Works by textile artist Lisa Lackey are on display through Sunday at the Monmouth Museum’s Nilson Gallery.
Vacation time is somehow never downtime for Red Bank-area artists and the spaces whose walls they festoon, and the mid-August interlude remains a busy one for visual creatives, with a number of exhibits opening or ongoing at venues around the Greater Green (even one that’s technically closed for the season).
While the Red Bank-based Art Alliance is currently preparing for the September start of a new exhibition schedule, the collective’s Monmouth Street headquarters provides the setting for an opening reception this Saturday evening of “vibrant pieces, in realistic styles, that make you think;” mounted under the title Art x 2.
Elaine Shor, a licensed professional counselor and board certified art therapist with a practice in Colts Neck, contributes a “Hidden Influence” series of oil paintings, each with strong contrast between the subject (women, dressed femininely) and the background (“machines or metal… in other words, in traditional male environments”).
Joining Shor will be Gary Paul, who displays two styles of painting — one possessed with the clarity of a photograph (but with “twists” designed to give the viewer something to think on), and the other using smaller abstract shapes to create large photo-realistic images. The exhibit opens with a public-welcome reception from 6 to 9 p.m., and continues through September 3 during special gallery hours (Friday 5-9 p.m.; Saturday 4-9 p.m.; Sunday 2-6 p.m.).
Over at Detour Gallery on Clay Street, a solo exhibit of vividly colorful, hip-hop inspired paintings by Ron Haywood Jones continues through this Saturday, with the former textile designer’s work on view during regular gallery hours (Thursday-Friday 1 to 8 p.m.; Saturday noon to 8 p.m.; Sunday noon to 6 p.m.), after which a solo show by Tobias Batz commences with a reception on August 19.
The coming days also represent a final chance to catch up with Now and Then, a four-woman group show displayed on the lobby walls and walkways of the Oyster Point Hotel. Curated by Gerda Liebmann. The exhibit reunites (for the eighth consecutive year) a quartet of abstract painters with a Monmouth County connection: Edy Ottesen, Annette Margulies, Tyrrell Masse and Leona Tenebruso-Shultes.
Shrewsbury’s Guild of Creative Art, the collective of which Margulies is a member artist, continues hosting an Exhibiting Members All-Media Show that runs through August 30 during regular gallery hours (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.; Thursday 8 a.m. – 6 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.).
At the Monmouth Museum on the Lincroft campus of Brookdale Community College, the New Jersey Emerging Artists series continues with a solo show spotlighting the “textile paintings” of Lisa Lackey. Recently relocated to the Garden State, the artist employs centuries-old textile crafting and embroidering techniques to present modern “organic moments in time” that range from frieze-frame captures of life among the urban millions, to quiet interludes of privacy away from the crowds.
The exhibit in the museum’s Nilson Gallery ends this Sunday (check website for hours and admission info), and the Emerging Artists schedule resumes on August 18 with a show of “alternative reality” Fairy Tales photographs by Jada Fabrizio — about which there’s more to come here on redbankgreen.