The Tris McCall Report
February 24, 2004
We're making progress. Since I posted my first SHAME piece, a series of local web designers have gotten off their pixels and thrown up sites of Jersey City interest and public service. They're not perfect, but they're a good start. Other organizations -- mostly community groups -- have either refreshed or re-launched existing sites. The era of cyberspace famine in Jersey City appears to be drawing to a close.
So what have we got? First, the old Newport bulletin board has converted itself into a long-awaited and much needed discussion site for Downtown Jersey City. So far, conversation has focused on the biggest issue in town, which is unsurprising and probably salutary. The problem with the board, so far, is that everybody seems to be posting anonymously. I understand that it's important to make it easy for people to join in the discussion, but anonymous posting leads inevitably to hit-and-run prose. It also hinders the emergence of definable bulletin-board personalities. I urge visitors to the JC List to take two minutes and register.
The official 111 site is still a little wonky -- and the artist database needs to be fleshed out -- but it's getting there. The Online Galleries Virtual Tour link isn't anything like what it promises yet, and the news page still has none. But the interactive calendar is a step in the right direction, and the media database promises to be a genuine community resource. Me, I want a pull-down menu listing all the artists who maintain studio spaces in the building, and a description of the work they're doing. Now that would be a database and explication worth getting lost in.
Historic Downtown Jersey City has updated. Of course that means you now get a big, annoying pop-up window splashed in your face, but hey, you can't have everything. The restaurant listing is still just an ugly-looking grid with no contextualizing copy, but there's a "Year In Development" article on the main page. It reads more like an apology than a projection -- and it's nowhere near as trenchant or penetrating as it ought to be -- but hey, it's something. The winds of change blow through even the most distant cyber-backwaters.
The Harsimus Cove website starts with an annoying (though stylish) flash animation of the famous neighborhood church, holds for a second, and then bounces you in to an interface that looks so similar to the Pro Arts site that, well, it's a bit of a problem. It's still the champion Downtown neighborhood site, though -- it's got a fine map, a neighborhood history, and the best links page in town.
I used to have trouble uploading the Landmarks Conservancy site. I don't know if they were updating or if it was my connection, but now it comes through bright and clear. This is one of the deepest and most informative websites in Hudson County, and the photographs alone are worth a visit. If you're interested in Jersey history or development issues, you have to check this out.
Okay, guys, keep up the good work. Remember -- I'm watching.
February 21, 2004
Is this man on President Bush's payroll, or what?
I could go on all day, but I can't say it any better than this.
February 19, 2004
Stepping out on Montgomery Street in a late-winter thaw. The sun is setting on Van Vorst Park, and the kids are wrapping up their games. I'm heading back to the Jersey City Museum -- not for a slide presentation this time, but for a high-profile art opening. Tonight, the museum unveils its early 2004 exhibits: paintings by Peter Paone of his Italian upbringing, sculptures in rubber and wood by Chakia Booker, and a few smaller standalone installations by local artists.
I've seen all this stuff before. It was up last week, at least, and before the slide exhibit, I took some initiative: I walked, unbidden and alone, into the first-floor room. Paone's paintings were waiting for me there, brightly lit, vibrant, emotional, moving. Tonight, though, I won't be on my own: this is a big shindig. I'm hoping to have the opportunity to discuss the featured work with some of the people I've met at 111 First Street. If any of them show, that is.
The Museum is at Monmouth & Montgomery, fabled corner of the Mons. This is the very edge of the treelined, brownstoned Van Vorst district -- past Monmouth, the main drag runs through a depressing clutch of housing projects that look like Martian settlements before climbing up the Palisade for points west. The building itself is stately, unobtrusive, glass-paneled; it blends into the neighborhood almost too well. It's all very nice, but why wasn't the Museum placed in the so-called arts district? Kinda makes you wonder if the administration is taking the initiative seriously at all.
Art museums do not get "crunk", but it's not too much of a stretch to say tonight is off the hook. The ground floor is wall-to-wall bodies, rich guys in suits, hipsters, little kids with maraschino cherries, talking, milling, sipping white wine. A buffet table stretches from the center of the atrium to the stairs. I'd grab a quesadilla, but I can't see two feet in front of me. Last week, the exhibiting artists had this space all to themselves: tonight, the doors have been flung open, and the public has streamed in. Will they be back tomorrow, I wonder, or is this an event-specific crowd?
I push my way to the staircase. Chakia Booker's exhibit is in the upstairs gallery, overlooking the main floor. The initial sculptures are fabricated from found wood and bone: a crucifix made out of two mandibles, legs of a table positioned to suggest an African mask. A large column -- festooned with white, black, and grey leaves the shape of oyster mushrooms -- is titled "assimilation". Well, at least somebody around here isn't ducking the political implications of her work. Booker herself is standing with her sculptures, wearing an orange and red headdress easily three times the size of her face. Hey, when in the public eye, try to be an eyeful, as Dres of the Black Sheep would say.
My man Bill Rodwell, president of the 111 Tenants Association, is here; checking out the sculpture and giving me a free lesson in the qualitative distiction between solidity and expansiveness. I recognize Nancy Wells, too; she's the sculptor who featured so prominently in Ed Fausty's slide exhibition. Jesse Wright, the rising-star painter whose works were recently exhibited at L.I.T.M., has also arrived -- he's strolling through the permanent exhibition, talking to some of the museum staff. In the crowd, more familiar faces come into focus: Josef Reyes, designer of a stunning picture-book about the 111 Building, Mark Dagley from the Abaton Book Company, curator Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, photographer and activist Shandor Hassan. You've got to love a town where the place to be is the art museum.
After some words from the president, it's right back to the exhibits. Booker's main medium is old tires; she cuts them, stretches them, layers and twists them into massive sculptures of vulcanized rubber and highway dreams. One wall is covered from floor to ceiling with fourteen wooden panels of shredded and mangled tires and inner tubes -- the volume of the piece alone is stunning. Another tire sculpture has been spray-pained red and named for Dorothy's shoes. In the center of the room, short strips cut from the central bands of tires have been tethered, poits outward, to a wire at the heart of the sculpture. It's an "S"-shaped monster, a curved, elegant, but broken body; dangerous-looking, black, sleek, and powerful, a ghost of reconstituted car parts.
The card on the wall suggests that Booker's central theme is race and class oppression. Certainly I see that here. But the title of this exhibition is Jersey Ride, and again I am struck by how relentlessly and scrupulously Garden State artists catalogue their experience of our cities, our towns, and our urban spaces. These car parts evoke visions of the Turnpike, the overpasses and auto-graveyards by Newark, the smoke and soot of Kearny, the stretches of road and tarmac that stitch together our metropolis. Booker channels these visions in all their diesel-drenched glory. There's a critique of Jersey highway culture here, but also great Jersey pride -- pride in how we keep these shambling wrecks running, working, carving new grooves into the roads that define us.
It's late. The museum is flashing the lights, trying to disperse the crowd. Just like CBGB! But we're talking, discussing -- not just 111 First now, but other, newer projects. Jesse introduces me to Dane Johnson, a musician from the band Chariot, who owns and operates a studio here in Downtown Jersey City. Elizabeth Onorato, another familiar face from 111 First, is here too; she wants to talk to Jesse about the building's website. We're making plans for the spring, we've got something going here. Even L.I.T.M. has a website now. (For everybody who was wondering, it stands for "love is the message"). We don't have to say it, we know: 2004 is going to be a hell of a ride.
February 18, 2004
Lengthy interview with Tris McCall (that's me!) now up at Chorus and Verse. Lookit, I'm right in between Clarence Clemons, Jon Bon Jovi, and a cover-tune performer who identifies with the cast of Friends.
If I've gotten you curious about Kathy Forer, the artist now showing at the Chamot Gallery, here's a link to her site.
February 15, 2004
From the "I'd Rather Be Pull-Quoted Than Paraphrased" department comes this.
I'd say it bears a shocking resemblance to this.
Of course, there are some differences. Their article is just like my article, only two months later, and with all the funny and impassioned parts taken out. OK, let's be fair, they added some pointless and value-neutral quotes from city employees. Next time, why not try asking a follow-up question? I promise, it won't hurt at all.
Guys, since you're obviously reading this page religiously enough to rip me off, let me offer you a few pointers. First of all, do not fling your free newspaper all over the street. Leaving copies strewn across the block is not circulation, it's littering. Find some legitimate distribution points and stop messing up my block.
Second, isn't it time you clowns covered the biggest story in town?
Don't make me do your job for you. Jersey City Reporter, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
February 12, 2004
I wish I had the vocabulary to talk about contemporary visual art with my neighbors. On my visits to 111 First Street, I'm reduced to imbecilic blather: this is cool, this is awesome, that is rockin', that is smokin'. Bleh. If I had any idea what the trends or issues were, I could at least offer a decent perspective. But it's hard to be an articulate advocate for a modern arts scene when my ignorance reduces me to monosyllables.
So here I am at the Jersey City Museum (350 Montgomery at the corner of Monmouth), yet another massive local resource that I had no idea even existed until about a week ago. I must have passed by the museum on walks at least ten times, and never noticed it. I blame the building next door for distracting me: a messy gallery with oil paintings of 50 Cent, Ja Rule, and Fat Joe in the windows. My new pal Shandor Hassan is here -- he's one of several artists presenting slides of new work. His peers, some of whom I recognize from the corridors of 111 First, have gathered in a room that resembles a small university lecture hall. Behind a glass panel in a projection booth, curator Rocio Aranda-Alvarado works the slide machine. This is a monthly event. There's no excuse not to educate myself.
The buzz on the floor is not about art, it's about politics. The threat hanging over 111 First Street is on everybody's mind. Is the Power House Arts District initiative being used by the current administration as an advertisement to entice condo builders to the waterfront? Are the new condos and lofts going up on Bay Street going to be affordable for local artists, or are they "arts housing" in name only? Will Lloyd Goldman blink?
Shandor is the first presenter; he's game as the museum staff attempts to get the microphone and lighting straightened out. He's got a big voice, though, he can adapt. His work consists of photographs; grouped into sets of five, each image offsets its neighbors. They're almost entirely urban: shots of signs, neon lights, tarmac, cement and architectural detail, harried bodies of city residents. Shandor likes color and texture -- the corrugation of a string of fortune-teller beads becomes a commentary on an iron grate, the lurid red of a devil's mask echoes the bright signage. Interspersed among the inorganic are faces -- some cautiously hopeful, many worried, all more than a little overburdened. The work, he says, is in response to "intense information", and he wraps by presenting his contact sheets. The images, once meticulously grouped, now reoccur in a cavalcade of associations, color, and rhythm, shattering the patterns and forcing the observer to realign his associations.
Shandor is followed by Peter Zirnis, an older artist with a flatter speaking affect. He's a photographer too, but while Hassan's work is restless, blurred, passionate and associative, Zirnis communicates a stunning, disquieting stillness. Like Hassan, Zirnis is drawn to city structures: many of the buildings he portrays are familiar features in the Jersey City skyline. By manipulating colors and depth, Zirnis's Jersey City feels like a box diorama: struggling toward multidimentionality but trapped in a flat landscape. His buildings are chilling, depopulated, alien; visitations from an evacuated public sphere. Zirnis displays the sinews of construction like a dispassionate surgeon, laying the entrails of the city open on display in the operating theatre. He wields the camera like a scalpel, and his photography stings with cutting edges.
A softer -- but no less incisive -- approach is taken by the still-life painter Frank Hanavan. He's a chatterbox, alternately apologizing and assessing, engaging with his own work as if discovering it for the first time. He couldn't be more of a contrast with the reserved Zirnis, but from a spectator's angle, their projects are not dissimilar: Hanavan is also engaged in the strained documentary realism of the depopulated urban street. His canvases of city brownstones, backyards, and Mr. Softee trucks mask an impish delight in urban disorder behind a greeting-card facade. Hanavan's work doesn't hit as hard as Zirnis's or Hassan's, but the craft is evident even to my untrained eye. Light filtering through trees on to a park bench is captured in vibrant color. On cue, Hanavan talks about his interest in light and shadow -- once again as if he's just noticing it. He's worried that his slides are in the wrong order. He scrolls back through them, commenting on them again, and then rolls forward one more time, playing with the images like a kid in a sandbox.
Edward Fausty doesn't introduce himself. He's on a mission, and his identity is unimportant: what matters is the message. He's here to show us photographs he's taken of 111 First Street -- of the galleries, sculptures, and residue of the artists with whom he's worked, and the grand exterior of the building. Fausty speaks of his realization of "the temporary quality of our existence", and his voice breaks a little. His shots from the roof are desolate but hard, industrial, resolute; the interior explorations of studios blush with telling personal detail. A shot of a sculpture by Nancy Wells represents, for Fausty, the extreme jeopardy of the artist facing dislocation. Two blue, ink-stained footprints -- those of 111 First tenant Sandy DeSando -- fill the next frame, and Fausty explains how "Sandy walks barefoot, everywhere, over all kinds of surfaces".
Suddenly, I find myself immensely moved. I don't know these people: Fausty, Wells, DeSando, they're just names to me. But the idea of this unknown woman, walking barefoot from gallery to gallery, friend to associate, around her loftspace and those of the other artists in her community, brings the predicament to life with an unspeakable urgency. I suddenly want Lloyd Goldman here in the room; I want him to respond to those footprints. I want him to explain how he could drive a woman who walks barefoot over all kinds of surfaces to take her next step over unfamiliar, hazardous terrain. Fausty's photographs burn with so much love, pride, and rage it seems impossible that one screen can contain them. I want Goldman to look at them square on: to be confronted with the creativity and wild imaginative energy of so many lives spent enriching Jersey City, offering perspectives, reclaiming detritus, voices raised against dehumanization and disposal. I want him to know what he's threatening to rubbish.
After the emotional exhaustion of viewing Fausty's work, I cannot imagine Hugh Harrison will be anything but a letdown. Yet the tall, soft-spoken British emigre offers another angle, explored in charcoal and colored pencil, on the same issues. Harrison draws human figures, but his subjects are invariably urban, ethnic, stylish, vaguely menacing. They confront the viewer with open questions, drawn faces, stares. His lines are curved, fractured, incomplete; Harrison frustrates both expectation and resolution, and imparts to his subjects a feeling of hunger, and in a few places, desperation. When Harrison moves to colored pencils, he does so with mad abandon -- his reds and oranges are absurdly vibrant and nearly assaultive. His images are as fascinating as they are troubling, beautiful as they are broken.
The lights come up; Rocio thanks us for attending. The audience breaks into groups of twos and threes, some saying goodbyes, some discussing tomorrow night's art opening at the Chamot Gallery on the fourth floor of 111 First Street. We'll be there. Yet as I walk up the steps and back out onto Montgomery Street, something strikes me. I am again moved at how relentlessly New Jersey artists want to represent their state, their city, and their urban culture. Yet at least three of tonight's artists -- in a roomful of friends and sympathizers, no less -- went out of their way to call themselves apolitical. "There's no hidden message in my work", said one; "I just see something I like, and take a picture", said another. While conversations before and after the slide shows focused on developocracy, the question and answer sessions entertained by the individual artists were entirely methological: what's your medium, what kind of canvas do you use, etc.
Guys, I may not have the background or knowledge to talk about visual art, but I damn well can talk about politics, and this was an immensely political event. Five skilled and passionate artistic voices representing the city and public culture in an environment of considerable external vexation? I got the point. Moreover, I don't think it's possible for any resident of Jersey City to have seen this presentation and miss the point. These are tremendously charged political images, as all images are; but our context only stokes the combustion chamber. You want to win hearts and minds for 111 First and other buildings like it? Show them this stuff -- show them your passion for the city -- and don't apologize for it.
February 11, 2004
This just in from Lex, Waterbug Hotel proprietor:
The Waterbug Hotel has now reached a new phase -- no longer as a particular space, but as a collective -- the time has now come for us to branch out and spread the love. Starting this thursday The Waterbug Hotel collective will be hosting its events at a gallery called Area 61 in the legendary 111 Building! We’ll continue to use our original space on Columbus, but for certain occasions. The new space is larger and street level -- so no more trudging up 4 flights. The new Bug space has its own separate entrance on the corner of Washington and Bay Street (the southeast corner of the building). Ok, so how do you get there?
Get off at Grove Street Path Station: Walk east on Columbus Drive (away from the old space and towards the river). Make left on Washington and walk to corner of Bay and Washington. Entrance is at the corner of Bay and Washington (seperate back entrance of the 111 Building) this is Area 61 Gallery. Look for Waterbug sign on door. You can also take a cab from the Grove St Path station if you wish -- about 2 bucks.
Moving to 111 First doesn't exactly remove the Bug from the municipal government's line of fire, but I'm pleased about this. There's no reason why there shouldn't be performances at 111. The spaces are big and comfortable, and there's a built-in community of neighbors who might be predisposed toward checking ourt a show. Any local aesthetes who haven't investigated 111 First Street will now have an additional reason to visit, and to discover exactly why this arts space is a resource that Jersey City cannot lose.
Nobody who copies text out of a press release ought to be reviewing or previewing music. When we sacrifice our own voices to profit, social status, or just plain laziness, we forfeit the trust of our readers. We're not doing journalism anymore, we're just transcribing.
Sometimes lousy journalists think they can get away with copying text from a band's press release because they figure nobody will know. But anybody who's been exposed to press release copy, even briefly, will be able to recognize the characteristically vapid rhetoric.
Case in point -- this week's lead feature in the Hudson Current. It's on a project that no serious rock journalist would expend a drop of ink covering, but that's not what I'm driving at. In paragraph nine (ostensibly the description of the project), the author writes:
"Media 51 was started in June of 2001 by Grammy award-winning record producer John Seymour (Santana, U2, Dave Matthews Band) and Rush. The idea was simple: create a full-service media company that could support the tri-state area's rich and diverse original music scene. Since the company's inception, it has operated as a licensed booking agency, booking shows for local artists at some of the region's premiere music venues. Last summer, Media 51 started TREEFORT Records...The album was met with rave reviews, so the label decided to continue on that path, and in October of 2003 they recorded another compilation titled JamPacked."
I smelled a rat. First of all, Media 51 has not "met with rave reviews". I read all the reviews around here; I'd know. Moreover, whenever you see a phrase as vague as "some of the region's premiere music venues", you know you're getting a bill of sale. Any bullshit detector is going to go haywire right then and there. The article was plainly written in a rush, with no regard for accuracy, critical acumen, or the community of readers the Current purports to serve. It reeked with the rancid stench of press release copy.
So I checked out the Media 51 website. Here's the "about" page:
"Media 51's roots began to grow during the summer of 2001. The company was the brainchild of Record Producer John Seymour, and Veteran Booking Agent Scott Rush, and several late night discussions at the end of a bar. The idea was simple; create a full service media company that would support the tri-state are's rich and diverse original music scene. Since the comnpany's inception, Media 51 has operated as a licensed booking agency, booking shows for local artists at some of the east coast's best original music venues. By the summer of 2003 Media 51 had started its own record label and released its first record aptly titled "Live & Loud Vol. 1".
Uh-uh. No way are you getting away with this, pal. There's a new sheriff in town. If you call yourself a music writer, that means I expect you to actually write. Your words and your ideas, not some garbage copied from a shoddily-written press release.
Every time our local arts paper runs another lazy, thoughtless article, another local artist leaves New Jersey. The idea is simple.
February 9, 2004
The Jersey Journal finally got around to writing a sympathetic -- but characteristically noncommittal -- piece on 111 First Street. The Journal article emphasizes the achievements of the endangered artists, which is nice too see in print, but really beside the point. 111 First Street shouldn't be saved because Ron English and Rikki Reich have had high-profile installations and therefore merit a handout. 111 First Street should be saved because it is and will remain a vital engine of growth and interest in Jersey City. Should we lose our recognized "arts town" status, the cost to our city's reputation will show up in everybody's bottom line -- including Lloyd Goldman's.
It's hard to walk away from the article feeling like Goldman's absurd renovation and construction plan is anything other than a smokescreen; he wants the artists out, and he is willing to float nonsensical pie-in-the-sky projects in order to justify his arm-twisting. It is up to the city and the local press to hold his ass to the fire. I'm not exactly sure what Mayor Cunningham can do, but whatever it is, he'd better do it: that list of requests doesn't seem like it would break the municipal bank, and the price of failure would be astronomical. To employ an analogy that many of you indie rockers can understand, imagine what would happen to Hoboken music if Maxwell's shut its doors. It would exist, sure, but it would take years for the avant-garde and the idiosyncratic to regroup from the loss. Hipster cache -- and all of the economic and aesthetic benefits that accrue to towns with that cache -- doesn't come from beer-swilling cover bands. It radiates from places where there's obvious artistic ferment.
111 First Street is the Maxwell's of the Jersey City visual arts community. Again, I'm pleased that the Journal trumpeted the achievements of the building's inhabitants. But by emphasizing the merit of individual artists, they come dangerously close to arguing that the building should be saved because its inhabitants conform to professional expectations. Look, the residents of 111 First Street don't have to apologize to anybody. Jersey City owes its buzz, its cache -- and a fair amount of its property values -- to their efforts. This isn't about individual prestige, it's about collective force. If Goldman wants to call the inhabitants "esoteric", and pretend that his tenants' work hasn't made him money, he's the one who is behaving like an idiot and an ingrate. I don't expect a family paper like the Jersey Journal to take that line, but there's really no alternate interpretation.
February 8, 2004
Stephen Mejias has written a beautiful article about our recent night at Uncle Joe's. He was the promoter, and responsible for the evening, so it's appropriate that his account be the emotional, moving one. I have nothing really to add, except:
1. I wasn't nervous when the sound went out -- I was actually relieved. It gave me an opportunity to restart the song and show, and everybody likes to share in a screw-up together, as long as we can all transcend it en masse.
2. I completely concur about Tomorrow's Friend, one of the most interesting groups I've seen in a long time. Drum-n'-guitar duos usually sound rudimentary. Not this one. The drummer's approach to her instrument was deliberate and thoughtful, and she reminded us all of why a drumkit is comprised of several different pieces. She played each with full cognizance of its tone and relationship to its neighbors. It was like watching a baby play one of those crib games where pressing each colored lever triggers a different discrete result. So she missed a few fills, so what? I like to see intelligence in action. The songs were idiosyncratic and smart, too, and the voices were instantly intriguing. These guys are playing at Tonic with the Secret Machines in a few weeks. Check them out.
February 8, 2004
why I don't like blogs.
When I first encountered text on the Internet, I was immediately attracted to the chaos of its presentation. Frustrated by the visual conformity of books, I experienced the freeform text explorations in cyberspace as something of a liberation. I also loved the sites that seemed to be nothing but text -- gigantic blocks of prose flung at readers through their monitors. As someone who genuinely believes not that a picture is worth a thousand words, but rather that the best picture is a thousand words, sites with mad scrables of prose, screeds, random links, dead ends, strange textual detours felt like a discursive funhouse.
But it is perhaps in the nature of writers to systematize, and the blog format has begun to make the Internet feel samey. Industry standards do help people act in concert, and that's important, but I'm beginning to feel that the wild-west days of discourse on the Internet are drawing to a close. Here on the Tris McCall Report, I do my best to create a fragmentary, hallucinatory (and even, when warrented, frustrating) experience with words. But one by one, writers whom I formerly counted on to bewilder and confuse me -- and to create those moments of insight that only happen when bewildered and confused -- are slipping into the harmonized blog format.
So why, then, am I doing this blog? In a way, it's an offer I can't refuse. New Jersey Online is the state's most-visited website, and I can't resist a podium like that for my ranting and raving. Moreover, I acknowledge that this site has become a bit too confusing: what with articles on Jersey City politics and planning juxtaposed with record reviews and occasional diaryland reveries of walkabout experiences in my neighborhood. TMR will continue to be all that and more. But for those of you who'd like to have more straightforward access to my writing and reflections, here's your source.
For my NJO blog, I'm confining myself to prose about Jersey indie rock. If you make it, I may write about you. If you write about it, chances are, I'll reply in this space. If you see me at a Jersey show, check here the next day for my reaction. I will continue to write diaristically about my own experiences playing my weird songs and sounds to bewildered audiences around the state -- but that's secondary. My primary interest is to communicate the size, power and scope of the New Jersey indie rock community, and to make it clear to you why it's worth grappling with. Okay, let's go.
Here's the Jersey City Journal for January.
Jersey City Journal for December.
Jersey City Journal for November.