Your Art Here...

Updike Farm, painting by Joe Kazimierczyk

Walking New Brunswick, photo collage by Madelaine Shellaby

R.C. Maxwell, once of Trenton, NJ, has a long and revered place in the history of billboard advertising in the United States. Ghosts of their original signs still hover on the brick surfaces of many Trenton buildings, and images of many of their pre-neon billboards are in national collections, including the Library of Congress and Duke University. Billboards have fallen on hard times in recent years, although many conceptual artists have eyed up (and in some cases, used) that prime time visual real estate with creative hunger. If you’re one of those artists who’s looked at a billboard and ‘dreamt big’ about your work, then read on:

Palisades, a New Jersey car insurance company, has a new promotional campaign, “Drive with a Smile.” They want to “...bring the distinctive and unique beauty of New Jersey into focus for drivers...” – and they need NJ artists to make it work! Recently, the company kicked off its Palisades Highway Art Gallery (a series of NJ highway and roadway billboards featuring original works by area artists) on prominent billboards on 1-80 near exit 65 in Bergen County and on I-295 near exit 67 in Mercer County. The inaugural works are by NJ landscape artists Tim Daly (Hoboken) and Gary Godbee (Westfield).

The next series of installations will be created and selected by the public. New Jersey residents are invited to compete to have their work featured on the Highway Art Gallery billboards throughout the state. Submit digital images of original paintings, drawings, photography and mixed media of scenic views, landscapes and destinations in NJ to the Drive with a Smile Web site, and the public will vote on the images. Entrants should “...make New Jersey scenes and landscapes their inspiration and central focus.”

The work will be shown in an online gallery, and visitors to the Web site will be able to vote for their favorite entries through August 7th. Based on the number of votes entries receive, up to a dozen submissions will be selected to be reproduced onto billboards on major highways and roadways in NJ counties from Bergen to Atlantic.

Check out the online press release and entry form for full information (be sure to read and think about the small print at the bottom of the page about the use of all work submitted). Good luck to those who enter – and if you’re not entering, make certain to vote for your favorites – at least two Mercer County artists (two of their images, above) are already in the running!!