Move Over, Tea Sets - Ceramic Artists of Color Respond to the World of Today

by Ilene Dube, JerseyArts.com - published 2022-06-03

Enter the exhibition space for Roberto Lugo: The Village Potter, on view at Grounds For Sculpture through January 8, 2023, and you feel like you’ve entered the artist’s studio. There are metal shelves with pots in various stages of completion, a row of potter’s wheels await, and there’s a shiny new kiln. This is, in fact, a Maker Space, where museum-goers can actively participate in the process.

In celebration of Art in the Atrium’s 30th anniversary, the Morris Museum and Art in the Atrium (ATA) present the exhibition, For the Culture, By the Culture: 30 Years of Black Art, Activism, and Achievement. This exhibition brings together prior ATA-featured artists in a group retrospective that spans 30 years and spotlights local and national Black artists who are masters of their craft and who have contributed to Black culture by creating impactful works.

Hailing from Kingston, Jamaica and currently based in Montclair, NJ, architect Nina Cooke John’s work includes a range of ventures - from remodeling homes and businesses, to designing interior and public sculptures, and teaching classes and community workshops.

Ever since – even before – Joni Mitchell penned the words “and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden,” humans have been seeking to do just that. A return to the “Garden of Eden,” the original utopia. Paradise.

Immediately upon entering the gallery space at Artworks Trenton, a viewer is struck by what appears to be a tribal necklace sized for the Great Sphinx of Giza. Suspended from the soaring ceiling, this assemblage of gold circles by artist Kate Dodd shimmers.

The last time I talked with Sharon Kiefer, Curator of Exhibitions at Perkins Center for the Arts, she was in the first few weeks of her position at Perkins. It was 2020, so Kiefer was not just navigating a new job, but she was learning a whole new way to curate exhibitions.

The France-born, Harlem-based artist was recently featured in Vogue; she was commissioned to create a painting for New York City’s Park Avenue Armory; she has a painting in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Princeton University has hung her first solo museum exhibition.

On view through May 8, 2022 at Newark Museum of Art, Carlos Villa: Worlds In Collision presents 35 rarely seen works by Carlos Villa, a central figure in the San Francisco art community and a leader in the multicultural activism of the 1960s and beyond. Along with the exhibit and programs, the Museum has launched The Filipino Oral History Project with Rutgers University and welcome the community to share their histories.

Artist Alex Rosenberg became internationally known for his work on the Netflix competition show “Blown Away” and was recently named Glass Studio Director at Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center. Correspondent Maddie Orton talks with Rosenberg about his love of glassblowing, the next chapter for WheatonArts, and “Wheaton Springs” — the organization’s 2022 season kickoff event on April 2nd.

New Jersey-native Caren King Choi is a visual artist of Chinese-Taiwanese descent and the mother of two young children. Her solo exhibition "Drawn In" – on view through April 1, 2022 at Gallery Aferro in Newark – showcases two different bodies of work. Meticulously crafted from thousands of tiny stickers, Choi’s Red Portraits depict friends and family members, mostly children. Meanwhile, her playful Mom Doodles illustrate the ups and downs of parenthood.