By Summer Dawn Hortillosa ? Feb 27th, 2013 ? Category: Arts, Lead Story

Greenville is probably not the first place in Jersey City that you think of when you hear ?art.? Downtown Jersey City is the bustling center of the scene and more events are taking place uptown near Bergen-Lafayette while the Riverview Arts District in the Heights and the Powerhouse Arts District literally have ?arts? as their middle names.







This week for JC Fridays, a citywide festival of free art events, four events aim to show what Greenville has to offer. There?s New Jersey City University (NJCU), which is often considered part of the West Side neighborhood and is listed as such on the official JCF map, with Nyugen Smith?s solo exhibit ?Thy Kingdom Come? at the Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery on campus. There?s also Art on the Blvd, a homegrown event by local artist Jesika Smith, who has hosted events under the name ?Le Bruit? for several editions of JCF (which occurs quarterly). This time around, she?s celebrating Women?s History Month with music, poetry and other performances by JC ladies and hosting a book swap.

Then there are two Greenville projects (literally) ? Elizabeth Deegan?s Project Greenville, which has been bringing art events into Ward F for the past couple years and ?The Greenville Project,? a group art show in Downtown Jersey City featuring artists with Greenville roots.

Deegan began hosting events out of a space in the back of her Winfield Avenue home in 2009 after reading an article about a recent shooting in her neighborhood in the Jersey Journal with the headline ?Living in Fear? with a photo of a nearby street sign. She disliked the choice of words and created Project Greenville as an organization that would highlight and support all the positive aspects of the neighborhood.

She told JCI in June that she started the organization ?simply out of a love for my neighborhood and feeling frustrated as we were rarely included as part of the city unless the reporting was about crime.? Unfortunately, crime is still a problem in Greenville and Bergen-Lafayette despite a citywide decrease over the past year.

Still, Deegan is determined to highlight only the best about the neighborhood and the city overall. Her event for this weekend (running both Friday and Saturday), ?Jersey City Young People?s Showcase? will show off what JC?s future has in store as kids share their art, music, poetry and more. Some of the participants include artists from McNair Academic High School?s Anime Club and the Queens of Song glee club.

?The Greenville Project,? on the other hand, takes the show on the road, bringing Greenville talent to Downtown Jersey City at the recently opened Newark Avenue streetwear boutique Wolf Juice, owned by Greenville native Earl ?Ego? Davis. Both ?projects? are cross-advertising, hoping to create a real cultural exchange between Greenville and the rest of the city.

The show?s curator, photographer Daniel Morteh (also known as Kodaq Jones), says Greenville and its artists can have a place in the city?s ?art renaissance.? The 30-year-old spent most of his life growing up in the neighborhood and also studied there, earning a Media Arts degree from NJCU.

?I have met and seen a lot of interesting people in the art field ? artists, musicians, poets and stuff like that. I?m seeing a cultural renaissance going on in Jersey City, kind of in the way Harlem was back in the day,? he says, adding that the artistic surge could transform Greenville the way it has Downtown.

?As a kid I remember going downtown and on Grove Street, all I saw were homeless people, rats and an unkempt environment. It?s shocking to see arts and crafts events happening almost every Friday there now,? says Morteh. ?But taking the bus back home into Greenville, I feel not much has changed there. I feel like I?m going into a different city. But the fact that it?s in the same city means there is hope that it will grow into a more positive place. I can actually see that.? Morteh adds this event can help bridge the gap between the two ?cities.?

?This exhibit will show that there are artists in Greenville who are just as talented as the ones in Downtown Jersey City and showing the Greenville artists that they need to be a part of everything going on. Some people don?t even know JC Fridays is going on even though they?ve been painting for like, seven years!? he says.

For the show, he turned to Greenville artists whom he went to school with at NJCU or who touched his life in other ways. Photographer Richard Ryals, for example, inspired and encouraged Morteh to pick up the lens. ?His lighting is really amazing and has inspired me to push in my field,? says Morteh. Also contributing is Cristina Villaflor (whose work is seen above, right). ?Her work is very urban-based and really catches the gritty beauty of the city,? says the curator of his old friend?s work.

Another standout is Kevin Jones, a painter who went to Lincoln High School with Morteh, changed his life in a different way. ?The first piece of art work I ever bought was Kevin?s,? says Morteh. ?He does pieces on singers, these soulful portraits of musicians. He captures the art form of music and shows its beauty. There was one piece, ?The Blues Singer,? a portrait of Billie Holiday. The coloring was great with these reds and greens that really goes well with the brown of her skin ? it caught my eye. It was $150 and I had just finished paying my tuition so I didn?t have cash but I took money out of other places and bought it. I still have it to this day,? he says.

?We have to be supportive of one another, go to everyone?s shows and buy work. I am broke and I still try to buy a lot of my friends? work to support them,? he says. ?Buying someone?s CD or a book they?re independently distributing, it?s a core element to support the growth of art in this community. If you love it, support it.?

Lastly, painter and photographer Lorenzo Pickett (whose work is seen above, left), Morteh says, ?shows the soul of a person when he does portraits.? Deegan wasn?t surprised to hear that Pickett was in Morteh?s show and says he was one of the first to exhibit at her venue. ?He?s representing Greenville in and out of it,? she says. ?It?s amazing how if you put it out there that there?s a venue for people to show their stuff, all of a sudden you see lots of creative people in one small neighborhood come out because they didn?t have that much of a market on the map.?

Morteh agrees. ?I hope ?The Greenville Project? can help a lot of people in Greenville that have this talent but don?t have an outlet to express it. I know a lot of entertainers and rappers and poets from there ? if you go over there, you?ll also find painters and photographers and metalsmiths. They?re there, but they don?t know where to show their work!?