Jennifer Perlmutter, Artist And Gallery Owner

 

I first met Jennifer back in 1999 when I was living in Los Angeles and teaching with her husband, Sean, at a school on Wilshire Boulevard called Theatre Of Arts. 

At the time, Jennifer was not only painting, but she was doing a lot of furniture restoration work and upcycling, long before it became so fashionable. 

She had already mastered gold leaf application, all sorts of painting and textural and media approaches to a variety of surfaces, including the difficult art of chinoiserie. 

By the time the year 2000 rolled around, she and Sean had opened a repair studio in a space that had once been a meth lab on Pico Boulevard. 

My wife and I left Los Angeles that year, but we have enjoyed keeping in touch.

The new millenium was just the beginning for Jennifer. After moving out of Los Angeles back to her native central California, she opened a gallery (pictured above) at the exquisite town of Carmel-by-the-Sea. 

Here is the gallery website: https://jenniferperlmuttergallery.com/

This is titled Sunshine from her Place In Mind collection

This is Jumbulaya from her Collage Stories collection

Here is Bloom, also from her Collage Stories collection

Jennifer in her gallery stands surrounded not only by her own works. The gallery on occasion will host a guest artist, as well. In June, 2022, it featured Into Pieces, Into Place by artists Chloe Corriveau and Lauren Michelle. 

Jennifer's focus nowadays is less on furniture restoration and more on her gallery and her own canvases, and her mixed media work. Examples of these, some of them framed, are on sale on her web site.

I find her paintings, many of which are quite large, altogether extraordinary. They're full of vitality, blending tension with optimism, a collision of forces influenced by sometimes fine Asian lines meeting the scope and colors and irridescence of Turner or Chagall, for example. 

Here she is with Sean, I believe, hanging one of her paintings.

This is the first cover we did together, with the publisher Caleb Mason at Publerati choosing to frame Jennifer's image and superimpose the seated Magritte-like art viewer. As the title story of the collection is about a female art teacher, I think this image quite fitting.

This is the second book cover we did together, a chapbook of poems which won an award that year, 2013, from Robert Henry at Leaf Garden Press. https://leafgardenpress.blogspot.com/

The name of Jennifer's painting here is Outside Inside, which Mr. Henry and myself thought entirely in keeping with the spirit of the poems.

The most recent and the third book cover image was chosen by the late editor at Fomite, Marc Estrin, and his widow and production editor Donna Bister. They chose from a group of images that Jennifer agreed to provide for my second book of short stories with Fomite: https://www.fomitepress.com/our-books.html

The title of this painting is Stay, and I think Marc and Donna chose well as the painting's stormy mixture of symmetry and chaos is in keeping with the nature of each story in the book.

Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Poet, Professor, Author, Painter

Tireless, dedicated, unselfish and generous are just some of the words that come to mind when I think about Maria Mazziotti Gillan. My wife Angela and I had the privilege of meeting and speaking at length with Maria afer hearing her give a reading in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the house of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. https://www.nps.gov/long/index.htm

A year or so later, I joined about twenty other apsiring writers to work with her for a couple of days at a writer's retreat in Morristown, New Jersey. 

It was a thrill for me to give my late mother signed and inscribed copies of Maria's books, Things My Mother Told Me, and Italian Women In Black Dresses. My mother read both of them with zeal, tears and much enjoyment. Like Maria, she'd been raised as the daughter of hard-working first generation Italian immigrants, and had dealt with all of the trials that entailed. When my mother died, I made a point of finding those two books and passing them along to my sister.   

Here is a link to Maria's website: https://www.mariamazziottigillan.com/ 

And here are lines from her poem, Daddy, We Called You. 

Papa,

dragging your dead leg through the factories of Paterson, 

I am outside the house now,

shouting your name.

Maria's poems help me conjure meals at winter dinner tables. Warm celebrations to counter the brick and mortar of Paterson. The smokestacks of, say, the Marcal paper plant. I think of the book of George A. Tice photos I bought at a library sale for a dollar. I still have it at home, a black and white documentary of industrial Paterson, a town that once represented so many American towns. 

However, that town is long gone. Paterson is a Muslim enclave now. The city mayor, Andre Sayegh, declared on February 28th, 2025 at a Hilal Lighting Ceremony that his city is now the “capital of Palestine” and “the fourth holiest city in the world.” 

Maria's America, the one I knew, as well, frankly, it's gone. One must mourn. Her Paterson is no more. As a woman, a feminist, the daughter of immigrants, does she question the myopic liberals who embrace Islam and what it demands from women? 

Such questions need to be asked. Sanely, without rancor. Paterson, like America, remains a surface, a lottery ticket, a shadow, a house, apartment and street. Whether Christian or Muslim, it’s in my opinion defined as a souless struggle to get by. On the dole a while, then off it, trying to rise, to get out, to get on, to get up, to conquer, reminded each day of what politicians have and haven’t done, whether it’s de-industrialization, antiquated roads and services, industries shut down, all the jobs that moved away, the poisoned rivers and foods or the chemical spills. 

How many Christian enclaves exist the size of Paterson in the Islamic world? Few, if any, I believe. When does Sharia law go to the ballot box or referundum under the name of relgious freedom? How does any of this make sense or promote unity? When have Jews and Arabs ever got along? I should ask Salman Rushdie. Or maybe Norman G. Finkelstein or Mark Levin or Ayaan Hirsi Ali. One of them might know. They've all certainly pocketed enough coin writing books about it.

Maria’s poems don’t wear rose-colored glasses. They contract in the mind’s eye toward sharply heightened and distilled moments with family, with gestures, glances, colors, Western European traditions, terms of endearment, expressions of love and folly and tender loyalty. 

Why do I feel we are under attack? At risk of survival. Yet I watch how our government attacks, as well. In the name of Christianity. Inclusiveness. All blatant lies. The bloodshed. How does sanity survive? 

I often feel like a foriegner in the nation I was born in. In some circles, I can't even say that I'm a man or act like one. Is that free speech? This is America now for many. On both sides of the deepening divide. Just what the controlling interests want. 

Maybe some still believe in the melting pot, but I think it remains a tawdry lie, always was. Immigration, either legal or not, has always meant cheap labor. It's always meant divisions, neighborhood turf battles, inner city rot, shoot-outs, addicts, racial tensions and demarcations, warring tribes, cops on the take, inept and corrupt politicians, those strung-out and those still cheating the systems while others keep working and dreaming -- all are inevitable as part of the human fabric. But, hey, Paterson Muslims are united. They may get their Sharia law one day, too. What do the Amish think of all this? Two really rather tiny cheers for democracy.

https://patersontimes.com/2020/03/11/after-divisive-public-hearing-paterson-passes-law-allowing-islamic-call-to-prayer/

What I admire is that Maria's poems drive me through her life, but she gets off the ghost highway now and then. She brings me beyond her past and her home. They remind me that Paterson is more than one face, one soul representative of America and its fracutured, lauded and downright scary illusory dream. Maria knows there are many more cities and towns and regions just like the New Jersey she writes about so well. She doesn’t force the issue of universality. She lets me as a reader see the bigger picture through the tiniest of her descriptions and metaphors.

So, free man that I am, I read on with delight, with sadness, with fear. I'm altered and charged, unharmed and bettered by her work. Bolstered in my conviction that family -- and any quest of a spiritual nature that brings me closer to the unkown -- is more important and will bring resilience, than what dogma or a public official promises. 

This, to me, is why the Paterson as Islamic definition irritates and feels so worrisome. Having lived in the Middle East for four years and having, at times, dipped curiously into the Koran, one thing struck me. Islam is irrevocably tied to the State. The history of the religion, its umblicial link to an intolerant political stance, leads me to doubt that pure fully committed Muslims can live side by side with Christians. The number of attacks, the restlessness, the violent rehtoric, and the written histories bear this out. 

Yet Christianity, despite its message of tolerance, is linked to the State, as well. I'm too much a realist to believe peaceful assimilation or harmony will thrive between Christians, Muslims and Jews to become the norm. I suspect just the opposite will occur. The politicians know this. They continue to divide and conquer. 

Talk on the street may be cheap, but Maria’s poems aren’t. She doesn’t chirp that the worst of us doesn't exist. No banal optimism here. She’s honest with her readers and with herself. She takes the time to pause and consider beauty, the menace as well as the love that resonates as she pines for the last of her garden roses in full bloom. 

Goodbye, Paterson. Maybe it was nice to visit you. There's still William Carlos Williams, or the Jim Jarmusch movie if I care to visit again.

What follows comes directly from Maria's biography online:

    "My art comes from an instinctive place. In my watercolors and collages I try to do what I do in poetry—that is to let go, to allow the old wise woman who lives in my belly to take over. Often, when I’m writing a poem, it is as though the poem is writing itself, operating out of the subconscious mind after the first few lines. I don’t allow my conscious mind to control what is going on in the poem. For me, the same thing happens when I am painting or constructing a collage. Allowing my imagination to take over, gives me the freedom to paint people, interiors, or the external world as they exist in my mind rather than in reality.

    "In my poetry, I try to root my work in the details and specificity of ordinary life, but in my art, I am not attempting to achieve realistic portrayals of people, interiors, or birds, or flowers. Rather, I am trying to capture energy and feeling. I am trying to allow the essence of the subject to come forth, to convey joy or sadness, exuberance or loss."

Having published more than 20 books of and about poetry and four literature anthologies, she is the Founder and Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, New Jersey, and is the founding editor of the Paterson Literary Review. She is also is a Bartle Professor and Professor Emerita of English and creative writing at Binghamton University-SUNY.

A collection of her poems along with a selection of her paintings was published as The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets. Her most recent poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Her poetry and photography collaboration with Mark Hillringhouse is Paterson Light and Shadow.

She is the recipient of the 2014 George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs), the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers and the 2008 American Book Award for her book, All That Lies Between Us (Guernica Editions). 

Maria has read her poems numerous times at universities, festivals, and poetry centers throughout the USA and in Italy, France, Yugoslavia, Finland, Wales, and Ireland.

Here is her poem, What If. 

And here is her poem, My Son the Lawyer Quotes Dylan Thomas to Give Me Courage.

Matthew J. Kelly, Photographer And Journalist, Part Two

The Battle Of Bennington

In the American Revolution, one of the turning points was the defeat of British General John Burgoyne at Saratoga by Colonial forces. One of the elements of that conflict was that Burgoyne sent Lieutenant Colonel Friedrich Baum, and his forces to Bennington to attack a poorly defended Colonial stores and Burgoyne would have supplies for his forces. Baum failed. The stores were guarded by about 1,500 militia men about whom Burgoyne and Baum were not aware. Ethan Allen and his troops from Bennington engaged Baum’s troops and killed or captured about 1,000 of them. Baum himself was among the dead.  The conflict has gone down in history as “The Battle of Bennington,” which has sparked local conflict. 

Walloomsac Battle Re-enactment

The Battle, which was for Bennington, took place in Walloomsac, New York, near that state’s border with Vermont, along the banks of the river on farmland currently being farmed by the Cottrell family. While the battle actually took place in New York, Vermont has been able to capitalize on it.

Bennington has the tall Bennington Monument which is to celebrate the battle, it has the Battle Day Parade, every August to mark the anniversary of the battle, and then of course there is the name, “The Battle of Bennington.” People across the line in New York tend to refer to it as “The Battle for Bennington,” in an unsuccessful bid to get some recognition. 

The state of New York has built a pleasant little park on the hilltop across Route 67 from the battlefield overlooking the conflict site. It is a great spot for a picnic and generally a quiet little place that locals all know is there and take for granted, as a native of New York City never goes up to the top of the Empire State building. 

Tourism is a major industry in Vermont, and they know how to promote, while the question of where the battle took place is of interest only to the people in the Hoosick, White Creek area. The vast majority of people in the state of New York have never heard of the Battle of Bennington and care even less of it. But to the people who live there, it is an insult. It is a slap in the face with a pair of brown, calf-skin gloves. It is a constant reminder that a key, but small battle in the Revolution took place in Walloomsac, and nobody gives them credit for it and nobody cares. 

These re-enactors in front of the Old First Church in Old Bennington and two shots of militia members from a re-enactment that took place on the anniversary on the fields on which the actual battle took place, which was a major accomplishment for the Battle for Bennington crowd. I have also included a photo of the Colonial Mobile Artillery. 

Barbara Brown Brenenstuhl 

Barbara Brown Brenenstuhl was a diminutive woman in West Hoosick who lost a son. Barbara’s first husband was Howard Browe, who worked on our farm briefly. Barbara lived in North Hoosick at the time and Howard was staying at our place, just outside North Hoosick. They had three sons — Paul, Daniel and John Browe. 

John joined the U.S. Army and was an eighteen-year old private stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.  On January 3, 1988, Browe and three other soldiers were involved in a car collision on the icy Green River Bridge. Their car apparently skidded and struck another car that had already slid on the ice and struck the bridge. The soldiers got out of their car and were trying to help the other operator when a third car came onto the bridge and slid. The soldiers scrambled out of the way. John Browe, either in an effort to avoid being hit or being hit and thrown, went off the railing of the bridge and plunged to his death.

However, in all the confusion, no one saw what happened to him. The other soldiers, all children like he was, returned to base and assumed John Browe had been taken to the hospital. The state police assumed he had returned to base. The Army, when he had not shown up for several days, declared him absent without leave. Barbara, who would get weekly calls from him, was concerned and she knew something had happened.

She had married Clark Brenenstuhl and they had a small farm. Barbara was a short woman to begin with and this seemed to shrink her more. She remembered me from her courtship with John’s father, and she knew I worked at a local paper, so she called for help. I hectored the state police and the Army and I think it was a combination of the persistence of a grieving mother and the fluttering fear of any military careerist of unfavorable publicity that forced the state police to go back out to the bridge and after some searching underneath it they found John’s body, dead of a fractured skull and severe internal injuries.

When Barbara first called the Army and the state police and the newspaper, I think she knew what the result would be, that it was all aimed at recovery and not rescue and I think for those several weeks she and I were in frequent contact, she knew John was gone, but as long as no one said it out loud she could hold it together, chasing after a slender wisp of hope that dissipated more each day until it was gone and there was nothing to hold on to but a cold reality that gave no succor.

I don’t think I saw her again after that affair. I do know that she died at age fifty-nine in 2006, in January, the same month in which her son died eighteen years earlier.

Jim Mulligan

The Browes had a house on Delavan Hill Road in White Creek. After they left, the house was sold to Thomas Gore Auchincloss, who fixed it up fancy into a show place. Jim Mulligan, an officer in the Buskirk Fire Department, was also a rural mail carrier. He had a package for Tom one time, a package for which Tom was supposed to sign and Jim went to the front door of the house and when he knocked, Tom’s step sister came to the door and told Jim that Tom wasn’t there but she would sign for the package. Jim was agog because Tom’s step sister was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. 

Tom’s father Hugh had married Jacqueline’s mother. Jim was very impressed because he seldom got to meet people as famous as she was, and several people bought a round for him at Delaney’s because he had met the late president’s wife.

White Creek had several famous people and got accustomed to it. One of the most famous was Grandma Moses, a ‘primitive’ artist. 

Grandma Moses

Autumn Berkshires by Grandma Moses

Hortense Callisher, a well-known New York writer, had a house there, as did Duane Michaels, a popular photographer, also from New York City.

Duane Michaels

There were others, who were famous elsewhere, such as Bob Epstein, a sculptor of strange creatures, popular in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.  Norman Rockwell spent many years living in nearby Arlington, Vermont, and my friend Tim used to tell his girls, who were raised up in Cambridge, New York, that they lived halfway between Grandma Moses and Norman Rockwell.

Bob Epstein

These people were known in town, but not ‘famous,’ only Bob or Hortense or Duane, people who could make good money for their art or their creations, but who when there were just folks.

Hathaways Drive In

North Hoosick, New York, has one of the few drive in theaters left in the state. It is still running, celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary. When we were teen-agers, before we had cars, we were walk-ins, carrying a blanket to lie on and under which to hide the beer. The walk-ins would park in the first two rows that were too close for the cars. And we would look up at this enormous screen and watch spaghetti westerns and James Bond films and luxuriate to the music of Ennio Morricone and John Barry over cheap speakers under the starry sky. Movies were big then, big enough for the outdoors, not penned up in a theater or a ‘cinema,’ as they were called later.

Hathaway’s screen was framed by the dark night sky and when the camera zoomed in on Lee Van Cleef’s eyes, it was so much bigger than reality. George Lazenby was an impressive James Bond at that size and Once Upon a Time in the West was magnificent, even if we were seeing the short version from which  Hollywood had sliced twenty minutes.

And while movies have gotten smaller and smaller and gone from 8 mm reels to VHS tapes and digital video discs and are now streaming so that people watch movies on their telephones, I still often think about that big screen, still out there, still framed against the night sky, caressed by my memory of Lee Van Cleef’s eyes, his face so huge, as was the experience, the way movies, I think, were meant to be, even though the sound was piped in through my car radio.

There is a certain magic in movies under the stars when we could afford cars, and when we met girls, and when the screens were visible through window glass.

Tony Sturtevant, Visual Artist

TONY STURTEVANT

Tony is a Native American artist working in all mediums, creating sketches and drawings and collages influenced by his tribal heritage, his political perspective, and his passion for other cultures. He's also a long-time ESL instructor, and a well-travelled ex-pat who's been living in Turkey for over a decade. While colleagues at TED University in Ankara, we collaborated on four book covers together, three novels and one book of poems.

Here is a link to his Profile site on Redbubble, where some of his images can be purchased:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/bereketlearning/shop#profile

Here below is a sample of his work:

This is an early image, untitled

This, above, is titled Angkor Wat

This Art Nouveau Beauty was used for the cover of the Basil Rosa novel, Milk Blossom  Pushes Free

Behind The Veil, a postcard

Ben In The Garden

Blue Horse Out Of Black

Buffalo Skull

Che Guevara

Burning Man Skulls on a tote bag, above.

The Awakening Part Two. This was used for the cover of the Basil Rosa novel, Witness Marks

Sunflower. This was used for the cover of the Basil Rosa novel, God Wore Denim

Dad's Trophy, above.

Flower

Frog

Guatemala Skull

Mother And Child

Ottoman Man, a postcard

Pitcher Plant, a collage

Rajastan Boy

War Pony

Ram Ornament

Takes Five, A Crow Indian

The Messenger, a tote bag

Writers

Self-Portrait In Pow Wow Outfit