Articles By Tris McCall
Sawyer Conlon: "Overbrook"
Part experimental photo exhibition, part ghost story, part time travel portal, part Weird NJ - where else would this happen but SMUSH Gallery?
published on 03/12/2025
"Open Book(s)" - Adventures on the wild frontier of bookmaking, and meaning-making, in the first floor galleries of Mana Contemporary
Books do not need to be beautiful objects to be cherished. Many indispensable books on my shelf were in poor condition when I brought them home from the shop. The publishers who put out the cheap yellow-page paperbacks that rocked my world and set my course when I was a child didn’t give much consideration to font, printing, or paper stock. All that mattered was readability. Could I open it fast, close it up quick, and chuck it in my bag when I was done? If anybody at the publishing company was making design decisions, those were their objectives. Any impediment to or distraction from the reading experience was unwelcome. They took it for granted that everything that mattered was inside the book.
published on 03/05/2025
Greg Brickey & Katie Niewodowski: Chaos & Order
Two stargazers examine the deep code of the universe (and the city) as it forms, coalesces, and falls apart around them.
published on 02/26/2025
Jodi Gerbi: Hope & Resilience
If all you need to see in a gallery show is an exhibition of superior painting skills, "Hope and Resilience" has got you covered. Jodi Gerbi can handle a brush as well as anybody in Hudson County can. The carnival hues of her oil painting, the drama of her modest-sized canvases, the balance in composition and interaction of light and shadow, her knack for suggesting the synthetic — all of this speaks to her confidence, her training, and her astonishing dexterity.
published on 02/19/2025
Kwesi O. Kwarteng - "Woven World": A Tapestry Of Social Connectedness
Our civic leaders like to say that forty different languages are widely spoken in Jersey City. Take a walk from the Heights to Greenville, and you'll probably hear them all. Ethnic and cultural diversity is one of our town's strengths. We're right to be proud of it.
published on 02/12/2025
