HELPING ART GROW ALL AROUND YOU

The quiet force behind Maplewood's arts scene

By Adrianna Donat

One of the best known projects of the Maplewood Arts Council is "Art in the Tunnel," designed to add "creative heat and light" into what had been a dark and dreary commuter passage.

If you’ve ever walked through the Maplewood train station tunnel and been jolted awake by a burst of vivid artwork or paused in town to read a poem hanging in a public space, you’ve already encountered the work of the Maplewood Arts Council.

Even if you didn’t know its name. That, in fact, is part of the story.

Art seems to bloom naturally in Maplewood, on stages, in galleries, in parks, in libraries, in storefronts, in converted buildings and occasionally in train tunnels. Behind much of that vision, advocacy and connective tissue is a volunteer advisory committee that has spent the last 15 years helping make sure the arts are part of daily life.

The Maplewood Arts Council, often called MAC, was created by the township committee in 2010 to support and enhance the town’s cultural life. Its members are appointed residents who work closely with the Division of Arts & Culture.

“We’re a group of Maplewood residents who serve on a volunteer advisory committee to the township, with the shared goal of improving the quality of life in Maplewood by helping the arts to flourish,” says Tricia Tunstall, a longtime member, co-founder and former chair of the council.

In practice it means a lot of practical, behind-the-scenes work. Marcy Thompson, the council’s chair, says the council provides continuity, perspective and institutional memory.

That continuity matters.

The Division of Arts & Culture operates venues including the Burgdorff Center for the Performing Arts, the 1978 Maplewood Arts Center and The Woodland. The council advocates for these spaces, supports their use by local artists and ensures the town continues to think seriously about accessibility, participation and artistic diversity.

The council is not an event-producing organization. It is not there, as Tunstall says, to produce your band’s live show, your stand-up comedy night or your quilting exhibition. MAC creates the conditions in which those things can happen. It advises, connects, supports and advocates. It helps the township think about policy, public spaces, access and long-term priorities. Sometimes, when the bandwidth and fundraising are there, it also helps spearhead public-facing projects.

Some of those projects have become memorable parts of Maplewood’s visual and cultural identity.

One of the best known is Art in the Tunnel, the permanent gallery of paintings installed in the tunnel at the Maplewood train station. The idea, Tunstall says, was to bring some of Maplewood’s “creative heat and light” into what had been a dark and dreary commuter passage. The council raised funds to pay artists, issued a request for proposals and selected works by local artists that would inspire people on the move while reflecting Maplewood as a vibrant artistic community.

The result is one of those quietly wonderful public experiences that can improve your day before you’ve even had your coffee.

Another project that MAC initiated was the Black Poetry Project in 2021. Here Maplewoodians gathered in Memorial Park to read a banner-mounted poem, one of 40 poems by Black poets that were displayed.

Another especially resonant project was the Black Lives Matter Poetry Project, mounted in 2020 and 2021 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the national reckoning that followed. The council displayed nearly 40 poems by nationally known, local and student Black poets on banners in Maplewood’s public spaces. Tunstall explains that the goal was engagement: to offer language,

protest, beauty and reflection in places where people naturally gather and pass through. For the council, success often looks like residents encountering art in ordinary life, then stopping, thinking and talking to one another.

Tunstall recalled people strolling through Memorial Park or along Springfield Avenue, pausing to read the poems, then lingering in conversation. That kind of spontaneous connection, she says, is one of the clearest signs that the arts are doing their job.

Thompson agrees. For her, one of the most powerful things about Maplewood’s arts scene is the way it brings local artists and local audiences into direct contact. In many places, artists have to leave town to find an audience. Here, they can make work, share it and find engaged neighbors willing to show up for it.

That audience, Thompson says, is one of Maplewood’s secret weapons.

“Artists live here, artists work here and artists share their work with this community,” she said. “I

am always amazed at how eager, engaged and supportive audiences are. They show up, and they’re energized. That doesn’t happen everywhere.”

The council meets four to six times a year, usually on weekday evenings. Sometimes it spins off subcommittees for specific tasks. It is not funded at all as a standing body. Members are volunteers. Projects sometimes require separate fundraising efforts.

Much of the council’s work depends on what many community institutions depend on: people with busy lives showing up anyway because they believe the thing matters.

And in Maplewood, the thing clearly does matter. The council has also evolved. In its early years, there was a strong emphasis on ensuring the town’s arts spaces – the Woodland, the Burgdorff, and 1978, in particular – were broadly and equitably used by a variety of community artists. That remains central. But the council’s role has expanded to include projects such as the arts registry on the township website, past arts summits that brought artists together to network and learn and more recent efforts to gather data on what residents want and need from Maplewood’s cultural life.

A work of art being installed in the train station tunnel as part of the Art in Motion Project, 2019.

A current major initiative is a community arts survey designed to better understand residents’ interests, barriers to participation and hopes for the future. Thompson is especially interested in the broader ripple effects: whether people who attend arts events also dine out, shop locally and contribute to the town’s economic vitality in other ways. The arts, she noted, can have a compounding effect. The survey may help make that impact more visible. If you would like to participate in the survey, scan the QR code at the end of this article until May 31 of this year.

The council also considers unmet needs. One in particular rises quickly to the top: space. Artists need places to rehearse, create, perform, display and collaborate. Maplewood has strong public-facing venues, but Thompson says there is a need for more working space where artists can spread out, find one another and build community in an ongoing way.

That vision feels very Maplewood: ambitious, practical and grounded in the belief that culture is not a luxury item.

The Artist Registry on Maplewood Art Council's website is where artists in the community can post their profiles

Although the Maplewood Division of Arts & Culture operates venues such as the 1978 Maplewood Arts Center, MAC advocates for these spaces, supports their use by local artists and ensures the town continues to think seriously about accessibility, participation and artistic diversity

Says Andrea Teutli, manager for Maplewood’s Division of Arts & Culture, “The Maplewood Arts Council is a vital supporter of the Township’s Division of Arts and Culture. [It is a] collective of members from diverse artistic backgrounds whose insight and collaboration help strengthen and sustain our vibrant community.” Maplewood Township Committee member Dean Dafis is also a proponent of the Maplewood Arts Council. Says Dafis, “Underappreciated, underutilized and often misunderstood, MAC serves to help mold and support Maplewood’s artistic and cultural identity or brand. With so many artists in town of all varieties, we need more of them to help MAC expand or redirect the town’s artistic and cultural footprint. It’s also an amazing opportunity for networking and mentoring.”

So why does a town like Maplewood benefit from having a dedicated arts council?

Because artistic energy, as it turns out, does not organize itself. It needs advocates. It needs public spaces. It needs civic support. It needs people who think carefully about access, inclusion and how a community meets its own creative life. It needs residents willing to fight for the kind of town they want to live in.

And if the best version of that work is sometimes a little invisible, maybe that is fitting. The Maplewood Arts Council is not trying to be the star of the show. It helps to ensure the stage exists, the lights turn on, the doors stay open and the audience finds its seat.

If you’re interested in applying to join the Maplewood Arts Council, you can go to maplewood.nj.gov and fill out a volunteer form. To complete the MAC survey, click here.

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Adrianna Donat is a writer and Pollock Properties Group realtor who knows Maplewood real estate is appealing – but Maplewood’s real masterpiece may be the town itself.