Bringing Harlem to Kean

By Keyon Gardner | Published March 22, 2022

The Office of Residential Student Services hosted an exhilarating event on the last Sunday of February called Jazz and Paint Night at Kean’s new Upper Multi-Purpose Room to celebrate Black History Month. 

One of Sozio’s Hall’s Office of Residential Student Services, Deshawn Kellman who hosted the event mentioned that he wanted the students of Kean to interact with each other and discuss any relevance they have with Harlem’s artist

“We wanted to get students to express themselves and have more of a social engagement,” Kellman said.

With the main core theme of the event being Jazz and Paint night, the Office of Student Residential services wanted to host the event to bring recognition to some of Harlem’s most famous paintings and wanted Kean students to get a chance to experience a night to feel what it’s like to be a painter in a calm environment with smooth jazz music playing in the background. 

Six esthetic and illustrious paintings were shown and demonstrated to the students who attended the event to gather inspiration from. 

One painting that I really favored from the event was “The Janitor Who Paints” by Palmer Hayden. The painting illustrates a man who is presumed to be a janitor painting another painting of a mother with her baby boy. It demonstrates the adversity many black artists during the Harlem Renaissance went through to get their work out there. It is said that Palmer described his painting as “a sort of protest painting” of his own economic and social standing. 

One other painting I found to be very dramatic and creative was Joseph Delaney’s “Penn Station at War Time”. It exemplified a unique perspective of New York’s Penn Station during and after the Harlem Renaissance. 

In the event, students had enough time to paint their own ideas and interact with each other while having a good time

Another one of the hosts from the Office of Residential Student Services, OluwaToni Awoleye’s master goal for the event was to “Bring honor and reverence to Harlem’s history” she added.

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