Jill Hoffman & Jack Herz

Theta is delighted to present a series of paintings by Jill Hoffman and Jack Herz.

Jill has owned the ground and lower levels of 184 Franklin Street for nearly four decades. Today she lives and works in the ground floor apartment alongside her partner of more than half a decade, Jack. In the eighties, the lower level space, which Theta occupies today, was renovated and built out by artists to become a gallery and hub for poetry and performance called Attitude Art. Afterwards, it was lived in until yuppie owners outlawed that. Artists, writers, performers, designers and the like have inhabited this space as tenants or collaborators of Jill’s over the years. This exhibition is a capsule of paintings they have made over the years, pulling samples from their respective autobiographies and reconfiguring them as a poem.

"What if this were my last day?

I’d go to the dog store and buy Vermeer

a treat, I’d sleep late and get a ticket

on the windshield of our car, I’d buy one tube of paint

and write a message on my chest

in ultramarine violet"

Jill Hoffman is an author, publisher, and painter. Most recently Stoned, a novel about moving downtown and starting a gallery, called Albatross Art, was published by Box Turtle Press, as well as a very new book of poems, Kimono with Young Girl Sleeves, (arriving providentially from the printer on Monday, July 22nd). She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1974. In addition to having authored six books of fiction and poetry, Hoffman has been publishing the poetry, art, and fiction anthology Mudfish under Box Turtle Press, since 1984. Her writing has been featured in such prestigious journals as Paris Review, and The New Yorker. Presently she teaches a poetry and fiction writing workshop in her home in New York City.

Jack Herz has been painting “seriously” since age 3. A fallen scientist, chemist, university professor, and a businessman, both in Corporate America and as an entrepreneur, he studied at the Art Students League, where he was a student of both Mary Beth McKenzie and Frank O’Cain. More recently, he has focused his work on abstracts based on his years in the laboratory and his consulting work around the world. He also assists in the operations of Box Turtle Press. He has had solo shows in Connecticut and taken part in a group show at the Elena Ab Gallery in New York. Some of his work appears in Mudfish.