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Dear Friend,

On Saturday, September 25, Kea’s Ark received the Mid-Atlantic Emmy for Arts Program (Long Form). The half-hour documentary premiered in February 2021 as a special State of the Arts. It was a journey that began with a 2016 State of the Arts story about an exhibition of Kea’s work. Kea’s Ark is a truly New Jersey story, the kind that we here at State of the Arts feel privileged to tell. 

Kea Tawana, who died in 2015, left behind a complicated legacy. A self-taught artist and builder, no one was quite certain where she had grown up, or even the exact year she was born. What was clear was that Kea was a visionary. She saw the troubled state of the Central Ward, the poverty-stricken neighborhood in Newark where she had made a home since the 1960s, and her mind turned to finding solutions—for herself and, increasingly, for others. Odd-jobs as a demolitionist led her to think of a use for the sturdy materials she was salvaging from the decaying 19th century houses being torn down all around her. She designed and built a 3-story ark on an abandoned lot in the Central Ward, a point she had determined was the highest spot in Newark. At first, Kea planned to escape the city on her ark—later, she envisioned it as a community center, and a way to teach young people the craft of building.
Kea Tawana on the deck of the ark in 1987
Photo: Camilo José Vergara
Kea’s Ark has been chosen for national distribution by American Public Television in March 2022. Until then, find out more here, and watch the story about the Gallery Aferro exhibit that started it all here.

Kea’s Ark was produced, directed, and written by Susan Wallner. Funding was provided by the NJ State Council on the Arts, the NJ Council for the Humanities, and the NJ Historical Commission. Kea Tawana’s work is presented in cooperation with Gallery Aferro and The Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers University-Newark. Kea’s Ark is a production of PCK Media in cooperation with Stockton University.
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The State of the Arts team.
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The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, encouraging excellence and public engagement in the arts since 1966, is proud to co-produce State of the Arts with Stockton University, New Jersey's distinctive public university, in cooperation with PCK Media.

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