New exhibition spotlights the universal connection between the artists showing throughout March, Women’s History Month;
the opening reception will be held this Friday.

March 1, 2017, Jersey City, NJ – Hudson County Community College (HCCC) Department of Cultural Affairs will celebrate Women’s History Month with an energy-charged exhibition titled, “Quantum Overdrive!”  Opening festivities for the exhibition, which may be viewed through April 19, will take place on Friday, March 3 and will include:

• Curator’s Talk from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. with Fred Fleisher – who is also a Hudson County Community College professor – detailing the concept and inspiration for the exhibition;
• #WomensHMC Social Media Challenge, from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., led by HCCC student and founder of #BlackHMC movement Nevin Perkins, who will explain this new endeavor for Women’s History Month; and
• Margaret Murphy: Live Painting, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. The artist encourages the public to provide women’s black clothing that can be placed on a hanger (shirts, blouses, skirts, dresses). Ms. Murphy will paint the articles in protest of the global backlash against women.
  The exhibition and events will take place in the College’s Benjamin J. Dineen III and Dennis C. Hull Gallery, which is located on the top floor of the HCCC Library at 71 Sip Avenue in Jersey City (just across from the PATH Transportation Center). All are open to the public, and there is no charge for admission.

Professor Fleisher equates the bonds of matter and energy at the quantum level to a universal connection that exists in all artistic work. For the exhibition, he chose works that embody the artists’ ability to “utilize maximum potential of the engine so as to get the most out of that fuel” in other words, their “Overdrive.” It is coincidental that the works are all by women, and those pieces featured represent a wide range of materials, energies and personal sensibilities.

The 11 artists featured are:

Jude Broughan, whose work juxtaposes materials such as vinyl and denim with photographs.

Marguerite Day, who utilizes “jazz crochet” in her HOME & BIOME series, which explores how everything is in constant formation and the importance of acknowledging our shared physical climate.

Ketta Ioannidou, who produced paintings and digital collages that combine her memories of the landscape and sea of her native country of Cyprus with imagined and synthetic forms.

Joanne Leah, the creator of photo-based images that portray a series of contorted nude body parts juxtaposed with ordinary yet highly stylized props.

Tricia McLaughlin’s military portraits and 3D printed apes are characters from her animation, good enough for the people, based on Emma Goldman’s speech, Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty, first published in 1917.

Helen O’Leary has made a table of wooden “paintings” – works that question their own structure, stability – and are paired with a large, fragmented work that flirts with, but ultimately resists, collapse.

Rachel Phillips presents a composition of animated objects that play off each other in a humorous yet disconcerting manner, with goofy smiles and distressed eyeballs creating different forms of expression.

Laurie Riccadonna, HCCC Professor of Fine Arts, conveys the magical experience of looking at intricate and complicated form in her paintings which utilize interwoven patterns and layered images.

Adie Russell explores representational versus abstract, direct perceptual experience versus the imaged, and authentic versus performed selves, with attention to the constructs of the “natural world.”

Savannah Spirit, inspired by the call-out heard at protests for women’s rights, created My Body, My Choice to reflect the elegant yet strong female body.

woolpunk, who machine-knits fiber installations and embroiders on photos of urban sprawl, has been inspired by her immigrant seamstress grandmother, who sewed American flags.

“Quantum Overdrive!” will share space with the exhibition, “A World Where We Belong,” which honors the memory of LGBTQIA advocate Georgia Brooks, who worked in the College’s Information Technology Services Department as an Academic Lab Manager for 25 years, and was an active advisor for the College’s Gay-Straight Alliance. Information on that exhibition is forthcoming.

The HCCC Benjamin J. Dineen, III and Dennis C. Hull Gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. (The Gallery is closed Sundays.)

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