Deadline Extended to October 17th!
Can’t attend the event but would still like to make a contribution to support our programs and services?
If unable to attend in-person, you can also purchase a “Sponsor a Veteran” ticket for the event!
Gourmet Food, Passed Apps, Dessert & Donation Bar
Silent Auction & Wine Pull
Private Viewing of Hunterdon Art Museum Galleries
Live Music by Raph KP
Featured Performances:
Seema Reza: Spoken-Word Storytelling
Yesenia Montilla: Public-Poetry Writing
(Scroll down to see the evening’s performances)
On October 19th, Frontline Arts will hold its annual benefit, STORIES, at the Hunterdon Art Museum to raise much-needed funding for our growing and nationally-recognized veterans' papermaking program that serves over 1500 veterans each year; community and educational papermaking programs; educational classes in non-toxic print & papermaking for adults and uniquely-abled communities; and so much more.
The event will engage our local communities and supporters as we honor Dennis X Murray, long-time Board member who has served his final term recently and advocate of the arts in New Jersey; the Rotary Club of Branchburg, comprised of incredibly devoted Branchburg community and veteran supporters; and Seema Reza’s Community Building Artworks and Ashy Palliparambil from the USO of Metropolitan Washington-Baltimore, long-time partners of the Frontline Paper veterans’ papermaking project in Washington D.C.
The benefit will be held inside the picturesque Hunterdon Art Museum, a former 19th century stone mill overlooking the Raritan River and Waterfall. We will enjoy a lovely and unique catered meal, inclusive of dessert, an incredible silent auction full of tantalizing items up for bid to benefit Frontline Arts’ programming, an interactive wine pull full of an array of lovely wines, and spoken-word storytelling to saturate our minds. You will also have the opportunity to contribute to our highly collaborative storytelling this evening, with typewriting on pages of our handmade paper, with public poetry, created by Yesenia Montilla. We will be creating a community story, bound by creation and full of adventure!
The indoor museum space will also be available for full private viewing of three floors of exhibitions, including:
Cliff Lee: Porcelain Master on the first floor
Mia Brownell & Martin Kruck: Skeptical Realism on the second floor
Holly Lee: A Jeweler’s Journey on the second floor
2019 Members Exhibition- Juried by Pedro Barbeito on the third floor
Hunterdon Art Museum
7 Lower Center Street | Clinton, New Jersey
Directions
From Route 78 (East or West), take exit 15, and bear right onto Route 173 East. Turn left at the Exxon Station and Clinton House and go over the yellow bridge. The museum is the stone mill on the left on Lower Center Street. Parking is available in the municipal lot just past the museum on Lower Center Street on the right side.
Click here for Google Map driving directions.
Accessibility
The museum is an accessible facility with an interior elevator, ramp to the front entrance, and accessible restrooms. For a list of accessibility accommodations for the museum facilities and parking, please click here:
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YOU CAN STILL PURCHASE A SPONSORSHIP!
Our deadline for Program Journal Ads has passed, but you can still become a Sponsor for signage at the event. New Deadline is October 12th!
Performances for the Evening:
Seema Reza will be honored for her work with Community Building ArtWorks and also give a spoken word performance during the evening’s program.
Seema is the author of A Constellation of Half-Lives and When the World Breaks Open. Based outside of Washington, DC, she is the Chair & Executive Director of Community Building Art Works. She coordinates a unique multi-hospital arts program that encourages the use of the arts as a tool for narration, self-care and socialization among a population struggling with emotional and physical injuries. Her writing has appeared in print and on-line in Entropy, The Feminist Wire, Bellevue Literary Review, The Offing, Full Grown People, and The Nervous Breakdown among others, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has performed across the country at universities, theaters, festivals, bookstores, conferences, & one mattress shop. (www.seemareza.com) Seema Reza is one of the original founders of the 5-day papermaking workshop model used in a participatory environment for active duty service members that Combat Paper NJ and now Frontline Paper use in partnership with Warrior Writers and Community Building Artworks. This model has paved the way for the connective practice and community building program that Frontline Arts is based on.
Yesenia Montilla will perform a public-poetry workshop, where she will write a poem about any attendee that approaches her and her typewriter, right there on the spot. These small poems will be typed on handmade paper either from veteran uniforms or from the Migration project, then collected and presented in a collective story-creation.
Yesenia is an Afro-Latina poet & a daughter of immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in the Chapbook For the Crowns of Your Head, as well as the literary journals The Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Pittsburgh Poetry Review & others. She received her MFA from Drew University in Poetry and Poetry in Translation & is a 2014 CantoMundo Fellow. Her first collection The Pink Box is published by Willow Books & was longlisted for a PEN award in 2016. She lives in Harlem, NY. (www.yeseniamontilla.com) Yesenia has been instrumental in organizing the Migration Project along with Frontline Arts, Deborah Paredez, and CantoMundo in collaboration with Columbia University’s Center for Study on Ethnicity and Race. She led a series of poetry workshops for veterans and immigrants on Columbia’s campus in the fall of 2018, writing and working on paper handmade from veteran uniforms and cultural objects from the South Bronx LatinX community.
Raph KP will be playing music for the evening https://www.raphkp.com. He aims to craft a sound that excites audiences and listeners alike. With influences from Stevie Wonder to Michael Jackson, The Beatles to Steely Dan, he delivers a performance that gets the audience on their feet and grooving.
Raph is currently a student at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He is double majoring in Instrumental Performance, with a concentration in Jazz Studies on guitar, and Music Education.
Thank you to our Narrative Sponsor
Thank you to our Chapter Sponsor
Thank you to our Character Sponsor
Thank you to our In-kind Sponsors
Thank you to our Radio Sponsor
and thank you to our other in-kind Donors & Sponsors:
Metropolitan Seafood & Gourmet
ThreeBirds Coffee House
Doherty Enterprises
MAYO Performing Arts Center
South Orange Performing Arts Center
Blick Art Materials
Maggiano's
Analar Corporation (& Craig Casucci)
Renaissance Graphics
Bobbi Brown Cosmetics
Raeleen Kao
Wegmans Food Markets, Inc
Crayola Experience
Jeanne Coogan
McCarter Theatre
American Estates Wines
Donna Moran
Spanda: Vibrational Sound Journeys
Apple Records
The Food Network
Image Dermatology P.C
and all those who have donated for the wine pull!
*Event invite design by Michael Maguire
*Photo credit Hunterdon Art Museum: Dana Lane Photography