Liz Cohen – “Walkabout”

November 13 - December 23, 2011

Artists’ muses can assume unexpected forms; the artist’s challenge is to be open to the muse’s inspiration. For artist Liz Cohen, a handmade doll from her childhood has emerged as a significant influence in her art. As a little girl, she had wanted one toy more than any other: a shiny new Betsy Wetsy doll. Once she had one of these dream toys of her own, however, she found herself coveting her older sister’s simple, homemade cloth doll, named Hazel. Cohen negotiated with her sister to trade dolls, and counts pulling it off as her first real accomplishment. The doll, beloved by both sisters, actually changed custody several times as they grew into adults, finally coming to stay with Cohen for good some 20 years ago.

For most of her career as an artist, Cohen worked in watercolors and oils, painting images of mythological women, elements of her dreams, and seashells. Her work is infused with motifs and techniques learned in her world travels, including seven years living in Australia and working with Aboriginal people, as well as trips to Africa and Latin America.

Then, about 15 years ago, Cohen’s husband passed away and she immersed herself in creating art to help deal with her grief. She soon found Hazel began appearing frequently in her work. “Hazel represents joy and happiness to me,” Cohen says, “I’m trying to convey the joy of a simple, well-loved object to others.”

In the resulting Hazel-inspired series, Cohen works in new and sometimes mixed media. Walking around Hoboken, for example, she would photograph Hazel in different settings. Some photographs she paints with aboriginal motifs of dots and cross-hatching, and she’s also been making fabric art, sewing new dolls of her own creation. Ten to 12 pieces from this recent work, titled Walkabout: Photographs and Mixed-Media Works by Liz Cohen, were on display in the Upper Gallery of the Museum from Nov. 13 – Dec. 23.

Lately, Cohen has invented an entire alternate world, peopled by her handmade dolls, with its own language and religion, bridging different times and cultures. Drawing on her knowledge of other cultures’ traditional beliefs and mythologies, she has created a goddess-centered culture with these dolls, using fabrics that she has collected from all over the world. The mix of fabrics gives the impression that the dolls could be artifacts from any number of civilizations. Many of these were exhibited in New York City in November, in a show titled “Mother Lore,” at the Ceres Gallery, on 27th St. Find out more on her website, www.elizabethweinercohen.com.

Cohen’s studio is a staple on the Hoboken Artists Studio Tour, and her work has been exhibited in many solo and group shows. About 10 years ago, she founded the Hob’art artists group, which is searching for a permanent home. She was an art major at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Masters in Art and teaching credentials at the University of California at Berkeley. She has taught art for more than 30 years at a private school in Summit.

Cohen returned to the Museum on Sunday, Dec. 4, at 4 p.m., to discuss her work and answer visitors’ questions. The exhibit was 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.

Barbara Mauriello – “Unfolding Landscapes”

September 25 - October 2, 2011

An artist with a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in painting, Barbara Mauriello hadn’t given much thought to how the books she loved to read were constructed until she took a class in bookbinding. She had done 10 small paintings and wanted to put them together in a book.

“I got hooked on bookbinding the first time a bowl of freshly cooked paste passed under my nose,” she recalls. “And the lovely, fat paste brushes…then a ‘bonefolder,’ the bookbinder’s essential tool, fell into my hands and that was that. I was in love: with my tools, my materials, paper, cloth, leather, thread, paint.” She made the radical decision to quit her job and, following in the tradition of centuries of craftspeople, she began an apprenticeship at the Center for Book Arts, on Bleecker and the Bowery.

Thirty years later, Mauriello is just as passionate about the art and craft of making books, if not more so. She now makes her living creating and repairing books, as well as colorful boxes that serve as containers or simply as art objects, using the same techniques. She also teaches bookbinding at the Center for Book Arts, the International Center for Photography, and the School of Visual Arts. And she has served as a consultant in book conservation to major institutions such as the Newark Public Library and the Brooklyn and New York Botanical Gardens.

By now, she’s created thousands of books and boxes by hand, for her own projects and for her clients, mostly artists and poets, who hire her to create an individual book or a small edition of up to a few hundred copies. In addition to traditional books, she makes them in unusual formats, such as accordion-style “tunnel” books, with an opening in the center of the pages that forms a tunnel when the book’s covers are pulled in opposite directions.

An exhibit of several of her books and boxes, Unfolding Landscapes: Books and Boxes by Barbara Mauriello, will open in the Museum’s Upper Gallery on Sunday, Sept. 25, with a free reception from 2 ­ 5 p.m. The show will be on view through Nov. 6. She returns to the Museum on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 4 p.m. for a talk about her craft.

Her fascination with tunnel books may be inspired in part by her decision to move to Hoboken some 20 years ago, because she commutes frequently through tunnels to New York. She loves it here, and has formed a private press with friends here who are artists with skills in calligraphy and printing. With her artist’s eye, she is drawn to rich colors and geometric shapes. She admires the work of French artists of the mid-20th century, including Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, and particularly Sonia Delaunay, who created her own books without any formal training.

Mauriello has made books from fragments of fire-damaged 18th century illustrated manuscripts and 19th century contracts written on vellum, and created books inspired by Apache playing cards, Russian constructivist costumes and good-luck charms embroidered on kimonos. Her work has been exhibited in many museums, art galleries, and libraries; one piece is being sealed in Santiago Calatrava’s New York Times time capsule.

Books as Art: Barbara Mauriello’s Unfolding Landscapes Sunday, Sept. 25, 2-5 pm: Opening reception for “Unfolding Landscapes: Books and Boxes by Barbara Mauriello.” Local artist Barbara Mauriello learned traditional techniques of bookbinding the old-fashioned way, through an apprenticeship. Now her skills are in high demand to produce limited editions of special art books or to restore antique books. Over the years, she’s expanded her craft to create innovative book shapes and decorative boxes, many of which will be on display in the Museum’s Upper Gallery through Nov. 6. She returns for a talk and demonstration on Sun., Oct. 2 at 4 pm. The opening reception and talk are free.

The Upper Gallery exhibits are made possible by a block grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs.

Louise Gale – “Mixed Media”

August 7 - September 18, 2011

www.louisegale.com/art/

As a child growing up in South London, Louise Gale was encouraged to be creative, spending hours after school and during the summer drawing, painting, and creating patterns with her beloved Spirograph. She loved making decorations for Christmas, Easter, and birthdays. Gale was accepted to art school at 16, studying drawing, photography, sculpture, and design, then spent two years in the “potteries” in Stoke on Trent, England, learning ceramic design and how to make surface patterns.

Her practical side led her to pursue a corporate career in training and development, however, and she decided to keep up with her art as a hobby. Her career brought her Hoboken in 2004, which she loves because it reminds her of an English village with a “high street” through the center of town, and people say hello on the street. After struggling to find the time to truly nurture her creative side—even pulling the plug on her TV set—she finally found the courage to take the plunge and become a full-time artist.

Gale participated in several creative retreats to sharpen her focus on certain projects and materials. She started a blog and networked online to find other creative people, whom she found to be a very supportive global community. “They help you celebrate successes and support you through hard struggles,” she says, “and we give each other feedback through blog comments.” She joined the local hob’art artists group for mutual support.

“I like to dabble in all sorts of things,” Gale says. “Lately, I’ve been experimenting with sewing.” Several of her mixed-media works will go on display in the Upper Gallery of the Museum on Sunday, Aug. 7, with a free opening reception from 2 – 5 p.m. The show is titled Sew Hoboken: Mixed Media Works by Louise Gale, reflecting her recent interest in working with needle and thread. There’s a collage piece featuring flora and fauna of Hoboken; another piece depicts the waiting room sign from the Hoboken train station, with sequins sewn into the image. The works on display will each have a sewn element, and incorporate other media, such as plasterwork, acrylic paints, photography, and book craft.

Her career as a corporate trainer continues to be useful: She has developed online courses to help other artists achieve their goals, and is currently in training to be a creative coach. She also works part-time as a co-manager for an expatriate community, planning events. She’s very active online, with a website and blog at www.louisegale.com, as well as a Facebook page, a Twitter account and an Etsy presence. She also sells her work, which has been exhibited in solo and group shows at galleries in New York City and Hoboken. Recently, her work was featured in Somerset Studio Magazine, on the cover of a book by Patti Digh, and in an article on Etsy in Inc. magazine.

Louise will return to the Museum on Saturday, Sept. 10, at 4 p.m. for a meet-the-artist reception, where she’ll discuss her work and answer visitors’ questions. 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.

Sterne Slaven – “Deconstructing Hoboken”

January 30 - March 6, 2011

Artist/photographer Sterne Slaven has an eye for the industrial soul of Hoboken. When he moved here in 1983, after graduating art school, he found himself drawn again and again to the old factory buildings in his uptown neighborhood: Ferguson Propeller Works, the old Shipyard machine shop, the Maxwell House coffee plant. He captured haunting images of many of these buildings, some in the process of being dismantled.

Born in Pittsburgh but raised in suburban Englewood, N.J., Slaven says he’s always had an affinity for old, rusting factories and broken glass and metal. He returned to Pittsburgh to study drawing and photography at Carnegie-Mellon University, and moved to Hoboken afterwards not just because the rents were more affordable than in Manhattan, but because he liked the look and feel of the city, and was happy to stay west of the Hudson, where his family still lives. In his career, he’s worked as a photographer’s assistant, carpenter and prototype model maker in industrial design.

For this show, Deconstructing Hoboken: Photomontages by Sterne Slaven, he incorporated the photographs, along with some double exposures and abstracted patterns from old buildings, into intriguing large-scale composite images. Some date from the midto late 1980s, and some are more recent. They depict Hoboken’s industrial buildings in their twilight years, including the huge ship propellers that used to lie on their sides in the yard of the Ferguson Propeller Works at 12th and Grand St. The effect of the layered photos in the montages and the use of double exposures gives the images a ghostly effect, as though the buildings have left traces— which they have for anyone who lived here at the time.

“Though perhaps not consciously,” Slaven says, “the pieces, with their overlapping and transparencies and general visual chaos, seem to echo the deconstruction of the buildings themselves, their broken windows and piles of twisted rebar.”

Slaven’s first Hoboken Museum exhibit opens on Sunday, Jan. 30, with a free opening reception from 2 – 5 p.m. His work has also been shown in galleries and juried exhibitions in Hoboken, New York, Pennsylvania and most recently at the Englewood Library in 2006. Slaven will give an illustrated talk about his work on Sunday, Feb. 27 at 4 p.m., and his work will be on display through Mar. 6. 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.

Bill Curran – “A Passion for the River”

May 2009

A born artist, Bill Curran was fascinated with the interplay between shapes, colors, and light on the Hudson River from the moment he laid eyes on it from a stunning new vantage point, the Stevens Institute of Technology campus overlook. “Within a week of moving to Hoboken, I went to Stevens to look out on the river, and it was love at first sight,” Curran says. That was 26 years ago, and now he hardly ever leaves the house without a sketchbook (a 4×6-inch Strathmore) and pastels (a 12-color set of Cray-Pas), and he’s quick to dash home to grab an easel and canvas when a sight moves him.

Regular visitors to the Museum know Bill as the kind soul who welcomes them most days of the week, helping them get to know the exhibits or find the perfect t-shirt or book as a souvenir of their visit. Others may know him as the artist intently drawing or painting from Pier A, or at a park, or at a garden gate where a newly blooming hyacinth might inspire him to race home for his easel. “I take a lot of walks to stay creative and healthy,” he says, and stops to do a sketch when something “talks” to him.

He’s been drawn back again and again to the view of Manhattan across the Hudson. After one of his pastels, “Manhattan from Hoboken,” was selected for a 1995 show at the Bowery Art Gallery by artist Jane Freilicher, he realized that the subject matter was a potent inspiration and challenge for his artistic eye and hand. He’s painted it in oils or drawn it in pastels many times over the years, following in the footsteps of one of his favorite Old Masters, Monet, who painted the Thames River and London’s Houses of Parliament from many angles at many different times of days and in various weather.

The resulting series, nearly 10 pastels on paper and 10 paintings, will be on display in “A Passion for the River: Paintings and Pastels by Bill Curran” in the Upper Gallery of the Hoboken Historical Museum starting June 6 through July 18. Please join us for an opening reception from 2 – 5 p.m. on Saturday, June 6.

Raised on the South Shore of Long Island, Curran has always been fascinated by the water, especially when his family took day trips on a motorboat to Jones Beach. Every time a motorboat goes by on the Hudson, he perks up. His work is impressionistic, with shapes and colors dominating the canvas. He has been featured in several group shows in New York City, and one-man shows at the Empire State Building, the Hoboken Public Library, Barnes & Noble, and the Hoboken Historical Museum. Every October, he participates in the Hoboken Artists Studio Tour.

Another inspiration over the years has been the Empire State Building, which he could see daily from his office window at Lord & Taylor, where he was Art Director and Illustrator for 16 years, and still features prominently in his Hudson River landscapes. He earned a degree in Advertising Design from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, and has taken art courses at several New York art schools, including the Art Students League. He now teaches art lessons privately, in addition to working at the Museum. You can see more of his work at www.billcurran.net.

Robert Burczy – “Poster Art”

May 2006

If you travel Hoboken by foot, you no doubt have seen those eyecatching posters on telephone poles and empty storefronts around town promoting local artist Robert Burczy. An art form of their own, these promotional posters have become a fixture of the local cityscape, which will be celebrated in an exhibit, Cascade/Proving his Mettle…The Poster Art of Robert Burczy, in the Museum’s Upper Gallery from May 7 through June 11. You are invited to the artist’s reception on Sunday, May 7, from 4 to 6 p.m. The artist will also give a talk on the last day of the exhibit at 4 p.m. Free to all.

A Hoboken resident since 1989, Robert Burczy grew up in the northwestern Pennsylvania town of Hazelton, but says he “became an artist in Hoboken.” He is self-taught, and greatly influenced by local artists he met here through the Hoboken Creative Alliance, an arts group that flourished in the 1990s.

Burczy cites a variety of influences, including fellow artist Paul Divone, who created brightly colored wood sculptures and affixed them to telephone poles throughout the city. Burczy also acknowledges the influence of the lively music culture that thrived in Hoboken, manifesting itself in flyers tacked onto any blank surface promoting a band’s gigs, as well as the omnipresent gate-sale posters often fringed with a ruffle of pull tabs to help passersby take note of the date and details. It was out of this ephemera tradition that the “Burczy’s” were born. He prides himself on creating his own “Burczy” posters for each exhibit, most of which use clever wordplay in the name, displayed in the bold “Interstate Highway” type face, along with the opening date and location.

The exhibition will display most of the “Burczy’s” created over the past 12 years, and will include documentation on how and where they could be seen then and how some have survived over time. The exhibition and lecture are supported by a grant from the Office of Hudson County Cultural Affairs and the New Jersey Council for the Arts.

Bill Curran – “A View for All Seasons”

November 13, 2005

“Down all the side streets, people have wonderful hidden gardens,” artist Bill Curran told a reporter from The Hudson Dispatch in 1986. Today, the painter says, “Seeing other backyards helped me see my own.” Curran loves nature and looking out the window, so, being an artist, he married the two and began a series of paintings of his own backyard.

Outside his window, shapes and colors interact to create beautiful compositions that call out to be painted. Sometimes, Curran records the scene in one sitting. On other occasions, he may return to a subject over a series of sessions.

Please join us Sunday, November 13, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., for an artist’s reception and opening of A View for All Seasons: Paintings by Bill Curran, in the Upper Gallery at the Museum, 1301 Hudson Street, through December 23. Over a dozen oil and acrylic paintings of backyard views observed through the seasons, and through the years, are on display.

The paintings record fleeting changes in light and weather conditions, and lasting changes over time. This year, the red geraniums that had always accentuated the green grass of a neighbor’s yard were gone, making the scene far less interesting to the painter’s eye. Even so, the view from his window continues to inspire the artist in fresh and unexpected ways.

Bill Curran’s paintings have been exhibited throughout the metropolitan area. He has studied at The National Academy of Design and The Art Students League. Among the painters Curran counts as influences are Claude Monet, and contemporary artists Fairfield Porter, Jane Freilicher, and Wolf Kahn.

Ben Fernandez – “Shipyard”

September 2005

Acclaimed photographer Benedict J. Fernandez went to work at Hoboken’s Bethlehem Steel Shipyard right after high school. His father, who had gone to work at the yard in 1936 and stayed until it closed, got him the job. Ben Fernandez worked alongside Moneybags John, Willy the Beat, and Jesse James. There was an easy camaraderie among the workers, and the shipyard became a home away from home. Fernandez stayed four years at Bethlehem Shipyard working as an apprentice and, later, a full-fledged crane operator, before taking a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. At the time, his great avocation was photography, and on several occasions he returned to the Hoboken shipyard to photograph the men who had become his friends. In 1963, after the Brooklyn Navy Yard closed, his hobby became his profession.

The Bethlehem Shipyard photographs of Ben Fernandez pay homage to the men who worked at the yard with his father. Like Family: Photographs of Hoboken Shipyard Workers by Benedict J. Fernandez is on view in the Upper Gallery of the Hoboken Historical Museum, 1301 Hudson Street, September 18 through November 6.You are invited to attend the opening reception on Sunday, September 18, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Fernandez has been widely published and exhibited, and has received recognition for his outstanding contributions to photography, including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. His work can be found in many permanent collections, among them the Museum of Modern Art; Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Smithsonian Institution; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Stadt Museum, Dortmund, Germany; and the International Center of Photography. Countdown to Eternity, his photographic record of Dr. Martin Luther King the year before his assassination, has been exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe. Currently, Fernandez is a senior fellow in photography at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and founder and CEO of Hoboken Almanac of Photography. The Hoboken Almanac Gallery, at 1252 Garden Street, is open by appointment.

This exhibition is made possible by a Block Grant from the State/County Partnership program for the Arts administered by the Hudson County Division of Cultural and Heritage Affairs, Tom DeGise, County Executive, and the Board of Chosen Freeholders.

Antonio DeJesus – “The Town”

March 20,2005

A native of the Dominican Republic, painter Antonio DeJesus moved to Hoboken only three years ago. When he first arrived, DeJesus took long walks around town and developed an appreciation of Hoboken’s architecture. His paintings of local architecture and highly realistic streetscapes are so sharply detailed that they appear at first glance to be photographs. Many are suffused with a warm, golden light, particularly his panoramic southerly view of the Erie-Lackawanna terminal, Lackawanna 2.

The second in a yearlong series of exhibitions looking at Hoboken through the eyes of artists, The Town: Paintings by Antonio DeJesus opens with a reception on Sunday, March 20, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The exhibition is on view through May 7 in the Upper Gallery at the Hoboken Historical Museum, 1301 Hudson Street.

Antonio DeJesus attended Parson School of Design and has won many awards for his illustrations and murals. His work has been shown at Parsons Gallery, New York City, and Centro Cultural Fermosselle, Dominican Republic.