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The fifteen handcrafted wooden tables local artist Molly Gaston Johnson created for her “Table Talk” community art initiative will be on display together at an art reception and exhibition this Saturday.

Since the summer, Johnson has worked with residents, business owners and other members of the Asbury Park community and surrounding area, gathering insight to help inform the unique design on each of the tables. All of the organizations involved were given a chance to provide input on the designs that would accompany the tables placed at their site.

In July, children who participated in summer program offered at the Boys & Girl’s Club in Asbury Park were given two large sheets of paper to draw sketches and designs on after they were read an African folk tale.  Johnson collected the sketches afterward and used them to inform the design used on the two six-by-four foot tables the club will host [shown above at right].

“[The designs] really reflect each individual location,” she said, adding that before she started the project, she already knew Asbury Park to be “a rich and textured community,” but “never knew how something like this could really engage people” the ways in which it did.

Paul Bonelli is the carpenter for Table Talk. He has assisted Johnson in physically building tables for her own personal projects in the past.

“These designs involve other people and she is dealing with the collaborative process, which can lead to interesting things on its own,” he said. “You make decisions with all types of input you wouldn’t have had if you were just working by yourself.”

Member of the community “really came out of the woodwork” to participate in the project, and not in an unpleasant way, Johnson said. “People clearly had things they wanted to say — this project brought them out and made them comfortable to say it.”

The host sites will now be encouraged to provide programming and events where people can meet to share stories and ideas once the tables are in place. One of the tables will stay in the Jersey Shore Arts Center where it will be used by several different groups, including a writers’ club, she said.

Tables will be also be placed with The Asbury Park Musical Heritage Foundation, Bella Terra Assisted Living, The Jersey Shore Arts Center, The Kula Cafe, Langosta Lounge, Mosaic Ministries, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Park Place Mental Health facility.

The experience was transformative for Johnson as an artist, who ultimately began to question her own role in the process, and allowed them to take more of the rein in terms of the designs. She eventually came to view it as “the perfect marriage of community and art,” she said.

Johnson owns a printmaking studio in Ocean Grove called Social Animal Press. Working with people from all of these different organizations has opened her up to different points of view, and has shifted the approach she now takes in regard to her own artwork, she said.

Englewood-based nonprofit Arts Horizons helped Johnson secure funding for the project through the New Jersey Recovery Fund. The fund allocates money to projects that promote community engagement, community-driven art, policy reform or environmental protection and restoration in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy.

Other communities like Union Beach and Toms River have also expressed interest in bringing the Table Talk art initiative to placed in their community, Johnson said.

Arts Horizons is also looking to use the Table Talk initiative as a model for other places, according to Jenifer Simon, a program director for the nonprofit. While the Asbury Park project was started in response to a natural disaster, that does not have to be the genesis of other similar projects that wish to foster community engagement, she said.

However, alternate funds will need to be secured for any new initiatives as the Asbury Park project funds have been exhausted, Johnson said.

Saturday will be one of the last times the tables can be seen together before they are delivered to their individual host sites, where they will begin their life of service to the greater community.

The reception takes place Saturday, Nov. 23 from noon to 2 p.m. at the Jersey Shore Arts Center, located at 66 South Main Street in Ocean Grove. Light refreshments will be served.

[Photo at top: Johnson spreads resin to coat the top of one of the Table Talk tables. Both photos provided courtesy of Paul Bonelli.]

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