Queens: On the Radar 2

NEW YORK CITY — (Continued) Queens still affords artists and nonprofit groups reasonably priced spaces. (Ironically, that may change as the borough increasingly attracts refugees from both Brooklyn and Manhattan.) As mentioned in my previous column, two thriving examples are Topaz Arts in Woodside, and Bliss on Bliss Art Projects in Sunnyside. (Full disclosure: I sit on the board of Topaz Arts.) Both neighborhoods are located near Jackson Heights, where my wife and I live, and which was recently featured in the real estate section of The New York Times—another indication that the borough we moved into almost two decades ago has become fashionable. Low-key, with minimal funding, Topaz Arts and Bliss on Bliss provide much-needed space and exposure to artists of various persuasions. And behind each venue is a racially mixed couple.

In the case of Topaz Arts, it’s Filipina dancer/choreographer, Paz Tanjuaquio, and Todd Richmond, a white composer and painter. Paz was born in Quezon City but her family migrated to California in 1973, when she was six years old, to escape the repressive Marcos regime. Paz and Todd met in New York in 1993, and it was, according to Paz, “collaboration at first site.” They have been partners in art and life ever since.

Topaz Arts was established in 2000, when the couple, then based in Manhattan, purchased a 2,500 sq. ft. warehouse in Woodside and renovated and redesigned it to become, according to their website, a “nonprofit multidisciplinary arts organization … to support the creative process and foster new works in contemporary performance and visual arts. … a space where collaborations can flourish and the process shared with the community.”

The well-designed, attractive space has two main areas: a dance studio that can also be used as a theater and for readings, and a light-filled gallery. The performance space can be rented at really low, essentially subsidized, rates, which dancers have gladly taken advantage of. This is in line with how Topaz seeks to create a community of like-minded contemporary artists, “encouraging dialogue among different disciplines and diverse cultures, stimulating new ideas and new ways of working.” The couple also maintains an organic roof garden that produces some of the lushest tomatoes I’ve tasted.

I’ve worked with them, principally in Topaz’s 2007 staging of my verse play The Beauty of Ghosts, the theater artist Andrew Eisenmann directing and with original music by Todd. Beauty dealt with individual Filipino immigrant lives in Queens. Subsequently, the poems were published as a chapbook by Ateneo de Manila University Press in 2010. Last year, Fil-Am theater artist and community activist Claro de los Reyes restaged it, with more of a focus on interaction with the audience, and for which Paz choreographed and performed a dance sequence.

One of their biggest shows was “Bastards of Misrepresentation: New York Edition” in 2012, curated by the painter Manuel Ocampo, whom they met on a previous trip to Manila. It was a multi-venue exhibition, including the Queens Museum, Tyler Rollins Fine Arts, Crossing Art Gallery, and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University. In 2013, Philippine National Artist Ben Cabrera a/k/a Bencab, gave a talk at the space. He was in town as he had been invited, on the suggestion of Paz and Todd, to be part of an art exhibition at Instituto Cervantes. In the spring of 2016, the Japanese dancer Min Tanaka, well known for his work in butoh, will be Topaz’s guest artist.

This month, to celebrate their fifteenth anniversary—the opening reception was on the auspicious date of 5/15/15—Topaz Arts has an exhibition of Todd’s paintings (his first at the space), “Mind Field: Oil and Oranges” and a screening of the short dance films that the husband and wife collaborated on.

In October, designated nationally as Filipino-American Heritage month, Topaz will host the Society of Philippine-American Artists (SPAA) annual exhibition, the first time it is doing so. That same month, Bliss on Bliss Art Projects, the younger nonprofit sibling and a mere ten blocks from Topaz, will have an exhibition, “Promdi Archipelago,” curated by Brisbane-based Filipino artists Alfredo and Isabel Alquilizan. “Promdi” (a play on “from the” with its colloquial connotation of being a country hick) will coincide with Bliss’s inclusion in October’s edition of Asian Contemporary Art Week. The driving force behind Bliss are Ged Merino, a painter and a Manileño, and the graphic artist Carolina Morales, who grew up in Bogota, Colombia.

Bliss occupies a sprawling basement, and carries the name of that particular area of Sunnyside. Merino, who moved to New York in 1987 to attend the Art Students League, and Morales founded the studio in October of 2011 to, according to Merino, “coincide with Filipino Heritage Month, with a talk by the scholar Vince Rafael, readings by R. Zamora Linmark and Jessica Hagedorn, a film by Lav Diaz, and an exhibition and artist talk by Ernesto Concepcion and Marietta Ganapin.” The couple describes Bliss as a venue for Filipino and Colombian artists, and is “committed to providing an intimate … showcase of new work by contemporary artists, writers, filmmakers, scholars, performers, and arts educators based in the tri-state’s most diverse borough.”

Since its inception, Bliss on Bliss has provided exhibition space for Filipino artists based as far afield as Australia and as near as the tri-state area, and for other artists of different genres and nationalities, from North and South America, Thailand, and Japan. Not owning the space, Ged and Carolina have nevertheless transformed the warren of rooms into cozy spaces for readings and talks, exhibitions, and the occasional musical performance. A local jazz band performed there not too long ago: Hide Inaba and the Hide Inaba Band, along with a Filipino band, Turbo Goth, featuring Sarah Gaugler and Paolo Peralta.

In a city that never sleeps, is tough, seemingly impersonal, and where the art world can be as combative and deadly as the gladiator-filled colosseum of ancient Rome once was, these four artists have transformed their venues into lively communal spaces, showing us how art can and should be a part of, rather than apart from, our lives. Copyright L.H. Francia 2015

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