The Center for Contemporary Art Celebrates Youth Art Month

Each year, for the past twelve years, in celebration of Youth Art Month, The Center for Contemporary Art hosts exhibitions of Somerset County student work in partnership with Art Educators of New Jersey. Youth Art Month has a long history going back to 1961 and is supported by the National Art Education Association. Each year, each state submits a Youth Art Month report to NAEA and awards of excellence are given to 4 states. New Jersey has been in the top 4 for the past 11 years.


This year fourteen public and private schools located throughout Somerset County will be participating in two exhibitions during the month of March. Part I of Youth Art Month runs from March 1-March 11 and features students in grades K through 5. Part II features students in grades 6 through 12 and runs from March 15-March 25. Public receptions will be held on Sunday, March 11th for Part I and Sunday, March 25th for Part II. Awards presentations will be held at 2:30 pm. each day.

This year, for the first time, The Center will hold two Family Open House events in conjunction with Youth Art Month receptions from 1-3:30 pm on Sunday, March 11th and 25th. Activities include a variety of hands-on art projects and artist demonstrations led by The Center’s faculty. Special class registration promotions will be offered, along with a summer camp preview, refreshments and more! The events are offered free of charge and the facility is handicapped accessible.

Come check it out! And bring a friend. All programs take place at The Center for Contemporary Art, 2020 Burnt Mills Road, Bedminster, NJ. (908)234-2345 http://www.ccabedminster.org/

New Exhibition to Open!



Bathers by Cindy Stockton Moore



Water/Line: Mark Stockton and Cindy Stockton Moore



The Center for Contemporary Art is pleased to present “Water/Line”, an exhibition of the work of Philadelphia artists Mark Stockton and Cindy Stockton Moore opening on Sunday, October 16, 2011 from 3-6 p.m. with an Artist Talk at 3 p.m. The exhibition runs through December 3, 2011 and is curated by well-known New Jersey artist Mel Leipzig.


Cindy Stockton Moore's painted work explores the liminal landscape in a variety of media including encaustic, watercolor and gouache. Swimmers trespass in isolated bodies of water - restricted reservoirs, wetlands, and rivers- creating a sense of both playfulness and potential for disaster. Themes of unease within nature, impending danger, and vulnerability also run through Stockton Moore’s Actum Agere series. Here paintings are repeated and abbreviated resulting in shifts and alterations from piece to piece and creating a narrative series that references cinematic story-telling. The imagery is inspired by cult films and staged photographs, resulting in a related but evasive narrative.


Mark Stockton works with traditional materials and techniques to reference a range of historical portraiture. Through a time-intensive and rigorous process, he reproduces the synthetic product of celebrity through hand-drawn and intimately human means. Through his drawings, Stockton reexamines familiar images of famous and infamous archetypes in an exaggerated size and with painstaking detail. Working from memory, found images and Internet sources, his work reflects a collective consciousness that is shaped by our media-saturated culture.




Poised by Mark Stockton



“Water/Line” speaks to the underlying themes connecting the work on view and the very different ways that these two, married artists work in their shared studio. Both artists are interested in saturation, Stockton with media-generated saturation of images, and Stockton Moore with the physical sensation of saturation. Both seek out the implied spaces around figurative images, but their methods differ dramatically in revealing them. Mark Stockton’s carefully rendered compositions introduce complex connections between iconic figures, while Cindy Stockton Moore’s looser, more intuitive approach to painting allows the media to obscure and reveal simultaneously.



Area artists will have an opportunity to learn directly from the exhibiting artists when they return to The Center on Saturday, October 22nd  to lead full day Guest Artist Workshops. Cindy Stockton Moore will lead an 'Experimental Watercolor Workshop" and Mark Stockton will teach "Drawing from Photographic Sources."



Please call The Center at 908.234.2345 for more information or register for the workshops online at www.ccabedminster.org