The very first time I stepped foot into Mana Contemporary was in August of 2014. I had seen it in fleeting as I would be on my way around the city to do various things that year and I didn’t know much about it. Having been slightly disconnected from that art world since the start of college, I didn’t know much about what artists were debuting to what exhibitions were on display. So it was the last semester of my junior year, I was sitting at my then desk in the Gothic Times office at NJCU and I received an email from one of my art teachers from high school asking me if I was interested in becoming a mentor to high school art students.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Feeling so separated from my time as an art student I really wanted to expand with experimentation and self-improvement. On top of that, I would be able to mentor students and so I agreed. With a successful first year, I returned again this year which was even better than the last.

The Jersey City Arts Program partnered with Mana Contemporary’s ESKFF: Eileen S. Kaminsky Studio Program to form SOL Studios for a summer residence.

SOL Studios is an intensive mentorship and apprenticeship program for high school students with college students and graduates. Students learn multiple levels of art on a collegiate level and produce a series of three pieces to present and donate at the end of the three-week program.

At the time I got to reconnect with classmates from my class of 2011 and got to make some new connections with the students that we mentored that year—some even ventured to ask if I would be coming back the following year.

Just this past August there were twenty-four of us all together—fourteen mentees and ten mentors. As a group we crafted, painted, and drew over 97 pieces of artwork and not only did it make our skills better, it made our network between each other even stronger.

In August mentors and mentees met with teachers Jessica Ward, Carolyn Frazier, and Gina Maffei, director of the ESKFF program. The students we prepped with materials and a set plan to complete three pieces of work each and collaborate on a single piece.

Carolyn Frazier, an art teacher with the Jersey City public schools for 19 years, reflected on how SOL Studios got its start. “It’s an amazing experience, it’s been really great. Eileen has been very, very generous with her space, with her resources for the students and I think that’s part of the better thing that’s happening by having the arts come into Jersey City and allowing the students and local young kids to come in and utilize the space.”

“It began because Mana Contemporary had a big opening like they usually do a couple of times a year and I attended it and I was visiting all the floors and wound up in this studio here. [I] started talking to Eileen and she was very open and generous and informative about what happens in this space and so I told her I had these amazing kids and she said, “That’s awesome, tell me more.” And so ultimately we sat down with a proposal for an idea because the main thing that I find is that many art students do not have space to work. They’re working on their kitchen table, they’re working in their little bedroom, parents are complaining, it’s making a mess—I myself don’t have a great big studio to work in so we do what we can as artists to find space and so I thought this would be great since this was an underutilized space during the month of August and that’s where we came up with the idea of her gifting the space to us because there are no other residents in here at the time. She thought, “Well a space that is not being utilized, if it could be utilized for something good,” like having young local artists be in this building and be influenced by what’s going on, only the good can come of that,” Frazier said.

At the end of their three-week residency, the students donated two of their three pieces to founder Eileen Kaminsky. A collect of artists who has seen thousands of beautiful pieces of work pass through her studio.

“I’m a collector, but I’m a collector of artists rather than a collector of artwork. It’s more interesting for me to be involved with the artist and know what they’re thinking, what their joys are, what hurts them, what makes them paint and what’s going into the paint, what’s behind the work. I prefer figurations because I like the suppleness of the body and what the face expressions can be, but sometimes there are artists who do other things and it draws me to their work because I know them and because I know what they’re putting into the work.”

“Some art is very hard to love, some art is difficult—I prefer art that is difficult. Anybody can paint a pretty flower, but you give ten artists the same flower to paint and you’ll get ten different paintings and some of them are going to be brilliant and some of them are going to be a painting. So bringing the artists to Mana and trying to help them move forward in their careers and then bringing the public in to share what I see in the artists and trying to get the public involved in the arts for their children, for their enjoyment. And also a lot of very fine artists end up working at a different job so this is about letting the artists know that if they work hard—yes they can make a living at art, but it’s not about making a living, it’s about the creation and the joy you get. If you work at a job that you don’t like it’s a job, but if you do something that you love, it [is] not work its joy,” Kaminsky explained.

Kaminsky relished in the fact that she stayed in the city for this year’s SOL Studios summer residency. “I didn’t go away this time, I usually travel in August and I made it a point to be here because the students are my favorite groups and I wish [they] could stay longer. The evolution of the work—the project [they] did this year—where everybody got together and the kids started it and then the mentors got involved, it really came together from three days ago to today that piece, where everybody’s working on it, evolved into an amazing group work.”

“This year more than any year I see the mentors more involved with the junior artists and I think that’s very important for both of them. It’s important to share what you have inside of you and you get as much as you give. So even though the mentors are older and working on different kinds of projects and moving forward in their life, looking back and seeing where they came from and being reminded of what they had to go through to get to where they are, helps them (the mentees). I love this year more than last year there’s more working together—I always wanted the artists, the mentor, and the student, to work together on one piece. But having everybody work on their own is okay too as long as there’s some interaction—a sharing of materials, ideas, and it brings everybody forward and this has been a wonderful group, [a] really good group,” She said.

Art is something that is passed down through the ages. Almost all students from JCArts know that Mrs. Frazier, Ms. Ward, and so many others polish the students until they are pristine artists on their way to prestigious art schools. Art is something that is self-taught and then experimented on and learned. As students, we all learned from who we consider the best. They have seen us grow and have seen us go through the worst of hardships whether it is through home life or school life; they were and always will be our surrogate teaching families. This is the reason the students of JCArts can never stop coming back and finding new ways to reinvent themselves and new and evolving artists. We’ve been in their shoes and we’re not afraid to hide it.

“It’s just always been something I need to do, no explanation it just has to happen. It’s [been] really incredibly fulfilling, it sounds cliché and people are always like, “Teaching does something to your spirit,” but it actually really does. It wasn’t something I set out to do it kind of was a happy accident and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I’ve met amazing human beings and I’ve watched them grow and become stellar adults and I’ve seen their art go places I never thought it could go and I’ve seen a kid become overwhelmed and excited about that thing made and it is just beautiful,” Jessica Ward, an art teacher with the Jersey City public schools for 10 years, said.

Ward reflected on her start as an artist as well as on the start of SOL Studios. “I’ve been an artist probably my whole life, I’ve always been drawn to having my hands busy—I do not like sitting idle. I’m not necessarily the most talkative person, I express myself a lot visually, but generally it’s all about making something—my hands are always busy. I think as a little kid I was solitary and I just loved to make things and it just kind of kept going. I didn’t realize I could be an artist as a career until much later but I don’t think there’s a day that’s gone by that I haven’t at least made something little be it a sketch or something bigger than that. I’ve been teaching [and] I’m going to start my tenth year.”

“Now I’ve become very attached to the program I work in and I feel just incredibly territorial about it and I want to see it survive and I want to see it grow and I also know the value it has for students. Having this opportunity here at Mana has shown me what the kids actually get from it.

“Eileen had August free last year and she offered it to us. Carolyn and I brainstormed and came up with a unique studio program for students in our program that may not have been able to go away to a summer program. We wanted to give them a free opportunity to be in more of a collegiate setting and then bringing in mentors, our alumni, to be their teachers so this way the kids don’t have to listen to me or Mrs. Frazier and have different opinions,” She remembered.

VPA (Visual Performing Arts) or Jersey City Arts (JCArts) is a magnet program within the Jersey City schools—students apply as eighth graders to join the program very similarly to how they would apply to college. Students are selected based on their art, their grades and their writing and their drive. For those who do last, they are taken through four years of intensive arts training. Currently housed at Snyder High School; the program had originally spent most its existence at NJCU which changed due to budgetary constraints in Jersey City which pushed the program into Snyder High School. The program maintains students from every single high school in the district. If a student is accepted based on their portfolio they can still attend Lincoln High School, McNair High School, Dickinson High School, etc. and still attend JCArts for their arts education.

“I get to know these kids as little eighth graders when they come in with their portfolios and they’re scared and overwhelmed and they have their little silly drawings of anime and other class projects that they hold on to so dear, portraits that are done to the best of their ability. And then something happens when they get their hands on a new media that they really love and usually it’s something color related and then they start to have their own voice and confidence happens.” Ward reflected on the growth of her students.

Each and every one of these students finds their voice during their junior and senior years. I found mine after falling head over heels and making an entire series about a single person through using multimedia when I painting. Even now, as an artist multimedia is my go-to media, I am willing to use any and everything until a piece is what I envisioned it to be or more.

 

Kelsey Reilly, 20, mentee and junior at Parson’s New School of Design talked about her history in art and attendance to JCArts. “I paint and illustrate. In the last five years, I’ve gotten really into expressing myself through paint.”

Kelsey explained that just like all the present mentors she learned her skill from JCArts. “It goes back to my childhood like many artists do, I used to constantly illustrate this cat figure so that was my interest in telling stories and making pictures on after the other and then I got formal training on how to paint. I would describe my [style] as very expressionist, I look at many photo references to match the proper proportions, but I also like to go in my inner desires of what I want to see in terms of color and texture.”

“I am a mentor to a senior student and she also likes to paint so we’re a pretty good match. I see a lot more experimentation, she came in, she started this portrait before I was even her mentor officially. So I saw her building up her colors and I think after a while she became a bit looser. I have a lot of good friends here, it’s just great, everywhere you look there’s a painting,” Reilly said.

Kristianne “Kate” Molina, painter, designer, 2008 alumni and mentor spoke about her time at JCArts and exclaimed in joy about being able to reconnect with the program.

“I think that the program is amazing, I loved how they started off with 40 students and at the end with my class, we ended up with 15 students. We made a lot of great memories, Juan who is doing [the] residency with me today; he’s my best friend since VPA. I think that program was amazing and I’m so happy for my career to come [full circle]. I know again in maybe five to ten years, I’ll come back to VPA. It’s really cool to be a part of that community and to be here! For VPA to move in this direction—to grow with something like Mana because that is the true integrity of what VPA is.”

Juan Ortiz, 26, designer, 2008 alumni, and mentor joined Kate in SOL Studios to help mentor students as well. “I’ve been drawing since I was four years old and I took it to a serious level in high school when I was part of the VPA program. When I was in JCArts it was a great experience, it was really structured traditionally and it took until my senior year to kind of figure out what I wanted to do and for the program to open doors to experiment and draw what I wanted. They got me through my college application process and opened eyes to the art world and culture from allowing us to go outside the country. My senior year we went to London.”

“With ESKFF my position with my mentee—I wanted to allow him to grow out of his shell and not question it. If it means so much to you to create art make sure—depending the type of work you’re doing, it’s clean, it’s neat. I think there’s a great flow of energy here. A lot of the kids here are young but eventually it’ll open doors and there’s a huge community that you need to interact with.”

A community like being an animator for Nickelodeon stems from the training through JCArts.

“I’m an animator studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, I’m a third year and I work for Nickelodeon. I’ve been an artist for about eight years now officially since I’ve been taught. I’ve been an animator a little over a year and a half and ever since I started school that’s what I felt like I wanted to study,” said alumni Ali Jafri, 20, mentor.

“Initially I went to the program [JCArts] because I liked to draw as a kid and I felt it was a good way to spend high school learning up my skills, but the program really ended up changing my life, it gave me a new career avenue I was successful in and something I could be really, really good at where the education system in Jersey City may have failed me otherwise, the Jersey City Arts High School Program picked up the slack and helped me in all aspects of life and helped me get into college and find my future,” Jafri explained.

Jafri reflected as he stared at the artwork in his corner of the studio. “As a kid you always wonder who those people are that design your clothes or make those shows on TV and it’s really cool to know some of those people personally and see the journey of my friends and underclassmen as they improve. It’s a really fulfilling experience because then comparatively you can match yourself up to your friends and see not only how much they’ve grown but through their progress you see your own and it gives you a way to measure yourself as you go forward. The program gave me so much growing up and I’ve always felt that in a sense of giving back that I’ve been through the program and I’ve been at college and I’ve had these jobs.”

 

Antony Edge, 15, sophomore, Jersey City native and aspiring artist, has truly enjoyed his time with SOL Studios.

“I’ve been an artist for about three years now. I started when I was eleven and then I started again in the eighth grade when I heard about VPA and I fell in love with it. There have been struggles and hardships; I could say I’ve grown as an artist in many ways. I want to become a fashion designer because there’s not really a lot of fashion for men’s wear and I wanted to make something revolutionary. I just learned about printmaking and I decided to create sleeves for plain blazers. I’ve definitely done more work [here] in the past three weeks than I’ve done in the past three years.”

 

One of the best parts about being a part of SOL Studios is the people you meet. I met David Panayiotou on my very first day at Mana Contemporary when I went the café for lunch. To my surprise and to everyone else we simply loved that he remembered our names and faces and that we weren’t just simply people in the building.

“It’s an extremely interesting complex, there’s so many different types of art going on in this building that you kind of never get bored. I never would’ve imagined some of the things that I’ve seen, I love it here. My interaction with the students is normally through the café; I still get to talk and get to know [them]. It’s impressive to see how hard [they] worked on [their] own different type of paintings, sculptures and it really mirrors the professional artists in the building. I’m no art connoisseur, but you can tell when someone has a passion for something. You don’t need to be versed in that to know that,” said Panayiotou, the head of the Mana Contemporary café, joyfully explained his experience in visiting SOL Studios at Mana Contemporary.

The students will have their artwork on display for the Jersey City Art and Studio Tour. Their artworks are located in the sixth-floor and are on view to the public.

To learn more about ESKFF click here.

Follow the ESKFF Studio on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and check out some of the student work on the JCArts Instagram.

 

Below is a gallery of the student’s time in the student and their artworks: