Faculty Exhibition on LBI

Today was the closing reception for the Kean Faculty Exhibition at the Long Beach Island Foundation for Arts & Sciences.  This all began last fall when we were given the invitation, apparently part of a series of NJ colleges that have been invited to have shows there.  At the time this started, we were in the process of having one of our regular faculty shows in our department gallery, and the starting point was contacting those faculty to see if they wanted to be involved.  I was approached personally as one of the rare shore area members of the faculty, so a logical choice to be part of a show in Ocean County.  Nothing happened for several months, then I contacted our organizer at a point where we were getting closer and people wanted to know.  She said everything was proceeding, and was surprised we hadn't been contacted yet, but was sure it would be soon.

A few weeks later we got the loan agreements and I filled out the information and submitted it quickly.  There seemed to be a lot of chaos at the gallery, but someone was ready to receive the work so I took a day to drive two pieces down (the ones I had planned and promised).  From where I live about an hour each way, for those coming from around the school, more like 2 hours.  We were told there would be a closing reception, and considering the distance, I saw no reason to go back until that day.  Which was today.

The LBIF has a large main room, with a long uninterrupted wall along the left side (shown above), while the right side has a few doors and a counter.  At the far end of the main room is a raised area that can function as a stage (shown below), but can also be used to hang art.

There were 20 faculty in the show, but about 6 or 7 were present today.  Of the others, maybe some had previous commitments, and a few claimed emergencies, and maybe some just didn't want to drive all the way down there.  I wasn't the only person who had noticed that gallery's website had no mention of this show during it's entire run, almost like it was a big secret.  No outside publicity either.  Still we had a good crowd.  Running along with our show was something involving the local garden club, which had produced a variety of artificial arrangements.  Hard to get an accurate count, but I'd estimate we had 80 or 90 people at times.  A huge tent like structure occupied a big chunk of the parking lot, but was not being used today.  Don't know if it was for something that already happened, or will be coming soon.

I quickly realized that my pieces were hung toward the back of that large room, on that big wall.  They got a bit of attention, from people who knew me and from strangers.  People were attracted to the boardwalk piece, which one person insisted had to be Seaside Heights.  Actually it's based on memories of a place in Belmar, but with this series I have found many people who insist they are the places they knew well.  Maybe they are all the same, or maybe I found some universal truth.  One viewer noted the accuracy of the prizes, the large expensive things on display, that no one ever earns enough tickets to redeem.

But most popular was the black and white piece, with its image of a piece of long gone but very remembered bit of highway.  There really was a piece of the Parkway that went right through a cemetery, also passing by a bottling plant with a giant beer bottle shaped tower, in my youth painted to look like a giant Pabst beer bottle.  The bottling plant is gone now, with that bottle carefully preserved for some future use we were told, though I haven't heard about it yet.  The headstones are still there.  It was almost like a piece of surreal art, practically begging to be used as the subject of an artwork.  I'm glad I documented it while it was still there.  As on a late episode of the Sopranos, where Uncle Junior is drawn to it while wandering Newark in a bit of an Alzheimer's fugue, if you are old enough to remember it, you probably won't ever forget it.  Over the years a lot of my art seems to have been about reminding people of what they had seen many times but now forgotten.

As we got closer to the end, the crowd got a bit smaller, and when the reception ended I could take down my pieces.  Rain never arrived in the daylight hours, so I was able to easily carry them across the parking lot to my car.  Just like the day I delivered them to the gallery, the roads were pretty empty both coming and going,  which will probably change when summer starts very soon.