By Annie Block
RED BANK – Earlier this month, on a birdsong-filled spring evening, a diverse and buoyant crowed gathered at Detour Gallery on Clay Street in downtown Red Bank. They were there to see art, of course, and to participate in Artists Open Hearts for Lunch Break, an auction fundraiser for the nonprofit dedicated to providing life’s basic necessities for people struggling to make ends meet. One attendee, Kathleen Palmeri, not only donated a painting to the auction but is also exhibiting in an upcoming group show at Detour, “Worlds Apart: A Women’s Exhibition,” running May 21 until June 18.
Palmeri, a Rumson resident, joins six other New Jersey-based female artists working in myriad mediums, styles and subject matters. “Although they’re all women, their oeuvres are vastly different, thus the show’s title,” said Victoria Steel, who just celebrated her year anniversary as the gallery’s director and is a fine artist herself with three of her own paintings in the exhibition. “When I started, I began looking through our collections, finding a lot by female artists in storage. I wanted to shine a spotlight on them.”
One of those hidden treasures is Kremena Lefterova, a Bulgarian-born artist based in Princeton. Her formal studies in industrial design, drawing and fine art, coupled with working as a pastry chef and an animation-tool designer – and living in Asia – result in complex and fantastical porcelain sculptures, of which there will be five, including a 3-foot-long sword, for “Worlds Apart.”
Belford-based Cat King has focused her work on sharp objects, too, particularly reimagining antique saws – believing that “broken can be beautiful and beauty can be broken.” For the exhibit, she has two new saw works, one with a moss-embellished handle, both hand-engraved with text and images, along with Transcend, Ascend, a 36-inch-square abstract kitten face in acrylic and yarn on canvas.
Vintage is also a characteristic of collage artist Holly Suzanne Rader, who has been with Detour since its inaugural exhibition in 2016, when owner Kenny Schwartz, a former car dealer and an avid art and antiques collector today, opened the gallery in a 10,000-square-foot, old Surray Luggage warehouse. Rader’s Passaic studio is a wonderland of sequins, glitter, spray paint, beads and even candy, all of which she overlaps onto retro Hollywood imagery of starlets, yielding rectangular mixed-media panels with a bygone glamour.
But for “Worlds Apart” she’s debuting a new series inspired by life after death. “My work is finding its way into a more dreamlike, fantasy, storytelling phase,” she said. The two pieces continue her use of heavy embellishment, including Czech crystal, but are in the form of 3-foot-diameter rounds of birchwood. Circles and overlapping also define the cosmically inspired work of Spanish artist SillArcas, who splits time between Red Bank and Manhattan and has a trio of metallic-based paintings in the show.
Rounding out the exhibitors are Jacqueline Brantley and Palmeri, two newly scouted artists for Detour. Like King, the pieces by Brantley, a Neptune resident concerned with decreasing her carbon footprint, give new life to old things. She combines everyday objects and recyclable materials – wallpaper scraps, bits of rope – into dimensional, monochromatic collages. “They’re different than what we have here,” Steel noted of Brantley’s four pieces in the show, “polished, tranquil – something an interior designer might like.”
Interior designers have certainly taken a liking to Palmeri, whose vivid paintings have landed in homes featured in Architectural Digest, Dwell and Design NJ magazines. The Red Bank Catholic alumna and mother of five has made a name for herself throughout New Jersey and beyond with artworks installed at Red Horse in Rumson and 1776 in Morristown, both David Burke restaurants; a 17-foot-high mural emblazoning a façade of the newly built Rail at Red Bank; private commissions through her business K Palm Fine Art; and by regularly donating pieces to fundraising events. Valued at $3,000 for the Lunch Break auction, her portrait of Maya Angelou was ultimately acquired by the nonprofit to hang in its new headquarters; additionally, her 14-year-old daughter Sophia’s digital illustration of Harry Styles brought in $500. The two are now collaborating on Pass the Crown, their NFT collection launching this fall that will give back to global organizations supporting women. “The most exciting part of that project is working with my daughter to initiate change,” Palmeri said.
In fact, her subject matter is often portraits of trailblazing women: For “Worlds Apart” she is displaying large-scale paintings of Iris Apfel, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Frida Kahlo – partly in homage to her two grandmothers, who were both working, single mothers.
“I greatly admired their strength, humor, courage and perseverance,” she said. “My best paintings are the ones that tell stories of struggles, imperfections and, ultimately, fortitude and grace.” Palmeri rendered the portraits in bright oils applied to canvas with a pallet knife, resulting in a textural, 3-D appearance.
“I first saw Kathy’s work when I moved here in 2017,” Steele said. “It’s been exciting to follow her growth as an artist.”
Ever the entrepreneur, growth is also on the docket for Schwartz, who is planning to open the boardwalk-inspired Chill Food & Booze, his third restaurant in Keyport, this summer. His affinity for vintage Americana is on display at his Old Glory Kitchen + Spirits, as well as at his gallery at Manhattan design center Showplace, where he began renting space during the pandemic for pieces from his 5,000-plus art and antiques collection.
“I like history, I like that aesthetic,” he said, standing next to his array of 100-year-old iron doorstops. “The artist’s brain, the creativity that comes out of it, those are skills I don’t have – I’ve always surrounded myself with others who are smarter and more talented than me.”
It’s a passion and patronage that started decades ago, when a 17-year-old Schwartz acquired his first artwork, a painting by a waitress at the Inkwell Coffee House in Long Branch.
The article originally appeared in the May 19 – 25, 2022 print edition of The Two River Times.
