Michelle Mercurio
Chinatown Three
2003
C-Print
According to an exhibition review of the show "Personal Territory: Four Color Photographers" in the New Jersey newspaper The Star-Ledger, Michelle Mercurio's "overlapping urban scenes combine her visual interests. "I'm very interested in street photography and I enjoy collages as well. This sort of ties it together for me." She arrived at her technique by "happy accident" while editing on a light box; "two of my slides happened to overlap. It was a wake-up call, to say the least." (December 9, 2005).
(A light box has a plastic or glass surface with a light source beneath it. Artists use light boxes for many purposes.)
Thank you to Annina Nosei for the generous donation of this work.
Amalia Mesa-Bains
Private Landscape / Public Territories
1997
Lithograph / Rives & Kitikata paper
Thank you to Benjamin J. Dineen Ill and Dennis C. Hull for the generous donation of this work.
Amalia Mesa-Bains, born in 1950 in Santa Clara, California, is a California-based artist, curator, and writer who has been associated with a number of exhibitions of Latino art, such as "Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation" and "Mi Alma, Mi Terra, Mi Gente: Contemporary Chicana Art." Her work incorporates various aspects of Chicano/a history, culture, and folk traditions and explores religion, ritual, Chicana history, and female rites of passage.
She earned a BA in Painting from San Jose State University, an MA in Interdisciplinary Education from San Francisco State University, and an MA and PhD in Clinical Psychology from the School of Clinical Psychology, Wright Institute in Berkeley, California.
She has received several awards and fellowships including the Chicana Foundation of Northern California's Distinquished Workin Women Award; an INTAR-Hispanic Arts Center's Golden Palm Award; and the MacArthur Fellowship award. The Smithsonian American Art Museum owns her work, "An Ofrenda for Dolores del Rio.”
Tom Holmes
Glass Mobile
2005
Coke Bottle Glass from Abandoned Coke Glass
Factory in Brockport, New York, and Steel
The Hudson County Community College Foundation gratefully acknowledges Benjamin J. Dineen and Dennis C. Hull for their generous donation of this work.
Charles Renzulli
Morris Canal Mural
1967
Oil on Canvas
This is part of the HCCC Foundation Heritage Collection that celebrates our local heritage.
Thank you to Provident Bank for the generous donation of this work.
Born in Melfi, Italy, Mr. Renzulli came to the United States as a young man, and lived in Jersey City most of his life. Mr. Renzulli painted murals and presented them to various banks throughout the town. Each mural was indigenous to a specific neighborhood. The one pictured is from the Greenville Section of Jersey City and depicts the old Morris Canal.
The Morris Canal, originally completed in 1831, played a key role in the industrial development of New Jersey and Hudson County. The canal, originally extending from Phillipsburg to Newark, provided invaluable transportation for the burgeoning local industry by providing boats with a passageway to bring much-needed coal from Northeastern Pennsylvania and iron from across New Jersey. In 1836, an extension was built lengthening the canal another 12 miles from Newark to Jersey City, making the canal essential for transporting goods to market in New York City. At its greatest length, the canal eventually spanned a total of 109 miles. The innovation of railroad technology contributed to the canal’s decline and ultimate drainage in 1924, but it nevertheless captured the inspiration of local artists, both painters and photographers alike.
In 1967, Jersey City resident and local muralist Charles Renzulli (1885-1974) painted the canal’s beautiful scenery in his mural titled, “Morris Canal: ‘Red Bridge’-- Circa 1887.” In the mural, the canal cuts through a lush landscape under a red pedestrian bridge, while men on horseback flank the waterway on each side. The painting sat on display in the Provident Bank’s Greenville branch in Jersey City until it was donated to the HCCC Foundation Art Collection in 2014.
Another Jersey City resident, William Armbruster (1865-1955), likewise captured the canal’s beauty and serenity in his photo, “The Morris Canal– Greenville, c. 1092.” As in Mr. Renzulli’s mural, this photo shows the Morris Canal carrying a small boar and the reflection of a tree-lined embankment. Mr. Armbruster, a self-taught photographer whose images ranged from natural landscapes to depictions of labor, was active in the local photography community, creating the Greenville Camera Club, which equipped local photographers with supplies and proper facilities.
Ann Sperry
Weeping Woman
ca. 1980s
Steel and Glass
Ann Sperry was a sculptor and a feminist. Her steel sculptures transformed toughness into softness, femininity, and beauty. Her work is in the collections of the Storm King Arts Center in New York, the Skirball Museums in Los Angeles and Cincinnati, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis and many others. Her large site specific sculptures are installed in Seattle, Boston, Aspen, and other places. She served on the board of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and the SculptureCenter, as well as in political campaigns from Eugene McCarthy’s to Barack Obama’s.
Thank you to the Sperry family for the generous donation of this work.
