Quote:

Agreed! I Love what Elizabeth and Nuradeen Galleries are doing up here. Good Luck, I will see you there.

Thank you for posting this. (Check your personal message)

I have taken part in past exhibits. Elizabeth has done a great

job getting this together. There are positive things going on

in Greenville.

By David Menzies / The Jersey Journal

Elizabeth Deegan makes it clear the Project Greenville events she started are a venue for something that already existed.

?I feel like long before I was going into people?s businesses and asking them if they wanted to get into a free art show ? which they still look at me like, ?What?? Long before I had any ideas, there was already a big sense of community here,? she says.

The southern area of Jersey City generally referred to as ?Greenville? includes the Bergen-Lafayette and ?The Hill? sections, and while Deegan acknowledges the area has its problems, she also sees people making the best of it despite them.

?There?s a lot of friendliness,? Deegan says, referring to the reception she gets handing out fliers on Martin Luther King Drive. ?People are very responsive. I feel like in Queens (where she originally hails from) they?d be a lot less responsive.?

Deegan has hosted Project Greenville events in the backyard of her Winfield Avenue house for the past two years. On special weekends in her outfitted shed, she and her cohorts display art ? generally with a Greenville neighborhood or Jersey City angle. Happy to accept the work of people who might be considered amateurs, Deegan also provides refreshments and has added live musical performances for what, ultimately, is a gathering spot for the local camaraderie she feels has been disregarded.

?It?s more about arts as a means to come all one weekend, all hardly knowing each other,? she says.

When Project Greenville had one of its group art shows last month, Daniel ?Kodaq? Morteh, born and raised in the area, made time to visit. Earlier this year Morteh put together ?The Greenville Project,? a platform for Greenville artists to show their work Downtown.

?I love the Greenville section,? he says, ?but I always felt the economical and cultural renaissance that this beautiful city is going through excluded ?The Hill.??

He cites organizations like Project Greenville, ?as well as the Bethune Cookman Center, the Bergen Ave. Miller Branch Library, Cafe Sole and a handful of others,? as being at the forefront of re-defining it from within.

?It?s important for this community to be a part of the change in the city or else it will be just another victim of gentrification,? he says.

In that vein Deegan is glad to be in close proximity to the Nuradeen Gallery, 424 Ocean Avenue. The space includes a thrift shop that Deegan says sells used finance books because its owner thinks they should be available to the local community. Deegan hopes the area never sees the kind of waterfront-driven rent increase that has happened in other parts of the city.

Moving forward, she wants Project Greenville to be a consistent presence in listings for local events. ?Once we were listed in the JC Fridays pamphlets I thought it would be good to make sure to have something in each one going forward,? Deegan says. ?Hopefully that will get the name ?Greenville? out there on a regular basis, in relation to something positive, maybe to a lot of people whose personal exposure to Greenville has been limited to the more unfortunate things that also happen there and typically get the coverage.?

Project Greenville would not have taken shape in its present form without a little help from volunteers and Deegan?s friends, who together make it a ?we? endeavor.

?When we are having a slow or no foot traffic day, I never close up the space early,? she says. ?Sometimes I start putting other things away, like the snacks we put out or the table full of flyers, but I always the leave the shed itself open till the very end. I know if I went out of my way to a neighborhood that might be more out of the way to check a place out I certainly wouldn?t want to get there with only five minutes to spare and find ?em closed, so I try to never put people in that position.?

On Dec. 6, 7 and the 8th (Friday through Sunday), Project Greenville will be holding its Wonderland Weekend event in the backyard space at 128 Winfield Avenue. The lineup of artists displaying work so far includes photographers Raymond Schwartz, Linda DeAngeles and Jim Legge. Deegan says there will be a children?s toy drive bin for visitors to donate a new or extremely gently used unwrapped toy.

For more information on the Winter Wonderland event, visit the Project Greenville website at http://projectgreenville.webs.com.