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ASBURY PARK — An event last weekend at the Jersey Shore Arts Center was a perfect representation of the vibrant arts and culture community that so many of us have built here in Asbury Park.

This newspaper constantly is fighting off the bullshit objections that As-bury Park is no longer “cool.” But as we’ve said for almost 30 years, it you don’t like Asbury Park, go someplace else. Our city has more than enough people who appreciate it for staying ahead of the conformist curve. We know of no other small town in a suburban region like ours that has pulled this off.

Our latest proof? The 300 people who attended the screening of the final-ists in the AP’N3 Film Challenge. They filled the auditorium at the Jersey Shore Arts Center in Ocean Grove, just a few steps outside Asbury Park.

What a spectacular event on so many levels. The film challenge is spon-sored by the Asbury Park Arts Council (APAC), a non-profit arts advocacy group that’s having a huge impact boosting the arts in the city. You read about APAC constantly in these pages for such things as their sponsorship of major outdoor murals, film meetups and even the development of an Asbury Park Arts Plan that was adopted as part of the city’s Master Plan.

APAC is a major force that’s keeping Asbury Park real and unique, with key arts leaders on its board, such as Parlor Gallery owner Jenn Hampton. She is also the founder and curator of the acclaimed Wooden Walls public art project of murals on the boardwalk.

But back to the AP’N3 film challenge. It’s a creative competition where par-ticipants have three weeks to produce a three-minute film that includes a required theme that is revealed on Day One of the challenge. This is their fourth year. There are two categories: On Location, with filming in Asbury Park, and No Borders, with filming anywhere so long as you include Asbury Park in some way in the film. The finalist films that were screened were excellent. The enthusiastic crowd at the screening was really into it. And the beautiful old auditorium inside the Jersey Shore Arts Center — a preserved school built in 1898 — looked stunning being illuminated just by the light of the films as they were shown.

This newspaper knew a ton of the 300 people in attendance. They rep-resented the best and most committed of arts supporters, artists and creatives in Asbury Park and immediately surrounding areas. Some have been here for decades. Others more recent arrivals. Everyone was happy and enthusiastic. It really doesn’t get better than this. Anywhere.

All these people, and others like them in the city, is how Asbury Park has stayed as culturally and creatively vibrant as ever. The form the arts take here was to inevitably evolve, and that’s what’s happening. It’s great. We’re constantly surprised by it all.

The Asbury Park Arts Council is now a key part of all this, and they deserve to take a bow for the AP’N3 film challenge.

“I couldn’t be more proud of our ongoing efforts to support and elevate the art of filmmaking in our community. The AP’N3 brings our creatives and community together through a diversity of storytelling,” said Michael Soda-no, the President of the Board of Trustees of the Asbury Park Arts Council.
Sodano, and his wife, Nancy Sabino, were the founders and long-time owners of the ShowRoom Cinema art house movie theater on Cookman Avenue. Nancy Sabino is also the Executive Producer of AP’N3.

“After 4 years, we are still impressed with the inventiveness of the film-makers’ submissions,” she said. “The AP’N3 Film Challenge is growing in numbers of entries, cleverness of concepts and audience size. We can’t wait to see what next year will bring.”

And while this newspaper doesn’t usually cover local school news, there was a stu-dent film made by Asbury Park High School students that brought down the house. And that film showed the reach of APAC into our city by going into the schools to serve our city’s youth. It’s just another example of spreading the benefits through-out Asbury Park of our vibrant arts community.

For almost a year, APAC worked with Asbury Park High School Principal Perry Medi-na and art teacher Jill Rosker to introduce film to the students, according to Carrie Turner, APAC Executive Director. First was an afterschool program earlier this year, where Mike Sodano advised on curriculum and provided speakers from the net-work built through AP’N3 and APAC’s well-attended Filmmaker Meetups.

The afterschool program was popular enough that the high school then held a one month summer enrichment program in film, where again, Sodano assisted by finding course instructors from APAC’s network. The student film shown this past Sunday was made by the students in the Summer Enrichment program. It was a joy to watch, and funny as hell.

“We are so proud that we’ve forged this relationship with the school and that stu-dents have this opportunity to be exposed to the various aspects of filmmaking, the timing of which is perfect as the film industry is set to explode in New Jersey,” Turner said.
Asbury Park Councilwoman Eileen Chapman summed it all up in her remarks at the screening.

“These films are creating a legacy of who we are: Our hopes, our struggles, our history, and they ensure a path forward to a future rooted in creativity,” Chapman said. “These films will live on. All of you filmmakers here today are preserving his-tory. As our city continues to evolve and reshape itself, we will always have these creative and historic moments documented on film to look back upon.”

Here are the winners and finalists of the AP’N3 challenge:

• ON LOCATION Category (Filmed August 1-21)
  First Place:
  “A Taste of Asbury Park” — Jay Leibowitz.
  Second Place:
  “Salt & Sand” — Iris Ameera Lewis.
  Third Place:
  “Brain Food” — Kyle DeMilner
• NO BORDERS Category (Filmed June 1-21)
  First Place:
  “What We Take With Us” — Doug Donaldson & Alex Tichy
  Second Place:
  “Cats in the Cradle”— Anthony Joseph Apicella
  Third Place:
  “Darling Forgive Me” — Dave McGrath
  Audience Award
  “Alphabet Soup” — Greg Silagy

ASBURY PARK — Our city increasingly has a national, and even international, reputation for arts and culture.

And that reputation is getting even bigger with events like the installation last week of a large work of public art on the boardwalk by internationally-acclaimed Portuguese artist Bordalo II.
The artist is famous for creating large scale 3-D animal sculptures from plastic waste to bring attention to a host of issues including overconsumption, climate change, and protection of endangered and threatened species. Bordalo II has over 200 works displayed throughout the world.

His process is uniquely community-driven. The artist selects an animal linked to the region and provides a specific list of discarded materials for the host loca-tion to collect in advance. For his Asbury Park installation, the artist created a three-dimensional mural of a mother and baby fox — an animal that has become a beloved symbol of resilience to many along the shoreline.
After the 2019 Ocean Grove pavilion fire, a family of foxes made their home in the ruins, capturing the hearts of boardwalk dwellers and photographers during the quiet days of the Covid lockdowns. Today, foxes continue to roam the beaches of Asbury Park, reminding us of the endurance of wildlife in the face of habitat loss. This mural will honor their story while calling attention to the need to protect and coexist with the natural world around us.

Bordalo II’s work on the boardwalk was jointly sponsored by the Wooden Walls Project of public art and the non-profit Asbury Park Arts Council (APAC), who to-gether funded it with grants and private donations. The installation is on the south side of the Third Avenue Pavillion, facing the children’s splash park.
Since its inception in 2015, Wooden Walls, founded by Jenn Hampton, has cu-rated an evolving collection of murals along the Asbury Park Boardwalk in part-nership with boardwalk redeveloper Madison Marquette. The Asbury Park Arts Council, co-founded by Hampton, extends beyond boardwalk murals, advocating for and supporting the broader arts landscape throughout Asbury Park.
Bringing Bordalo II to Asbury Park has been years in the making.

“We have worked for several years to bring Bordalo II to Asbury. We are huge fans of his aesthetic and how this public art piece creates community involve-ment, sparks inspiration, and hopefully will give viewers a chance to reflect on the mural’s environmental message,” said Hampton. “This landmark installation promises to leave a lasting impact on Asbury Park as a revitalizing city, reinforcing the city’s reputation as a hub for innovative public art.”

Since 2012, Bordalo II has created over two hundred animal sculptures using more than 100 tons of reused materials. His works are chiefly found throughout Europe, but they also can be seen in Singapore, French Polynesia, Quebec and Mexico City. He has fewer than 20 pieces in the United States, and none in the tri-state area. His closest work is over 200 miles away in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Bordalo II’s “work is very accessible. You don’t even know it’s plas-tic until you get close,” said Carrie Turner, Asbury Park Arts Council Executive Director.
The Wooden Walls Project of public arts has been an important force to keep Asbury Park in the forefront of arts and cultural, both locally and even nationally. The many murals it commissioned the past decade from all types of artists on the boardwalk are easily the most shared artistic images in Asbury Park on social media. That’s important for our city’s arts reputation.
And all that, hopefully, will set up something even larger for the future of the waterfront.

“The end game is an arts district on the boardwalk,” Hampton said.

So now it’s about getting all types of artists, especially interna-tionally-acclaimed artists like Bordalo II, to come to Asbury Park, create their art installations and go back to where they’re from to tell everyone about our city. The bigger the artistic buzz for Asbury Park, the more possible it will be for boardwalk redeveloper Mad-ison Marquette to create a successful and vibrant boardwalk arts district, as it hopes to do. That could be big.

And Wooden Walls is setting the stage, along with other key groups in the city like the Asbury Park Arts Council, for such a boardwalk arts district. The installation of Bordalo II’s work on the boardwalk is a powerful example of how it could be.

ASBURY PARK — There’s always a false narrative about Asbury Park this newspaper has to combat.

In our early days over twenty five years ago, it was that nothing was going on in our city, especially with the arts and culture. Today, it’s that arts and culture in Asbury Park have been destroyed by the changes here!

One was wrong twenty-five years ago. The other is wrong today. Our job is to counter such false narratives. Why not? We’re the triCityNews. We’re here to help.

The cultural critical mass in Asbury Park is as strong and powerful as ever. That’s why we continue to attract creatives. Of course, it changes over time.
The punk rock DIY days twenty years ago, when a small group of creatives had the place to ourselves, was not going to last forever. What’s here now is of course much different, but it often combines those already established in creative and artistic pursuits with talented younger people starting out. It’s a great combination that creates a lot of energy that can last long-term.

Which brings us to the filmmaker meetups sponsored by the Asbury Park Arts Council (APAC). It’s a perfect example of what we’re talking about.

APAC is a dynamic non-profit arts organization with a board of creative lead-ers involved in our city. One board member is Asbury Park’s most high-profile arts leader, Jenn Hampton, who co-owns Parlor Gallery on Cookman and is the curator and founder of the boardwalk Wooden Walls mural project. The Board President is Mike Sodano, who founded the ShowRoom cinema with his wife Nancy Sabino on Cookman Avenue.

APAC does a lot. It developed an arts master plan which the city adopted so it has legal weight. APAC has also been a leading sponsor of public mural art projects throughout the city. The group is always looking for ways to promote and elevate the arts.

One APAC program is the filmmaker meetups open to anyone interested in any aspect of filmmaking. There’s a speaker followed by a social hour to mix and network. APAC has been sponsoring the gatherings every two months for two years. TriCity attended the most recent last week at the Asbury Park Public Library and it was impressive. (Visit asburyparkartscouncil.org for more information.)

To our surprise, there was over 30 in attendance. It was a diverse mix of people of all ages and experience in film. The featured speaker was Jay Webb, who’s often been in our pages as the founder of the Indie Street Film Festival in Red Bank, which is celebrating its 10th year.

To start the meeting, everyone got up and introduced themselves. Each had something interesting to say. Some already had careers in film in all different capacities: camera operation, music composing, screenwriting, acting, directing, producing. You name it. Others were younger people just starting out with an interest in film and video making. While most were from Asbury Park or places close by, a significant number were from further north in Middlesex County and beyond — a great example of the cultural draw of Asbury Park beyond its borders.

Several people from outside the city said they first got involved with the filmmaker meet-up — and first got to know Asbury Park — through another APAC program: The AP’N3 in film challenge. Now in its fourth year, the AP’N3 challenge has attracted hundreds of people to Asbury Park as participants and attendees at the annual awards ceremony. (See information with this article on how to sign-up for the AP’N3 challenge. Filming starts Aug. 1 with a deadline to finish on Aug. 21)

As an example of who was at last week’s filmmaker meetup, one attendee had 40 years experience operating his own successful video production company. He also makes documentaries that have aired on PBS and loves that storytelling genre. He was there to interface with other peers, and to help mentor those just starting out.

“I’m open to collaboration, to teach, to give back,” he said.

Another participant had a successful career in sports broadcasting, but now wants to get back into his own passion for documentary filmmaking. He too has had success in the documentary genre, and wanted to refocus energy there.

Then there was a young man who’s found traction creating YouTube videos on his own. But he wanted the camaraderie and collaboration of the meet-up because, he said, “YouTube, it’s very lonely.”
Our favorite was another young guy who earnestly said he wanted to get into filmmak-ing. With a great attitude, he candidly said he was there to figure out where to start, as he’s currently working at a supermarket rouding up shopping carts in the parking lot.

“There’s a film in that!” one audience member piped up.

Every person introducing themselves was friendly and open. It was lovely. And it was here in Asbury Park in one of the city’s most remarkable buildings: our public library, which is an historic landmark.

Again, here was yet another great example of what we’re talking about. Asbury Park has done a great job staying ahead of the conformist curve. You read the evidence about why week after week in these pages, like this article about the filmmaker meetups.

Artist has 200 sculptures displayed internationally made from 100 tons of upcycled material

ASBURY PARK — The 10th anniversary of the acclaimed Wooden Walls project of public mural art on the boardwalk will be marked by a striking art installation this fall. It will be a large work by Portuguese activist and ecological artist, Bordalo II. The artist is famous for creating large scale, 2-D and 3-D animal sculptures from plastic trash to bring attention to a host of issues including overcon-sumption and waste, climate change, and protection of endangered and threatened species.

This particular project is jointly sponsored by Wooden Walls and the non-prof-it Asbury Park Arts Council (APAC), who’ll both fund it with grants and private donations. The installation will be located on the south side of the Third Avenue Pavillion, facing the children’s splash park. Palmetto restaurant is just inside.

This artist has done some stunning work around the world.

“This has been six years in the making,” said Jenn Hampton, the founder and curator of Wooden Walls and a member of the Asbury Park Arts Council.
This is the second such large installation for Wooden Walls. The first large ones were the hoTTea installations in the former Casino site, which people went crazy over. Hopefully, this will have a similar reaction. Bordalo II’s “work is very accessible. You don’t even know it’s plastic until you get close,” said Carrie Turner, APAC Executive Director. She said the installation will be approximately 17 feet by 15 feet. Wooden Walls has been the most important project in our city to keep As-bury Park in the forefront of arts and cultural, both locally and even nation-ally. The many murals it commissioned the past decade from all types of artists on the boardwalk are easily the most shared artistic images in Asbury Park on social media. That’s important for our city’s arts reputation.

And Wooden Walls, hopefully, will set up something even larger for the future.

“The end game is an arts district on the boardwalk,” Hampton said.

That would be achieved by getting all types of artists, especially internationally acclaimed artists, to come to Asbury Park, create their installation and go back to where they’re from to tell everyone about our city. The bigger the artistic buzz for Asbury Park, the more possible it will be for boardwalk re-developer Madison Marquette to create a successful and vibrant boardwalk arts district, as it hopes to do. That could be big. And Wooden Walls is setting the stage.

Back to the Bordalo II installation on the Asbury boardwalk this fall. Since 2012, the artist has created over two hundred animal sculptures using more than 100 tons of reused materials. His works are chiefly found throughout Europe, but they also can be seen in Singapore, French Polynesia, Quebec and Mexico City. The Asbury Park installation will feature a mother fox and a baby fox.

Bordalo II has fewer than 20 pieces in the United States, and none in the tri-state area. His closest other work is over 200 miles away in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
“Appearing on the Asbury Park Boardwalk will ensure that the artwork can be enjoyed by residents and the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the boardwalk each year, providing inspiration and provoking conversation, all while helping continue the uniqueness of this creative Jersey Shore destination,” ac-cording to a statement from the Wooden Walls Project and APAC.

Bordalo II’s projects necessitate community involvement in that the host location must collect the used plastic to be utilized in the upcycled installations prior to his team’s arrival to the project site. There are several groups that host beach clean ups or otherwise focus on sustainability issues in Asbury Park that are being targeted to support the project in these collection efforts. The project is likewise an opportunity to coordinate with city youth organizations to include them on a high-profile, large-scale, educational art project.

“The Bordalo II-Asbury Park project will use art to engage the community, drive tourism, and bring attention to contemporary global issues like consumption and waste, clean oceans, endangered and threatened species, and sustainability,” according to the Wooden Walls Project and APAC statement on the installation.

The Wooden Walls Project and the Asbury Park Arts Council are currently accepting in-kind or other financial donations to support the project, as well as seeking donations of the used plastic items identified by the artist to create Asbury Park’s unique installation. To discuss opportunities to get involved, con-tact Jenn Hampton, Founder, Wooden Walls Public Art Project at juicyjenn@par-lor-gallery.com.