Tom Nussbaum & Christine Romanell: NJ Artists at Montclair Art Museum

Tom Nussbaum: A Career Retrospective

• 💡 Tom Nussbaum's exhibition, "But Wait, There's More!", spans 60 years of his artistic career, featuring 100 pieces.
• 🛠️ Inspired by his engineer father, Nussbaum learned to use tools from a young age, starting with small iceboat racers made at age 10.
• 🎨 His work, which began with ceramics, now includes welded steel, gum wrappers, and more, often featuring bright colors and sculptural forms.
• 🧠 Nussbaum describes his process as intuitive, with the act of working with materials in three-dimensional space being crucial to his sculptural creations.
• 👂 The sculpture "Listen," featuring a figure inside a large ear, explores the psychology of being heard and the feeling of being understood.
• 🏭 His studio in East Orange, located in a former Johnson & Johnson building, is a space filled with tools and materials for his extensive work.
• 🚗 A new steel piece, "Gilapy," depicts a vehicle moving through a landscape of life, incorporating figures, animals, and the Grim Reaper.

Christine Romanell: Sacred Transition

• ✨ Christine Romanell's installation, "Sacred Transition," utilizes 3D printing and laser cutting to create hypnotic, circular sculptures.
• 💻 Her artistic practice begins digitally, translating 2D drawings into layered 3D prints or laser-cut wood components.
• 🌀 Romanell is drawn to investigating non-repeating patterns, particularly those derived from overlapping circles and rotational symmetry, found in nature and sacred geometry.
• 🌐 The title "Sacred Transition" reflects the vesica piscis symbol, representing the crossing of the physical and spiritual worlds, and her own transition from digital to physical art.
• 🖼️ The installation is visible from outside the museum in an enclosed glass stairwell, featuring wall pieces and hanging plexiglass halos that interact with light.
• 🌌 Inspired by cosmology and Sir Roger Penrose's theories on the multiverse, her work explores cycles and echoes, akin to ripples in a pond.
• 🕌 Romanell's interest in patterns was initially sparked by Islamic art and tiling, leading to her exploration of Penrose patterns and quasi-crystals.