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Children involved in the summer program at the Boys & Girls Club in Asbury Park helped kick off a community art initiative on Monday.

The project, called “Table Talk,” is designed to create spaces for people to meet and engage in civic discourse around handmade tables placed in specific locations around the community.

Table Talk is the innovation of Belmar artist Molly Gaston Johnson. The idea behind Table Talk is to have members of the public help design wooden tables which she will craft and place at “host sites,” Johnson said. After the tables are placed, programming to promote community discussion around them will be encouraged.

Johnson teamed up with Englewood-based non-profit organization Arts Horizons to fund the project. Arts Horizons helped secure a $27,000 grant through the New Jersey Recovery Fund, which is supported by the Community Foundation of New Jersey and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, according to Jenifer Simon, a program director at Arts Horizons.

The Recovery 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, according to the fund’s website.

Johnson had worked with Arts Horizons previously, and had mentioned the idea for Table Talk to Simon.

“When we saw this opportunity, I said, Molly, this is perfect for your project,” said Simon.

“I think the reason [the Recovery Fund] picked it is because it is an arts project and also a communication project,” Johnson said.

Each table will have a theme and design unique to its host site. “African folk tales” was chosen for the theme of the two tables the Boys & Girls Club will host.

“We really wanted to connect our kids to African cultural heritage,” said Douglas Eagles, executive director of the club.

At the Boys & Girls Club event on Monday, children in attendance first listened to club volunteer and former Asbury Park resident Lorraine Stone read an African folk tale. After the story was finished, large sheets of blank paper were brought out so the children — now inspired by the traditional tale — could draw on them.

“We had about 30 kids and they were really young but they were very sweet,” said Johnson.

“The kids loved the story,” said Eagles. “They asked a lot of questions…and then they all jumped in and started drawing [photo at top].”

After the children completed their drawings, Johnson collected them. The sketches will help “inform the general design and layout” of the tables that will eventually be placed within the club’s library, she said.

Johnson also plans to incorporate some of the children’s actual drawings on the tables themselves, and to create other pieces of art that will hang near where the tables are placed, she said.

“We’re excited to be part of this broader initiative that will link various organizations in Asbury Park together and build a bridge from the Boys & Girls Club to these other places,” said Eagles. “It will deepen the level of change that we are able to affect in the lives of our club kids.”

Besides the tables slated for the Boys & Girls Club, other tables will eventually be placed at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Roman Catholic Church and School, The Kula Café, Langosta Lounge, the Jersey Shore Arts Center in Ocean Grove, Park Place Mental Health Facility in Jersey Shore Medical Center and Prevention First in Ocean Township, Johnson said.

Events to gather design ideas for the tables places in those locations will happen in the weeks ahead.

Johnson hopes to have a launch event on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, but notes the project is “more about community building than it is community recovery,” she said.

Once the tables are finished, “any organization that would like to tap into community grass-roots ideas can utilize [them],” Johnson said.

In the long term, Johnson would also like to create a map that shows the locations of all the tables and perhaps plant small gardens along the sidewalks and routes that connect them.

“It’s all about getting to know your neighbors,” she said.

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Photo at top courtesy of Douglas Eagles.

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