![]() But it’ll quicken your pulse nonetheless. “Bombastic,” a freewheeling fusion of cartoonishness, cubism, fashion model aesthetics and Afrofuturism, feels like a proud, direct descendant of Jones’s characters. Painter Ray Arcadio, too, plops outrageous angled headdresses on black and white bodies. This same audacity is present in the work of “Constellations” artist Mustart, a muralist who has been playing Jonesian tricks on brick walls all over Jersey City. This electric charge zaps us even harder in a pair of explicitly sexualized images of reclining men, each with pendulous genitals and eyes that fizz and crackle with awareness. Instead, everything is awash in erotic energy. ![]() This is Pop Art of sorts, but there’s not much irony, and there’s no trace of kitsch. “Deliver the Funk” juxtaposes an image of an African-American man in glowing orange trousers with slices of fruit, concentric hearts, open mouths, and scribbles of primary colors that feel like lipstick traces on a white wall. Throughout his career, Jones has been drawn to vivid hues and clear, unambiguous shapes his prints, in particular, are dotted with fierce, searing fields of pigment that amplify the intensity of the bodies of his human subjects. Lucy Rovetto, painter of dreamscapes and spectral bodies in motion, has been featured at the Museum of Jersey City History.Įxactly what did Ben Jones impart to these ambitious, thoughtful artists? We’ll never know exactly, but “Universe” and “Constellations” drop some hints. Richard La Rovere, a draftsman and illustrator fascinated by Garden State architecture, has hung his work in the Jersey City Public Library. Mussa presides over classes at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in Summit and the Newark Museum. The empathetic Bisa Washington, for instance, teaches in Morristown. The twenty artists who’ve contributed pieces to “Constellations,” a companion to “The Universe of Ben Jones,” include several who share their inspiration’s commitment to arts education and symbolic literacy. At the NJCU Visual Arts Gallery (100 Culver Ave.), Mathern and Yoshimoto are, simultaneously, putting that work on view and making a point about the enduring value of arts education. Those students have made some charismatic works of their own. It’s plain to see what drew students to this generous, playful, emotionally effulgent teacher, and it’s equally apparent why so many local artists continue to cite him as an inspiration. Like a pot on boil, the show bubbles over and into the Hepburn Hall corridor, where Jones’s lively prints goose up an otherwise staid administrative floor. Curators Casey Mathern of William Paterson University (where Jones was educated) and Midori Yoshimoto of NJCU (where Jones holds an emeritus teaching position) have filled the Lemmerman Gallery with paintings, cutouts, silkscreens, lithographs, and sculptures that exhibit the artist’s characteristic vivacity, gutsiness, occasional combativeness, and warmth. ![]() He’s been making art in the Garden State for the better part of six decades - he’s got a studio in a Bergen-Lafayette church - so he’s got plenty to show off, including several exciting pieces that even Jones aficionados won’t know. “The Universe of Ben Jones,” which will hang at the City University until April 3, lets the master strut his stuff. He’s not an influencer, he’s an influence - and a sumptuous pair of shows at the University galleries gives his students (and his audience) an opportunity to acknowledge that debt and say thanks. Among his pupils and protégés are some of the region’s most celebrated painters, printmakers, and sculptors. Ben Jones, 82, has taught at New Jersey City University (2039 Kennedy Blvd.) for forty-three years, providing guidance, perspective, and training to several generations of aspirants. Yet some artists cast shadows too long to ignore. Coaches are mainly confined to the sidelines, when we think about them at all. We like to imagine that we’re standing in the presence of something that sprung from the head of its creator. Originality means stepping out of the mentor’s shadow. It’s understandable: nobody wants to be called a copycat. ![]() Artists don’t always like to acknowledge their forerunners. ![]()
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