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Raritan Valley Community College’s Arts & Design department will present the 22nd Annual RVCC Juried Student Art Exhibition, November 14-December 4, in the Art Gallery at the College’s Branchburg campus. The show is being coordinated by Arts & Design Co-Chair, Associate Professor and Art Gallery Director Darren McManus.

The opening reception will be held in the RVCC Art Gallery on Friday, November 14, from 5-7 p.m. The event is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Student artwork completed for visual art, graphic design, or interior design classes during the past year—since the Fall 2024 semester—will be featured in the exhibition. Selected work will span a variety of media including ceramics, painting, drawing, sculpture, graphic design, digital and multimedia, photography, illustration, interior design, video, and printmaking.

Each student was permitted to submit up to three pieces of artwork for consideration. The guest juror for this year’s exhibition is Otis Kriegel, a New York City-based public artist and author. Kriegel will evaluate all the entries, make the final selections for the exhibition, and determine the “best in show” award winners.

Otis Kriegel cofounded the New York City art collective, Illegal Art, in 2001. The group’s goal is to create participatory-based public art to inspire self-reflection, thought, and human connection. Their projects have been installed throughout the United States and in South America, Europe, and the Middle East. The results of their project, Suggestion Box, were published by Chronicle Books in 2005. They were the first artists-in-residence at South By Southwest Festival in Austin, TX, and their work has been featured at the South by South Lawn Festival of Ideas, Art, and Action at the White House (2016), and at Wonderspaces, an interactive art museum, in San Diego, Austin, Scottsdale, and Philadelphia. In 2018, they had a four-project retrospective in Mexico City at Artz Pedregal, hosted by Arte Abierto. In 2019, they were featured in Wavelength: RESET, an interactive art exhibition at the Beijing Times Art Museum.

Most recently, Illegal Art won the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Creative Engagement grant for the project, Wash Away Your Fears, which has been installed in numerous locations throughout the U.S. Their work is documented on their website, www.IllegalArt.org, and on Instagram at @illegalart2001

Kriegel presented at the 2008 College Art Association Conference, as well as the University of New Hampshire at Durham and The New School University. He also was part of a visual arts exhibition sponsored by the Ford Foundation, Difficult Dialogues, at Clark University in Worcester, MA. Additionally, Kriegel was the 2010 Visiting Artist at Webb School in Knoxville, TN, and was a resident at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2011. His short films and photography have been highlighted at numerous festivals and in several publications. Kriegel has taught at New York University and has spoken at a number of conferences and universities, including the University of New Hampshire and Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.

Gallery hours for the RVCC Juried Student Art Exhibition are Mondays, 3-8 p.m.; Tuesdays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.; Wednesdays, 3-8 p.m.; Thursdays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; and Fridays, 1-4 p.m. On Friday, November 14, the Art Gallery will not open until 5 p.m. For further information, contact Arts & Design, 908-218-8876.

RVCC is located at 118 Lamington Road in Branchburg, NJ. For additional information, visit https://www.raritanval.edu/arts or www.raritanval.edu and follow the RVCC Art Gallery Instagram feed at https://www.instagram.com/rvcc_art_gallery/

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 3, 2025

PR #40