Artist Aim?e Burg organized Tabula Rasa, the current show at Curious Matter in downtown Jersey City. On view until September 16, the exhibition features nine artists, many of whom hail from the MFA program at Yale University. Participating artists include Sam Anderson, Lorraine Dauw, Frank De Leon-Jones, Tamar Ettun, Shanti Grumbine, Nate Heiges, Steven Paneccasio, Monika Sziladi and Catherine Telford-Keogh.

Before I discuss the show, I want to talk about boxing, a subject that I hold close to my heart. The size of a boxing ring often determines the style of a prizefight, if not its outcome. The larger ring fosters free-flowing action that takes place all over the canvas, as the boxer pirouettes around his opponent one minute, only to throw a four-punch combination to the head the next moment. The smaller ring, by contrast, encourages nose-to-nose action, which favors short, deliberate punches to the kidney, liver and abdomen. It?s as intimate as it is brutal.

To continue this post, click here: http://hyperallergic.com/56252/a-blan ... -and-some-curious-matter/

The Underground Supper Club is a hush-hush dining society in Jersey City.

Ramon Ruiz, the founder of the club, offers an assorted menu that features locally supported agriculture and meats. His main goal is to bring together foodies, art lovers and people from all walks of life to share food and conversation.

To finish the article, click this link:

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... round_supper_club_pl.html

The Powerhouse Arts District (PAD) is not the cultural jewel of downtown Jersey City, but an underused stack of bricks. Studio 371, the neighborhood?s newest gallery, may change this dismal fact. With more than 3,500 square feet, lots of natural light and minimalist aesthetics, the venue is ideal for a range of artwork. To date, the gallery has hosted three exhibitions, artist portfolio review day, and film festival. We sat down with Stephanie Panepinto and Kara Rooney, the brain trust behind the gallery, as they made some final preparations for its next show Arc-Types and Well-Rounded Characters, which opens Friday, May 4.

Arc-Types and Well-Rounded Characters
Curated by Jeanne Brasile
Friday, May 4?Friday, June 1, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, May 4, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
STUDIO 371, 371 Warren Street, 4th fl., Jersey City, NJ, 07302


To read the full Q & A, click here:

http://www.jerseycityindependent.com/ ... powerhouse-arts-district/

Artist Sara Wolfe is known for her colorful paintings that soothe and entertain like well-placed nursery mobiles.

Of late, she paints kooky triangles and parallelograms as they twirl, tumble, and play peekaboo in cosmic space. The feel is as unfussy as it is buoyant.

There is an infectious joie de vivre about Wolfe's geometric abstractions, which are now on view at three different galleries in New Jersey.

Click here to finish the article:

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... ty-based_artist_sara.html

SILVERMAN and Hamilton Square Condominium Association present

Glenn Garver: Recent Paintings
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 10, 2012

Hamilton Square Condominium
232 Pavonia Avenue, Jersey City, NJ 07302
201.434.1000

Exhibition Run: May 10, 2012?August 31, 2012

?All my painting is intuitive?
?Glenn Garver

Recent Paintings is a new body of abstract painting and works on paper by artist Glenn Garver. Paint?the medium?is both subject and object of Garver?s work. Though he has strong ties to American postwar gestural abstraction, his work is a unique investigation of the nature and possibility of paint. In some areas of canvas, paint is as creamy as ice cream, and looks as though he applied it to the canvas using a wide trowel from Cold Stone Creamery. In other areas, paint rises and falls like ocean spray during high tide.

More Information: http://brendanscottcarroll.wordpress. ... -garver-recent-paintings/

At the Underground Supper Club, you may not get to break bread with Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn or share a glass of wine with Jerry Saltz, but you?re still guaranteed fascinating conversation and beautifully plated food: chicken-basil croquette with peanut sauce; braised pork tamale with beets, carrot, daikon and fried yuca; gingery coconut chicken with chili-infused honey and potato gnocchi; masala chocolate cookies. Ramon Ruiz, the founder of the club, offers an eclectic menu that features locally supported agriculture and meats. His main goal is to bring together foodies, art lovers and people from all walks of life to share food and conversation. The vibe is causal and intimate, more dinner at a friend?s house than at a busy restaurant. You?re allowed to stay as long as you want ? there is no second seating. The dinners, which range from $40 to $50, include three courses, plus wine.

To read more, click here: http://hyperallergic.com/50123/an-art ... pper-club-in-jersey-city/

Question: Does anyone know if these galleries are still in operation?

Mana Fine Arts

Nobis Gallery

Mary Benson Gallery

Lex Leonard

More information about Ms. Flaherty work can be found at www.annflaherty.com.

The exhibition opens this Friday, October 2, from 5 to 8pm at the Majestic Theater Condos (222 Montgomery Street). Bar Majestic provides wine and refreshments.

The Beacon is running shuttle service both days for visitors. Pick up shuttle at Grove Street Path Station.

Jersey City Art Fair at The Beacon
Sneak Preview

Thursday, October 1, 2009, 6pm ? 8pm

Please join Jersey City Museum, Victory Arts Projects and the Jersey City Cultural Affairs Office for the Jersey City Art Fair at the Beacon. This event, the first art fair in the city's history, will feature cutting-edge artworks from more than forty of the city's finest artists.

A special wine and cheese Sneak Preview Reception kicks-off the art fair in the Great Hall of the Beacon on Thursday, October 1, 6-8pm. Guests will have the opportunity to get a sneak preview of the artwork on view while mingling with nationally and internationally recognized artists, curators, gallery owners, and the arts community.

Jersey City Art Fair at the Beacon is a wonderful opportunity not only for the art connoisseurs and serious collectors, but the entire Jersey City community to discover new developments in contemporary art.

Artwork on view will be available for purchase during the kickoff reception, and throughout the Studio Tour Weekend, Saturday, October 3, and Sunday, October 4, 12 to 6pm. Jersey City Museum Docents will be onsite during the reception and throughout the weekend to answer questions and guide guests through the art fair.

Participating artists include Brendan Carroll, Christine Barney, Christian Winslow, Kimberley Wiseman, Barbara Lands, Jill Scorpion, Joyce Zielaznicki, William Rodwell, Peter Bill, Loura van der Meule, Edward Fausty, Feng Xiao Liu, Katrina Bello, Beth Achenbach, Frank Bosco, Kirk Bray, Brenda Buck, Thomas John Carlson, Steven Cimini, Beth DiCara, Dylan Egon, Eileen Ferara, Jaz Graf, Megan Klim, E. Jan Kounitz, Mike McNamara, Duda Penteado, Orlando Reyes, John Ruddy, Martina Solej, Leon Yost, Erma Yost, Scott Taylor, Jen Parisio, Mey Mey Lim, and Graham McNamara.

Location:
The Great Hall at The Beacon
4 Beacon Way (at Montgomery Street)
Jersey City, NJ

Valet parking is available at The Beacon for a fee of $5.

Anyone know of the Korean bbq food truck on Montgomery Street downtown? Comments?

hahahahaha

These two kleptomaniacs - one male, one female - stole the gifted three-legged stool when I turned my back to lock the car.

D.A.M.N.

Sunday, August 23, 2009. 9:26 PM.

Just came back from lovely trip from Asbury Park with my lady. Unloading the car; goods included antique stool just gifted to me from my ma. As I turned my back to unlock my front door, I found the stool boosted by a couple of bourgeois pigs from the neighborhood that had just walked by the house. These bourgeois pigs are presumptuous, entitled, and rude.

I found the hoisted stool a few doors down, set beside their faux English garden. They did not even pay the respect to bring the stool in doors.

Vacation officially over. Welcome home to Jersey City.

Bourgeois pigs: learn the rules of the neighborhood. Simply ask, don't just take.

The stool has been rightfully reclaimed. Suckas.

Jersey City - it took my parents thrity years to leave, and me thirty years to return.

In Jersey City, you may walk to the multi-faceted corner store to rent a DVD, buy a slice of pizza, get a key made, take home a 40oz of Old E, and fill a prescription for penicillin.

I suggest reading some great books about Jersey City: Mysteries of My Father, by Thomas Fleming; Clockers, by Richard Price; Miracle of Saint Anthony: A Season with Coach Bob Hurley and Basketballs Most Improbable Dynasty, by Adrian Wojnarowski; Five Finger Discount: Crooked Family History, by Helen Stapinski.

Adrian Grenier, of Entourage fame, was seen checking out local hotties in Tacqueria's backyard patio tonight at 9:o0 pm. He bobbed his head to the AC/DC soundtrack. After his eyeball session, he presumably enjoyed fish tacos - extra hot sauce - with an apple soda.

Dont let the door hit you on the way out.

In less than two weeks: 13 people shot, four dead.

I am going to give a shout out to Pho Binh in McGinley Square. It's located on 749 Bergen Avenue. Their Pho is great. I recommend the Pho Do Bien Hoac Mi, and Pho Tom. In addition, the Bun Bo Xao Sate and the Bun Cha Gio are very tasty as well. The restaurant is clean, and the staff is hospitable.

If you do not live in the area, they have parking located on Montgomery Street, adjacent to the Astor Bar.

Pho Binh may be reached by several bus lines: #80, #87, Bergen Ave, Westside/Montgomery, Newport Mall.

http://phobinhnj.com/index.php

http://www.yelp.com/biz/pho-binh-jersey-city

Jersey guy Arturo Gatti packed a special punch
by Jerry Izenberg/The Star-Ledger
Monday July 13, 2009, 9:47 AM

Andrew Mills/The Star-LedgerArturo Gatti, whose career took flight while fighting predominantly in Atlantic City, "touched the emotions and the heartbeat" of those in New Jersey.

To understand the impact the tragic death of Arturo Gatti in Brazil on Saturday has had on so many people in this state, you have to know that going in, New Jersey was, is and always will be the state of long-shot dreams, of hard knocks, high hopes and getting off the deck for one more shot. In every facet of what makes this state what it is, this is the state of a Puncher's Chance.

It has always been this way. In urban enclaves, no matter how they change, no matter the ethnicity or the skin color or the economic status. Nobody has to remind us.

''The Puncher's Chance.''

It is the mantra of this state's psyche as it struggles to overcome the ''Rust Belt'' Burden. In other slices of geography they succumb to the awful dirge of the Rust Belt Blues. Here we respond with the code of The Puncher's Chance. And the fire in that determination explains who we are and why we do not store our dreams away in the closet.

It explains how the son of an Italian immigrant, who, himself, became an immigrant from Montreal, touched the emotions and the heartbeat of those North Jersey cities that still have neighborhoods. Gatti wasn't fancy and he wasn't quick. What you saw was what you got.

He was, pure and simple, a living example of ''The Puncher's Chance.''

Listen to coach Bob Hurley, who was born and raised in one of those enclaves. The sound of his voice could pass for the music of North Jersey's cities. He can explain the legend of Arturo Gatti:

''People have dreams. So do neighborhoods. They were his people. You look back when you grow up and you remember the toughest kid on the block and years later you think, 'Well, he made it. Why not me?' So you keep on trying. In so many ways, he is what we are sometimes, back on his heels, bleeding, hurt and then coming back again because he would not yield his Puncher's Chance.''

Try Carl Moretti, the matchmaker for so many of his fights:

''He was my friend. It was like if you really needed something no matter where or what time, he'd be there for you. He's the guy I would have wanted in my foxhole whether the other guys were coming with guns or dynamite or tanks.

''He was North Jersey. He came from another country but he was one of us and they knew it. When he got hit, they got hit. When he bled, they bled. And when he won, they won. He was their kind of guy. Before the Mayweather fight we had to do a studio shot with HBO so Pat (Lynch, the manager), and Buddy (McGirt, the trainer) and Ted Cruz (the conditioner) and I are standing in front of his apartment house and this limo about the size of a battleship pulls up and he says, 'What's that?' Pat says, 'It's for us,' and Arturo says, 'Not any more.' Arturo walks over to the driver and hands him 200 bucks and tells him, 'This isn't us. Take the day off.'

''Then he gets in his car and we get in and he drives, no retinue, nobody to hold the door and patronize him, just friends like always. We get to the tunnel and the (Port Authority) cops and toll-takers all recognize us and they are shouting, 'Hey, Arturo, you gonna beat that guy?' To them he wasn't a star. He was more than that. He was Arturo from the block.''

As a case in point, after the third Micky Ward fight, he was still bleeding when he walked over to the press conference. Lynch held the door open and Gatti grinned and slammed his hand against it, screamed and pointed to the blood near his eye. Lynch looked at mob of Gatti aficionados and blurted ''Jeez, Arturo, you want to get me killed?''

That was Arturo Gatti.

But what was Gatti's hold on urban New Jersey? How did it happen?

For Arturo Gatti, it began like this. On June 10, 1991, his manager, Pat Lynch, turned him pro at the Meadowlands Convention Center against an older guy named Jose Gonzales.

"I looked across the ring and I saw him and I was like, 'Oh, man.' I was scared to death," Gatti once said. "Here was a guy fresh out of the can with a ponytail and tattoos all over his body. I was a teenager. I never saw anything like him before in my life."

But in the third round he caught Gonzales with the kind of left hook for which all the tough-guy ritual trappings in the world have no answer.

And so it began.

Actually, he insists it began long before that. When he was 8, his immigrant father, Giovanni, would take him over to Gentile Cafe in Montreal's Little Italy, stand him on a chair and say, "Here he is, look. Look at him closely. One day he will be a champion."

This is the same kid who got very good grades at Louis Joseph Pepino High School and told his teacher he wanted to drop out and fight for the Canadian amateur team. She thought of all the immigrant kids who needed education so badly and what they were up against and wanted to help, so she sent him to the principal.

When the principal heard that, he told Ida Gatti to tell her husband to put his foot down and stop their son from watching all those "Rocky" movies.

"I wasn't a wise guy," Gatti once told me. "I even tried night school later on, but it wasn't for me. My father made me go to work for him as an electrician. I wasn't very good. Hey, I was terrible. If it weren't for boxing, I could have been responsible for burning down half of Montreal."

So this is the way it was when Gatti left Canada and came to Jersey City and morphed into the neighborhood kid who swallowed Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall. You could walk down the boardwalk on Gatti fight night and, if you came from Newark or Jersey City or Paterson or Bayonne, every 50 feet, you saw somebody you knew. They were not only headed for a fight; they were headed for a reunion.

Boardwalk Hall belonged to them. They were his home team ... from the rafters to the floor seats ... from ringside's $750 seats to the $50 section in nosebleed heaven ... the joint was packed with Jersey guys and Jersey gals who had come to see a Jersey fighter in his element.

He was transplanted from the St. Leonard Italian ethnic section of Montreal to Jersey City in what seems like another incarnation, but he owned this state from the Delaware Water Gap to Cape May ... from the tank farms along the Jersey Turnpike to the rolling hills of Sussex County. He was the athlete who carved out a blue-collar autograph with his sweat and his blood.

This was a neighborhood guy who flipped burgers for pay days after he left Canada for Jersey City. He gave every blue collar in this state Jersey boxing the way it used to be ... Jersey boxing as it once was in Newark's old, rickety Laurel Garden and Meadowbrook Bowl and down the road in the Elizabeth Armory and in places like North Bergen's Embassy Hall along the way.

Even when Arturo Gatti was the main-eventer, he still fought with the passion of a club fighter ... the honest workman who never checked his hunger at the door just because life was easy and he had a world title. He fought a puncher named Micky Ward three times in matches so brutal and so passionate that they could have fought inside a pay telephone booth.

If you were there you will remember, and thousands, who were not, will say they were there as well.

The details of his murder are horrific. But in time they will not be how he is remembered. He will be remembered as Arturo from the block, laughing, caring and most of all, as the man who always kept his and their ''Puncher's Chance'' alive.

My family is devastated. We've been following his career since the Tracy Harris Patterson fight. We've had the pleasure to see him fight in the Garden. And I've met him four times in person - three times in Hoboken, once in Jersey City. He was a gentleman, down to earth, an all around great guy.

Check out these fights:
Gatti vs Tracy Harris Patterson
Gattil vs Wilson Rodriguez
Gatti vs. Gabriel Ruelas
Gatti vs. Ivan Robinson (I, II)
Gatti vs. Terronn Millet
Gatti vs. Mickey Ward (I, II, III)

Yo! I gotta give big props to Pho Binh, and McGinley Square. Pho Binh's food is top notch, and the service is excellent. The bun tom nuoung (vermicelli noodles w/ grilled shrimp) is pretty authentic, and very tasty. And this is coming straight from the Jungle Unit. See you on the other side of the bamboo. Yeah.

I agree. From the outside, the museum is not inviting. The physical structure is imposing, and resembles a parking garage. It's a shame. The exhibitions inside the museum are superb.

Well-designed murals would help to enhance its visibility and may help create a sense of warmth and invitation.

This comment is in response to icechute. The mission of a museum is to preserve and collective artwork and antiquities. The reason why Jersey City Museum does not have windows is too protect artwork. Sunlight does more damage to artwork than anything else (except maybe water or fire). The less natural or artificial light to which a work is exposed, the better. Even windows protected by UVA/UVB filters are not good for prolonged exposure.

Temperature and humidity are both strictly controlled because artworks expand and contract with temperature and humidity fluctuations. This means that things can wrinkle, flake, buckle and otherwise get damaged when temperature and humidity are either too high or too low.

I do think murals could enhance the fa?ade of Jersey City Museum. This issue needs to be brought to the attention of the City, and to businesses along the Gold Coast. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have tremendous mural projects in their cities. If Jersey City were to be covered by well-conceived mural, our city could become a real cultural destination.

Comment from [deleted name]
Date: June 12, 2009, 11:55 am

"Grove St. divides Chilltown from Shilltown. West of Grove is Chilltown, East of grove is Shilltown, where the corporate shills have invaded with their grotesque, prefab, corporate garbage."

Amen.

PRO ARTS runs the tour. They destroy this city's creative chi.

Thank you for posting this article. Much appreciated.

What's the status on the Jersey City hip hop scene?

Favorite current hip hop artists: 1. Plastic Little (Philly) 2. Rhymefest (Chicago) 3. Dr. Octagon aka Kool Keith (Bronx) 4. Edan (Boston?)

Favorite hip hop artists: Jungle Brothers; Brand Nubian; Tribe Called Quest; Public Enemy; Ultramagnetic MC's; Eric B & Rakim; Jay Z; NWA - Straight Out Of Compton; Quasimoto; People Under the Stairs.

Thank you for the Haagen Dazs shoutout at Shop Rite. As for you "heavy cream haters" and "buy Breyers," where's the love?

I have frequented Torico's for years. I love the ice cream, and I love the staff.

But I want my "two dollars" worth.