Be Astonished. Tell About It.

Newark Arts Festival 2026 | Treat Place, Newark

For the 2026 Newark Arts Festival, Tiny Gallery presented Be Astonished. Tell About It., seven miniature exhibitions tucked along Treat Place in downtown Newark. Inspired by the festival's theme, On Purpose, the show brought together seven artists working across sculpture, collage, printmaking, and mixed media.

Inside Shoshanna Weinberger's Refracted Consciousness, mirrored stripes and floating braids created an infinite, shifting universe, animated by changing daylight and the people passing by.

Antionette Ellis-Williams's Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, Hold On centers on a young Black girl confronting a world in which books are being banned and familiar safe spaces are disappearing. Drawing on Black women's quilting traditions, the collage balances uncertainty with defiance, finding hope in the stories, songs, and love passed down through generations.

Eirini Linardaki's Ghost Trees of Douala conjured mysterious figures from the nighttime landscape of Cameroon, using textile patterns to create trees that seem almost human.

Melisa Gerecci's Remnants took inspiration from a Persian carpet, using variations in the printmaking process to explore the comfort of familiar patterns and the beauty of imperfection.

Christen Clifford's The Ache of Love, made with hair and ribbon, connected childhood gestures with larger questions of love, bodily autonomy, and collective care.

In Hold Tight, Amanda J Thackray cuts and weaves images of the Lower Passaic River into a patchwork of oil slicks, floating trash, fish, and changing tides. It's a portrait of a complicated waterway, where pollution and natural beauty exist side by side.

Kween Moore's America Runs On… borrows the familiar imagery of Dunkin' Donuts, using papier-mâché donuts to explore the distance between the American promise and lived experience. One donut says it all: “Life isn't always sweet.”