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Eric Fischl on Art & Shared Experiences

Rich Egger

The juror for this year's “64 Arts” exhibit at the Buchanan Center for the Arts in Monmouth hopes the show inspires conversations.

“It's about sharing. So I think people will see either things they identify with or things that trigger memories for them of other places, other people, other events that give them feelings,” said Eric Fischl, who is an internationally known artist.

“They won't feel alone when those feelings are triggered because they're triggered by somebody who has those feelings as well and was sharing them.”

Fischl said memories are triggered every time he looks at art.

Fischl works on Long Island. He traveled to Monmouth for the opening reception for “64 Arts.”

The exhibit will remain on display through October 13. It includes more than 130 works from across the country as well as Canada and Italy.

Fischl hopes visitors will immerse themselves in the show and that it inspires some civil conversations. He feels too much talk today comes from anger, fear, and frustration.

“We're not addressing the emotions that are going with it. Instead they're being couched in polemics, dogma, rhetoric. To me there's no truth in it,” Fischl said.

“If you get artists to talk about things that are meaningful to them about America and you invite an audience to come in who shares the same space -- they share America -- and have feelings and thoughts and memories .... (art) triggers other parts of our memory and our experience and our emotions, and I think in a way reveals how we're more connected to each other than we are separated from each other.”

Artists who submitted work for the exhibit were asked to reflect the ideas expressed in Fischl's “America: Now and Here” initiative. He said the project is on hiatus for now because of funding issues, but all of the artists in “64 Arts” will be on the “America: Now and Here” website.

Fischl said he will be returning to his studio to paint. In addition, he just submitted to a publisher a manuscript for his memoir.

Rich is TSPR's News Director.