Social Animal Press
Molly Johnson printmaker
Molly Gaston Johnson has her own printmaking studio, Social Animal Press, in Ocean Grove New Jersey where she practices woodcut, lino-cut, silkscreen and intaglio forms of printmaking (she would do lithography if only she had a litho press!). She applies these skills in many unusual ways, such as costume design, stage props and tabletops. She has been a practicing and exhibiting artist for over 20 years, and in that time has received many awards including a full fellowship to study printmaking at The Ohio State University and recognition with a New Jersey Governor’s Award for Distinguished Teaching Artist in 2012. She has worked in museum education at Washington, DC’s Corcoran Gallery of Art, taught printmaking to graduate students at Virginia Tech’s school of architecture, worked at the National Endowment for the Arts managing federal partnerships focusing on youth and prevention issues, and currently teaches art history, treks all around New Jersey as a teaching artist, and is developing an Art and Literacy initiative in a partnership between the Newark Museum and the Newark Public School system.
ABOUT OUR
JSAC
One of the ways we support our local artists is providing affordable low cost studio space allowing them to focus on their craft and grow creatively.
RESIDENTS
One space - two printmakers
Studio Arribbiata
Paul Bonelli
Paul Bonelli was born and raised in northern New Jersey and now resides in the state’s shore region. He studied art at the College of William and Mary, Montclair State University, and most recently at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, where he earned an MFA in printmaking in 1995. The woodcut print has been his primary medium of expression for the past 25 years, but like most printmakers, he is well experienced in drawing, the other graphic medium. He drew his initial influences from comic books, but also carefully studied the work of the renaissance masters, the great artists of the baroque periods, and twentieth century realists, taking lessons from all. Their use of proportion, shape, edge, and shading all found their way to his work as well. The artist’s work takes inspiration from the world around him, and documents his experience of the human condition, particularly where it meets popular culture. His award winning woodcut prints have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in his home state, as well as other regions around the country, and are included in several important print collections. He has taught drawing and woodcut prints at three different colleges, including two in New Jersey.