Mostly Drawing Journal vol. 1

MOSTLY DRAWING A Journal Of Current Drawing

MOSTLY DRAWING Jersey City, 9/11/15 - 10/11/15

Designed by James Pustorino and Anne Trauben

Cover Image: Greg Brickey

MOSTLY

DRAWING

A JOURNAL OF CURRENT DRAWING

VICTORY HALL PRESS

VICTORY HALL

DRAWING ROOMS

180 Grand St Jersey City NJ

previous page: top to bottom-Tuan Tran, Maggie Ens, Mollie Thonneson, Stephen Cimini, William Stamos, Loura van der Meule, Alaine Becker. this page: clockwise from top left corner- Eileen Ferara, Robert Preston, Megan Klim, Cheryl Gross, Bruno Nadalin, Ibou Ndoye, Doug Madill, Gilbert Giles, Tim Daly, Kimberley Wiseman, Maria Pavlovska, center Mostly Drawing Journal Volume 1 No 1- Published by Victory Hall Press 180 Grand St Jersey City NJ 07302 September 2015 victoryhallpress.org copyright 2015 ISBN-13: 978-0692537886 ISBN-10: 0692537880

This program is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, administered by the Hudson County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs, Thomas A. DeGise, County Executive, and the Board of Chosen Freeholders.

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.

Le Corbusier (architect) Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (photographer)

Drawing, like writing, is an essentialy human form of expression,

investigation and communication. Our intention when starting Drawing Rooms as an arts center in 2012, was to promote, encourage and display developments in drawing and drawing-related works by artists in our area. In creating this journal, we want to extend our reach beyond the walls of our building and present an ever-progressing selection of artists and images to a broader public. The dea of turning these artworks into print, making something you can hold in your hand is much in keeping with these goals.

Drawing is an action as well as an object-it is an action of movement of hand, arm and even the body in co-ordination with seeing and thinking that results in the record of a new form.

At Drawing Rooms, we see the act of drawing and principles of drawing as applying to not only works on paper, but also to painting, sculpture and even at times photography.

Artists are always seeking to expand their visual language and express their message in unique ways. This gathering of works by artists involved in the Jersey City area offers twenty-five approaches to drawing and drawing-related paintings, photographic images and three-dimensional drawing.

James Pustorino, Director Anne Trauben, Curator

this page clockwise from top- Anne Trauben, Jill Scipione, James Pustorino, Edward Fausty, Alan Walker, Greg Brickey, Heidi Curko.

Anne Trauben: White Wire Drawing Suspended Against Black Background, 2015, white cloth wire, 12” x 12” x 10”,

MOSTLY DRAWING Jersey City

Exhibition September 11- October 11 2015 ARTISTS Alaine Becker Alan Walker Anne Trauben Bruno Nadalin Cheryl Gross Doug Madill Edward Fausty Eileen Ferara Gilbert Giles Greg Brickey Heidi Curko Ibou Ndoye James Pustorino Jill Scipione Kimberley Wiseman Loura van der Meule Maggie Ens Maria Pavlovska Megan Klim Mollie Thonneson Robert Preston Stephen Cimini Tim Daly Tuan Tran William Stamos

Victory Hall DRAWING ROOMS is a contemporary art center for drawing, painting, three dimensional works and print located in vibrant downtown Jersey City. DRAWING ROOMS features continually developing exhibitions of exciting new works by artists in the NY/NJ area. We create opportunities for artists to connect with their community and create possibilities for artist interaction, art sales, and attention from curators and the press on a consistent basis.

DRAWING ROOMS is operated by Victory Hall Inc. a 501c3 non-profit organization producing exhibitions, programs and public art projects in the NJ/NY area. www.drawingrooms.org

top image: Tantrum, 2013, graphite on paper, 23” x 29” right image: Ruggengraat, 2015, graphite, conte, & pastel on paper, 72” x 51”

Alaine Becker Alaine Becker is a NJ artist working on paper. She received a Fellowship from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts for Works on Paper and a grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation for an artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center. She has exhibited her works throughout New Jersey. She holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase.

“I cannot remember a time when I was not drawing. Because it is something I have always done, there is a comfort with graphite that I don’t feel with other materials.... Gesture, line quality and mark making are all central to the way I work. Throughout my career I have worked in both drawing and sculpture. My method of working in graphite is similar to working in clay where there is both applying and removal of marks or material. The erasures in the drawings add volume moving them towards a sculptor’s perspective. While removing clay from a sculpture is a physical removal of material, the erasure in the drawings is not an act of negation. The erasures in the drawings both remove and create new marks in the same stroke." www.alainebecker.com

top image: Improved Circulation, 2015, ink on paper, 9.5” x 9.5” right image: El Mundo Maya, 2010, ink on paper, 15” x 22”

Alan Walker Born in Buffalo, New York and raised in Southern California, Alan studied Illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. During the summer of 1981, he made his first trip to New York City and became obsessed with moving there. After an extended visit in late 1983 and other moves across the country, he finally moved to New York during the summer of '88, witnessing the Thompkins Square riots on hs first night in town. He eventully landed a job at The American Museum of Natural History, and representation at Gallery Revel, Soho, before moving to Jersey City in 1994.

According to Alan, “I draw mostly as a means to an end, in order to paint. On occasion I enjoy working on nice paper with ink, or watercolors. I paint because I love color, materials, and the process. For most of my life I’ve created interpretations of photographs, as a scene and portrait painter. For the last year I’ve been working abstractly. I enjoy the improvisational aspect and freedom from having something too specific in mind when I start. I especially like being surprised by the result.” www.alanwalkerart.com/paintings

top image: Untitled Drawing, 2015, 12” x 10” right image: White on Black (Wire Drawing), 2015, 7” x 9”

Anne Trauben Anne Trauben was born in Brooklyn and grew up in NJ. She is a visual artist and arts advocate. Anne is the Curator and a founding artist at Drawing Rooms. She has exhibited her works throughout the NY Metropolitan area.

Anne received a BA in Studio Art with a concentration in ceramics from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ and she was awarded a fellowship to study art in Rome from Temple University's Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA where she received an MFA in Ceramics. Anne makes two and three dimensional drawings.

“As a sculptor I’m interested in space, how to shape it as well as capture it in an elegant poetic and ethereal way through a process that blurs the lines between 2 and 3-dimensions- drawing, sculpture, sewing and craft.

In my 3-dimensional works, I manipulate form. My space is open; it can't hold anything. These works result from a playful and intuitive activity of drawing with wire in space - malleable and interlocking with itself appearing as a continuous linear movement. My 2-dimensional drawings often begin by consciously tracing the shadows, interior or exterior shapes of the wire forms. I may stop there, or freely continue the drawings.” www.annetrauben.com

top image: Creature, 2015, gouache, charcoal, ink, 12” x 9” right image: We All Have One, 2015, gouache, Ink, 6” x 9”

Bruno Nadalin Bruno Nadalin is an artist and illustrator based in Jersey City. He exhibits his drawings, paintings, and prints regularly in local galleries, including at 313 Gallery, LITM, 58 Gallery, and The Raven Gallery and Boutique.

Bruno’s work has been published by The Nation, WFMU, Real Reads publications, and Screw magazine. He holds an MFA in illustration from FIT and currently teaches printmaking at the Jersey City Art School and is an instructor for Victory Hall’s Rainbow Thursday Program for developmentally disabled individuals. Bruno’s work embraces the spontaneity of mark making.

Drawings may begin with a concept in mind, but typically he allows random marks to develop and guide the work. Preliminary sketches and planning are kept to a minimum, if employed at all. At times, areas may be painted over or eradicated, but the main purpose of the drawing is to discover itself as it unfolds, and “mistakes” are often left on the paper or otherwise incorporated into the piece. Bruno’s drawings explore the grotesque and the humorous, an extension of his early love for comics and artists such as George Grosz and Jean Dubuffet. The drawings revel in the absurd and ugly; characters alternately forlorn or ghoulishly ecstatic abound in this world, but there is an unmistakable playfulness to the work. www.brunonadalin.com

top image: Aleppo, 2013, ballpoint, handmade paper, graphite, 27” x 20” right image: Cow Rides, 2013, ballpoint, handmade paper, graphite, 27” x 40”

Cheryl Gross Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Cheryl Gross is an illustrator, writer, fine art and motion-graphic artist, living and working in the New York/Jersey City area. She is a professor at Pratt Institute and Bloomfield Colege.

According to Cheryl, “I equate my work with creating and building an environment, transforming my inner thoughts into reality. I compare my process to that of an architect or urban planner, but instead of using bricks and mortar to construct that reality, I use humor, ballpoint, India Ink, water color, graphite and handmade paper) to form the foundation of my work.

Beginning with the physical process, I work in layers. I am involved in solving visual and verbal complexities such as design and narrative. The result is drawings that are based on the absurdities of life.

I am currently working on a large installation/graphic novel titled: Greetings From Karpland which includes text and drawings depicting a new race of people that are being persecuted, and will eventually be known as the third civil rights movement. Greetings From Karpland is my second book in The Z Factor trilogy. Although metaphorically induced, the influence behind the work is authentic, straightforward and poignant.� www.cmgross.com

ink/watercolor on paper 6” x 4” or 7” x5” left to right from top:Woman, C Train, Man on Cellphone, Subway Backpack, Sleeping Grays, Sleeping Greenish facing page:Hip Bottle, 33rd Street, Towel Guy,Cigs Window

Doug Madill Doug Madill was born in 1972 near Chicago, Illinois and lived mostly in the rural town of Bainbridge, Ohio near Cleveland. He currently lives and works in Jersey City. Doug has a 1994 BFA from Pratt Institute.

Predominantly a landscape painter, Madill also sketches from observation in the urban streets, subways and cafes. He enjoys the spontaneity of the impromptu, cartoonish-like mode of execution in his sketches. Later in his studio back home, he continues coloring his sketches in watercolor. Madill titles them “streamlines�, in part from the literary allusion to run-on sentences in novels that symbolizes internal narration, or consciousness. As this literary device may give rise to thoughts that enter and exit the mind at that moment, Madill’s drawings express a likeness of an individual without stopping, or stopping to edit. www.dougmadill.com

top image: White Elephant Zone outside Ens-Sloan Studio, 2003, digital pigment photograph on Arches paper, 23” x 23” right image: Found Door in Hallway 2004, digital pigment photograph on Arches paper, 23” x 23”

Edward Fausty Edward Fausty is a photographer and printmaker specializing in collotype and digital pigment printing on fine papers. Grounded in the documentary tradition of Walker Evans and color sensibility of Joel Meyerowitz, he has taken excursions into the worlds of abstraction, minimalism, autobiography, graphic mythology, Asian form and temperament. A graduate of the Yale Master of Fine Arts program and The Cooper Union School of Art, Ed’s work is represented in the collections of The Canadian Center for Architecture, The George Eastman House, The U.S. Library of Congress, Pfizer Corporation, Yale University, etc. He has shown at The Dallas Museum of Art, The Canadian Center for Architecture, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, and The World Theatre Festival in Nancy, France.

According to Ed, “This project began in 2001 when I started to imagine a time when the artists and small businesses at 111 First Street, formerly the Old Gold cigarette factory in Jersey City, would have to make way for occupants more like those in the surrounding downtown areas of Newport and Exchange Place, with their hotels, condos and corporate headquarters. The thought of this cycle coming to a close without somehow recording it was uncomfortable.

This work of snooping and photographing around studios (with permission, of course) and other parts of the 111 building was a way for me to contemplate a unique lifestyle: how creative people on a limited budget make their homes/studios from scratch in an industrial environment, how their work evolves behind the scenes, how the old industrial world looks next to the surrounding new world of prefab- all this with the spectre of possible eviction lurking.

Some of the drawings were done by resident artists, while others were clearly done by those representing forces, if not evil, certainly of destructive intent.” www.edwardfausty.com.

top image: Channeled Whelk egg casings abstract, 2015, mixed media on paper (monotype, drawing, sand), 22” x 22” right image: Invasive Species (devil’s heads Hudson river) 2015, mixed media on canvas, 42” x 22”

Eileen Ferara Born in New York, Eileen Ferara lives in Jersey City. With an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Eileen is a mixed media artist and curator, whose work has been included in numerous exhibits including ‘Thou Art Mom’ at the Pierro Gallery in S. Orange, NJ and the 5th International Artist’s Book Exhibition in Székesfehérvár, Hungary. Eileen is in the collection of the William Paterson University Galleries, The King St Stephens Museum of Hungary.

According to Eileen, “the current focus of my work contemplates on my relationship to nature and water.

These drawings are the result of walks along the estuaries near my home. Not a pristine sanctuary untouched by humans, but slices of wilderness that exist despite human intrusions. The water both washes away what came before and preserves traces in the sand, mud or grass.

I find inspiration in many places; observations of the natural world, personal memories, and humans relation to the otherworldly are a few examples. Using a mix of materials and techniques I create images which have strong foundations in drawing; and often extend into printmaking, collage and painting. Drawing is the beginning for all of my work, and even when I am using paint or glue or cut up paper, I express myself as a draw-er, using a combination of marks on a surface and an interest in rendering what I am contemplating.

I create images that are a reflection on the experiences of my walks. The imagery drifts back and forth between abstract and figurative in a process I think of as visual poetry; making marks, building textures and exploring different compositions. www.eileenferara.com

top image: Untitled Drawing, mixed media on paper, 60” x 44” right image: Untitled, 2015, mixed media on paper, 7” x 5”

Gilbert Giles Gilbert Giles immerses himself in the culture of his place and times, the music, art, film, sports, news and politics that America experienced from the early 1960's until now. Cartooning provides a base for his approach.

His knowledge of its possibilities allow him to freely mix image, mark, text into incredibly densely layered compositions- as if he had taken a whole book of drawings and distressed and peeled away paper to reveal pages beneath. They "read" like secret messages; vestiges of what was there before seem to poke through, telling a story that we can only piece together in the way that an anthropologist or archaeologist might investigate a record of an unknown society.

Gilbert has taught at the NY State Summer School of the Arts, the Flushing (Queens) Boys Club, and the Jamaica (Queens) Arts Center. He has recently been a visiting artist at Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

His work has appeared in the NY Times, the NY Daily News, the Washington Post and Rolling Stone Magazine, and he has exhibited paintings and drawings in New York City, Paris and Madrid.

top image: Untitled 1, 2015, ink, acrylic paint, and pencil on paper, 8 1/2” x 10 1/2” right image: Untitled 3, 2015, ink, acrylic paint, and pencil on paper, 8 1/2” x 10 1/2”

Greg Brickey Greg Brickey was born in Indiana in 1956. He has been a curator as part of his position at Jersey City Cultural Affairs for over ten years, organizing exhibitions for artists city-wide. As a musician, he is part of the band, One Hundred Hits.

His new drawings continue his exploration of ambivalence, identity, loss, and instability. The pieces are visually arranged in a neutral and arbitrary grid of individually gestural and expressive drawings. Some of these new drawings introduce text into my work, stepping back from the anti-narrative template that has become characteristic of most of his art. www.onehundredhits.com

top image: Carbon 5, 2015 graphite on paper, 36” x 24” right image: Carbon 4, 2015 raphite on paper, 36” x 24”

Heidi Curko Heidi Curko is a Jersey City artist who was born in Shelter Island, NY. She has a BFA from Purchase College, Westchester, NY. Heidi is interested in the “expressive force of mark-making.”

According to Heidi, “the combination of black and white lends itself to many styles and ways, in which, to work. I use it as a means to convey gesture, action, and energy. I begin working with a medium ground, from which darks are added and lights are subtracted.”

Although Heidi has spent many years working from observation, her current paintings and drawings are purely abstract. “As a response to all of my lifetime experiences, these works are reflect my internal landscape.” www.heidicurko.com

top image: Untitled, acrylic on paper, 67” x 48” 2015 right image: Conversation, 2015, Ink on paper, 18.5” x 12”

Ibou NDoye Born in West Africa's capital city, Dakar, Senegal, glass-painting artist Ibrahima (Ibou) Ndoye has combined modernism and traditionalism to create his own style. Ibou resides in Jersey City, New Jersey, and regularly exhibits his art both locally and internationally in addition to holding glass painting workshops at libraries and schools. Ibou intends to continue promoting and expanding his artistic vision through exhibition, education and cultural exchange.

According to Ibou, “the means of communication I use in my art is an easy-to-understand universal language.

You would not need a dictionary, a large vocabulary or a translator to understand it, because it is 100% social, in the sense that it has a social function which allows it to deal with all the social ethics of modern and traditional life.� www.iboundoye.com

top image: Males, 2014, pencil on paper, 90� x 58� right image: Untitled (Mercy series) 2014, pencil and oil stick on paper, 96" x 58"

Jill Scipione Jill Scipione’s art been shown in galleries, museums, and art-spaces in New York City, New Jersey, Boston, Santa Fe, and throughout Pennsylvania and Ohio. She is a founder of Victory Hall DRAWING ROOMS, and manager of Rainbow Thursdays, a Victory Hall, Inc. project that engages the developmentally disabled in the visual arts.

Jill Scipione's work presents us with emphatic images that we may often encounter as symbols, but here have an individual specificity and power, engaging concepts from conceptual and pop, photo-realist and minimalist art while not clearly allying to any of these categories.

Jill’s source material is as experiential as possible. She has had both short-term and long-term study residencies in major museums working from biological and anthropological collections, has employed butcher charts from the meat-packing industry, and has studied renaissance paintings.

Combining precise, empirical rendering with gestural drawing, and photo-realistic painting effects, Scipione's works also make use of collaged and repeated forms. Through a variety of methods including observational study, photocopying and use of projectors, light boxes and digital images, she creates images that include duplications of her own drawings and her source material, assembling these into both new forms and forms borrowed from antiquity. www.jillscipione.com

top image: Forever falls on a Tuesday, 2014 mixed media on paper 100" x 105" right image: Second Day of Forever, (detail) 2015 mixed mdeia on paper 2 panels 45� x 100� each

James Pustorino James Pustorino is an artist, arts organizer and the Executive Director of Victory Hall Inc, the nonprofit that oversees all Victory Hall projects, including Drawing Rooms. Pustorino received his BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University and has been an educator for more than a decade, teaching art to students in elementary, middle and high school, and directing programs for the Jersey City Museum and the City of Pittsburgh.

James has exhibited in venues throughout the U.S., including the Columbus Museum, The Butler Institute of American Art, Jersey City Museum, Chambers 916 Gallery in Portland, OR., and Odetta Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. His work uses graphic, abstract and realistic form to explore concepts of narrative and spatial/structural composition. According to James, “the composition is built from drawn or painted graphic forms, identified by their specific colors that weave in and out, with shifting emphasis, much the way different instruments work together in a musical composition. As in music, structure and form are built through repetition, variation and contrast, areas of intensity and areas of rest; and the creation of an engrossing or compelling visual experience, as opposed to aural experience, is the goal of the piece. The white of the paper is important as it becomes formed and folded as positive and negative space. The image can be thought of as an abstract visual novel of sorts, something to be read, like a stone tablet. In drawing them, I like to consider how one can approximate the experience of reading and holding in your hands a complex novel, including the awareness of the book cover and page design; in an expansive graphic language.� www.jamespustorino.com

top image: Green night Out, 2015, watercolor pen and ink on paper, 30” x23” right image: Red Room, 2015” watercolor pen and ink on paper 23” x 30”

Kimberley Wiseman Kimberely Wiseman is a Jersey City artist. She attended graduate school at the Maryland Institute College of Art Hoffberger School of Painting where she studied with famed Abstract Expressionist Artist Grace Hartigan and Archie Rand. She currently works as web master with Drawing Rooms and head teacher of their afterschool programs in Bayonne.

According to Kim, “drawing is the best way for me to express what I usually can’t put into words. My drawing is about invented space…space is a toy to be played whether it’s kinetic or compact. neurotic or eclectic the sense of space in my drawings seems to jut in and out of reality in a surreal and abstract way. I would characterize my drawing as representative with abstract elements. I use color to draw with. I love watercolor and also pen and ink which I incorporate in my work. Ink wash is great for creating beautiful line and gestures which can go from subtle to intense and expressive in one fell stroke. It is important to me that line is visible and often shows the journey. By leaving the line showing it lets the viewer know that quite often the imaged changed and evolved and transformed over time.”

Currently Kim is working with images from the environments most of us inhabit, bars and restaurants. She love the blurry chaotic imagery of people letting loose in these closed compact environments. They are almost monochrome in color and dark and expansive in mystery. “ I often liken them to instagram photos blurry images of fleeting moments that we quickly breeze through on our phones.” www.kimberleywiseman.com

top image: Oma in Sunday Room, 2014, oil pastel on paper, 50”x 38” right image: Cement Silo, 2015 Oil pastel on paper, 22” x 31”

Loura van der Meule Loura van der Meule has lived and worked in Jersey City since the 1980s. She studied at the Academy of Visual Arts in Breda and the School for Design and Décor in Utrecht, the Netherlands. In 1983 she came to New York on a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Cultural Affairs. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the New York area, and has been collected by museums, corporations and private collectors in the Netherlands and the United states.

According to Loura, “my inspiration is found in the rich culture of my Dutch background especially the traditional costumes of the province of “Zeeland” (Sea land) where my family comes from and where I grew up. My work is mostly realistic with some abstract elements. My starting point is a realistic image but during the drawing process shapes can become more abstract. All my work comes from a desire to tell my story where I come from, the places, the people and the culture.” www.vandermeuleart..com

top image: Masque, 2015, mixed media wood, earth, moss, artificial flowers, plants, wire, paint, shells, ,toys, cloth, leather, stitching, feathers, beads, safety pins right image: The Rest Is Silence, 2015, paper, thread, yarn, fiber paste, paint, beads, shells, starfish, 12” x 12” x 3”

Maggie Ens Maggie Ens was born in Missouri. Presently residing in Jersey City, she teaches woodworking in Manhattan to children and collage and mixed media to adults at the City and Country School and at the 92nd St. Y. Ms. Ens attended Western Michigan University, Thomas Jefferson College at Grand Valley State University and California College of Arts and Crafts, studying with the feminist painter Jay Defeo, a San Francisco artist of the Beat Generation. In 1981, Ms. Ens received her MFA in Painting and Sculpture from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, she has exhibited work in Paris, Helsinki, Montreal, Tokyo and Posnan. Her art is in private and public collections and is included in the printed matter collected works of The Fusion Art Museum at MOMA, the Whitney Museum and the Guggenheim Museum.

Ms. Ens has showcased her Echologically sENSitive interwoven found object sculpture, creating urban jungle installations with Collaborative Projects, Inc. (COLAB) during its second East Village incarnation, and with the Fusion Arts Museum in the U.S. and Europe.

Maggie Ens's material paintings, collages and sculpture recycle common discarded objects in artworks. The detritus, while retaining its identity, is transformed. The works are dense with manmade objects. They interact with natural items like sand, shells and plants. Ens takes an outsider's delight in investing manic energy in fetishistic objects that make no concessions to polite artistic conventions. However, she does not try to hide the fact that she is a product of a sophisticated arts education. As wild and wooly as the works might be, most are presented in standard rectangular formats. There is a tension between tastefulness and the macabre. www.treesofnerveendings.net

top image: Black & White series 1, 2013, oil on canvas, 10” x 10” right image: Black & White series (8 pieces) 2013, oil on canvas, 41’’ x 7 ft.

Maria Pavlovska Maria Pavlovska was born in Skopje, Macedonia (Former Yugoslavia) in 1975. She holds BFA and MFA from the Acad Her work has been featured around the globe in over 28 solo shows and more than 100 group international exhibitions including Art Basel Miami, The Kunsthalle-Vienna and Kunsthalle-Krems (Austria), Gallery Lang (Vienna), Cite Internationale des Arts, The Dock (Paris), Museum of Contemporary Art, The National Gallery, Museum of the City - Skopje (Macedonia), City House in Nurnberg (Germany), Station Gallery, Gallery MC, The Open Space Gallery, Citibank (New York), FLA Gallery (Connecticut), Viota Gallery (San Juan - Puerto Rico), Prima Center (Berlin), MANA Contemporary and Drawing Rooms (New Jersey). Her work is held in private and public collections worldwide, including embassies, museums, galleries and libraries.

Critics have described Maria’s work as having "a strong personality" which "translates her topics of choice into pictorial language that demonstrates a quietly powerful eloquence". She has received praise from critics worldwide for her drawings and paintings with work that reflects painting as a battlefield, where light and darkness fight and the result is unpredictable. One sees the lightning bolts of ideas at work, as they are being worked out. This sort of simultaneous image "process / result " dialectic lies frozen in space, stimulating the viewer to actively participate in the image creation themselves by way of investigation, inviting myriad readings within a given theme. www.mariapavlovska.com

top image: Secret Code #4, 2015, holes, pencil, charcoal on 300lb paper, 30” x 22” right image: Megan Klim Structured #1, 2013, ink, pencil charcoal on paper, 30” x 22”

Megan Kim Megan Klim is a mixed media artist who lives and works in Jersey City, New Jersey. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in the discipline of painting.

Klim has exhibited in NYC, NJ, MI, PA, FL and has received numerous awards. Her mixed media pieces have been seen at ART BASEL, Miami as well as in several museums.

About the Secret Code Series, “the process was ritualistic and required performing an action repeatedly as a recording of my hand and of passing time where one could sink into a rhythm and get lost in the repetitiveness. Using an awl, I poked and punctured; letting the paper puff out, sink in or tear. The light caressing the texture and the shadows of the holes became the elements. The paper made a pleasant sound as it was punctured and as the awl was pulled out, accentuating the process. Any time I started to think too deeply about what these “meant”, I stopped myself and kept my mind peripherally open only to the possibilities and nothing more.

I relied totally on what I indescribably know as an artist and the nuances that speak for themselves.” www.meganklim.com

top image: Sati Quits Her Body 2015, mixed media 15” x 11” right image: Divine Eternal Tales, (detail), 2015, mixed media, 15” x 11”

Mollie Thonneson Mollie Thonneson, originally from California, lives in Jersey City. She has shown her paintings and fabric sculptures nationally and internationally. She studied Illustration at Art Center College of Design. Thonneson.

Mollie’s current work “is more about lines and their relationships and less about previous color concerns. The diversity of marks made possible by the ink, oil, charcoal, and graphite (thick, thin, light, dark, hard, soft, pushed, pulled, precise, and smeared), create a dialogue dance between the lines which when cut and reassembled are visually reminiscent of newsprint or any type printed on a page. The choice of Sanskrit collage material comes from her personal struggle to let go of treasured devotional books that no longer have a place in her physical world. Somehow incorporating them into art feels more reverent than sending them to an uncertain fate.� www.molliethonneson.com

top image, left to right: Robert E Lee, Boston Corbett, Michael O'Laughlin, John Wilkes Booth, all 2008, graphite on paper 12”x 9” right image: David Herold, Executed Lincoln Conspirator 2008, graphite on Paper 12”x 9”

Robert Preston Robert Preston has been an Instructor in art and architecture at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH, has taught at Avenues the World School, New York City, NY and in the painting department at Massachusetts College of Art, Boston MA. His father was a photographer for the Boston Globe, which sparked his interest in art at a young age. He became interested in 19th century photography, portraits of Lincoln, the transcontinental railroad and many other historical and cultural phenomenon.

“According to Robert, “in 2008 I made a series of drawings and paintings based on the the Conspiracy to Assassinate Abraham Lincoln. It was an open ended project that was designed to take me me anywhere it lead. I became fascinated by 19th century photography and the politics involved in photographing these subjects.

The Lincoln Conspiracy also became the first of the many rabbit holes of conspiracy I was to subsequently explore. Like the many that followed I was left with more questions than answers.

Further exploration of 19th century photography lead me to make portraits of Civil War generals and Native American chieftains. I find that my drawings and portraits can take on characteristics I did not anticipate..

More than copying a photograph it felt more like I was channeling the subjects.” www.robertprestonart.com

top image: Courage, 2013, oil paint, cold wax medium & marble dust on canvas 48” x 78.5” x 3” right image: Royal Orange, 2014, oil paint, cold wax medium & marble dust on canvas 10” x 12” x 3”

Stephen Cimini Stephen Cimini, is a Jersey City painter who has exhibited his works throughout the NY Metropolitan Area, California, Pennsylvania and Canada. Stephen is a Pollock Krasner grant recipient and his work is in numerous collections.

Stephen's oil paint and cold wax paintings are inspired by architecture. In his work, he creates a balance on of closely toned rectangles, with no discernible pattern, which allow for a symmetrical, meditative composition to emerge. Stephen's shapes are defined by incised lines where the drawing in the painting delineates the forms.

Stephen’s unique vocabulary “originates from the linear landscape of New York City. It has since mutated to geometric spaces and their relationships to each other while still adhering to its architectural origins. During the process, I devote my concentrations to composition and color relationships allowing the emotional story to unconsciously unfold. The feeling or environment that evolves during this process is often revealed in the title of the painting. I use marble dust and wax medium to invent different surfaces. The marble dust gives the paint a chalky look while the wax medium enhances the paint with a soft patina as well as giving a translucency, revealing the layers of paint underneath. Both mediums lend an organic feel to the oil paint.� www.stephencimini.com

top image: OLG Contrails, 2014, pastel on paper, 18"x18" right image: Backyard Vortex, 2013, pastel on paper, 12"x18"

Tim Daly Born and raised in Jersey City, New Jersey, Tim currently lives and works in Hoboken. Tim attended the School of Visual Arts in NYC and is a four-time recipient of fellowship grants for graphics and painting from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Daly's work has received numerous showings in New York and New Jersey and is represented in many collections, including those of Coopers and Lybrand in Newark, Malcolm Forbes in NYC, Prudential Insurance Co. in Newark, Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and the writer Nick Tosches in NYC. In 2002, he was commissioned by NJ Transit to create thirty-two mural paintings for the Secaucus Transfer Station in Secaucus, NJ. Tim was known early on for his paintings of the mostly unseen landscape surrounding Jersey City and the Meadowlands, and the urban industrial landscape of the New York/New Jersey Metro area. His subject matter has expanded to include the rest of the world. His inspiration is drawn from mostly unseen landscapes in the New York and New Jersey Metro area.

According to Daly, “while landscape is the image, the real subject is the light, natural and artificial, and how it feels on and delineates these places. A certain tension is created, a psychological space where something else is happening unseen.” The poet James Ruggia has written, “On the surface, one is simply impressed with Daly's skill at rendering a believable reality. But, there is a vision at work which makes these paintings seduce on a more mysterious level. An empty sheet takes on the mysterious quality of a deserted stage. The details have a ritual power.” www.timdaly.artspan.com

top image: Portrait II 2013, acrylic, nacre (mother of pearl) on screen 31” x 29” right image: We-Me-You, 2013, acrylic, nacre (mother of pearl) on rice paper, 42” x 93”

Tuan Tran Tuan Tran is a Vietnamese-born sculptor-painter active in the Jersey City area. He has taught art at the School of Design in Hanoi (2002-2005) and has been an Artist in Residence in Vermont Studio Center (2005) and University of Michigan, School of Art and Design (2005-2009). Currently, he runs “Bee’s Art Studio” in Bayonne, NJ. Tuan has been working as an active sculptor-painter on various materials not limited to wood, stone, metal, plaster, lacquer, oil, glass, fabric and rice paper. All of the cultural and creative experiences reflect on his artwork.

"I am a studio artist. I always ponder for the life. I like freshness, money, loneliness and friendship. I have reached these, more or less, or none. Ultimately, I like art. Art gives me pleasures and ambitions."

top image:Untitled 7 2014, mixed media on paper, 7” x 5” right image: Untitled 2, 2010, mixed media on paper, 4” x 6”

William Stamos William graduated with a BFA from Penn State University in 1994, and has lived in Jersey City since 1995. His work is in numerous public and private collections.

William has been painting and drawing for as long as he can remember. As a child attending Greek Orthodox church services, he was mesmerized by statues, paintings, and icons, seen through the haze of burning incense. His continued interest in both science and spirituality informs his work. William believed "art has the power to transform both the artist and the viewer, through a transcendental alchemy, towards a heightened awareness of the universe, and our place in it– a cosmic connection, which gives our lives added depth and meaning".

“These small works on paper, made with color pencils, watercolor paint & gouache, are both a departure and a continuation for me. A departure in scale and materials, I usually work much larger, in oil, on canvas or wood taking weeks, months, sometimes years, to complete. The pieces here are water-based on paper– quick drying, immediate, impulsive, a bit more whimsical and spontaneous, taking a few hours or a few days of work.

They blur the line between drawing and painting, and continue my practice of finding a place between realism, surrealism, and abstraction - sometimes familiar, often unknown.” www.williamstamos.com.

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Thanks to Our Sponsors and Supporters Fall 2015

Major Donors: Geraldine R Dodge Foundation, Mario and Anna Scipione, Qualcomm, Kenneth M Jacobs Friends for this Journal: Danielle Brooks, Susan Trammel, William Stamos, Carol Pustorino

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Yoga Shunya is located in downtown Jersey City at 275 Grove Street, site of the historic Majestic Theatre. The entrance to the stairs is through Razza Pizza, next to their reception area. The third floor is light, comfortable and spacious. We provide yoga blankets, straps, sand bags and blocks. We have mats but encourage students to bring their own.

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