ArtYard Showcases Art Without Intent in “As Is”

ArtYard Showcases Art Without Intent in “As Is”

Objects of inadvertent beauty are featured in ArtYard’s As Is, an exhibition curated by Benjamin Albucker and Margaret Parish. The pair are collectors who have honed an eye for arresting objects hiding in plain sight or altered by time, accident, fire, or flood.

A mound of illegally dumped moss-covered foam insulation, left for years in a wild corner of New Jersey’s Sourlands, evokes a Chinese Scholar’s rock. A trio of twisted, desiccated plungers and a carbonized bagel are among the masterworks.

Albucker, an antiques dealer, and Parish, an artist — both of New Hope, Pennsylvania — sourced many of the nearly 100 items from their own collections as well as those of fellow collectors in the field.

As Is is one of three exhibitions on view at ArtYard that engage in conversation between the galleries.

Paul Bowen: Drift features sculptures of materials scavenged from Cape Cod beaches and Bowen’s rural Vermont, much of it wrenched from its source by hurricanes. Bowen is an artist’s artist whose work ethic and poetic circular abstractions may read like maps of the cosmos.

The third exhibition, Shoes, A Love Story, is a repository of beguiling shoes that suggest wordless narratives about brokenness, grief, and repair.

All three exhibitions continue through May 21 at ArtYard, located at 13 Front Street, Frenchtown, New Jersey. Public hours are Wednesday through Sunday from 11am to 5pm and late night Thursdays until 7pm.

ArtYard is an incubator for creative expression and a catalyst for collaborations that reveal the transformational power of art. Its campus includes an arts center featuring exhibition space and a state-of-the-art theater, as well as two buildings housing its residency program.

To learn more, visit artyard.org.