Bennys Goin' Home
After work today I made the trip to Long Branch to catch the Bennys Go Home show at SICA on its last day. The show was curated by 3 artists from the New York/North Jersey area, and included two dozen of their fellow Bennies.
(For those of you from out of this area, "Bennies" or "Bennys" is the popular term here at the Jersey Shore for the hordes of visitors that descend on us every summer, clogging our roads, crowding our restaurants and bars, and responsible for all manners of obnoxiousness. Thus, Bennies Go Home signs are a common sight around here in the summer. The biggest source of Bennies is North Jersey and NYC, although there are a large contingent from Philly, too.)
Anyway, one of the 3 curators was Victoria Hanks, who I know from a few years back when she found my slides in a registry in Newark and curated me into Seven Deadly Sins, a group show that was supposed to be there in Newark, but ended up in Soho. We keep in touch occasionally, and she in fact invited me to participate in this show. I reminded her that I was actually a beach town resident, and we agreed that I wasn't really a candidate for a show with this theme. I told her I'd come to see it, but a busy semester and holiday season kept me away until today, the final day.
It was worth the visit. My friend's very large wall drawing (see above) was really cool. Some other familiar people in the show- Ben Goldman (also part of the Sins show), Jose Camacho (former classmate from my painting days at Montclair State), Len Merlo (took one of my woodcut workshops years ago), and Tiffany Calvert (whose work I remember from one of the "Fresh Meat" shows of recent NJ MFA's that this space hosts every spring). Since Vicki has told me that she'd like to put me in another show someday, maybe I'll be running into some of these people again.
(For those of you from out of this area, "Bennies" or "Bennys" is the popular term here at the Jersey Shore for the hordes of visitors that descend on us every summer, clogging our roads, crowding our restaurants and bars, and responsible for all manners of obnoxiousness. Thus, Bennies Go Home signs are a common sight around here in the summer. The biggest source of Bennies is North Jersey and NYC, although there are a large contingent from Philly, too.)
Anyway, one of the 3 curators was Victoria Hanks, who I know from a few years back when she found my slides in a registry in Newark and curated me into Seven Deadly Sins, a group show that was supposed to be there in Newark, but ended up in Soho. We keep in touch occasionally, and she in fact invited me to participate in this show. I reminded her that I was actually a beach town resident, and we agreed that I wasn't really a candidate for a show with this theme. I told her I'd come to see it, but a busy semester and holiday season kept me away until today, the final day.
It was worth the visit. My friend's very large wall drawing (see above) was really cool. Some other familiar people in the show- Ben Goldman (also part of the Sins show), Jose Camacho (former classmate from my painting days at Montclair State), Len Merlo (took one of my woodcut workshops years ago), and Tiffany Calvert (whose work I remember from one of the "Fresh Meat" shows of recent NJ MFA's that this space hosts every spring). Since Vicki has told me that she'd like to put me in another show someday, maybe I'll be running into some of these people again.
posted by arrabbiata at 8:19 PM
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