In theory, JC Fridays means free arts events of all types. The organizers of the festival promise music and live performance and film and poetry. That’s no fib: All of that stuff is on the calendar at jcfridays.com, which you should check out immediately. But in practice, JC Fridays is a visual arts celebration and a quarterly echo of the annual Artist Studio Tour that has defined the cultural life in this town for decades. There are more art openings and gallery events listed on the JC Fridays site than all other options put together. This means it’s a fine excuse to run all over Jersey City, taking in as much visual art as you can stand.
For instance, if you’ve never been to the Fine Arts Gallery on the Saint Peter’s University campus, this coming JC Fridays is giving you a good reason to do just that. “Forged in Fabric” collects the works of three Jersey artists each of whom are engaged in the sort of innovation that has made modern fiber art a plush alternative to traditional painting and sculpture. Mollie Thonneson makes translucent, pennant-like pieces from repurposed lingerie; the result is very pretty and outrageously feminine. Christine Barney’s sculptures dance on the intersection between sleek fabric and cool glass. Hamlet Manzueta was another artist who was deeply embedded in the local scene – until he wasn’t. The Dominican-born Manzueta, who died in the winter of 2019, was a big personality: a drag queen, a designer, and a lover of life. He’s remembered for his public access television show “The Pot,” which was silly business in the best possible way, and for his drag characters, too, and he’s survived by his visual art, which manages to radiate innocence and trepidation in equal measure.
Manzueta’s work is liminal in the sense that it does speak to the experience of queerness and otherness in a contemporary society that still isn’t comfortable with either, but mostly it’s an expression of a singular personality that doesn’t fall squarely into any particular identity category. “One Year After,” a show curated by Andrea McKenna at the Art House Gallery, is a more than just a show of Manzueta’s paintings. It’s a memorial to a man whose spirit is missed in a town in which playfulness is often in short supply. Technically, this show doesn’t launch until Saturday, but Art House is doing a sneak preview of the exhibition for JC Fridays. The Gallery is only open for an hour, so act fast. (6–7 p.m. at AHP Gallery at the Cast Iron Lofts, 262 17th St., arthouseproductions.com.) McKenna’s own work is on display elsewhere. At Eonta Space, her somber, drape-like paintings of female forms engulfed in color fields of rust red and institution green are juxtaposed with Cheryl Gross’s vibrant drawings of endangered animals. “Commit to Memory: The Precipice of Extinction” has been up since the beginning of February, and it remains one of the most provocative visual art experiences around town — and an echo of the thunderous, inspiring Federico Uribe “Animalia” show that landed with fanfare at the Montclair Art Museum last month. (6–10 p.m. at EONTA Space, 34 Dekalb Ave., eontaspacenj.com)