TECCS Gala and Silent Auction

Richard J. McCormack/For The Jersey Journal

This week I was very pleased to participate in a silent art auction organized by art critic Carly Berwick for the TECCS (The Ethical Community Charter School) Gala honoring Jersey City mayor Steven Fulop. The piece sold, a good time was had by all, and apparently the Mayor checked out all the art!

Carly wrote this nice blurb about the piece. I should work this William Eggleston connection.

Stevens’ photographs are found landscapes, reminiscent of William Eggleston’s color-saturated photographs of American vernacular scenes. Drive-in was taken in upstate New York, near the town Massena, on the border with Canada. Its seeming casualness belies the deep formalism of the image, with its repeating rectangles in the marquee, screen, and numbered posts. The sun-streaked outdoor cinema references vacation postcards yet replaces crowds and vibrancy with a sense of absence and decay. The leftover landscape becomes an accidental collage.