New Jersey Blues

Special screening "New Jersey - The Movie" hosted by Director Steve Chernowski 9/25 at 6:00 pm

You could call it a road show, but artist Rich Harrington and photographer John Treichler have titled it “New Jersey Blues.” It’s their joint exhibit honoring the view from New Jersey’s many byways and highways.

As you’d expect, there are urban street scenes and picturesque farmsteads. There are also cowboys and Indians, buffalo and wolves. Take a few months to explore New Jersey as Harrington and Treichler have, and there’s no telling what you’ll see.

"I’m interested in showing what it means to live in an area of convergence,” he says. “People outside the state joke about the turnpike, but that's just another word for crossroads. So many things come together here — people, cultures, attitudes, the past and present. Nothing is really out of place in New Jersey."

Harrington was born and raised in upstate New York, but a 1998 move to the eastern edge of Pennsylvania placed him in close contact with the Garden State.

“I chose New Jersey as a subject because I often find myself driving through the state as quickly as possible, trying to get somewhere else,” says Harrington. “Influenced by William Least Heat Moon’s travelogue Blue Highways, I decided to try taking my time and exploring the side roads and smaller highways, hoping to find the unexpected in a state that I had previously ignored and hurried through.”

Both Harrington and Treichler have contributed to an online blog detailing the various places in New Jersey they have visited and researched in preparation for the exhibition. You can read the entries and see works to be included in the show at www.thenewjerseyblues.blogspot.com