i always wondered about this place. i dodnt know what bulding was zoned for a commercial space and having signs outside the building advertising it on a residential block just looks wierd.

Different point of view
Exhibit features '2 Women' in new show

Friday, August 07, 2009
By JONATHAN MANDELL
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

If You Go: "2 Women" featuring the works of Susy Salemme and Lisa Collodoro,weekends noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment through September 19th at Nuradeen Gallery, 483 Jersey Avenue, Loft 1. For more information:(201) 978-8074.

Every time people enter Nuradeen Gallery across the street from the Jersey City public library, they are entering Farah Nuradeen's former bedroom.

"I'm inviting people into my personal, intimate space," says the gallery owner, who converted half her living quarters two years ago, and still lives in the other half.

So it should come as no surprise that she explains the latest exhibition of drawings, paintings and jewelry at the gallery, entitled "2 Women," in personal terms. "I wanted to bring the two artists together for over a year," Nuradeen says.

The two artists have never actually met. Lisa Collodoro, an Italian-born former dental technician who began painting seven years ago, lives in Guttenberg. Susy Salemme, a Brazilian-born jewelry designer, lives in the Middle Eastern nation of Qatar.

At first glance, their work does not seem all that close either -not the medium they use nor the methods they employ nor the market their work attracts.

Collodoro's eight drawings in the exhibition were all created during an 11-day stay at an ashram on the island of Fiji.

Salemme has said she spends about two months to put together each of her large chokers made of crystals. The jewelry designer has created pieces for African dignitaries and members of the Saudi Arabian royal family.

The painter's collectors come largely from Hudson County.

The gallery owner, however, sees both women's art as spiritual, and sensual too. "Their work complements one another." It shares shapes and colors: The blue ovals, red spirals, purple "angelic script" and vast white space in such Collodoro drawings as "Unseen" and "Secret Language" - what the artist calls "sacred geometry" - seem to have echoes in Salemme's necklace made of jade, rutilated quartz, fossil and silver or her earrings made of mother of pearl and citrine; Salemme's onyx choker is as deeply black as Collodoro's oil painting "Exploring."

To Nuradeen, who was born and raised in Newark and lived for several years in Italy before moving to Jersey City 13 years ago, the drawings and jewelry in "2 Women" help turn her gallery into an appealing feminine space, " a place where a woman can walk in and feel special, can love herself, can feel empowered."

And, she adds quickly, "when a man comes in, he wants to get something for his wife."