SUBMISSION OF ART WORK/ CONSIDERATION FOR UPCOMING EXHIBITS:
The Gallery at the Arts Guild New Jersey accepts and reviews work throughout the year as we search for artists for upcoming exhibits.

If you would like your artwork to be considered for exhibition PLEASE SUBMIT a CD with 10 to 20 Images (JPEG format saved at 300dpi and image size no larger than 8” X 10”.) Include a Current RESUME/BIO and a brief statement about your work. Works in ALL MEDIUMS ARE CONSIDERED. WORK in MANY mediums are included in each exhibit.

Almost all of our exhibits showcase emerging artists and focus often on the works of New Jersey artists in particular.

Almost all exhibits are GROUP SHOWS.

We Do Not exhibit pre-existing groups. We might be interested in seeing work from members of a group, but these would be accepted only on an individual basis for specific exhibits being planned at the time of submission of your artwork.

Please DO NOT send a wide variety of different kind of work. The more work in one medium that you submit, the better we will be able to determine the overall quality of your work and the visual ideas that concern you.

Send your CD and other information to: The Arts Guild New Jersey 1670 Irving Street Rahway NJ 07065. PLEASE INCLUDE a Self addressed Stamped envelope with sufficient postage for return of your CD if you would like it returned.

Our Executive director serves as curator for several of our exhibits each year. Exhibits are planned by: MEDIUM or STYLE or GENRE OR by a THEME/IDEA.

We are almost always in search of art for shows that are tentatively planned for each upcoming year.

The THEMES for which we are currently Seeking New Work ARE:
1. MONEY/CURRENCY----any work in which you use imagery from coins, currency, credit cards or other items used for payment: beads, shells, gold, jewels etc.

2. SELF PORTRAITs----Any work from the present or past of your life that was created as a self portrait

3. TEXT/IMAGE----Works in any medium which incorporate letters/words or text with images.

4. WOMEN’S PERCEPTIONS ABOUT THE PERCEPTION OF WOMEN’S IMAGES----Any work by female artists that typifies a response to the way women are portrayed or perceived in our current society/times.

5. OPPORTUNITIES FOR ARTISTS WITH DISABILITIES----Any works that have been created by artists with a physical handicap.

OPPORTUNITIES TO CURATE EXHIBITS:
We invite several guests each year to curate exhibits for the Arts Guild Gallery. If you have a history of organizing exhibits for non-profit or museum spaces and have an idea/proposal for an exhibit which you would like to curate for us please send an abstract/proposal concept with names of any artists whom you expect to show and a CD of selected images. Address for Submitting Exhibit Proposal: The Arts Guild New Jersey 1670 Irving Street Rahway NJ 07065. You can also email us at artsguild1670@verizon.net or call (732) 381-7511.

12th Season Art Exhibits

“The idea behind this exhibit is influenced by an appreciation for Charles Darwin, Kiki Smith, Noam Chomsky, Andy Goldsworthy, Robert Smithson, e.e. cummings and others.

|tek'tänik| will attempt to explore the relationship between our physical environments and our emotional/psychological environments. Where we are physically has a great deal of impact on how we feel and identify on many levels, short term and long term. This exhibit will deal with issues of environmental health and relates those issues to health of community and spirit.

Questions asked will include: How do we create and recreate ourselves around our spaces? Does the shape of our internal lives reflect the literal shape of the structures that surround us? What impact has the wealth of technological advancement made on our thought/emotion processing?

Often we are unable to analyze an event or experience until we occupy a changed space giving us distance not only linearly but physically from the event we try to understand. As our environment changes so do we. We adapt to changes large and small.”

From 1999 to 2007, The Arts Guild New Jersey presented “Celebrity Excellence”, the Merck Juried Union County Art Exhibit. This year we present NEXUS – the Merck 2009 Invitational Exhibit for Union County Artists which includes 15 artists who are either new to us or have only had minimal representation at the Guild during our eleven years of visual arts presentations.

NEXUS: 1. a means of connection: a link or tie. 2. a connected series or group. 3. the core or center.

Neither Union County or Rahway are particularly notable for having a large active population of notable visual artists in the sense that we recognize this in Essex County with many artists in Newark and Montclair and the South Orange / Maplewood area or Hudson County with a sizable community of noted artists in Jersey City and the surrounding area.

Yet, as we have found at Arts Guild New Jersey, there are many, many extremely gifted visual artist in Union County and this invitational exhibit presents a sampling of the variety and excellent quality of the work of some of these artists.

While our current season of art exhibits will include artists from many states and other countries, it is part of our mission at The Arts Guild New Jersey to give a great deal of our focus to the enormous range of talent available from the artists of our home state. Toward this end, we have recently renamed The Arts Guild New Jersey as Arts Guild New Jersey to express our very broad following from much of our home state, our roll as a regional resource for the visual arts and art education and the work we undertake to help provide a unified identity for New Jersey artists and the gifted community they represent.

In NEXUS, we present a group from the 60,000 artists of New Jersey who live or work in our more local area.

These days, in one of the most dire economic climates of our lifetimes, one thing on the minds of many people is money – we all have some, many want more, we use it everyday. Probably by the time most of us were three years old we saw, handled and/or spent money. In the United States, one of the richest countries on earth, it is often a topic of discussion and the focus of thousands in their careers – Wall Street, the corporate structure, the major banks, mortgage companies and lenders.

Since just about everyone on the planet has a knowledge of and experience with money, we began to wonder just what artists might have to say on this subject.

Moolah brings together artists who have created original artworks on the subject by either creating images based on currency or coin of this and other countries, or by altering or manipulating actual paper currency or coins or including images of actual currency in their work. To broaden our approach we also include work about barter, trade, sales and other transactions or processes which involve our subject.

One aspect of the art of portraiture is an area with a different intent – the Self Portrait. Many artists since the Renaissance have created images of themselves but as apposed to being a show of status or wealth, the self portrait has most often been a creation designed for introspection, showing the artist at different periods of their lives as they faced both personal triumphs and tragedies. Many of these are notable for their self-commentary. Michelangelo, for instance, showed his likeness on a flayed skin being beaten on the rocks by a demon in his famous “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel. Rembrandt Van Rijn created over 50 self portraits during his career showing himself as a homely young man, a successful artist, a senile, foolish older man and as a triumphant survivor of his life’s challenges. In the modern age both Picasso and Matisse created self portraits reflecting their robust personalities and showcasing the unique styles which they pioneered.

SELF IMAGE presents the many faces, roles and personas of fourteen artists as they record their image at different periods in their lives. Jennifer Watson shows herself with a plastic Barbie doll body in “Cyborg Self Portrait”. Jane Zweibel takes on other women’s roles in “Self Portrait with Bride of Frankenstein Hair” and “Self Portrait Reclining (Daryl Hannah in ‘Splash’)”. Dasha Shkurpela creates a self portrait as a hovering head reduced to almost diagrammatic essential features. Diana Kurz shows herself at several ages over thirty years of her life.

The images in Self Image are as much a record of the artist as they are their sense of self, self-evaluation as artists, as human beings and in the many roles they live or adopt in their lives.

Art-making is known for its therapeutic value and many artists have used their talent to respond to issues or circumstances in their lives. The talented artists in ENABLED are a testament to the human spirit’s ability to find wholeness through the creative process, as they continue working as builders and creators. Lawrence Cappiello, curator and executive director of Arts Guild New Jersey, says, “In ENABLED, we celebrate the courage, perseverance and gifts that these talented artists have brought to us.”

Today, however, the world is experiencing a new, electronic revolution that is slowly diminishing our connection to paper. Few people write letters these days, preferring email and texting. No one cares about the color and texture of stationery. Novels are downloaded onto reading and audio devices. The newspaper industry is dying.

But for most visual artists, paper still retains the same importance it always had. Artists produce their art to be seen on a gallery wall, hung from a ceiling or displayed in a home. It is meant to be seen in “real life.” Works of art lose much of their immediacy, resonance and intimacy when viewed on a computer screen. Along with canvas, paper is a mainstay to the visual artist.

As a collage artist, I think a lot about paper. I have always been attracted to paper and to art that is made from paper. I therefore decided to curate an exhibit dedicated to paper. I selected artists who use paper in interesting and innovative ways, artists for whom paper is more than a surface on which their art is carried. The artists in this show include paper-cutters, collagists, sculptors and book-makers. Their art is original, exciting, and contemporary, but it also shows a special affinity to, and relationship with, paper that warms my heart.”

Throughout the history of art “woman” has been an ever present subject. She has been represented as “Earth Mother”, “Fertility Symbol”, “Goddess”, “Queen”, “Sex Symbol” or “Sex Object”, “Mother”, “Daughter”, “Wife”, “Lover”, and “Slave”. In the era of modern art such giants as Picasso and DeKooning represented women in brutally violent images and, of course, in the age of images, pictures of women abound in the commercial world to promote products promising beauty or sex.

Baby Doll brings together fourteen women who feature the image of women in their work in a wide variety of roles, representing many of the ideas and ideals associated with “WOMAN” in this era of post-feminist doctrine. Have the roles changed? Has the perception of women been significantly altered in our time? This exhibit investigates these questions through the work of women reflecting on their lot and the ageless mystery of womanhood.