If all rock nyc's readers just note us as a handful of writers dashing from concert to concert in a mad rush to speak truth to the powerful, what you miss is what happens behind the scene where rock nyc's partners, Joseph Franklyn McElroy and his wife Donna McElroy, manage the website.
Joseph and Donna own Corporate Performance Artists -a website management and seo firm who became partners with us in rock nyc, when they heard our entreaties to help move us to the next level. Trust me, nothing we have accomplished in the interim would've been possible without their technological savvy and hard work on our (though they are "our" as well) behalf.
It always seemed odd that hard nosed business people would even agree to work with a music website that even then seemed to be a long haul to capture an audience. But the McElroy's are rarities, true artists and business people, in every sense of the word. I mean, really, real artists, whose paintings are glorious constructions and things of great beauty. They seem to mix collage with Impressionism, and the McElroy's installations look like beautiful, utilitarian constructs. They seem to exist as an extension of mental gymnastics, like a tautology,"use this, don't use this".
I've admired Joseph and Donna (they collaborate on everything) art for years, so when they invited me to come to Patterson, NJ and view their paintings and installations in exhibition, and with the added incentive of 20 local bands playing the two day art festival in Paterson, NJ, I jumped at the opportunity.
In 1792, Paterson, NJ, a pre-planned city, was birthed to take advantage of the energy harvested from the Great Falls on the Passaic River, it was home to employees and the families of the local industries, including the one that afforded Paterson's nickname, "Silk City".
Today, despite a healthy population of 146,199, Paterson is, as Mayor Jeff Jones ruefully admits, a place you drive through. The Festival is an attempt to make it a destination. But I enjoyed its hybrid, friendly vibe. And the "Historic District' (the one I visited), is actually quite lovely. Time has changed it from a hot bed of back breaking labor do a living, breathing work of art. There were two, not affiliated, Art Festivals (though the Mayor would rather leave off the moniker "Festival" for now, believing they have some growing to do). One was adjacent to the Walls themselves. A DJ was spinning old school hip hop, vendors were a mix of local vendors and the type that have polluted Street Fests for decades now.
I was there for the other fest at Dolphin Manufacturing Company Mill, according to the press release: "The Great Falls Arts Festival, presented by The Ivanhoe Artists Mosaic (IAM), Suzy Von Q, DJ Mike and Alex (of NuStyle). This celebration featuring Music, Art, Food and Films is your chance to kick off Labor Weekend 2012 with a hardy arty party, as you contemplate and honor the history of labor–in the America’s oldest planned industrial city."
Arriving around 5pm on Saturday, I hooked up with Joseph and Donna and then asked some Pointed questions about their art.
Joseph: "This is called 'The Power Of Mystique', we wanted to do a site specific work in a factory, specifically for this place, utilizing construction or industrial material and we discovered that there is designer duct tape. So in the moment we decided use it to create a very visually exciting and vibrant representation of work and art."
Joseph is an Artist and an Internet Entrepreneur and Businessman, and here we see the two connecting, but I wondered how it connected on an ongoing basis. "It's creativity expressed in content and community. In everything we pursue you will find the underlying process (and intent) is to utilize collaboration and creativity to start content that engages and participates with an audience, a community. And our desired result is to somehow stimulate an action, reaction, aversion, an epiphany, some experience made manifest and non-passive – we call this stimulated experience a "conversion", a word borrowed from Internet marketing. So all of our work, have thread elements: Content, Community, Conversion. Even here, we leave the left over rolls of tape on the art work – inviting people to place tape into the artwork, take the tape to use somewhere else, or to just be aware that such tape exists for their own creative expression."
When I see Joseph it is usually to discuss matters regarding the working of rock nyc, but I took this opportunity to ask about how rock nyc fit into his broader business and artistic plans: "music is one of the ultimate communities and rock nyc is a fantastic expression of it. With music, while the musicians may learn in isolation, they have to perform in front of a community. So music is, in a sense, the ultimate expression of community. Thus our support of rock nyc is to help build a community, expand the community, exploring more avenues for the community to express itself. "
With that, Joseph and I wandered around the 400,000 square feet warehouse. For the price of $12, which went to the support of the Ivanhoe Artists, we traveled the maze-like warehouse, checking out some wonderful modern art as well as various artisans stalls. The artists and the audience were an exciting mix tattooed Goth kids, middle class white folks, teenagers on a Saturday night date, black, hispanic and white, young and old: a cross section of Paterson and very diverse.
However, I was also here for the music and according to band promoter Suzy Von Q, there would be 11 bands to choose from. Unfortunately, I only managed to see one of them by the time I left a 8 pm. Phil And Friends are a jam band variant who use an African instrument, the Mbira, a xylophone sound alike, to add color to their sound. On a song that drew my attention they were very effective on the instrument. They followed that song with a rocking "Forever Young" which allowed the bassist to hit it hard. Presented by Internet Radio's "Urban Heartbeat".
We left around 8 pm and missed the rest of the evening, slated to end at 11pm. But this is just the first year of the Great Falls Arts Festival. Next year promises to be bigger and better. Meanwhile, "We honor the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and look to it for our rebirth!” is the Festivals tag. What better way to spend Labor Day?