"Plastique-The Ocean Show at Broadway House"
View the show
Broadway House For Continuing Care welcomed
the Visual Arts League project
"Plastique-the Ocean Show".
This austere and majestic
building is the health care facility for live-in patients
with HIV.
The interior of this massive building is pristine and spacious,
with a long, central hall of high marble walls.
Marble pillars support a central rotunda, and high above is
a carved and painted ceiling. The ocean show fit
comfortably on the high walls and got everyone looking up!
East Brunswick artist, Judith Wray, implemented the show
in 1994 as a way to bring people together from all over
the country and beyond in a long term experimental art project.
Vinyl was chosen to paint on. It can be rolled and it is durable,
even for outdoor fairs.
Best of all, it is transparent to take advantage of changing light
...and can be hung on glass.
"I wanted to create a show which was an experiment in working
and playing together;
a show whose focus was not sales or blue ribbons,
or artists rubbing shoulders with other artists,
but instead, a show which rises to the challenge of
making a visual music together by random selection, welcoming
who is at hand and putting imagery together in a
fun, imaginative way."
"Plastique-the Ocean Show" originally included twenty-five works
done on vinyl 8' high X 5' wide, with the theme of
"...the ocean and denizens of the deep".
Thirty-five artists and a thousand children from all over
the country have had a hand in this show. Four hundred children
from five schools in Burgettstown, Pa (near Pittsburgh)
were involved in creating one piece;
Children from McKinley School, New Brunswick; 100 children
coming through the Atlantic City Sea Food Festival
Children patients from the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital;
50 people from the East/West Yoga School of Visual Arts,
Monroe, N.Y; Works from Alaska, Georgia, Louisiana, Arizona,
Chicago, New York and New Jersey.
One of the ocean pieces went to an
English school in Shiga, Japan.
The show has visited Lincoln Center, NY and the
Robert Wood Johnson Hospital, Medical Schools, libraries,
municipal buildings, grade schools, high schools,
(from here to Chicago!), cub scout meetings, festivals
and it has made appearances at lumber companies, shoe stores
and other businesses.
The entire show and each new piece created can be seen on
the Visual Arts League Internet Web site.
People all over the country can see where their piece has been
and is going, before it even happens.
They can watch the show grow and history be made
and get a feeling of continuity.
J.Wray |