from home to heartbreak and back, Bojana Coklyat solo exhibit

From partially losing her sight to type 1 diabetes to having her heart broken, Jersey City Heights artist Bojana Coklyat has been through her share of trials.

Next week, the 34-year-old will share paintings born from her personal journey in her solo show “From Home to Heartbreak and Back” at restaurant, bar and art gallery LITM.

The past five years have been a wild ride for Coklyat. In 2008, she became legally blind when diabetes caused blood vessels in her eyes to burst. In 2011, she received a kidney and pancreas transplant that changed her life, allowing her to live without dialysis and insulin injections as well as allowing her to keep some of her sight.

Other adventures include teaching art at St. Joseph’s School for the Blind, going back to study fine arts at New Jersey City University (she hopes to eventually be an art therapist) and a few relationships, good and bad.

“My health has improved, I’ve adjusted to my vision, I’m back in school which has been a huge goal for years, I’m in a happy, healthy relationship…all these things are coming together,” says Coklyat. “And I’ve noticed that in the past year, my work has a similar feel to my stuff from the past couple years but there’s definitely a lighter feel.”

Before, Coklyat’s female figures, rendered in her signature bold, moody lines, often cast their eyes down. Now, they look viewers square in the eye.

“To me it signifies more of a comfortable confidence,” she says. “There’s something different going on. A lot of my stuff in the past couple months are much lighter, sweeter. Even my color palette is lighter with pastel blues and white…I’m letting go a little bit more, letting myself be looser with the brushstrokes and lines…there’s more joyful energy.”

Alongside her happier paintings, the artist is also going to show some of her “hurt” paintings, dark works that she says actually have helped her find hope and healing.

“The show spans from 2009 to now and in that time I’ve had two relationships and two break-ups. One happened after my transplant, which was really hard, devastating and crushing. It’s funny because I felt it should be the happiest time of my life but I was just crying all over Jersey City!” she says with a laugh.

“The paintings I do out of catharsis, they’re so dark. I was looking at them recently and I thought, ‘I don’t need to keep these hurt paintings anymore.’ I have some from 10 years ago and I thought, ‘I’m not carrying this around anymore!’ And I painted over them. I painted funny, happy, sexy paintings.

“I am taking all the old hurt and changing it around. I am molding these paintings into something more current with how I feel now. All those paintings and experiences are part of me and make me who I am now but I am able to transcend them and turn them into something positive,” she says.

Earlier this year, Coklyat’s ability to overcome adversity (and a tip from LITM curator Andrea Morin) got her a spot in an art show that was videotaped for “Girls Interrupted,” a reality show pilot that might find its way onto Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network.

At the show in New York City, which was organized by You Are a Warrior, which aims to help people connect socially to find healing, Coklyat and several others shared their stories about overcoming things like Hurricane Sandy, cancer or being transgender.

Coklyat also works with visually impaired kids ages 3 to 21 at St. Joseph’s, which will have a juried art show for high schoolers in Hudson County next year. She is also helping to curate a show for the Jersey City Artists Studio Tour at the school in October.

“From Home to Heartbreak and Back” opens Tuesday, Aug. 6 with a reception at 7 pm at LITM, 140 Newark Ave. For more information, visit Coklyat’s website.

article by Summer Hortillosa for the Jersey City Independent

hugh dwyer paintings, opening reception

Thursday 11/15 from 6 to 8PM at Made With Love-Wine and some food Thursday 11/15 from 6 to 8PM at Made With Love-Wine and some food Thursday 11/15 from 6 to 8PM at Made With Love-Wine and some food 

From the Road, Jennifer Krause, landscape interpretations

opening reception March 2,      7-9pm

“Time has a way of flying by . . . but what can you do?”

–Jennifer Krause Chapeau

From the Road is a 10-year survey of landscape paintings by artist Jennifer Krause Chapeau. Each painting depicts a landscape observed from the vantage point of a moving vehicle. The o...bjects of her attention range from the American Southwest to the French countryside. Her paintings are as much about the passing of time as they are about light, and its changing affects, on the terrain.

To walk like a hunter through the woods is not in Krause Chapeau’s temperament. She does not specialize in majestic scenes of nature; she prefers sundry roadside scenes. The land is not wild, idyllic, or hospitable, but fleeting. These vistas are temporary, on the verge of disappearing, as she bounds down the highway.

This series of paintings is based on the artist’s personal snapshots that were found in drawers, folders, and manila envelopes, many of which are 14 years old or more. She relies on spontaneity to choose what subjects to capture. There is not a direct tie to a particular landscape, but intuitive response to what she sees. Krause Chapeau is a roadrunner and her domain is the highway, which may seem odd for a landscape painter.

Like many Americans, her experience of nature tends to be mediated through nostalgia or another source, like photography—not direct experience. As a landscape painter, her challenge is not to endure subzero temperatures and blackfly-infested summers to create a representational scene, but to suggest motion and light: landscape as moving target, all soft focus and subtle blur.

Seeing a landscape in motion was a revelation for her. Speed eliminated detail, reducing entire scenes to color and light. “I think the solitude of driving alone for long periods allows your mind to really wander,” says Krause Chapeau. “The compositions and textures are constantly changing and flowing one into another while driving. It is a fascinating visual experience for me.”

At first glance, Krause Chapeau’s unadorned landscapes can strike the viewer as clear-eyed depictions of nature. A lazy mountain lounges on a desolate patch of land in twilight, as in “New Mexico Plain.” A chorus line of pine trees skinny-dips in autumnal sunlight, as in “Fleeting Fall.” On repeated viewings, her work becomes more complex and engaging, as it hovers between conventional representation and minimalist abstraction. For example, in the paintings “Morning Frost” or “French Plain,” she sees the landscape as a geometric division of space, sensuously worked surface, and luminous color.

Unlike photorealist painters, Krause Chapeau uses photographs as a starting point rather than as a model to be meticulously copied as an end unto itself. She is interested in the process of applying paint to canvas not only as a means of conveying information but also to embody a poetic force.

To view these paintings is to exist in a place between hopeful anticipation and regret. A roadside is not a definite location, but something that is neither here nor there, a thing between destination points. Her photographs of the landscape provide her an outlet to ruminate on memory, place, and time. The blurry images of her paintings are an appropriate metaphor to suggest time and motion, but they also highlight the sensuality of paint.

The artist, starry-eyed and mesmerized, staring through a car window to the frozen fields, and beyond, as the terrain continuously unfolds like a cinema reel.

Jennifer Krause Chapeau (b. 1962) received her B.F.A. from University of Michigan, School of Art and Design, in 1984; and attended the Studio and Stage Design Forum, in New York City, from 1985—1987. Krause Chapeau’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States. She is an official member of the United Scenic Artists Local 829, 1987—present. She lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.

~ Brendan Carroll

The exhibition will be on view at Majestic Theatre Condominiums through May 28, 2012. For further information, please visit us at SilvermanBuilding.com or call number (201) 435-8000.

Candy Kisses, opening reception Andrea Morin

Inspired by the colors of Summer, Andrea Artemis Morin's new paintings delve into a palette of bright "acid pastels" creating a quirky, joyful exhibition. With subject matter ranging from juicy fruits to crazy candy to futuristic geisha punks Morin invites us into a bizarre wonderland.
Beverages and Refreshments will be served.   aug 7, made with Love Cafe, 4 -7 pm

Charlie Foxtrot, art opening, LITM

Sean Lugo's First Solo Show at LITM!

april 5, 7 - 10 pm, LITM, 140 Newark ave

Artists Statement:
With age I, like most, have come to realize that humans are what create this chaos, and they are more animal then animals. Most [humans] should be caged up, so I paint the animal as a reflection of ourselves, our cruelty to each other and other animals, and our near descent to a world that does not support true free expression. Through my work I try to deconstruct America and the rest of the world through the guise of animals. It addresses current events, stereotypes, and underlying threads of drugs, sex, and corruption that underpin American society, to which the text provides clues to content and interpretation.

Brush with the East

A three-artist exhibit of works by Peter Arakawa, Rita Cohen and Kathryn Klanderman, all of whom use the brush with an asian flair.
The show will be open during restaurant hours from now until the end of April.
 Artists' Reception March 1, 2011, from 6pm-8pm

Sawadee Thai Restaurant
137 Newark Ave.
Jersey City, NJ 07302

open M-F 11am-3pm, 5pm-11pm, Sat. 5pm-11pm, closed sundays

LITM presents “The Sacred and the Mundane”

Friday  December 3rd · 7pm- 10pm

New paintings by Ken Bastard.

LITM

140 Newark Ave (betw Barrow/Grove St)

201-536-5557

PARK AND SIXTH presents paintings by Miguel Hernandez

Friday December 3rd · 11am - 8pm

Miguel Hernandez's paintings give the viewer a sweet taste and an amazing view.
Curated by Tara Thurber V3-vision.verb.vibe.

PARK AND SIXTH
364 Grove St (betw Bay/First St)
201-360-0076

ART OPENING: Beatrice M. Mady -- Digital Prints & Paintings

Tuesday, March 9th 6-8 pm

In the rotunda gallery.
City Hall
280 Grove Street
Jersey City
201-547-6921

http://www.artslant.com/ny/artists/show/105365-beatrice-m-mady?tab=ART+WORKS