48 Blocks AC Goes Virtual

On the first day of March, Valerie Feo moved into a brand new apartment right along the beach in Ventnor. Just a few weeks later, her life changed even more.

With the coronavirus pandemic sweeping across New Jersey, and statewide lockdown restrictions and business closings in place, Feo was furloughed from her longtime job at a casino in neighboring Atlantic City and quarantining in her new home.

But what she suddenly had was time.

Feo is also a painter who specializes in colorful, abstract, largely acrylic portraits, sometimes of celebrities, often of women. And she had now turned her apartment into a continuous art studio.

“I’m making the best of it that way,” Feo explains. “I’ve always worked smaller scale. Now I have the time to kind of process, work large, to take risks. I was always afraid to take risks because I didn’t really have the time. Now I’m experimenting and putting the work in.”

This weekend, Feo will welcome people into her apartment — sort of — and show off her work during an online tour of her studio. It’s one of the many events making up 48 Blocks AC, the annual arts and culture festival in Atlantic City that’s also undergoing an overhaul in its fourth year thanks to the pandemic.

In a normal year, the festival — run by the Atlantic City Arts Foundation in partnership with Stockton University — features art exhibitions, live music, and other performances in person across the seaside resort town.

This year, the whole thing is virtual, allowing people who have been cooped up at home for months the chance to experience arts and culture with only the click of a computer key. 

The festival — which runs Aug. 7-9 — will include art and photography exhibits. Mad Libs with an Atlantic City focus. A music video about the city by hip-hop artist Shawn Rock. The Atlantic City Ballet performing “Dracula.” A cooking session, yoga session, dramatic reading, and even a few garden tours.

All of them will be streamed online.

“It’s been a really rewarding time to see how our creative community has come to embrace the change,” says Joyce Hagen, executive director of the Atlantic City Arts Foundation. “I’m excited.”

And a little nervous.

“We try to anticipate that everything can and will go wrong,” Hagen says with a laugh. “But there is no creativity without risk.”

To many people — especially those not from the Garden State — Atlantic City is known for its casinos, boardwalk, and (free) beach. But the goal of 48 Blocks is to showcase the city’s diversity and arts scene.

“People really live here,” Hagen explains. “We are a resort, but we are also a community. Because of the major industry being such a sparkly industry, I guess, the community usually gets overlooked.”

Feo is one of the artists who has worked in the area for years. She grew up in Somers Point, about a 10-mile drive from Atlantic City, and has been creating art since she was 10.

Her biggest inspirations are Piscasso and Frida Kahlo, a combination she plays with in the off-kilter but vivid portraits she paints.

She originally attended Philadelphia University for fashion design. That is, until she realized something that could hinder such a career.

“I hated sewing,” Feo recalls, laughing.

Nor does she have a skill for painting scenery.

“If someone asked me to do a landscape, I can’t even do a decent landscape,” Feo says. “I only want to do portraits. And yeah, mostly women, because of that more theatrical, makeup kind of feel.”

Feo says she prefers acrylic to oil because it’s “better for blending.”

“I don’t really blend as much,” she explains. “I kind of like those colors sitting on top of one another.”

Feo stresses that her casino job has always provided flexibility for her to paint and her employer has always been encouraging. But now, during furlough, she’s aimed to create a piece a day, whether it’s a painting or something in her sketchbook.

“Her growth during this time has been really stellar,” Hagen says.

Recently, Feo even had her artwork “High Standards” accepted into the Palazzo Ducale Museum in Genoa, Italy.

Locally, the Stockton University grad last year became a board member of the Atlantic City Arts Foundation, the group that puts on 48 Blocks and has gained attention for a program in which artists create striking murals throughout the city. The foundation has even continued the murals during the pandemic.

“It’s truly changing the landscape of Atlantic City,” Feo says. “When you go by, you see the murals. It’s just bringing the community together, and tourists are seeing an art community here now.”

The original idea behind 48 Blocks is in the event’s name. The festival was conceived as a celebration of arts and community throughout the city, which stretches 48 blocks in length. People would experience the whole thing by jumping off and on the city’s famous jitneys.

“We wanted to highlight city assets, which include the parks and also the public transportation system of the jitney — being able to move people around the city so they could experience the ethnic restaurants in the city and other smaller restaurants that are not necessarily connected to the casinos and really have more of a city experience while they were experiencing the talents that were being shared by the creative community we have here,” Hagen remembers.

But that proved complicated at the inaugural event.

“When people came to the city who weren’t familiar with the city, they didn’t really know about the jitney system, they didn’t feel comfortable knowing where to park,” Hagen explains.

Hence, the Arts Foundation has narrowed the event over the last two years, reinventing itself based on feedback and budgets.

This year, the pandemic almost forced organizers to cancel altogether. But Hagen said the dean of Stockton’s arts program suggested training people to put the entire event online. Not only would the festival survive, it would help the school learn how to put art exhibits and performing arts programs online in the fall, assuming the pandemic would continue to keep them from happening in person.

Going forward, Hagen says one hope is to turn the event into a something even larger.

“If we can keep this going, I’d like to have 48 Blocks almost like a city-wide block party, where we could all do our own promotional things and have this really be an event that does promote lots of other stuff in Atlantic City,” she says.

For now, it’ll be limited to the size of people’s digital screens at home. For Feo’s home studio tour, showtime is 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 9. She plans to hang her pieces gallery style throughout the apartment and discuss her process.

“I feel a little awkward in front of the camera,” she admits. “But I’m just gonna have fun with it.”

And she’s eager to see what her fellow artists have created for the online fest.

“I feel like this has just been a time for artists creating, in their studios and in their homes,” Feo says. “It’s kind of exciting to see them welcoming people in and people connecting that way.”