coLAB Arts

Hosted by Poetic Assassin

First installment on Monday, October 11, 7-9pm at coLAB Arts (49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor)

FIRST INSTALLMENT FREE
All other nights $5 at the door

Every 2nd and 4th Monday of the month, Amoeba Room brings you the most exciting slam poets and hip hop artists in New Brunswick. Come take a turn on the mic or just show up to hear some emcees spit. Working on new material? This series is designed for poets to come experiment and get immediate feedback on their work from fellow poets. Check back here for announcements and special guests.

Upcoming Calendar:
October 11
October 25
November 8
November 22
December 13

Collaborative Arts is pleased to present CONCEPT: FOUND, a two month exhibition of new visual art featuring New Brunswick emerging artists Shane Gertner and Brent Klokis, and curated by Christina Entcheva. Opening reception is Thursday, October 14 from 7-10pm at coLAB Arts (49 Bayard Street, 3^rd Floor, New Brunswick, NJ 08901). The opening will feature music, wine and food, and is FREE and open to the public.

Sync or Swim, Brent Klokis

Exclusions, Shane Gertner

Concept comes first. This notion fuels the work of conceptual artists Shane Gertner and Brent Klokis. Both artists employ a wide range of media and techniques to bring their creative ideas to life, but only after their concepts have been established. For Gertner and Klokis, concept is also what drives their choices for medium and technique. Concept: Found is a collection of the artists’ work that employs the use of found objects.

Shane Gertner creates rich narratives through found photographs, objects, and other ephemera. He affords the viewer glimpses into private worlds that are at once relatable, nostalgic, and bizarre. Gertner utilizes his vast collection of found materials to create immersive environments that reveal truths and invoke contemplation.

“As an artist I strive, through various media, to collect and create objects that remind me that each person’s perception is unique to them and never the same as mine; no two truths are ever the same no matter how similar. By collecting and creating various objects, doing research about their origins, gathering data, and performing field work I create assemblages and artworks which work to show someone’s truth, whether it is yours or mine. By collecting and creating various objects, doing research about their origins, gathering data, and performing field work I create assemblages and artworks which work to show someone’s truth, whether it is yours or mine. My work also concerns the relationships and values we create between things in our lives and how singular these are to us. I never approach making art with an idea of the finished piece. Instead I begin with an idea or concept and then decide what materials are needed to best express it. My body of work is therefore collection of different kinds of media all connecting to each other in order to further investigate an idea.

My work in Concept: Found is comprised of a more personal collection of works and artifacts. The photographs and objects on display were all found at various times in different places. My interest in each item led to further investigation and the presented works are the result of various investigations, inquiries, and expeditions. Each piece is part of a collection of insights, facts, and in some case voyeuristic truths that I have assembled. While some give more insight than others, all of the pieces work together to provide an insight into something other than my own perception.”

Brent Klokis uses found imagery and recyclable materials to distill layers of information. He employs the technique of collage to create seamless environments and imaginary worlds that capture an atmosphere that simultaneously evokes both intensity and calm. Klokis also creates three-dimensional topographical works that explore surfaces, layering, and the human form. What starts as a series of rectilinear planes is transformed into three-dimensional geometries that create an exaggerated sense of depth.

“Our reality is built on information. However, it is the specific organization and layering of this information that facilitates our understanding of this reality, whether it’s putting together bits of sound waves to constr uct a conversation, or pieces of visual information to construct our surrounding environment.

“In my work, I seek to explore this information landscape and exploit its constructs as I strive to find ways to present new organizations of that information. In my collection of collage work, this pursuit manifests itself through the creation of vignettes of environmental wholes. These vignettes are personified emotions portraying an almost muted intensity, as the emotion of each scene is balanced with a passiveness that resides as a reminder of the complexity and decentralized structure of the information landscape.

“No effect is the result of a single cause, there is no central focus in life, what’s exciting to one may be terrifying to another and mean nothing at all to a third. These pieces are made from disparate clippings of mainstream publications reinstated as a new whole, with a new story to tell.

“Manufacturing the thought process through a different method, my Topographs collection reimagines visual information as topographical layers. By simplifying visual information into two dimensional, hierarchically-colored elevation planes we can approximate an image with a definite depth. However a side view reveals a different picture. This collection uses cardboard as an easily accessible and workable material for surface exploration and layering.”

Christina Entcheva is an artist and designer. Her main focus as an artist and visual communicator is on concept, mastery of medium, and facilitating communication through common experience. Entcheva is continually inspired by design, technology, humanity, self-similarity, modernity, and urbanity.

• OPENING NIGHT for Concept:Found is Thursday, October 18 from 7-10pm. The opening will feature live music and a presentation by the curator. Free wine and food will be served. The event is FREE and open to the public.

• SECOND LOOK for Concept: Found, an event revisiting the exhibition its second month is on Thursday, November 11, 2010 from 7-10pm. The Second Look event will feature live music, and free wine and food. The event is FREE and open to the public.

Click here for link to the incredible review.

Romeo y Julieta
de William Shakespeare
dirigido por Dan Swern
19 de agosto – 29 de agosto, Jueves – Domingo

Primera Iglesia Reformada de New Brunswick
9 Bayard Street
Situado en Downtown New Brunswick entre las calles Bayard y Paterson.

Todos los espectáculos son GRATIS! Reserve su entrada hoy por correo electrónico jpkeller@colab-arts.org.

Esta producción contemporárea explorara la comunidad de New Brunswick y su historia reciente, y se ocupa de su política subyacente y las tensiones raciales. Puede el amor de dos jóvenes, de mundos muy diferentes superar el odio de sus padres?

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a benefit for Collaborative Arts

at PJ’s Coffee in Highland Park
315 Raritan Avenue
Highland Park, NJ 08904

Friday, July 23
7:00-10:00pm

$15 tickets available online
$20 tickets available at the door

Featuring live music by The Bond Trio

Open beer and wine bar with admission
Food and beverages available (COME HUNGRY!)

Silent Auction featuring original art and gifts from local Highland Park and New Brunswick vendors and restaurants

coLAB Arts gratefully acknowledges its event sponsors:
New Brunswick Jazz Project (www.nbjp.org)
PSAK & Associates (www.psaklaw.com)
Dental Hypnosis Center of New Jersey (www.graysondds.com)

BUY TICKETS HERE

Fear Junkie 2012: Are you Addicted?
written and performed by Pandora Scooter
August 5, 6, 7 at 8:00 pm
George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick)
The world is coming to an end in 2012. Or is it? You gonna make a buck or be taken for a ride? Pandora Scooter takes a hilarious whirlwind tour of the craziness that’s gonna rain down on us as the Mayan calendar comes to an end.
$10 tickets

BUY TICKETS HERE

Puppet Slam!
curated by Mary Gragen
August 8th at 8pm
George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick)
Puppeteers from All Around the Tri-State area come to perform everything from shadow to hand puppetry. This is not-just-for-kids puppetry; this is puppetry like you’ve never seen before on subjects ranging from freedom, to coming of age, to oppression. You don’t want to miss this once-a-year event. Underwritten by IBEX Puppetry.
$10 tickets

BUY TICKETS HERE

LMAOpen Mic: Laughing My Ass Off – an open mic for Stand Up Comics
Mondays, Aug 9, 16, 23, 30 at 8:00 pm
coLAB Arts (49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor, New Brunswick)
Come bust a gut with some of the funniest up and coming stand up comics in our area.
$5 Tickets (only available at the door)

BUY TICKETS HERE

Motion: New Dance Works
a collaborative choreographic event by artists from New Jersey
Thursday & Friday, August 12 and 13th at 8:00pm
George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ)
Modern Dance takes center stage at Breakthrough Arts Festival with these engaging and experimental works by the next generation of choreographers.
$10 tickets

BUY TICKETS HERE

Flash in the PAN: Performance Art Night
Saturday, August 14 at 8:00pm
George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ)
$10 tickets

SLAM! Poets in Action
Sunday, August 15th at 7:00 pm
George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ)
Ever seen a slam poet spit out words like a machine gun and totally change your perspective all at once? Slam Poets (a la Def Poetry Jam) from New York City and all over New Jersey are going to come and compete for prizes. This is where art and competition meet and it promises to be a blast.
$10 Tickets

BUY TICKETS HERE

Romeo and Juliet / Romeo y Julieta
by William Shakespeare
adapted and directed by Dan Swern
August 19 – 29 (Thu – Sun) at 8:00 pm
First Reformed Church (9 Bayard Street, New Brunswick)
This contemporary bilingual production of Romeo and Juliet, brings the classic tale to present day New Brunswick. Cast with professional actors from New York City and community members from New Brunswick, the Montagues (Romeo’s family) are played by Afro-Caribbean actors and the Capulets (Juliet’s family) are played by Latino actors. The beautiful and tragic love story is set against the sometimes positive, sometimes challenging changes facing our home town. This is a Romeo and Juliet like you’ve never seen.
All performances are FREE!!!

Collaborative Arts is the only guaranteed place to catch the hottest emerging artists in Central New Jersey. Breakthrough Arts Fest, for its third year, is the only summer ticket in New Brunswick, with something happening almost every night through August. There’s something for everyone, featuring puppetry, music, dance, theater, and visual art over three separate spaces in Downtown New Brunswick.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter for periodic updates as we countdown towards the festival.

An exhibition featuring paintings by Maria Giancola and photography by Sam Hetzel
Curated by Alana Integlia and Janine d’Auguste

Reception: June 10, 2010, 7-10 p.m.
coLAB Arts
49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Featuring live music performance by Michael Lawton and his band
through the Somerset Jazz Consortium (www.somersetjazz.com)

Additional gallery hours:
Tues-Thurs
6-8 p.m.

A comparison both visually and conceptually of Maria Giancola and Sam Hetzel’s work is the conceptual embodiment of this exhibition, Dual Perspectives. I see their work as playing off of the standard binary structure, more specifically masculinity versus femininity. The medium, the choice of imagery and how they came to represent the works within the gallery itself, comes from what I perceive as their gendered perspective. The manner in which they use this binary as a means of comparison is subtle. Giancola and Hetzel reference key concepts in the history of art to play with the visually gendered landscapes they depict in their imagery. Their work, strong alone, complements and in a way argues the significance of gender in art; the subtleties of their visual and conceptual references prove the inspiring and knowledgeable ways in which they try to represent their dual perspectives. The perspective of an artist, and any individual is influenced innumerably; it is not just the gender binary that has been the muse to Giancola and Hetzel but also notions such as “private versus public” and “natural versus industrial”. There are so many visual cues that inspire my reasons for analyzing these artists’ works through the simplicity of the binary system but the obvious conceptual duality of their work is unavoidably the most persuasive. – Alana Integlia, Curator

Opening on Thursday, April 15, 7-10pm

coLAB Arts
49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Wine and light hors d’ouevres will be served.

This exhibition consists of works by Terri Beckles and Nakeya Brown; the exhibit provides a sample of their best and/or most recent series. Terminology that is deemed socially appropriate to identify is more often than not a categorizational tool used without true understanding of the subject and in so doing, further homogenizes individual or communal identity. In other words to define these women and/or their subject under standardized terms would not be to provide actualized information instead create a stereotypical depiction in which the previously stated subjects may or may not embody. This exhibit provides visual insight into what can only be an interpretation of the “Identifiable” characteristics of any given individual and/or community.

DERBY DAY
by Samuel Brett Williams

Sunday, April 11 at 5pm
coLAB Arts
49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

FREE Staged Reading

Featuring:
Joe Tisa
Joachim Boyle
Brian Corbett
Kristen Lazzarini

Three estranged brothers are reunited in Arkansas by the passing of their father. A day at the races thrusts their history into full focus, opening the door to reconciliation if they don’t kill each other first.

Samuel Brett Williams’ plays include “The Woodpecker” (Cherry Lane Mentor Project) and “Arkadelphia” (published in “Best American Short Plays ’04-’05″). Previous Orphanage readings include “Fraternity,” “Revelation” (a New Play Network commission), and “The Revival,” to be produced by Project Y Theatre at Theatre Row in Manhattan, Fall 2010.

The Orphanage is the only new play reading series in Downtown New Brunswick, providing a home for local theater artists and a safe environment for playwrights to develop their work.

BABIES
by Lia Romeo
directed by Louis Wells

FREE staged reading

Sunday, March 21 at 7pm
coLAB Arts
49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

A lost infant leads to the hilarious intersection of five strangers’ lives. This new dark comedy from Lia Romeo explores the lengths we can go for the things we want.

This reading follows hot on the heels of the world premiere of Lia Romeo’s play “Green Whales,” first given a public reading at coLAB Arts’ Breakthrough Arts Fest. She is the co-author of “11,002 Things To Be Miserable About.”

The Orphanage is the only new play reading series in Downtown New Brunswick, providing a home for local theater artists and a safe environment for playwrights to develop their work.