Vance Valente at Quicksilver Handcrafted Jewelry on Saturday. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
This edition of redbankgreen‘s Retail Churn might be titled “keeping churn to a minimum.”
Because while we’re reporting the closure of a downtown shop – due to retirement, not the economy – the change comes with a significant real estate deal aimed at keeping small shops alive.
The paintings of Franki DeSaro are on display at Salon Concrete beginning Saturday evening.
The early days of June offer up a bumper crop of art happenings in and around Red Bank — simply scroll through recent posts on redbankgreen for the details on current installations at the Art Alliance, Detour Gallery, Middletown Library, the Guild, and Monmouth Museum for proof.
But one of the downtown area’s most forward-thinking hair salons is preparing to transform itself into an artist’s “salon” of an altogether more luminous sort.
Press release from Hometown Heroes
All around us there are people in need: hungry kids, homeless veterans, teen moms, ailing seniors, and so many more. In every community, our friends and neighbors are experiencing enormous challenges in their lives and can use a helping hand. Eager to help make a difference, “Hair for Heroes” is a nationwide fundraising event created by Christine Zilinski of Salon Concrete in partnership with Hometown Heroes, an organization that provides financial support, professional assistance and advocacy to any individual or family who suddenly finds themselves in a crisis.
On Monday, November 10, 2014 Salon Concrete will host a “Hair for Heroes” day in the salon, offering haircuts for a $50 donation to support Hometown Heroes and those who are struggling in the community. Salon guests will receive top quality haircuts, and will feel good about supporting a cause that directly impacts their own local community.
Portraits of iconic women of the 1950s and 60s by Michelle Weadock are on display at Salon Concrete, beginning with a Saturday night fundraiser reception at the Broad Street business.
The seasonal return of one of Red Bank’s longest established galleries — and the latest from one of the borough’s most unusual exhibition spaces — are on the agenda for Saturday evening, as summer’s-end etiquette dictates that it’s NOT okay for walls to dress in plain white after Labor Day.
“In With the New” is the theme for September, as the Art Alliance of Monmouth County opens its 2014-2015 Exhibition Season with a non-juried show of recent works by member artists. Running through September 30 in the gallery at 33 Monmouth Street, the installation previews with a public-invited reception on Saturday, September 6. All ages are welcome; refreshments will be served and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear some live jazz music played on the ocarina (by Lars Tollefson of Matawan) will be offered between the hours of 6 to 8 pm. The work of Toms River-based artists Robert and Barbara Edelhauser will be featured in the gallery windows throughout the month — and the gallery invites all art lovers to stop in Tuesdays through Saturdays, 12 to 4 pm, to look at the new art, take a break during your day in Red Bank, pick up a class and studio schedule, or learn more about membership in the Alliance that recently marked its 35th anniversary.
A selfie by Bob McKay is among the works on display in the group show FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE opening Friday at Gallery 135 in Red Bank.
Leave it to Gerda Liebmann – the Swiss-born, internationally exhibited multimedia artist (and redbankgreen Clippings correspondent) – to discern the beauty in so tawdry a device as the cellphone selfie.
Liebmann, who established Gallery 135 in the second-floor space shared by Red Bank Community Church, has employed this maybe-misunderstood signifier of 21st century life – and its cousin in succinct cinema, the Vine – as the basis for her new group show, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. Opening with a reception at 7 pm on Friday, the multimedia installation “will give viewers the opportunity to reconnect with the special intimacy and self-revelation that self-portraits uniquely offer,” she says.
The “surfboard gyotaku” prints of Scott Szegeski will be on display at Salon Concrete in Red Bank on April 26, as part of an evening of art, hair and cuisine dedicated to charity, and co-sponsored by restaurateur and chef Marilyn Schlossbach.
With the long-awaited spring season underway, Marilyn Schlossbach of Kitschens Hospitality Group and Christine Zilinski of Salon Concrete in Red Bank are marking the spring equinox by announcing their plans to curate an evening of art, hair inspiration, charity and cuisine in support of Thousand Locks Charity Hair Drive.
The April 26 event at Zilinski’s Broad Street salon will feature a closing reception for the “Float/Swim” gallery show featuring Asbury Park-based artist Scott Szegeski, Schlossbach’s husband and business partner in Asbury Park’s Lightly Salted Surf Mercado and several area restaurants, including Pop’s Garage at The Grove West in Shrewsbury.
The 6 pm event will spotlight Szegeski’s surfboard prints in the traditional Japanese Gyotaku style, currently on display at Salon Concrete. Honoring the season of renewal, Zilinski, recently back from training in Italy, will showcase the international hair color technique Flamboyage with an exhibition of models. Chef Schlossbach’s cuisine, featuring sushi samplings, esquites, New Jersey cheeses and crudité, spring shortbreads and chocolate truffles, will round out the affair.
Christine Zilinski of Salon Concrete styles the hair of Maritza Soler of Port Monmouth, in a file photo from 2012.
From press materials furnished by J Jems Communications
When the Jersey Shore was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, Salon Concrete owner Christine Zilinski stepped up to create a grass-roots relief effort — one that, as it turned out, showed its roots far beyond the greater Green.
As reported here on redbankgreen, the “Scissors for Sandy” endeavor drew together the tonsorial talents of dozens of hair styling professionals — all of them contacts of Zilinski’s, through her nationwide work as an in-demand trainer in styling trends and techniques — for a fundraising event that led to the creation of the “Concrete Cares” campaign.
Now she is harnessing the power of the beauty industry once again, for a community much farther from home — Taclocan, Philippines. Typhoon Haiyan created massive destruction there, affecting 11 million people and wiping out 1.1 million homes.
In response, Zilinski and the Salon Concrete team created “Hairdressers for Haiyan,” a special event dedicated to raising funds to send a team of people to Taclocan. The event will be held at the Broad Street salon on Sunday, January 19 between the hours of 10 am to 7 pm. Guests will be asked to donate $50 for a haircut and style — and one hundred percent of the proceeds will go directly to the nonprofit Hometown Heroes, to defray the cost of a six-person team traveling to Tacloban to aid in the recovery efforts.
Salon Concrete celebrated its first business day after a move Wednesday. (Photos by Danielle Tepper. Click to enlarge)
By DANIELLE TEPPER
Red Bank’s 
Salon Concrete reopened for business Wednesday at a new Broad Street location, a move owner Christine Zilinski says had been a long time coming.
The process of occupying the 2,500-square-foot location at 123 Broad formerly home of Surray Luggage began almost a full year ago. After signing the lease, it took until October to start renovation work on a space that had been an eyesore vacancy for almost six years.
Then Sandy hit, and that of course put us back a little bit, said Zilinski.
Christine Zilinski of Salon Concrete styles the hair of Maritza Soler of Port Monmouth last week. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
In the days after Hurricane Sandy hit, Red Bank hair stylist Christine Zilinski jumped in as a volunteer to help residents of Union Beach cope with the aftermath.
It didn’t seem like enough, though. Zilinski said she wanted to do more. She wanted to use her strongest skills.
Of course, the answer to what that might mean was right there in her mirror. And it came with a sexy catchphrase: “Cheat on your hairdresser.”