Center for the Visual Arts Gallery

Current Exhibition

Amanda Thackray, Visiting Artist Workshop and Exhibition*

Entanglements
March 20 – April 29

CVA Gallery Hours:

April 20 (Thursday) 10:00 am – 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm – 6:00 pm
April 20th at 11:00 am Monmouth Arts visit
April 21 (Friday) CLOSED
April 23, Sunday 1 – 3:30 pm Open House
April 24, Monday 11:00 am – 2:00 pm
April 25, Tuesday 10:00 am – 2:00 pm; 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
April 27, Thursday 10:00 am – 2:00 pm; 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
CLOSING EVENT: “Living Room Conversations: Wages, Work and Market in Creative Fields”, 12 – 1:15 pm. This event is free and open to the public.
April 28, Friday 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

About the Artist:

Amanda Thackray is a multidisciplinary ecofeminist artist and educator, based in Newark, NJ, whose practice sits at the intersection of craft, sculpture, and environmentally-based social practice.

She is the recipient of an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Art and Design (MAD) in NYC, the NJ State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in 2022, and the Arctic Circle in Svalbard, Norway Artists’ residencies. Her work is in over a dozen public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art Watson Library in NYC; Mediatheque Andre Malraux, France; Yale University and The Library of Congress.

The exhibit at Brookdale will include Riverbound, a community papermaking project on the bank of the Lower Passaic River, funded in part by the Andy Warhol Foundation through the Newark Artist Accelerator grant.

Thackray teaches printmaking, artist’s books, and papermaking at SUNY Purchase and Rutgers University. She earned her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.

Save the date for her weaving workshop during the exhibition. It is free and open to the public.

March 20: Exhibit open to the public. While visiting the exhibit you will have the opportunity to create a weave that will be part of the event on April 14.
April 14: Live Artist Event Weaving 2:00 p.m. and Artist Talk 6:00 p.m. Visiting Artist talk up on Brookdale’s Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/I4zdyVxsUuA
April 27: CLOSING EVENT: Living Room Conversations: Wages, Work and Market in Creative Fields, 12 – 1:15 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.

Artist Statement:

As a multidisciplinary ecofeminist artist-educator, I collaborate with biologists, ethnographers, natural and found fibers, and site specific water, to create objects and tableaus that inspire environmentally-centered conversations. I often stage projects that engage the public through participatory, performatory projects that combine art, science, & community, with a specific focus on human connection to waterways. Initially, I created work about vast oceans — plastics & microplastics in the ocean and the phenomenon of ghost nets. Recently, I am interested in hyper-local water, specifically the Passaic River.

My work is foregrounded in traditional/experimental drawing, printmaking, & papermaking processes. Notably, I employ hand papermaking processes to create complex forms referencing abandoned, lyrically floating, tangled netting. When creating handmade paper, I engage with water — often site-specific water — to create imagery that is directly tied, both materially & conceptually, to that same water. Traces of site-specificity remain in the paper object long after the individual fibers of pulp have coalesced & dried.

At Brookdale, I am interested in foregrounding the labor of artmaking. Through a workshop with students, I introduced a new skill – a traditional Korean papermaking (hanji) technique of twining paper called jisung, and students were paired and tasked to create collaborative sculptures. As we worked together, we discussed materiality, physical artmaking processes, the local reservoir, teaching unions, the students’ own majors and bodies of work, and their impending collaborations. These collaborations are another, deeper form of labor – a connective labor.

During the tenure of the exhibition, there will be paper painting and paper twining stations, so visitors can share in the creation of colored, twisted paper rope. On the day of my artist talk, I will work with the completed twisted paper rope to create a woven sculpture that references the reservoir on campus. The thread of connective labor runs through the course of the exhibition, and will be embedded in the final woven sculpture.

About the Visiting Artist Program:

*The CVA Gallery’s Visiting Artist program is supported by generous donations from individuals and institutions. Please consider supporting this work by specifying the “Visiting Artist Program” fund in a donation through Brookdale’s Foundation. Additional information is available by emailing (magha@brookdalecc.edu), calling (732-224-2260) or visiting the Brookdale Foundation page on the Brookdale Community College website.

CVA Gallery Contact

Elisa Elorza, Professor of Art
eelorza@brookdalecc.edu

Center for Visual Arts Gallery, Brookdale Community College
765 Newman Springs Road, Lincroft, NJ, parking lot #2