New exhibition spotlights the universal connection between the artists showing throughout March, Womenâ€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 Womenâ€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:

• Curatorâ€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 Womenâ€s History Month; and
• Margaret Murphy: Live Painting, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. The artist encourages the public to provide womenâ€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 Collegeâ€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 McLaughlinâ€s military portraits and 3D printed apes are characters from her animation, good enough for the people, based on Emma Goldmanâ€s speech, Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty, first published in 1917.

Helen Oâ€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 womenâ€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 Collegeâ€s Information Technology Services Department as an Academic Lab Manager for 25 years, and was an active advisor for the Collegeâ€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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Opening Reception: Friday, March 1, 2013, 7–9 p.m.

The Majestic Theatre Condominiums 222 Montgomery Street Jersey City, NJ 07302 201.435.8000

Exhibition on view in the lobby from March 1, 2013 to May 31, 2013

SILVERMAN AND MAJESTIC THEATRE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present “Margaret Murphy: Dollar Store Divas,” curated by Brendan Carroll. The exhibition presents a series of acrylic and watercolor paintings on paper. Murphy draws inspiration from her native Baltimore and her adopted hometown of Jersey City, with its diversity, blue-collar neighborhoods, and dollar stores.

For the last decade, Margaret Murphy has developed her own genre of portraiture: sentimental, pensive, abstract, and matter-of-fact. Murphyâ€s “sitters” are a collection of mass-produced figurines that she purchases in 99¢ stores. The collection includes girls, princesses, mothers, and whores, and the occasional family of bunny rabbits.

To see her pictures of girly figurines as saccharine would be easy but limited, and dead wrong. Murphy is indebted to the critique of how women are objectified in American society. She writes: “The female figurines represent the ‘woman†in a post-feminist analytical arena, one that has been objectified on many levels.” In her work, Murphy is constantly returning to issues regarding gender, class, and consumerism.

The subjects in Murphyâ€s paintings occupy the center of the composition like religious icons. In this matter, they borrow specific tropes from art history. They exist in fields of pure color, nondescript settings, and decorative backgrounds. The effect is jarring, as it thrusts her models into the viewerâ€s space. From this vantage point, the viewer can see how Murphy uses harsh side lighting to illuminate each model. This tactic, which contrasts light and shadow, suggests volume, form, depth, and weight. It is as if Murphy wants the viewer to feel as though he reach out and grab the model.

Murphy does not depict the faces of her sitters, but their backsides, from head to toe. The tactic is not arbitrary but full of cheek, so to speak. If these figurines operate as surrogates for women, is Murphy suggesting that society perceives women as nothing more than a nice derrière? A thing to be ogled, squeezed? As viewers, where do we stand, as we eyeball the backside of countless statuettes?

Murphy is constantly pushing herself as a painter—experimenting with medium, color, composition, light, and shadow. The paintings of figurines owe as much to the 19th-century French painter Manet, or the 20th-century American Alex Katz, as to kitsch.

What is most interesting about Murphyâ€s work is how she is able to balance the “serious” and the “playful,” without allowing one to undo the other. She is often cited as working in the tradition of Pop Art, which is true, but itâ€s not the whole truth. Like Warhol, she is concerned with making art about banal objects of mass consumption. But where Warhol was cool and ironic, Murphy is discriminating and judicious.

Margaret Murphy is a painter, curator, and professor. Her work is included in many national collections, including the Deutsche Bank, Jersey City Museum, and Hudson County Community College Foundation, as wells as numerous private collections. New Jersey City University, Ramapo College, Rosenberg Art Galleries, Real Art Ways, Visual Art Center of New Jersey, Pentimenti Gallery, and HPGRP Gallery have organized solo exhibitions of her work. The New York Times, ArtInfo.com, Art Fag City, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Star-Ledger have reviewed her work, to name a few. Murphy is the recipient of many awards, including New Jersey Print and Paper Fellowship, Pollock Krasner Foundation Individual Artist Grant, New Jersey State Arts Council Fellowship, and P.S.122 Studio Residency.

Murphy earned her Bachelor of Science from Towson State University, and she earned her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 1992. Currently, she teaches at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD and New Jersey City University in Jersey City, NJ. She was born in Baltimore, MD. She lives and works in Jersey City, NJ.

The exhibition will be on view at The Majestic Theatre Condominiums through May 31, 2013. For further information, please visit us at SilvermanBuilding.com or call number (201) 435-8000.

Margaret Murphy: Dollar Store Divas the thirteenth exhibition that Brendan Carroll will organize for SILVERMAN.

For additional information, go here: Margaret Murphy.

This event is part of JC Fridays.

SILVERMAN has presented the works of Valeri Larko, Tenesh Webber, Glenn Garver, Jennifer Krause Chapeau, Michelle Doll, Tim Heins, Megan Maloy, Laurie Riccadonna, Thomas John Carlson, Tim Daly, Ann Flaherty, Scott Taylor, Jason Seder, Sara Wolfe, Beth Gilfilen, Andrzej Lech, Hiroshi Kumagai, Tom McGlynn, Victoria Calabro, Asha Ganpat, Darren Jones, Ryan Roa,Laura Napier, Risa Puno, Nyugen E. Smith, Amanda Thackray, and Kai Vierstra.

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