The New Jersey State Council on the Arts and Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation present an evening grant-writing workshop for artists regarding the 2009 New Jersey Individual Artist Fellowships. The workshop, held at Jersey City Museum on Thursday, June 19 from 5-7pm, is one of several being held throughout the state during the month of June.

About the 2009 New Jersey Individual Artist Fellowships:
In June of 2008, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation announced the immediate availability of year 2009 New Jersey State Council on the Arts (NJSCA) Individual Artists Fellowship guidelines and applications. The funding categories available for 2009 include: Crafts, Interdisciplinary Performance, Photography, Playwriting, Poetry, Prose, and Sculpture.

How to Apply:
All applications must be submitted online. Applicants can go to www.njartscouncil.org or www.midatlanticarts.org/funding/artists_programs/nj.html and click on the link to the 'NJSCA Individual Artists Fellowships Application'. Applicants who do not have access to a computer can visit any County Library in New Jersey for access to the Internet and the application or call 410-539-6656 x101 for assistance. Visual artists will need to upload work sample images online and submit them with their application. Prospective applicants with specific questions regarding the online application process may contact Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation: 410-539-6656 x101. Fellowship applications for 2009 categories must be submitted not later than by 11:59 p.m. on July 15, 2008. The printable Consent Form, signed in blue ink, and work samples, must be postmarked on or before July 17, 2008.

Eligibility:
To be eligible, one must be an artist in one of the disciplines offered and a permanent New Jersey resident. Fellowships are awarded solely on the basis of artistic excellence and not other merits that may be associated with a project or other factors. If any special accommodations are required to file a NJSCA n Arts Council Fellowship application, please call Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation at 410-539-6656 x101.

About the Workshop:
During the month of June, 2008, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Council will hold five technical assistance workshops throughout the state, including in Jersey City at Jersey City Museum on Thursday, June 19, 5pm-7pm. These workshops will address the process for applying in the categories offered for NJSCA's the Arts Council's 2009 Fellowships.

A complete list of workshops offered is as follows:

Thursday, June 19, 2008
5pm-7pm
Jersey City Museum
350 Montgomery Street
Jersey City, NJ 07303

Tuesday, June 10, 2008
5pm-7pm
Perkins Center for the Arts
30 Irvin Avenue
Collingswood, NJ 08108
www.perkinscenter.org

Wednesday, June 11 2008
5pm-7pm
The Community Theatre at the Mayo Center for the Arts
100 South Street
Morristown, NJ 07960
www.mayoarts.org

Monday, June 16, 2008 4:30pm-6:30pm
NJ State Council on the Arts Offices
225 W. State Street, 4th Floor
Trenton, NJ 08608
www.njartscouncil.org

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
5pm-7pm
Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center
1501 Glasstown Road
Millville, NJ 08332
www.wheatonarts.org

Also, Jersey City Museum and Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy are teaming up for Preservation Month. More information here .

Jersey City Museum and Wachovia Family Saturdays present

Spring Fling: Love your Mother (Earth) Family Project Day
This Saturday, May 10th, 1-4pm. Free Event.

Spend quality time with mom and learn to make easy and fun crafts she will treasure forever! Teaching artists at three age-specific craft stations demonstrate techniques to make unique, recycled gifts from recycled materials for Mom's special day.

Then, at 3pm families can enjoy a performance of REVERSADOODLE...The Eco-Show in the museum's theater. REVERSADOODLE tells the story of two kids who go on a quest to rid their neighborhood of garbage and pollution. The performance includes six original songs, serves as a musical lesson on how precious commodities like water, paper, and food, are often wasted and encourages the audience to make "green" changes to their lifestyle. In additon, all sets and props for the one-act show are made from recycled, found, or pre-owned materials.

For more information, visit www.jerseycitymuseum.org or email info@jerseycitymuseum.org.

Final screening and performance tonight at 7pm!

On Saturday, April 19th at 2pm, Jersey City Museum will present the opening performance of we call it the river?, a video installation by local artist and independent curator, Barbara Bickart. The work features the dramatic transformation of downtown Jersey City as seen from the perspective of insiders, born and raised in the city. The afternoon will consist of the video performance followed by a reception with refreshments. Jersey City Museum will host additional video performances of we call it the river... on Sunday, April 20th at 2pm and Thursday, April 24 at 7pm.

we call it the river... is an exploration of the effects that the rapid gentrification of downtown Jersey City has had on the people who live, work, worship, and have ties in the community. For the film, Barbara Bickart collaborated with community members from Segunda Quimbamba, a Puerto Rican drum and dance performance group based in Jersey City. Bickart also worked with Bethesda Baptist Church, among others, to create the original of film. The film encourages audience members to discuss the many various forms of gentrification. ?Perhaps the most significant part of this entire project is the fact that it engages such a timely topic and one that directly affects Jersey City so deeply. New buildings are being built every day in downtown Jersey City. Families are pushed further away as the waterfront becomes home to luxury lofts.? Jersey City Museum Curator Rocio Aranda-Alvarado says about the piece.

Jersey City Resident, Barbara Bickart is an interdisciplinary artist who has been an artist in residence at the Jersey City Museum from October 2007 through March 2008. Her work takes on the form of video installation, video performance and experimental documentary.

Reservations are not required for the events but seating is limited. Admittance is on a first come first serve basis and seating begins 30 minutes before the performance. Visit http://www.jerseycitymuseum.org or email info@jerseycitymuseum.org for more information.

Film lovers! Please be sure to visit our Website for a calendar of diverse films that show regularly at Jersey City Museum's theater. For the month of January, we are very excited to present the African Diaspora Film Festival, which comes to the museum January 26th and 27th. The Festival features the work of emerging and established filmmakers of color and this year will be showcasing the film, NY's Dirty Laundry,, which was picked up by the Cannes Film Festival and focuses in on a predominantly black neighborhood in Brooklyn in the post 9/11 era. Also featured in the Festival are acclaimed documentaries The Souls of Black Girls and Josephine Baker: Black Diva in a White Man's World, which will screen during a special opening reception on January 26th, 2:40 pm. Please call 201.413.0303 x 141 or email info@jerseycitymuseum.org for more information

The following media release from Jersey City Museum is to inform the local community about the new exhibitions. We at the museum hope that this message forum could be a place to discuss the work of the artists represented, as well as the exhibitions themselves. An additional message forum thread will alert the community to upcoming events in our auditorium, and discussion of those gatherings is also greatly encouraged.
- John Catania, Communications Manager

JERSEY CITY MUSEUM ANNOUNCES THE NEW EXHIBITIONS

Fantastical landscapes, battered and burned pianos and sofas, and utopia are all part of Jersey City Museum?s new exhibitions, now on view through summer 2007.

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE:
Exhibition Gallery ? Unmaking: the Work of Raphael Monta?ez Ortiz (thru 8/26/07)

Downstairs Project Gallery ? Jon Rappleye: Out of the Silent Planet (thru 8/19/07)

Permanent Collection Galleries -- Perspectives II: Then & Now. Guest Artist to Permanent Collection: Emma Wilcox: Forensic Landscapes (thru 8/19/07)

1 x1 Series of Contemporary Art, including:
- Lizzie Scott: Window/Wall (thru 8/12/07)
- Iv?n Navarro: Large Wall Hole (thru 8/26/07)
- Micah Silver: Be Still, Take Up as Much Space as Possible (thru 9/16/07)
- Kayt Hester Lent: Black Tape (thru 8/12/07)
- JCM Media Zone (video on 4 screens ) ? Barbara Bickart: Careful (thru 5/13/07)

INTRO TO THE NEW EXHIBITIONS:

Art historian and archaeologist George Kubler once noted that a work of art is as useless as a tool is useful. This question of the functional aspect of objects and art is an essential part the new exhibition, "Unmaking: The Work of Raphael Monta?ez Ortiz." For the first two decades of his long and prolific career, Ortiz rendered useful things like mattresses, sofas, chairs, shoes, and even paper towels useless, transforming them into ?destructive? works of sculpture that addressed the wrenching debates of the period, such as war and an increase in violence worldwide.
In addition to sculpture, "Unmaking" features Ortiz?s earliest video works from the late 1950s, his computer generated videos of the 1980s, and his most recent vinyl digital paintings. Also included is an early abstract painting by the artist that has not been seen publicly since the 1960s.

Raphael Monta?ez Ortiz is currently a professor at Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University, and Unmaking is a tribute to his life?s work and his significance to the region and in the history of American art.

In the first floor Project Gallery you will enter a whole new world created by Jersey City artist Jon Rappleye. For "Out of the Silent Planet," a title borrowed from a book by C.S. Lewis, Rappleye?s large-scale landscape paintings express the artist?s sheer awe of nature in scenes reminiscent of science fiction art, with exotic creatures and mystical trees populating craggy lands. Add to the experience sculpted trees inspired by the paintings, and, for the first time ever, sound designed by the artist?s brother, Austin Rappleye.

In the continuing series of 1 x 1 exhibitions, Jersey City artist Kayt Hester Lent greets you on our front window with a large-scale work made entirely of an everyday office tool?masking tape. In the atrium lobby, Barbara Bickart?s work Careful occupies all four video screens, and Bickart, also a Jersey City artist, adds to this a sculptural work featured nearby. Replacing Bickart?s videos May 16 will be Lili White?s The Balloon Garden on our large screen, and URBAN IMAGE: Truth, Lies, and Secrets in our three-screen Media Zone. Under the museum?s grand staircase?a wall space dedicated to art for the first time?is a new fabric work by Lizzie Scott titled Window/Wall.

The second floor Sound Station features a retrospective of experimental recordings by Micah Silver, Curator of Music at the Experimental Media & Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. And on the second floor Iv?n Navarro presents Large Wall Hole, a sculpture that gives the impression of an endless, vacant space in the middle of a museum wall.

The new Permanent Collection exhibition for 2006-2007 is Perspectives II: Then & Now. As a new curatorial twist, the Jersey City Museum?s education department selected works to tell a whole new story about the collection. Chosen themes for the exhibition are People, Home Life, the City and Industry, Nature, and Utopia. Historic and contemporary works juxtaposed illustrate how the same idea unites works of art over various time periods.