The Jersey City Independent "

Share/Save

While there will certainly be many worthy exhibitions, performances and shows to see at this weekend’s Jersey City Artists Studio Tour, one prominent name will be sorely missed. Due to code violations dating back to the summer, Art House Productions was unable to put together its planned multimedia group show, “inventionREinvention,” and will be sitting this year’s tour out.

“At the end of August, Art House Productions had been issued citations for our arts space, and we were under the impression that all issues had been resolved,” Art House founder and executive director Christine Goodman tells JCI. “It was then brought to our attention that there were additional citations which needed to be handled.”

While the issues have been handled and Art House is back up and running (they’ll be kicking off their 9th season tonight, in fact), dealing with citations and getting everything back up to code “prevented us from staying on schedule for our planned 2009 exhibit,” Goodman says.

Art House is not the only cultural entity that’s been having some troubles with the city lately. Acting on what we’ve been told was an anonymous tip, fire department officials stopped by J CITY Theater’s space in St. Michael’s Church last Wednesday, just hours before the troupe’s latest play, Passion, was set to premiere. (The show went on, as they say, but with a limited lighting setup.) And in August, fire and building officials swung by IM Automata Chino just as Melissa Surach’s “Babyhole” show was about to was about to start, hitting the venue with a bevy of violations that forced it to temporarily move its shows to the Iron Monkey. (The venue, which took the opportunity to upgrade its space, says it expects to be back up and running on Oct. 18.)

Meanwhile, though Goodman says she “feels confident” that Art House will be back on the studio tour next year, this weekend her trailblazing group will be on the sidelines.