Upper WET Side
You can scroll the shelf using ← and → keys
2/9: Your Weekend Forecast on the 7′s
February 9, 2012
The Glamour Girls canvases of Holly Suzanne Rader — exemplified here by a detail from DICK & CANDY — are on display during a reception for GLAMit, this Saturday evening at Glen Goldbaum’s two neighboring Bridge Avenue salons.
His parties, alive with art and music and anybody-who’s-anybody people, are precisely the sort of under-the-radar events that you’d spend all night seeking out if you were looking for that elusive “something completely different” — the kind of happenings that should by all rights be too-cool and impossibly exclusive, were it not for the fact that they’re fully free of charge and open to friends old and new.
Last we looked in on Glen Goldbaum, the superstar Manhattan stylist turned catalyst for a creative new vision on Red Bank’s west side was hosting an event branded as Bewitched, a “magical evening of fantasy, hair, art and more” that transformed his two neighboring Bridge Avenue hair/ eye/ makeups (Glen Goldbaum 72 and Lambs & Wolves Den of Beauty) into an environment populated by winged fantasy characters, live mannequins and guest conceptualizers from Asbury Park’s Cookman Avenue “Arts Bloc.”
This Saturday, Feb the 11, the “Left Bank” block opposite the NJ Transit station stop will be the scene for GLAMit, a solo art installation (keyed to New York Fashion Week 2012) that celebrates “old Hollywood glam with a modern feminine edge” through the paintings and three-dimensional work of Holly Suzanne Rader. The Tennessee-bred artist will be on hand for a reception that spotlights her unique miniature paper dresses (composed of paper mache, vintage book pages, clip art and assorted items) as well as her Glamour Girls paintings — a series of homages to “retro bombshells, lusty pin-ups and the timeless Hollywood divine” that are “candy coated” with the artist’s engagingly repurposed found objects.
“I feel that the dress is more than a garment…it tells a story,” says Rader of her magnificent minis. “This collection is inspired by nature, poetry, fairytales, historical heroines, daydreams and other romantic notions.”
The Saturday reception, too groovy to be contained within a single storefront space, runs from 7 to 10 pm — with Rader’s art remaining on display through February and March — and we get off on telling you where else to go this weekend, beginning with a Friday fricasee that lies right around the clickable corner.
Juneteenth Comes Early This Year
June 6, 2011
Producer Darrell Lawrence Willis Sr. goes for BRONZEVILLE GOLD during the fourth annual Juneteenth Urban Arts Festival, beginning Tuesday and continuing through the week in Long Branch.
The whole thing started over gin and tonics, when August Wilson — the late Pulitzer-winning author of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Fences — met Darrell Lawrence Willis Sr. a few years back, while both were attending the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, NC.
Why gin and tonics? As Willis explained it to us, “when August Wilson asks you what you’re drinking, you say, ‘I’m drinking what YOU’RE drinking’!”
Having been a regular attendee at the bi-annual Festival, Willis had watched it grow exponentially each time out, becoming a cultural celebration that attracted tens of thousands of people (including the likes of Cicely Tyson, Samm-Art Williams, Bill Duke, Ted Lange and Malcolm-Jamal Warner); and transcended its “national” origins to embrace new works from Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.
Somewhere along the way, Willis — the Brookdale Community College faculty member whose Dunbar Repertory Company is a local troupe dedicated to presenting African American-themed stageworks — was inspired to found a homegrown version of this major festival; smaller in scale but faithful to the ideals of the late NBTF founder Larry Leon Hamlin.
“He was a real character,” says Willis of the producer who famously sported long dreads, big shades and loud clothes. “It was his vision that made it all possible.”
Willis may not have taken his fashion tips from Hamlin, but as the producer of the annual Juneteenth Urban Arts Festival in Long Branch for the past four years, the assistant director of BCC’s Office of Urban Services captured some of the spirit behind the North Carolina event — while borrowing its name from the observance of the abolition of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865 (it’s since spread to become an observed holiday in 25 other states, including New Jersey).
“We want this event to be tied to the June 19 date as closely as possible,” says the producer-director. “We want to remain true to our original mission.”
Well, Juneteenth comes early this year — a solid week-plus early, as a matter of fact — and when the celebration of African-American words and sounds commences on Tuesday, June 7 at the BCC Higher Education Center building (as well as the Broadway Park outdoor stage directly behind it), there will be some other fine-tuned changes in place for 2011.
Gloria Steinem is Caught Doing 76
May 4, 2011
She’s lost the groovy glasses, but her vision, perception and focus beat the whee out of yours and mine. Plus she’s a tremendously hot 76.
“If you make any kind of jokes or comments about Take Your Daughter To Work Day,” said our daughter — who agreed to accompany us on an assignment that was ultimately more about the shirk than the work — “I will kill you.”
Back in our day, a child who threatened patricide would rate a thrashing with a stout switch back by the corn crib — but this is a different, if backsliding, era of hard-earned enlightenment, thanks in no small part to the tireless efforts and remarkable tenacity of the person we were on our way to see — Gloria Steinem.
Daughter — who tends to limit the minutes she spends with her dad — has always been amenable to tagging along when “work” involved the prospect of meeting a celeb like Alec Baldwin, Debbie Harry, triple Emmy winner Bryan Cranston or one of the stars of Scrubs. This time, however, meant something a little more to an 18 year old who, sadly contrary to many of her peers, has actually read and admired the work of this game-changing American original — an icon that her father probably first became aware of as a punchline on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.
