. The interview also features some highlights of Shaughnessy’s graphic design work (he does most of the Museum’s signs, posters and postcards) as well, and contains information about the Find the Hidden Faces of Hoboken contest that concludes on the show’s closing date of Sunday, April 25, at 5 pm.

Join in the hunt for hidden faces: 

The exhibit is supported by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.