Ellen Martin’s ‘Abandoned’ series of photographs (above) are on display beginning Thursday at the Oyster Point.
From painted portraits of nature’s splendor to photographic captures of commercial ruins and other scenes of gorgeous desolation, the galleries of the Greater Red Bank Green offer up an eyeful in the days and nights to come with an art walk that begins Thursday evening with a new installation on the walls and walkways of the Oyster Point Hotel.
Entitled The Fabric of Time — and curated, as are most of the Oyster Point art installations, by Swiss-born multimedia specialist Gerda Liebmann — it’s a two-woman showcase for a pair of Monmouth County artists who have (relatively) recently seized upon photography as a crucial component of their work: Ellen Martin and Erica Geralds.
Regular readers of these pixelated pages might recall Martin from her involvement with the outdoor HEADS installation that turned heads around Red Bank back in the summer of 2012, as well as for curation of the Women Paint Women exhibit at Oyster Point last year.
For the past two years, the Red Bank-based painter and mixed-media specialist has focused her artist’s eye upon a facet of the local landscape that most of us are all too content to rush by without noticing: the shuttered homes, boarded-up gas stations, weed-choked shopping plazas and decommissioned public places that comprise her Abandoned series of digital photographs. It’s a body of work that originated both “as a reaction to a personal rejection” and “as a commentary on the American proclivity to destroy rather than reconstruct.” Beginning with a Thursday opening reception that runs from 7 to 9 p.m., 19 images from that acclaimed and ever-expanding series (including five never before displayed) will be on view.
Sharing the hotel’s exhibit space will be a sampling of recent works by Geralds, a former assistant to the noted African artist Wangechi Mutu, and a maker of “manipulated paintings” whose interest in textiles has seen her create symmetrical, patterned “photographed and mirrored” designs from her acrylic abstracts.
Both artists are expected to be present for the opening night reception (with complimentary hors d’oeuvres served, and free or valet parking available), and the exhibit remains on display through June 30.
• This Saturday afternoon, the garden is the seasonally appropriate theme for a new group show going up at the Guild of Creative Art, the creative collective that’s watched the contemporary landscape of the Greater Red Bank Green take shape over the past 55 years from the window of its ever-fascinating house on Shrewsbury’s Broad Street/Route 35 main drag.
The public is welcomed to a reception that takes place between 4 and 7 p.m., with the art remaining on display through May 31 during regular hours (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; Thursday 8 a.m.-6 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-3 p.m.), with free admission and on-site parking at all times.
• The first Saturday of the month means it’s time for another opening reception at the Art Alliance of Monmouth County — and on the evening of May 6, the Monmouth Street headquarters of the local artist collective introduces its latest group exhibits, Photography Now and Drawing Now.
It’s long been the custom at the Alliance to feature a different guest juror each month (with that artist also showcasing their own work in the gallery’s windows), and for the month of May the featured guest will be a photographer whose richly detailed black-and-white images of the natural and man-made world have been discussed several times here on redbankgreen: Colin Seitz.
The photographer’s gelatin silver prints — created by “wet” process in his darkroom — will be on view for the duration of the exhibit, which remains on display through May 30 during regular gallery hours, Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 4 p.m. Refreshments will be served during Saturday’s opening reception, which runs between 6 and 8 p.m.
• It’s well worth taking an off-the-beaten-path detour over to Red Bank’s Clay Street, for a look at the latest installation at Ken Schwarz’s Detour Gallery. Having opened officially this past weekend, the group show Re-America spotlights the work of 10 Latin American artists based in the Caribbean, South America, and the United States. The exhibition remains on view through May 27 during regular gallery hours (Thursday 3 to 5 p.m.; Friday 3 to 9 p,m.; Saturday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.) or by appointment.
• Finally, a reminder that this Saturday also sees the return of the Spring Creative Arts and Music Festival at Lincroft’s Thompson Park, the annual event about which more to come tomorrow, here on redbankgreen.
