Culture in Context
Friday, June 27 at 8:30 pm
Rebroadcast Wednesday, July 2 at 11:30 pm

Culture in Context is a State of the Arts special exploring an exhibition of the same name at the New Jersey State Museum. Culture in Context: A Tapestry of Expression, marks the reopening of the museum after an extended renovation. The array of objects and traditions included in the exhibit gives striking testimony to the fact that New Jersey is one of the most diverse states in the union.

The half-hour NJN program brings together South Jersey decoys with Cambodian court dancing, Pinelands baskets with Nigerian folk tales, Indian embroidery with Jewish sukkahs, and much, much more. State of the Arts visits the newly renovated museum and goes on to meet some of the artists in their homes, at work, and in the community.

Guest curator Rita Z. Moonsammy, who is a featured interview, states, “One of the reasons that I love folk arts and working with folk life so much is because I love stories. I love the stories of people’s lives. And folk art objects are also stories. They’re stories of an individual, they’re stories of a community and they’re so encapsulated. We’re helping unfold stories so that people can understand more of what is within this artifact and see the person behind it and see the community and the history.”

Moonsammy, a resident of Tabernacle, New Jersey, has a Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She has conducted field research on and documented the traditional life of ethnic, regional, and occupational communities in several states, most extensively in the Northeastern and Delaware Bay areas of New Jersey. In 1995 she developed the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Folk Arts Apprenticeship Grant program. The twenty-six artists in the Culture in Context exhibition are just some of the over 100 traditional artists who have participated in the NJSCA’s Folk Arts Apprenticeship Grant Program. The grants provide support for artists to pass on their skills to other community members.

The State of the Arts special features some of the artists in the exhibition, going behind the scenes and talking to them about their crafts. One is Forked River basketmaker Mary May. She began making baskets as a hobby, but soon developed an interest in making the type of baskets once used to trap fish, gather berries, and do other tasks in South Jersey. She was drawn to the white oak baskets of the Pinelands region and became skilled in recreating their traditional forms. May describes the process of splitting the white oak in almost musical terms, “When you pop the grain right, it’s like a song.” Mary has developed skills in identifying and splitting the best white oak logs, separating and shaving the splints and weaving them into berry baskets, pound fishing baskets, eel fykes and grocery baskets among others. State of the Arts visits May in her home studio and at Tuckerton Seaport where she teaches children the process and history of basketmaking.

Also in South Jersey, State of the Arts learns from woodworker Robert Broschart about the traditional wooden molds he has learned to make. Studying with a master in West Virginia, Broschart has learned to make the molds which are used in making certain blown glass objects at historic glass factories. We visit Broshart’s shop in the Petersburg/Woodbine area and go to Wheaton Arts in Millville for a glassblowing demonstration using the molds.

On the other end of the spectrum and the state, State of the Arts visits with Alpa Thakkar in Secaucus, a Gujarati Indian skilled at traditional Kutchi embroidery. Alpa is by profession a jeweler, creating original designs with a computer assisted design program. However, in her off time, she enjoys making the colorful embroidered clothing worn by Indian women for Navrati and other festivals.

Isi Igetei is a storyteller from Nigeria who now resides in Hillside. His art form is represented in the New Jersey State Museum’s exhibit by a display of his traditional full length costume and props. State of the Arts visits Igetei at home where he tells an engaging traditional story to a group of children from the neighborhood and describes his own youth learning from the local griots and his hard times during the war.

Another artist marked by war is Sojaita Jenny Hua. Born in America, raised in Cherry Hill, and currently a student at Temple University, Hua is in many ways an average American girl – but she is also a skilled Cambodian Court Dancer. Her folk art is represented at the museum by costumes and through fantastically carved masks and headdresses. State of the Arts visits Hua at home and meets her parents, ethnic Khmers who escaped from Vietnam and Cambodia during the war. Hua talks about why she decided to learn court dancing, once reserved for royalty but now an important source of ethnic Cambodian pride. From age 14, she has studied with master dancer Chamrouen Yin in Philadelphia, and now also teaches younger students herself. She has performed at the United Nations and the Cambodian Embassy, and this summer will be strengthening her ties to Cambodia by interning with an NGO. State of the Arts goes behind the scenes for the elaborate ritual of dressing in full costume as Hua prepares to perform in a celebration of the Cambodian New Year at the Khmer Art Gallery in Philadelphia.

“This show really honors the diversity of communities and their traditions in New Jersey, which we all know is a very diverse state,” says Dr. Moonsammy. “It brings into visibility people and traditions who most of us don’t realize are there…people really just in their community and in their own lives really have done a lot and work very hard with a lot of passion and a lot of dedication to keep tradition and traditional crafts alive for many, many wonderful reasons.”

Culture in Context is a special NJN Public Television/State of the Arts program produced by Susan Wallner with the assistance of Christopher Benincasa. The show is accompanied by an extended website, www.cultureincontext.org, created in partnership with the New Jersey State Museum. Nila Aronow is the executive producer.

The program is funded by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

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