NJCU Galleries Celebrate Women's History Month With Solo Exhibition By Late Artist Julie Green

New Jersey City University (NJCU) and NJCU Galleries celebrates Women's History Month with a solo exhibition from artist Julie Green (1961-2021), whose work engaged society in profound ways. Throughout the month of March through Friday, March 25, The Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery at NJCU will present Thank God, I'm Home: First Meal by Julie Green, to celebrate the life work of Green.

As a highlight of the exhibition, the NJCU Center for the Arts will host a free virtual talk with former New York Times National Correspondent, Kirk Johnson and Sara Sommervold of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, on Friday, March 4 from 12:30-2 p.m.

Registration for the virtual talk is available at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/conversation-about-criminal-justice-and-julie-greens-first-meal-paintings-tickets-256906613597

Green, an Oregon-based artist, passed away in October yet her exhibition persists and will raise questions with viewers about the nation's justice system.

For three years until her death, Green had been asking wrongfully convicted persons about their "first meals" upon their release from prison, painting their responses for her series by the same name. With colorfully painted details of food, such as oranges, burgers and fries, and pizza, 12 works from the series featured in this exhibition humanize and personalize the shocking statistics around wrongful convictions in the U.S.

Partnering with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University and The Innocence Project, Green's focus extends beyond the individual meals, and the individuals she depicts, to the sheer number of wrongfully imprisoned in this country and the reason for their unjust incarceration.

One such painting, Thank God I'm Home said Marcel Brown (2019), depicts the first meal of corned beef eaten by Marcel Brown at his mother's home on July 18, 2018. His handwritten comment to the artist is enlarged in the center. At age 18, Marcel Brown was wrongfully accused of murder and spent 10 years in prison.

Green's better-known work, The Last Supper, was a series of blue glazed ceramic plates which documented the last meal of death-row prisoners. Over the past decades, Green spent half of each year on this project, determined to continue until capital punishment was abolished or after 1,000 plates were created. In September 2021, a few weeks before her passing, she completed the 1,000th plate. The 800 plates from the series are currently on view at Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington until June 5, 2022.

Green, a professor of art at Oregon State University, lived in the Willamette Valley, Oregon. A recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors and the Hallie Ford Foundation Fellowship, Green is included in A World of Art published by Prentice Hall. Green has had 42 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad at venues including The Block Museum at Northwestern University, Hunter Museum of American Art, and University of Liverpool Art Museum. Collections include State Library of Oregon, Spencer Museum of Art, Fidelity Investments, Athena Art Finance, and hundreds of private collections worldwide. Green's work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, CNN, a Whole Foods mini-documentary, National Public Radio, and Ceramics Monthly.

This exhibition is made possible through the generous support from the Ford Family Foundation and the cooperation of Elizabeth Houston Gallery in New York and Upfor Gallery in Oregon.

NJCU's Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery is open to the public on Monday through Friday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and by appointment.

All visitors and members of the University community who visit NJCU Galleries are required to wear a mask indoors and be prepared to show your proof of vaccination or negative test results (within the past 72 hours) to staff at any point during the visit. Children aged 2-12 are not required to show the proof. View Protocols

For further information, see https://www.njcu.edu/community/center-arts/galleries or contact Midori Yoshimoto, Gallery Director, at myoshimoto@njcu.edu.

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