Curated by Calvin Reid.

“Dancing in the Dark is an effort to show off the wide range of visual imagination, conceptual eccentricity and formal inventiveness that characterizes the contemporary New York-New Jersey art scene. – Calvin Reid, Emerge 2002 Catalog

Taking risks, going through doors (even those with cruel bars and dead bolt locks) are part of being an artist, and are an integral aspect of the philosophy behind Aljira’s Emerge program. Aljira provides the ‘keys, combinations, lock picks, screwdrivers, drills and crow bars’ to open doors but the program participants must be ready and willing to use the tools. They must also have the desire, energy and courage to continue the passage—after all, getting through the door is only the first move.– Judith Page, Emerge 2002 Catalog”

The following artists were selected for inclusion in this exhibition:

Patty Cateura, Nicole Agbay-Cherubini, Mike Childs, James Costanzo, Gema Alava-Crisostomo, Jennifer Crupi, Michael Eade, Elise Engler, Nancy Goldenberg, Timothy Hutchings, Josh Jordan, Megan Maloy, Robert Marbury, Annie Murdock, Heidi Pollard, Elisa Pritzker, Kit Sailer, and Robert Walden.

Photo (at right): Elisa Pritzker, @Black Maya Series #3 (detail), 2001

Curated by Judith Page.

“Time is of the essence”
Estella Lackey, from an undated sketchbook

When Estella Lackey wrote the above words, she was not consciously aware of how critical an issue time was for her. She must have intuited it, however, because she always worked as if a fire were nipping at her heels. In her brief life, she created an impressive body of sculpture that was fiercely intelligent and passionately focused. When Estella died in 1999 at age thirty-nine, she had moved determinedly through the art world, receiving degrees from the University of Florida and Columbia University, significant grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and important residencies from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Between the years of 1989 and 1999, Estella developed a distinctive artistic vocabulary—a combination of welded steel and stretched fabric—that contained fragile and dangerous elements and charged voids and solids. Estella’s transcendent visual blend of feminine beauty and female power evokes and affirms the power of nature. Could any artist have left a more eloquent and potent legacy? — JUDITH PAGE, Curator

Photo (at right): Estella Lackey, Torque II, 1995

Curated by Arlene Raven.

“Whether envisioning tomorrow or the end of time, the unending possibility inherent in art speaks in a future tense that is forcefully informed by memory and immediacy.” — Arlene Raven, Emerge 2001 catalog

“Aljira has a long history of risk taking. Consistently over the past eighteen years, Aljira has supported emerging and mid-career artists—exhibiting the work of artists whose art defies categorization, giving mid-career artists the opportunity for a major exhibition, and often providing an emerging artist’s first major exhibition venue.” — Judith Page, Emerge 2001 catalog

The following artists were selected for inclusion in this exhibition:

Pedro Cruz-Castro, B.J. Ervick, Nicholas Evans-Cato, Rita Grendze, Marion E. Held, Suki Kurjian, Lisa Petsu Lagunes, Greg Leshé, Meghan LeBorious, Sharon Libes, Julie McConnell, Nisa Rauschenberg, Elizabeth Riley, Sheila Ross, Reynolds Tenazas-Norman, Gloria E. Williams, James Teixeira.

Photo (at right): Greg Leshé, Personal Radar, 2000