“How much are those Avalon Cove things going for?”
It was a question posed last weekend by a Brooklyn woman to Maryann Kelleher. Kelleher, the city’s Assistant Director of Recreation and Cultural Affairs for the city, was driving near the Exchange Place area and saw the woman and her friend, who had been deposited outside the Exchange Place PATH station. So she picked the women up and whisked them over to 111 First St., the epicenter of the Jersey City Art Tour.
The visitors were left impressed, said Kelleher, the point person for this year’s art tour, and are going to be looking for a place to live in the city.
You couldn’t have asked for a better weekend to showcase the city’s first “Homecoming” and 10th annual Art Tour.
Kelleher estimated last week that some 6,000 people flocked to the orgy of activities across the city each day. “It is a bit of a renaissance,” said Kelleher.
Last Saturday and Sunday, thousands of visitors toured local artists’ studios and also participated in a variety of “Homecoming” activities all over the city. The art tour was co-sponsored by the Jersey City Reporter.
Kelleher had a lot of help. Charles Chamot, who keeps a gallery at 111 First St., drummed up artists around the city who otherwise might not have normally participated. The First Street space offered more art than could reasonably be consumed in one day.
And that was only part of it. Galleries throughout the city flung wide their doors, as the Barrow Mansion on Wayne Street, artists in Lafayette and McGinley Square, and St. Lucy’s all the way on 15th Street held art showcases. Marionettes, motorized insect Lego robots, a Tim Burton-esque mechanized bike rider, photographs, paintings and a man in surgeon’s scrubs cutting, frying and pinning plantains to a wall were all part of a remarkable weekend.
The Homecoming, a brainchild of Mayor Bret Schundler, included history tours, band shows, receptions and festivals.
Jersey City historian Bob Leach took busloads of people to the city’s many historic sites. The tour proved so popular, in fact, that he had to turn some folks away.
The city also produced and distributed “Jersey City Landmarks,” a 31-page booklet of city buildings, including The William J. Brennan Courthouse on Newark Avenue, the 300-year-old Newkirk House at 510 Summit Ave. and, interestingly, the Holland Tunnel. The trans-Hudson engineering marvel is, in fact, a landmark on the National Register of Historic Places. It may make you think twice before cursing the traffic into and out of New York.
The weekend ended with a developer and artist networking party, designed to get Jersey City companies interested in locally-produced art.
In a post-tour ceremony on Tuesday, Jersey City “visionary artist” Ron English was presented the key to the city by Schundler. The artist is known for his provocative billboard postings and Disney skewering.