I did not know what to expect when I decided to go to New York on Saturday to check out Occupy Wall Street. In fact, I had only opted to go after seeing the now famous footage of police brutality, courtesy of inspector Anthony Bologna aka “Tony Baloney”(video). I had originally planned to go with a couple of friends, but that did not pan out. For a moment I was hesitant to go by myself because I rarely travel to New York City, let alone get involved in a protest in which people have been beaten, pepper sprayed, and arrested. But I decided to go anyway.

There are people out there who know more about the Marvel and DC Universes than I ever will. People who can name every single Lantern Corps and at least three prominent members of each. People who know that Booster Gold has done more for the multiverse than Batman ever will, and can tell you in excruciating detail why and how.

If you don’t hang out much with the punk crowd, going to some basement shows can feel like stumbling upon a long lost tribe. People in cut up jean shorts and sleeveless t-shirts gather to take part in holy rituals at houses like the Alamo as if they were hollowed temples. Every inch of the walls is covered in the sacred images of DIY band posters, makeshift artwork, and oversized reprints of Ziggy cartoons.

Finding a basement show in New Brunswick takes some couth. It’s like the line in Swingers “You tell a chick you’ve been some place, it’s like bragging that you know how to find it.” The speakeasy romanticism of the whole local scene is its exclusivity, the delightful feeling you’re getting away with something the outside world wouldn’t understand.

This Thursday coLAB Arts is hosting an opening event for the month long show, “Waving to Solidarity,” featuring one of the Johnsonville’s former artist contributors, Dave Peters. Below you will find the Press Release for the event. We hope that you will attend the event, or visit the gallery during the month long showing in support of coLAB and the Johnsonville’s own, Dave Peters.

Recently I sat down with Theresa Francisco of the coLAB Arts organization in New Brunswick to chat about the organization and the people involved. CoLAB Arts is a non-profit organization that seeks “to cultivate a hip, mindful, and inclusive community of artists, audiences, and critics” as they so eloquently say in their mission statement.

Modern American Youth are notoriously referred to as Generation Y or Millennials. Attempts to name and define our generation have mostly come from those who are not members of this generation. Our identity as a group, as a demographic, as a social class: it must come from within. We cannot let the world tell us who we are; we must assert our own identity. We are Modern American Youth. I call us the MAY Generation.

Discernment of Spirits is a collection of photographs that emphasizes the incredible variety of subjects in Addessi’s work ranging from landscapes, to portraiture, to abstraction. The images stir up feelings of warmth and nostalgia as they project the idea of a much slower and tranquil time in life.

The Alfa Art Gallery is proud to present “Abstraction and the Creative Unconscious,” the joint exhibition of Peter Arakawa and Rita Herzfeld. The works of Arakawa and Herzfeld create a world of the nonrepresentational, often conceived in moments of instinct and uncertainty. Each piece in this exhibition began as a mystery with the first brushstroke and stresses the artist’s journey to reach a conclusion.

These girls I knew,
It was like their
houses were sinking