Jersey art show celebrates diversity
By Tova Navarra
November 20, 1990

In a small anteroom of the Jentra Art Gallery – at a corner, Route 33 and Millhurst Road, where you’d least expect to find an art gallery – 36 works make up the CentraJersey Art Show 1990.
Continuing through February, the collection is compact and hung close together on carpeted walls. Were they people, they’d remind you of a New York street full of pedestrians; the major characteristic of the lot is a sort of multi-ethnicity – they’re all completely different from each other. This swing in many directions serves the show well. Your eye doesn’t get a chance to be lulled into one sweeping style and your taste in art is most likely to find satisfaction somewhere.
Among the most satisfying of the pieces is a whimsical illustration by Marge Levine, of Highland Park, “Mother and Daughter” finds strength in a mixed use of delicate pencil drawing of faces and other elements and the dramatic coloring of the mother’s ample culottes. This triangular composition has a touch of Sendak dreaminess combined with some offbeat overtones.
Then, jump to a construction titled “BHAO” by Joyce Hutchens, of Pine Beach. Ms. Hutchens made a strange, heart-tugging flag, a war relic of acrylic on canvas and wood, that bespeaks a commitment that couldn’t last except as a symbol. Under it, Brick Township sculptor Michael Malpass’ sphere of metal screws – a sea urchin or formidable anemone? – rests on a pedestal. It might well serve as an odd anchor for the “flag” construction, as though both pieces were fossils created and abandoned by soldiers.
“Baby with Bagel,” an oil by Red Bank artist Judith Draper Martin, has no ties with past wars except emotional ones. The elegant depiction of a deep-blue-eyed woman holding a young girl on her lap has something of a Mary Cassatt composition, but the cool, twilight blues provoke a sense of fear unlike Ms. Cassatt’s work.
A neighboring unease is echoed in “Lisa in Black,” an oil by Joyce Anastasia Urbanskia, of Holmdel Township. Another painting emerges first as a simple oil study of a girl’s head and then, upon locking eyes with her, the viewer feels menaced and vulnerable. This uncanny work was done in 1931 by Clarence Holbrook Carter, of Holland Township.
For relief, one turns to the mysteries and comforts of Joe DeOrio’s pastel seascape, or to the delicate pen-and-ink study of marshland by Howell Township artist Misao Fishwick, or to Lakewood artist George Haas’ “Mutant King #12,” a small assemblage of colorful plastics that at once resemble a futuristic toy and an ancient tablet.
One might even mistake the bright red car in Perrineville artist Alex McFarlane’s oil on panel, “We Both Could Have Died Right Then and There,” for a board-game illustration – until you read the uninhabited car as pure form, the clouds as sword-like blades and the glow of the lettering as eerie competition with the scene’s sunlight.
Fair Haven artist Evelyn Leavens contributed a bizarre, writhing painting, “Fence Post.” Here is an entanglement you must untangle in order to see the fence and the one-point perspective. It’s the most torturous view of a usually mundane subject and a huge leap from Ms. Leavens’ exquisite portraits and figure paintings.
Other strong pieces in the show include “Mountain Home Porch,” a black-and-white photograph by William Vandervere, of South River; “Downtown Freehold #1,” by Domenick E. Maulucci, of Holmdel Township; East Windsor Township artist Hanneke DeNeve’s fiber work; “A Little Clown”; the charcoal drawing “Industrial Night,” by Frank Illo of Navesink, and Ocean Grove artist James Yarosh’s gouache, “First the Beasting.”
And before you leave the gallery, keep in mind a small crayon/oil pastel, “Corner Girl,” by Barbara Bleicher, of Lambertville. It supplies an intriguing grace note to the other music in the room.