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Left: 1993-F Heart Aflutter
1993
Alkyd on Wood
36 x 6 x 4.5 in (91.44 x 15.24 x 11.43 cm)
Right: 1993-G
1993
Alkyd on Wood
36 x 6 x 4.5 in (91.44 x 15.24 x 11.43 cm)
Charles Kessler lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. This work was featured in a thirty-year retrospective of his work at West Village Gallery in Jersey City. He writes about art online at http://leftbankartblog.blogspot.com. Janet Kolpos in Art in America wrote about this body of work:
"Clearly, for him, paint is an easy sell -a wondrous substance of entrancing surface and glorious hue, no matter where it's found." She also wrote, "No matter how offhand the support materials or the organization of elements in these works, one was drawn close to them to examine the radiant colors and the elastic surfaces of the paint." The artist writes, "I think she nailed it -that's what these paintings are about: closely experiencing the color and texture of the paint. Whether the work succeeds or fails, however, depends on the relationship of the colors to each other, on whether the colors enliven or weaken each other."
Thank you to Charles Kessler for the generous donation of this work.
Open Book
1998
Acrylic on Canvas on Wood, Hardware
42 x 74 x 29 in (106.68 x 187.96 x 73.66 cm)
Charles Kessler lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. This work was featured in a thirty-year retrospective of his work at West Village Gallery in Jersey City. He writes about art online at http://leftbankartblog.blogspot.com. He says of this work:
"This is by far the most difficult painting I've ever worked on (this IS one painting). It took me about six months to finish. Not only did each panel have to work with the adjacent panel, but the edges that can be seen when looking at any one panel had to work color-wise with the other edges. By cutting out the center shapes and inlaying them into a background, I was able to try out many, many different possibilities without permanently committing to anything until the end. And it also makes the panels even more physical, less illusionistic.
"The main difficulty, the reason for this crazy format in the first place, is that I wanted the visual experience to change in a dramatic way as the panels are turned. The idea is to look at two open panels, compare them, experience the color, shape, texture, etc., move to the next panel, and hopefully, there's a sort of surprise, or at least there's some contrast or change in your experience- one set of panels affecting the experience of the others."
Thank you to Charles Kessler for the generous donation of this work.
Amphora Frieze
2004
Silkscreen
16 x 22.5 in (40.64 x 57.15 cm)
Collaborator: Susan Goldman
Edition of 30, Printed at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers
Jo Baer, who was born in Seattle, Washington in 1929, currently lives and works in Amsterdam. Baer was a key figure among the celebrated Minimalist painters in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. During that period, she executed her series of different-sized squares as well as vertical and horizontal rectangles in the hard-edge style, works she later expanded into multipartite arrangements as diptychs and triptychs. Her works are in public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Gallery, London; and the Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main.
Thank you to Benjamin J. Dineen Ill and Dennis C. Hull for the generous donation of this work.
Morris Canal
1967
Oil on Canvas
74 x 116 in (187.96 x 294.64 cm)
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 Greenville c. 1902
1902
Carbon Print
3.25 x 4 in (8.26 x 10.16 cm)
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.
Weeping Woman
ca. 1990s
Steel and Glass
59 x 12.5 x 17 in (149.86 x 31.75 x 43.18 cm)
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.
Rear Elevator and Canopy
c. 1912
Ink on Linen
35.5 x 42.5 in (framed) (90.17 x 107.95 cm)
This is an original architectural drawing of 25 Pathside.
Partial Elevator in Details
c. 1912
Ink on Linen
42.5 x 35.5 in (framed) (107.95 x 90.17 cm)
Thank you to Joseph Cundari for the generous donation of this work. These are the original architectural drawings of 25 Pathside.
Long before architects used CAD (Computer Aided Design), each plan for a building required painstaking and careful hand-printed work with an ink pen on linen. This was one of the original architectural drawings for the building across the street, at 25 Journal Square. Rowland, an American architect, served as the Supervising Architect for Jersey City, New Jersey Board of Education for forty-two years. Projects he designed include several buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Among Rowland’s historic designs are most of the buildings at the Jersey City Medical Center, the Labor Bank Building, and William L. Dickinson High School as well as many other public buildings. Rowland, an 1893 graduate of Cornell University, designed twenty-five public and private schools in Jersey City.
