Scott Cranmer, Artists and Muses @ Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Ar
The Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art on the banks of the Cooper River is a haven for art enthusiasts who crave modern art, new artists, and contemporary techniques with challenging content in an intimate, welcoming environment. Under the art direction of curator Bruce Garrity, the old stone house is an art space with a maximizing mobile wall, glowing reflected light from the river and three rooms of gallery space. Hopkins House Gallery has continually exhibited cutting edge art by New Jersey regional artists since the 1970’s! In fact, the Hopkins House Gallery is where I was accepted in my first juried art show. As a young artist, being included in an art show and attending a swanky wine and cheese reception helped to change my life and continue to pursue art.
The Camden County Cultural & Heritage Commission utilizes the gallery for true community outreach, an outpost for the arts in southern New Jersey. Marketing Director, Sue Shorter said,” We usually have over one hundred programs throughout the year that feature local artists and sometime we get people from outside the area. Everyone from poetry to artists to children’s programs, jazz concerts and many outreach programs – fundraising workshops and a recent workshop on disability sensitivity. For the most part, most of our programs are free. It’s a fantastic way to reach out to our Camden County and local citizens, as well as Philadelphia and the wider community, through the arts.” I asked her about the biggest challenges the gallery is confronted with? “Probably, the biggest challenge, which is everywhere, is funding. Funding has been cut in many areas. As the marketing person, I can’t spend on promotions the way I did years ago but we found ways of being able to cut the budget and still reach the audience. Even some of our programs have seen an audience increase of participants, for example, children’s programs. We’re using the internet a lot, instead of sending out notices through the mail, we’re doing the e-mail blogs, that’s probably the biggest hurdle but we’ve been doing very well with that, our numbers are either the same or better. One of the things, as a marketing person, that I do is on all the sign-up sheets one of the questions is, “How did you hear about the program?” So that way we know are they going to the library? Are they picking up a flyer, which costs virtually nothing? Or seeing it on Channel 19, which posts community events on TV, or the newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer, Courier Post, Gloucester County Times, the Haddonfield local paper…”
Executive Director Sandra Turner-Barnes explained that the gallery is just part of the arts programs they provide. “Hopkins House is the headquarters of the Camden County Cultural Commission, it’s where we live and work. The Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art is important but other programs funding grass roots organizations in the community like The Settlement School, Chimes Musical Voices, Haddonfield Plays and Players, South Camden Theater, there are so many.” Camden County has long been a center for the creative arts, in 1897 the poet Jessie Redmon Faucet came from the area and went on to become editor of the NAACP Crisis Magazine. She was one of the first to publish Langston Hughs and Contee Cullen. This rich creative history inspired a writing competition that annually draws young writers from the South Jersey region to submit their poems. Turner-Barnes says, “I’m amazed at the talent.” An accomplished poet, the author of “But Mostly Love” who will be reading at the 9/11 Memorial at the Village Vanguard this year, says nationally renowned poets come to read their work at Hopkins House.
“The Arts for Teens programs offer high school kids the opportunity to participate in a wide range of arts at the Rutgers Camden campus for a whole day. Instructions on how to sing, dance, critique, professional crafts like how to build a stage, you name it. This year we even had hip-hop and rock guitar workshops. We have Jazz in the Park.” The disability sensitivity workshop is a good example of the connection the gallery has with the community, the organization even arranges live musical performances for people who are shut in with disabilities and cannot attend the theater.
Marketing Director Sue Shorter says of the galleries curator, “Bruce Garrity has been a blessing here, all the work that he has done, everything from painting the walls to hosting the art exhibition. I also did some coordinating programs and it’s true that it takes months in advance for the planning. The end result is that new artists, that doubted themselves but staff encourages them, and they put their artwork in one of our contest, we don’t like to call them contests, but then they win. It could be a twenty year old, it could be a seventy-five year old and they’re just like, ecstatic, that they were recognized, that’s happened several times in this past year. To me, that’s the ultimate reward.”
Executive Director Sandra Turner-Barnes says, “Bruce is the greatest guy I know. He’s so dedicated he takes care of this place like it’s his home. But as a curator I can’t say enough about how much he’s appreciated. He has been here six years, but the young man with a vision has surpassed what I could imagine. I trust him to do anything. His own artwork is phenomenal; I was in the library at Rutgers and his painting was instantly recognizable. I don’t know where he finds the time; he’s a great visionary of today, tomorrow and days to come. Our art is our humanity; it doesn’t take much to encourage a young child or an adult. Everyone has a gift; those of us who find it are lucky. Art allows you to live another day and share your gift with the next person. It’s a gift from God.”
Scott Cranmer, Artists and Muses @ Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art
The current exhibition at Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art is a group show called 3 Rooms / 3 Views showcasing mixed media painting by Scott Cranmer, mixed media sculpture by Erin Rose-Boyle and photographs by me, DoN Brewer. I contacted the other artists in the 3 Room / 3 Views show to learn more about their work. Scott Cranmer’s insightful portraits of artists painted on layers of torn fabric and sensual figure studies mixed with lace fill the first floor, his collection is titled “Artists and Muses”. Cranmer said of his art, “I was painting portraits of friends and family. I started digging through my mom’s old photos of deceased family members and began painting them. I needed a way to express mortality. I had just lost both my parents. I wanted to be like Frankenstein bringing back the dead. My girlfriend at the time was a fabric artist and then it dawned on me to use torn fabric, which would allude to skin. I began tearing up old t-shirts at first. All my posted artists faces and self-portraits were made with torn women’s underwear (I ran out of old t shirts and I started using my girlfriend’s panties and I just ran with it). As for the jump from dead ancestors to dead artists, I ran out of dead relatives and got really excited about portraying my struggle with mortality through my dead heroes. I begin by gluing the torn fabric on a blank canvas. Then I paint an under painting, add the skin tone, just like a regular portrait. The magic happens after I glaze over the canvas in between the fabric pieces with a blue grey. This creates the contrast and makes the fabric pop off the face. With the ‘muses’ series I went from torn fabric to cut lace tablecloths. I wanted to paint females and express a different side. They were fun for me. I wanted to create a voyeuristic affect by placing the lace on top of the painting so there is a layer between the viewer and the painting. I also experimented with spray painting patterns from the lace in the background and even onto the figure. There is still an element of death in that the figures are left grey and the red black and grey palette. But I wanted them to be sexy too. I am not showing anywhere else at the moment but am hoping to soon. I’ve been in a few group shows in Fishtown but this is the first time I was able to show a whole series (in this case two series).”
Erin Rose-Boyle, This is Not My Home @ Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art
Erin Rose-Boyle’s group of mixed media sculpture is called “This is Not My Home”. Her surreal sculptures mash-up anatomy, geometry, architecture and industrial shapes into a metaphor of family and home with really simple materials like foam, paper and tape. Do you always work with a limited palette of materials? “No, I work with what I have at the time and things I can reuse and recycle. I do not have a website and do a bad job of advertising myself as an artist. I adjunct all over and know a wide group of people that I stay in touch with on Facebook. I post images there rather on a website.” Erin Rose-Boyle, a wildly talented sculptor, is an excellent example of an emerging contemporary artist benefiting from the Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art exhibits and the exposure, publicity and recognition it provides.
Erin Rose-Boyle, This is Not My Home @ Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art
DoN Brewer, Abstract Landscape Photographs @ Hopkins House Gallery
Bruce Garrity contacted me through Facebook; a short instant message, “Can you do a show?” Yes, of course, I typed back. “What do you want to call it?” “Abstract Landscape Photographs”, I said. I was able to select from several series of photographs I’ve produced for art shows with The Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Da Vinci Art Alliance, Photographic Society of Philadelphia and others galleries and curate what feels to me like a greatest hits show, an art retrospective. I have that great feeling of accomplishment that Sue Shorter and Sandra Turner-Barnes spoke about. I still have the watercolor I entered in that art show back in the seventies, now I have a full room of photographs on display in an upper gallery at the Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art. And there’s a big banner hanging on the front of the building with my name on it! The young artist who submitted a single watercolor decades ago to the urbane gallery in the park, has an entire gallery of artwork on display; years of seeing and capturing the strange, the surreal and spiritual images with my camera is now on view for the next person to see.
DoN Brewer, Abstract Landscape Photographs @ Hopkins House Gallery
Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art
3 Rooms / 3 Views @ Hopkins House Gallery of Contemporary Art
The Artists Reception for 3 Rooms / 3 Views is September 10th, 2011, 2 – 4:00PM.
DoN Brewer, Contributing Writer, SideArts
Photographs by DoN Brewer.
