One Weehawken resident is trading a behind-the-scenes job for the life of an up-and-coming artist.
Lisa Mareiniss-Rutledge, whose family moved to Weehawken back in 1938, has worked as an assistant set decorator for TV and film projects for over 15 years. She has worked on season two of the hit CW series “Gossip Girl,” and is currently working on an upcoming HBO film.
“When you’re working in New York City, you go from job to job,” Rutledge said, “working on different projects. The only thing that changes is the script.”
Although Rutledge has worked on some popular projects, the artist said she is first and foremost a painter. “That’s why I got so involved in film in the first place,” Rutledge said. “I was funding my art habit.”
“I was funding my art habit.” – Lisa Mareiniss-Rutledge
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When asked how the show has been received, Rutledge said, “They haven’t asked me to take it off the walls yet.”
The long-term show is scheduled to remain up indefinitely. “I have heard really positive stuff from other galleries,” she said, “so I’m really looking forward to showing more works.”
The artist said that “Running in Circles” is the first painting in a series of works with the same name. “As my artwork changed over the years, it always felt like I was running in circles,” she said. “So I decided it’s all a step in the saga.” The works on show at the Trump SoHo are Rutledge’s works span 1994 to 1997.
“It’s all about color movement, and texture,” Rutledge said. “It’s all about understanding the paint as the medium, as a communication tool very much like building a vocabulary.”
The Weehawken connection
For Rutledge, art is all in the family. Her grandmother, Rose Mareiniss from Maplewood, N.J., was a famous painter, printmaker, and sculptor who studied at the Arts Students League in the 1970s.
But her mother’s side of the family has been in Weehawken since the 1940s. Moving from Vienna during the Holocaust, the family promised to reconnect after their voyage to America.
“Before they left Vienna, they pointed out Weehawken on a map of New York City and decided to get together there a year later,” Rutledge said. “After that, Weehawken is very much a part of what my family history is all about.”
The family house was the office of the late Dr. Jon Schwartz, a beloved doctor in township who was also Rutledge’s grandfather. He passed away last year.
“My paintings are on display throughout the hallways of his office,” Rutledge said. “They’re so big; I probably wouldn’t be able to fit them anywhere else.”
Although the paintings aren’t on public display, her works have been seen by hundreds of Weehawken residents on their way through the office. In addition to Weehawken, Rutledge has shown works in the Hudson County area as well. Eight of her large-scale pieces were on display at Gulls Cove in Jersey City.
The artist has been living “on-and-off” in the township since childhood, moving away while earning a bachelor’s degree in fine art at Bard College. “I’m really grateful my mother has an upstairs apartment,” she said.
Although the resident splits her time between her parents’ house in Weehawken and her art studio in Hoboken, she said that Weehawken has a special place in her heart.
“It’s very convenient when working in the city, and it’s a great escape when you want to get out,” she said.
For more information on Rutledge, please e-mail the artist at lisarutledge1@mac.com.
Sean Allocca can be reached at editorial@hudsonreporter.com