BY GLORIASTRAVELLI
Staff Writer
CHRIS KELLY staff The Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts opened last week in a factory building and includes gallery space for exhibits, artists’ studios, a video room, metal and wood shops, and a coffee house/performance space. It may be a modest studio, but to Danielle Acerra it offers community and the energy of a vibrant contemporary arts scene in her own back yard.
"It’s being in a community, not being alone in your house," explained Acerra, a painter and muralist. "Right now my easel’s in my bedroom.
"It’s knowing that I’m not alone in this community and in this area. And it’s here — not New York, not Philadelphia — this contemporary arts scene is alive here."
Here, for Acerra and other artists and the community at large, is a refurbished factory building in downtown Long Branch that opened last weekend as the Shore Institute of the Contemporary Arts.
The new arts center has a mission unique to central New Jersey: to make important contemporary art accessible to the general public and to foster awareness and appreciation of the contemporary arts.
Accomplishing that goal will involve more than exhibitions; SICA will partner with arts organizations and educational institutions to offer classes, lectures, internships and performances.
Doug Ferrari, a sculptor whose vision for a contemporary arts center drove the four-year effort to make SICA a reality, is clear about the focus of the facility.
"There’s no place else dedicated to the contemporary arts in central New Jersey," explained Ferrari, SICA’s executive director. "I thought artists and people in the community would appreciate a center whose emphasis is contemporary art that will bring in other artists to stimulate them and to educate them."
SICA’s extensive gallery will focus on the exhibition of contemporary visual arts by artists who produce new and significant works of art and are known for their innovative work and ideas, he said.
Ferrari, who lives in West Long Branch, and the board of the nonprofit raised close to $900,000 for the facility and need another $100,000 to put the finishing touches on, he said.
In addition to gallery and studio space, the circa 1900 building at 20 Third Ave. has been retrofitted to include a café, a video viewing room, offices, a sculpture studio, a metal shop and a wood shop.
The second floor houses a studio for painting and drawing classes and 18 studios (14 are already taken) ranging from 150-700 square feet, which are available for rent by visual artists at reasonable monthly rates.
A painter and muralist, Acerra pays $150 per month for her sunlit, 10-by-10-foot studio, the smallest of the studio spaces carved out of the vintage factory building.
"For me, it was why I moved back here after school," explained Acerra, a Lincroft resident. "I was worried about not having a cultural center. I was so excited that I could be in this community with other artists. It’s hard to create without the energy of people in your community. It’s knowing there are people right across from me, down the hall, doing their own work."
Painter and print maker Jude O’Connor had a studio in Asbury Park for two years but still lacked a community to work in.
"It really hit me that I was working in a vacuum," said O’Connor, who heard about SICA from another artist.
"It sounded exciting to be in the midst of a facility like this with other artists and exhibitions, openings, a sculpture studio. It’s a support network, too," said the Edison resident, who rented a 20-by-20-foot studio that has a large, tall window that allows the studio to be bathed in natural light.
"I’ve already met the artist across the hall," he said. "I’m very excited about it.
"Do you need anybody else? You don’t and you do. I have the option of locking the door and blocking the world out, and when I want it, it’s there."
SICA’s inaugural exhibit, which will run through July 25, features works by Karen Giusti, Doug and Mike Starn, Gary Kuehn, Erzsebet Baerveldt, D. Dominick Lombardi, Una Henry, Mimi Weinberg, Patricia Cronin, Michael Joo and Rudy Serra.
Gallery hours are Wednesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. Café hours are the same except on Friday and Saturday when the café will be open until 10 p.m.
For more information about SICA and membership in the contemporary arts center, visit www.sica.org.