The Jersey City Independent "

So often has Bojana Coklyat been asked how her students can make art, let alone have an exhibit dedicated to their work, that she’s crafted two curatorial statements to help address the viewer’s possible skepticism. This is because many of these students are blind or nearly so, or developmentally impaired, or afflicted with trying conditions like cerebral palsy. But, as a legally blind artist herself, Coklyat is in the unique position to answer these questions.

“Technically my sight is 20/200,” Coklyat says. “Maybe the best way to explain is to say that it’s like looking through a foggy windshield all the time, and glasses don’t help.”

Born with sight, her vision degraded three years ago as a result of complications with diabetes. Coklyat, who still creates art (and is painting and selling work more than ever), knew that the artistic expression she takes comfort in could be therapeutic for others. This was her motivation in offering to volunteer her time at St. Joseph’s School for the Blind in the Heights. It’s also what laid the groundwork for the new gallery show at Art House Productions.

The show features work from dozens of students, ranging from ages 4 to 21. As Art House Productions’ artistic director Jack Halpin notes, the work — and the efforts that went into it — is relentlessly uplifting and life-affirming.

“I can’t help but smile when I’m in this room,” he says.

Perhaps this is because, as the show is aptly titled, Art is a Feeling Language. The title comes from an answer given by one of Coklyat’s students to the age-old question: What is art?

“This came from a student who likes to spend his time painting snakes and spears and spiders in art class,” she says, “but he thought up that answer, and it was perfect.” It also leaves the begged-question lingering: is there a better answer, really?

Textures matter in art, but rarely more than when the feeling and sensation of paints are the artists’ only way to differentiate colors. 

“Students can squish the paint in their hands, they feel the wetness, the coolness and then they also feel when it dries, when it cakes up and how it becomes thinner,” Coklyat writes in one of the show’s explanatory notes. “They have some control and can put as much or as little paint as they want.”

Technique, then, rather than a function of artistic movement and expression, is a way of understanding the properties of a substance, of tactilely engaging with the unknown. It is, literally, a “feeling” language.

Appropriately, the work on display showcases this sense of touch — there are paintings made with fingers, hands and feet. But what this technique reveals is the exploration of the painted page, most perceptibly in the consistencies of shapes and style, or in the elaborate motion and movement of controlled fingerprints. Certain paints’ grittiness stands out, as does the noticeable consideration of negative space. 

Even with the emphasis on the tactile experience, Coklyat says the color choices of some of her blind students shouldn’t be discounted as random, or an accident.

“You might think a student who has been blind all their life would not have a color preference, but you would be pleasantly mistaken,” writes Coklyat in one of her notes to gallery visitors. “Omar loves to paint with red, and what I gather from him and his personality I’d say it’s because it is a dynamic, passionate color.”

Hudson County Cultural & Heritage Affairs director William La Rosa picks up on the same theme, explaining how art, in the less-literal way, is a “feeling” language.

“The question of ‘how can blind and disabled children make art?’ is ludicrous,” he says. “The great thing about art is that it comes from your soul.”

Recalling when the county brought artists in to assist geriatric ward patients, De Rosa remembers that — if but briefly — crafting art regaled serious problems to a backseat. 

“Art requires an emotional intelligence,” he maintains, “and these students show that.” 

While helping to set up the show, Halpin also noticed that different personalities emerged in the artists’ work. Some of the work features everyday objects — a field of grass, a smiling sun, flowers or a rainbow — while other works tend towards more abstract expressions, with colors melding in hue and depth, patterns emerging and dispersing. If the only thing on display were results of the emotionally therapeutic use of art to explore feelings, then that would perhaps suffice. Almost equally as important, though, is the sentiment outlined in one of the exhibit’s curatorial statements: the potential to change the perception of the gallery’s visitors.

The exhibit, which is a first for her students and the school, was a confluence of circumstance and a compliment to the Jersey City art scene. As Coklyat recalls, she took her class to an art show at the Brennan Court House. Already enthusiastic and receptive to art, it sparked an idea for them: Why can’t we do this? 

Having previously shown some of her paintings at Art House Productions, Coklyat mentioned this idea to Christine Goodman, the founder and executive director of the space. She and Halpin both loved it.

“I look for quality and energy in artwork. I come from the theater world and so I appreciate that. I want there to be something magnetic about art. Is the work honest?,” Halpin says. “This can all be found in these students’ work.”

Each class at St. Joseph’s, however, is different, and is catered to the individual’s needs. As many of the students have multiple disabilities, and some are non-verbal or wheelchair-bound, Coklyat’s involvement with students range from teaching exercises and techniques and letting students experiment, to sometimes literally holding the hand of a student who is holding a brush. Some students paint and some draw, some sculpt with clay, and as a teacher she tries to encourage all of these, no matter the student.

For her part, Coklyat says that she hopes visitors see how meaningful art can be to the “so-called disabled.”

“Artistic work enriches their lives as much as it enriches ours,” she says. 

Or, as she explains in the closing of one of her notes:

“Painting, sculpting and making collages is an enriching experience not just because you can sit back later and say, ‘I made this, it’s nice!’ But because we through a process of making something of our own.”

THE DETAILS
Art is a Feeling Language; at Art House Productions, 1 McWilliams Place, 6th Floor. The show is up through the end of October. For more information, visit arthouseproductions.org or call 201-915-9911.

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