Episode 71 - The 2 for 1 Special : Juicy Jenn Hampton Parlor Gallery/Wooden Walls & Porkchop, Artist

"Juicy" Jenn Hampton is an arts and music curator part owner and co-director and curator of Parlor Gallery in Asbury Park, NJ and curator of the Wooden Walls Project. Jenn spent many years pursing acting, art and documentary film production after college. Her acting pursuits lead her to Asbury Park where she helped create and build the legendary Asbury Lanes. In the eleven years at Asbury Lanes, Jenn helped to create a national and international fan base of performers, bands and burlesque acts, in addition to creating an innovative gallery program that focused on young art collectors. The success of Asbury Lanes helped to create a destination in Asbury Park for music lovers, artists, and performers from all over the country. Parlor Gallery opened in 2009 with a unique vision in New Jersey’s art community that features innovative work by some of the best emerging and established artists. Parlor curates exhibits the public may not ordinarily have access to outside of a large urban environment within a welcoming, creative, and inspirational space. Jenn is also the curator of the Wooden Walls Project, a public arts program that showcases murals and public art on the Asbury Park Boardwalk that has brought international recognition to Asbury Park and the participating artists while providing a backdrop to likely millions of Instagram photos. Porkchop is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He has a MFA in Sculpture from VCU and has had a successful career designing and creating murals, mixed media art, and sculpture. He creates intriguing scenarios by combining paint, illustration, and text. He has exhibited exclusively in the United States and Europe with Russia on the horizon and is published in “The Greatest Erotic Art of Today/Volume 2”, “Eye Candy” and “I Want Your Skull." Denizens and visitors to Monmouth County have been enjoying Porkchop’s vibrant and colorful artwork and murals for years, but in its most recent manifestation, the artist strips his works of his normally vivid palette and instead employs intentionally ritualistic and graphic monochromatic designs and symbols accented with Gold. Influenced by ancient block printing techniques, history and literature, Porkchop sources out, manipulates, and casts familiar objects. He then painstakingly recreates their surfaces giving them a new existence into a dark and curious storyline. The application of paint into his intentional ritualistic designs followed by flawless coats of glossy resin is an act of pure precision and care, like the work of a surgeon or mortician. There are often unexpected but pleasant marriages of imagery and object. By stripping these pieces of his usual vibrant palette, Porkchop’s choice of black & white emphasizes the narrative in the works, which becomes difficult to ignore. Presenting these pieces in symmetry creates an alter that pulls the stories altogether. This is a great chat with two visionaries leaving their lasting imprint on Asbury Park and the world! For additional information visit: www.parlor-gallery.com www.theartofporkchop.com www.woodenwallsproject.com And follow @parlorgallery @porktomic & @woodenwallsproject