Picturing New Jersey

In ‘Garden State Project’ at Artworks, artists create a new vision of the state.

By: Jillian Kalonick

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A piece from "Postcards from the Garden State"


   If you graduated from a central New Jersey high school in the last five years, that all-important, postage- stamp-sized yearbook photo you posed for might be part of a collaborative artwork based on your home state’s reputation.
   For "Stay Sweet, New Jersey 1999-2004," part of Garden State Project at Artworks Gallery in Trenton through May 29, Mercer County Community College art students collected more than 30 yearbooks from local high schools, photocopied the students’ portraits, and put more than 4,500 of them on display.

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Part of "Stay Sweet New Jersey 1999-2004," which includes more than 4,500 photographs from area yearbooks


   "We tried to keep it a recent timeline of people who have graduated," says Mark Stockton, a fine arts faculty member at MCCC. "This moment they’re at, everybody goes through — the end of youth and beginning of supposed adulthood. The moment you’re supposed to get your picture taken is everything that is up to that point, and it’s the image everyone’s going to remember you by — like 20 years from now at that high school reunion."
   The resulting project is a local timeline of sorts, a cross-section of Jersey youth transitioning into adults. The painstaking process of photocopying, cutting and pasting thousands of thumbnail photographs of faces also made students realize the impact of the portrait form.
   "The process of doing it made us aware of the stereotypes you apply to people by looking at their facial portrait — how you generalize who you think they are by what they look like," says Mr. Stockton. "The other things we’ve talked about is how it makes you feel small, a little bit, seeing so many people and same types of people, and how much alike different schools are, how easily the line blurs when they’re in this giant group. It makes you feel minimal.

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   "Some of our other projects are dealing more with what people think of New Jersey, whereas this is more something people are going to participate in," he continues. "When they realize the photos are from New Jersey high schools, they might try to find themselves among this list, in a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ sort of way."
   "Stay Sweet New Jersey 1999-2004" is one of four works in Garden State Project, which is a collaborative exhibition of multimedia, installation, performance, environmental art, video and digital media by art faculty at MCCC and about 20 of their students. Faculty member Yevgeniy Fiks envisioned the show, which was six months in the making, as an environment-specific exhibition. Along with faculty members Paula Swisher, Sean Dembrosky, Edgar Endress and Mr. Stockton, he met with students every other week to brainstorm ideas about the Garden State’s image.

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   "The projects address issues like class and race relations," says Mr. Fiks, who teaches digital media art. "It’s also about excitement. We wanted to do an exciting art show to show that art doesn’t have to be boring, or irrelevant."
   One project Mr. Fiks worked on, "Postcards from the Garden State," plays off the divide between beautiful New Jersey — that vacation-land of the shore, the Pine Barrens, the Delaware Water Gap — and the state’s extensive environmental problems.

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   "We found photographs of specific hazardous sites in New Jersey that were reported to the department of environmental protection," says Mr. Fiks. "(The students) are using those photographs and combining them with texts like ‘Greetings from New Jersey’ and ‘Welcome to the Garden State.’ They have a front and back side, and they look like real postcards. You could put a stamp on and send them — some students said after the exhibition we should mail them."
   More than 30 of the cards are suspended from the ceiling with fishing line, so viewers can literally walk though the artwork.
   "NJ Survey Collage" also plays off the state’s reputation. Students conducted a survey using message boards on the Web, asking people what the first thing to come to mind is when thinking of New Jersey.
   "Some would say ‘Nothing comes to mind,’ or ‘What is New Jersey?,’ because it was on international message boards," says Mr. Fiks. "You never knew from where they came. Some people gave more elaborate answers and listed a bunch of things — ‘gas stations,’ ‘suburbia’ or ‘When I think of New Jersey I picture Detroit.’"
   With the responses, the students found images to match each one. "The images are all numbered, one through 48," says Mr. Fiks. "We cross section the images to the responses, so it becomes more of an interactive thing — it makes it more conceptual.
   "We wanted to explore different stereotypes and deconstruct them," he continues. "It’s more of an investigation. In this collage project, we are accepting all the answers that people gave us and we are just visualizing them."
   Both Mr. Stockton and Mr. Fiks brought an "outsider" perspective to Garden State Project. Mr. Stockton lives in Manhattan, and Mr. Fiks, who is originally from Moscow, lives in Brooklyn. Mr. Stockton admits he thinks of New Jersey as "awkward space — the vacuums of both New York and Philadelphia."
   "I think the biggest thing about Jersey and about teaching in Mercer County is the spectrum you get is really wide," he says. "We’re trying to bridge some of these gaps, to reach students of different levels coming from different backgrounds."
   "For me New Jersey is the ‘other’ of New York, but I actually like that," says Mr. Fiks. "Every day I commute to New Jersey to teach, and it’s a great escape. I appreciate the art community in the Trenton area — people are passionate about art. I actually love Trenton, it has this feel of some parts of Brooklyn. It’s got an industrial vibe but it’s not overcrowded. You can breathe there more easily than in Brooklyn or Manhattan."
Garden State Project is on view at Artworks, 19 Everett Alley, Trenton, through May 29. Reception: May 13, 5-8 p.m. Gallery hours: Tues. 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Wed. 10 a.m.-2 p.m.,