Tom Nussbaum’s art studio is exactly how I imagined it to be – it looks like a toy chest exploded. Works dangled from the ceiling. Half-finished ones sat on his desk amid a pile of springs, gears, figurines, and gadgets that fuel his imagination.
One of the reasons his murals and sculptures are so beloved is because they elicit an immediate, uplifting response. On a tour of his East Orange studio during Garden State Art Weekend, I sat back and watched what people said about his works.
When I told him what I had overhead a child tell his mother about one of his sculptures, Nussbaum, one of the artists at Manufacturers Village, smiled amusedly.
“Kids are less inhibited – they’re not afraid to tell you what they see in art,” Nussbaum said. “A lot of adults are apprehensive about revealing too much. Instead they’ll ask me what a work of art means to me — they want my story.”
I tried to to keep Nussbaum’s advice – to view art more fearlessly – close to heart as I roamed the three-acre grounds of Manufacturers Village in East Orange, which was the epicenter of the first-ever Garden State Art Weekend on April 19-21. The three-day festival included large-scale institutions like Newark Museum of Art and the Montclair Art Museum. But with more than 50 artists spread across the historic industrial building at 346 Glenwood Avenue there was more than enough art just in this one place.
The Art Weekend was the idea of Christine Romanell, another Manufacturers Village artist, who after trekking off to Upstate Art Weekend, decided to bring that same experience closer to home. The turnout exceeded her expectations. Each day, more than 300 visitors roamed through the old Johnson & Johnson factory, Romanell said.
“I sold art, others sold art — but I don’t think that was the main goal,” said Romanell, known for her cosmic and meditative 3-D printed vortices. “It’s about building the art community here in New Jersey. We have great artists and institutions but I don’t think we get the recognition we deserve because we’re in the shadow of New York.”
Art viewing often concerns itself with questions about what and why. However, seeing works at various stages of completion naturally makes you curious about how a creator does their craft. I never thought talking about concrete would be so riveting until I spent time with Donna Conklin King and her extraordinary cement sculptures. She bends concrete to her will the same way potters do with clay.
“You usually associate concrete with something banal like foundations and buildings,” Conklin King said. “It’s a more permanent material – it’s ancient and historic.”
Her latest endeavor called Bubbly Barnacles, a colossal caterpillar-eque structure, was sitting disassembled on wooden palettes and waiting to be shipped off to its eventual location: below the sea with the other fantastical creations at Florida’s Underwater Museum of Art.
Seeing it prepared for a thousand-mile journey put in perspective the reach these artists have. East Orange is still supplying the nation with goods as it did when Johnson & Johnson produced medical supplies here. Only now the export is world-class art.
The Art Weekend also offered a chance for artists to show a new side of themselves. I had seen the works of metalworker Charlie Spademen at places like the Hillside Sculpture Park in Montclair. But galleries and museums only display a few pieces of the artist’s work at a time.
Here in Spademan’s studio, I caught a glimpse of his body of work. In addition to his sculptures, including a playful series depicting a falling anvil, the Montclair-based artist displayed many of his paintings which not many know is part of his repertoire. There were portraits of his tools, highway streetscapes, and his latest creation — an arresting floor-to-ceiling cartograph. “This is the first time I’ve painted in two years,” he said. “It was complete serendipity.”
The serendipity Spademan was referring to was a shoulder injury incurred while installing one of his hulking works at Miami Art Week. With age, metalwork has only gotten heavier, the 68-year-old confessed.
As Spademan was describing his latest painting, art buyer Bob Silver, who has one of Spademan’s works displayed at the National in Montclair, walked in and discussed his painting. Later, I asked if was difficult for established artists to show curators and dealers their lesser-known works in other mediums.
“Yes,” he said. “But I’ve always done whatever I feel like doing. I also like the way the paint feels.”
