In the heart of Jersey City’s colorful and eclectic Little India neighborhood is a secret that is about to explode the art world.  Mana Contemporary is more than a gallery, more than a studio, more than a sensation.  It’s a burning impression on the mind, body, and heart – an interior garden of sorts that stimulates the senses by creating sparks in a quiet, light, white space.  Housed in an abandoned sprawling brick tobacco factory, the industrial exterior trimmed with concrete loading docks and the crunchy sound of aluminum garage doors rolling up and down serve as a gateway between the quotidian and the imagination.

From the deep warm belly of the earth, the boundless starry sky, or the walloping waves of the sea, Mana’s diverse collections seem to ask, “Where do we come from and when will we meet?” Let’s start on the sixth floor.  A ramp with a fenestrated wall on one side and a series of large photographic panels of black sky and rising red sun that radiate heat leads to the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation (ESKFF) Gallery.  An avid art collector of American and international art, Kaminsky traveled the world selecting pieces that touched an emotion in her.  Before entering, she shares a few words about what is inside:

“I have a personal feeling about the art and these artists.  They are full of surprises.  They are lush and wonderful with a hint of something wrong.  I want to be tickled by art.  I want to be astounded.  I want to be brought back in again and again and see something different every time.  Every one of these pieces does this for me.  One piece reminds me of another and another in the collection.  I love to make these connections.”

Once inside, I am drawn into a corner of the room that holds Aroma Mother Earth (artist, KAORUKO), a tall screen print and sumi ink wash of a pregnant Japanese woman holding a bouquet of three peonies.  As I move closer, I see all the details of pink and blue geometric patterns that come together in her open kimono exposing her breast and belly.  The exterior of her kimono is a floral print tarnished in smoky soot.   A very faint aqua-colored watermark of Japan’s geographical form stains her stomach.  In her left hand are three peonies, a Japanese symbol of bravery often tattooed as body art.  In medicinal folklore, the root of peonies was often used to suppress convulsions.  Two cranes float along a gray plume in the air, and a third hovers closer to the ground more like vultures rather than their iconic sign of peace.  A year after Japan’s catastrophic earthquake and tsunami, I recall the images of lives swallowed up in seconds, a landscape standing still, and an ancient culture shattered to pieces.  Even though hopeful, there will be pain as a new Japan emerges.

Coming out of the corner, diagonally from Aroma Mother Earth, is another painting of a female figure, an untitled piece by Kim Dorland.  She looks serene, seductively cast across a green hillside speckled with yellow daffodils.  The paint is so thickly textured I can feel the clumpiness of the grass.  Close-up, it’s easy to have more interest in the background and the figure fades.  Dressed in a short red and white summer frock that resembles a picnic tablecloth, the girl seems comfortable and contemplative at the same time.  Her legs are defined but as you move farther up her body, the arms are not visible possibly located behind her back or perhaps her sense of touch is completely severed.  A streak of white light meets her cloudy gray gaze.  This is the hint of something wrong.

The two rooms of ESKFF are filled with humor and melancholy, light and dark, real and imaginary creatures reflecting worlds of possibilities.  I am amused by Ryan Mosley’s cameo painting, Primitive Ancestry XIII, an oval side portrait of a figure that looks part human part ape with pygmy ears, a pronounced chin, pointy nose, and skin that has a shimmery copper-like patina.  It’s awkward and at the same time distinguished; aren’t we all?

Also on the sixth floor is Undivided Di vided, a live art performance by internationally renowned Chinese choreographer, Shen Wei Dance Arts.  The room is prepped with large square canvases on the floor onto which semi-nude dancers move to music.  Another visual layer is added by puddles of wet paint that the dancers spread on the canvas in circular, linear, and sweeping strokes creating abstract art on the canvas and their bodies.  Some of the dancers are placed inside glass cases, in which the walls also become covered in these intense colors that are free form but simultaneously contained.

Mana Contemporary is a collaborative space that aims at uniting artists with curators, collectors with dealers, and art handlers with art viewers.  It opened its doors in 2011 and continues to grow within its own walls outward.  It is a unique experience that gives visitors a chance to mingle with artists in their private studios to see works in progress as well as process, attend shows, lectures, view completed works in the gallery, and share an espresso in the café.  Mana is a journey and destination.

Mana Contemporary, 888 Newwark Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey 07306

Images of Aroma Mother Earth by Kaoruko and Untitled work by Kim Dorland provided by Mike Weiss Gallery.
Photo of Shen Wei Dance Arts courtesy of Tema Stauffer.

Originally posted in Culture Catch: http://culturecatch.com/art/mana-contemporary

©2012 myartobiography. All Rights Reserved.

Helen Frankenthaler, Midnight, 1986 Etching and aquatint on Magnani paper Editions size: 71 Paper size: 32 x 25 1/2 inches

There are many accidents that are nothing but accidents – and forget it. But there are some that were brought about only because you are the person you are… you have the wherewithal, intelligence, and energy to recognize it and do something with it.  Helen Frankenthaler (1928 – 2011)

Image Source: http://contemplativeprocess.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/37/

Helen Frankenthaler, Video Portrait

©2012 myartobiography. All Rights Reserved.

eXtinction is an environmental art clip by Summer Rayne Oakes and director, Clayton Haskell, that will be available for viewing for two days… You only have a few more hours to watch.  Then it will be gone… eXtinction

©2012 myartobiography. All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Road Fun (flickr)

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.  ~Friedrich Nietzche

©2012 myartobiography. All Rights Reserved.

By:  Michelina Docimo

“A tree against the sky possesses the same interest, the same character, the same expression as the figure of a human.” ~ Georges Rouault

Joseph Wheelwright, Pine Man (2006), 24' tall.

A dreary October afternoon, the pallid sky hidden under a stained glass tunnel of roadside, scarlet burning bush, mottled sassafras, and a canopy of golden honey locust teardrops; mystery is steeped in the air like fruit-infused vodka. Sculptor, Joseph Wheelwright’s Tree Figures at the Katonah Museum of Art, in Katona, NY have a similar effect—dizzying, somber, jovial and mischievous—a concoction of haunting hallucination and sobering truth: that tree and man share the same breath. In the spirit of Dr. Frankenstein, Wheelwright ‘gives birth’ to his sculptures by carving anthropomorphic features into trees, stones, bones, and other found-objects, collected while walking through woods.  He communes deeply with the essence of these forms until he hears a heartbeat, a perceived pulse that appears to then breathe fresh life into his art.

J. Wheelwright, Pine Man, detail

Pheremones of crushed dried white pine needles and freshly sawn wood sap waft under my nose, as I approach the largest of Wheelwright’s tree figures on exhibit on the front lawn.   A towering 27’ Christ-like figure, with arms out-stretched, appears to float on air.  The crest-fallen head reveals a face with deep, sad eyes, a pronounced nose and chin, and lips that speak the language of anguish. Atop the head, a crown of thorns is sculpted from a dense root ball, whose very features seem to lash wildly in the autumn wind.  The hips are concave, as though sagging under the strain of grief, and looking up into its face, I am overcome by a feeling of fear that the structure will stumble and fall.  Encircling the tree figure, tension from tip-to-toes pulsates from every angle of the work.

J. Wheelwright, Smoke Jumper, 2007, Bronze cast from hornbeam and fir trees 16-1/2x7x6 feet

Wheelwright was raised in the natural splendor of western Massachusetts’s Berkshires, a remote area known to harbor countless secrets and legends of New England’s old-growth forests. He expressed a fear of trees as a child, often clinging to the lower trunk to escape being snatched up by the clawing grasp of its branches.  After graduating from Yale University’s School of Fine Arts, Wheelwright moved to a commune in Vermont, using sticks and small stones as his medium—finally able to release himself from his childhood fears.  Surrounded by endless stands of trees, Wheelwright embraced his presentiment, converting it into creative curiosity and began to identify individual characters and personality traits in the natural forms around him.

Expressive movement is what he looks for, when walking through the forest selecting specimens for his sculptures: the appearance of a bended knee, a twisted torso, or swaying arms.  Once in the studio, he often turns the tree upside down, visualizing a newly- conceived anthropoid, where the intricate root system becomes the head, shoulder, armpits, and where, sometimes, fingers and the trunk can metamorphose into legs and body.  Wheelwright is not a purist, sometimes transplanting disparate parts, like grafting the ‘head’ of a hornbeam tree onto the ‘body’ of a cherry tree.  Instinctively, the artist knows whether a tree is male or female, engendering anatomically correct traits.  Lifting the bark, peeling layers, and adding tissue, Wheelwright is intimately familiar with how to create the feminine form.  Other figures are more androgynous, mythical, or centaur-like—each tilting to the side of eccentricity.

J. Wheelwright, Oracle, 2008, Pine tree, 26x14x7 feet.

In the courtyard behind the museum, I sense that I am not alone. My eyes drift up from the ground as I meet the gaze of another 30-foot figure, camouflaged against a weeping Norway spruce. Suddenly transfixed, I sense a connection with this man-made object that is surprisingly empathetic.  I am reminded of other creatures of science fiction-past, reclaimed from discarded and unwanted part and yet, assuming human emotions and drives.  Here, for a few moments, I sense a desire to communicate with this gargantuan creature, and I find myself listening, watching, connecting.

Sublimating scientific desires into artistic expression, sought out in the relationship between man and nature, is an age-old impulse. An important aspect of that desire to meld man and nature can be found in Wheelwright’s Tree Figures. His sculpture, exploring the biomorphic ‘evolution’ of man from trees, calls into question human superiority in the natural order of things, and promotes greater sensitivity for the fine genetic line that separates all living things.  “There’s no question that we are descended from the same organism,” Wheelwright says.  “Clearly they are our ancestors.  Human hope and design was inspired by trees.  The question is, when did we split apart?”

“Joseph Wheelwright: Tree Figures,” through May in the Marilyn M. Simpson Sculpture Garden and on the South Lawn at the Katonah Museum of Art, 134 Jay Street (Route 22). For more information: www.katonahmuseum.org or (914) 232-9555.

Joseph Wheelwright’s Website: http://www.joewheelwright.com/index.htm

by Michelina Docimo, CSBA, Contributing Writer

Photos by Michelina Docimo

Michelina Docimo is a certified sustainable building advisor and writer. Her focus is on sustainable or “green” architecture, landscape, design, and the representation of nature in art. Her writings have appeared in ARTESMagazine, Culture Catch, CT Green Scene, D’Art International, and other industry publications.

Visit her blog http://michelinadocimo.com/myartobiography

This piece was written for ARTES Magazine and the original link can be viewed here:

http://www.artesmagazine.com/2011/10/new-york%E2%80%99s-katona-museum-displays-looming-creations-by-contemporary-sculptor/

©2012 myartobiography. All Rights Reserved.

http://inhabitat.com/bosco-verticale-in-milan-will-be-the-worlds-first-vertical-forest/

©2012 myartobiography. All Rights Reserved.

I love this question and I love the fact that it is anonymous.  Anyone could have asked it – Confucius, Shakespeare, Dali, Oprah, Mike The Situation, a five-year old child, me, you – anyone.  On a day like 9/11, choking down tears with my coffee, everything seems a question.  Why did this happen?  What have we learned?  How will we move on?  Who are we and What is my life worth?  How will we remember?  What will I give?  Today is a day of asking and you don’t have to know all the answers, simply ask.

Here is a commentary by Todd May on The Meaningfulness of Lives from The New York Times:

Who among us has not asked whether his or her life is a meaningful one?  Who has not wondered — on a sleepless night, during a long stretch of dull or taxing work, or when a troubled child seems a greater burden than one can bear — whether in the end it all adds up to anything? On this day, too, when many are steeped in painful reminders of personal loss, it is natural to wonder about the answers. Read the full article here:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-meaningfulness-of-lives/

©2012 myartobiography. All Rights Reserved.

The Healing Hearts Project by CT and NY artist, June Ahrens

A lot of good love can happen in ten years.  ~Jim Carrey

Similar to Ghetti’s Tears tribute, Ahrens also memorializes the number of victims.  Three thousand hearts – inside are messages, prayers of peace and hope – silent and unknown.  I remember walking into Ahrens’ studio at a Loft Artists Open House back in 2002 inviting visitors to create.  Her Healing Heart Project is a collaborative work by children, adults, and organizations throughout the States and some international participants.  I remember sewing up my heart feverishly – this need to close and then giving it up completely, unsure of what would become of it.  Now – it is part of two circles of hearts connected together by safety pins that have been on display throughout CT and NYC parks and many public locations.  By allowing others to be part of the process, Ahrens feels The Healing Heart project “allows participants a voice to express their feelings, honor lost lives, and those who gave so much of themselves.”

Image Source: http://www.juneahrens.com/Collaborative.htm

©2012 myartobiography. All Rights Reserved.

Dalton M. Ghetti's 9/11 Memorial composed of 3,000 lead tears.

There is a sacredness in tears.  They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.  They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.  They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.  ~Washington Irving

Bridgeport artist, Dalton M. Ghetti, famous for his extraordinarily intricate carvings of found pencils, was deeply moved by the 9/11 tragedy.  Shaping 3,000 tears the size of a rice grain, Ghetti began transferring his well of tears into these graphite markings, which took him a full decade to compose.  His tribute will be unveiled Sunday, September 11th, at the New Britain Museum of American Art in New Britain, CT at 12:00 (http://www.nbmaa.org/).  In something so micro, Ghetti captures the heaviness in all our hearts.

Image Source: http://www.courant.com/news/nation-world/9-11-attacks-ten-years/hc-sept-11-teardrop-nbmaa-pictures-20110905,0,7513715.photogallery

©2012 myartobiography. All Rights Reserved.