Bringing Harlem to Kean

By Keyon Gardner

Art has many multipurpose uses and it just so happens that it is another tool for public and social issues to be addressed to the people to give them more of a meaningful understanding.

The Office of Residential Student Services hosted an exhilarating event on the last Sunday of February called Jazz and Paint Night at Keans New Upper Multi-Purpose Room to commemorate Black History Month. 

With the 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 at experiencing what it’s like to be a painter in a calm environment with smooth jazz music playing in the background. 

“Our overall goal was having our students express themselves and have more social engagement towards one another,” Deshawn Kellman, one of Sozio’s Hall’s Office of Residential Student Services members said. 

Harlem’s history is best known for its start-up of the Harlem Artist Guild, an organization intended to promote and spread young African American artist works. Their goal was to spread as much understanding to the public of the many problems that the African American community faces.  

“I believe that this program was an efficient and effective way to steer residents in a positive direction so that they can find new ways to express themselves,” Kellman said. 

The event included staff members of Sozio hall and students with diverse backgrounds in their degrees.

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.” 

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

 “The Janitor Who Paints” by Palmer Hayden 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. 

 Joseph Delaney’s “Penn Station at War Time” exemplified a unique perspective of New York’s Penn Station during and after the Harlem Renaissance. Delaney, who was an African American artist at the time of the Harlem Renaissance  had a knack for capturing images in his mind and painting them to be more exaggerated than what they appeared to be. He spent much of his art career in the New York scene where the city and the people in it became a source of inspiration. 

“The real community is out there in the street where everyone is equal,” said Delaney as this was his meaning for the entire painting. 

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

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