NESL contributed to the exhibition “Stick Around for Joy” at Evening Star Studio Gallery in Jersey City, NJ, May 30 – June 29, 2025. The show was curated by Doris Caçoilo. See Eye Level’s review of the show.
Here, NESL’s deep time ceramic seed burial vessels hold the seeds of weedy, disturbance-loving species from Snake Hill, a site in Secaucus, NJ that was radically reshaped by over a century of human use—as the site of jails, asylums, and hospitals that left behind mass graves, and later by quarrying and highway construction that erased much of the original rock formation.
These vessels were made with site-specific soil—one to be buried, one to be kept as an artifact—suggesting the possibility of new, exuberant growth in a distant future. This installation also includes seed packets available for the public to sign out, as well as informational materials about our site, previous sites, and the Next Epoch Seed Library’s activities and ethos.
This exhibition of ceramics reminds the viewer that important tools of resistance include persistence and joy. Nine artists share works that explore joy as an act of protest, as a story, as an action and as a call to care. Joy is powerful and complex. These artworks ask the audience to remember our collective humanity through humor and myth, joy and love, care and sustained resistance.
Artists: Gehad Abedullah, Doris Cacoilo, Corrine Carr, Beth DiCara, Gabriella Gentile, Ellie Irons, Karen Leo, Anne Percoco, and Randi Wolfman.
