Andrew Wilkinson finds his creative place

By Dan auBrey

In the art realm there are passion projects, things you want to see, says Andrew Wilkson sitting at a table at One Up One Down Café.

The café is located at in the former Polish Falcons Clubhouse at 750 Cass Street in Trenton.

Wilkinson co-owns the building and shares upstairs studio space with artist and former Artworks Trenton executive director Lauren Otis.

“I have been a real advocate for the intersection of art and commerce,” says Wilkinson, a self-described creative medium producer whose presence in the region has been demonstrated by the two areas just mentioned.

In business, he is the owner of Wilkinson Media and Princeton Product Photography. He has provided services for Siemens Corporation, Lenox, Princeton University, Princeton Magazine, New Jersey State Museum, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, Mid-Jersey Magazine, Mercer Alliance to End Homelessness, Isles, William Trent House Museum, the Trenton Downtown Association, and others.

He says Wilkinson Media provides simple studio photography but with a notso-simple flavor.

“For the commercial work, it is a client that values artistry and creativity and has an understanding of a budget to produce something that is suitable and communicates accurately. I can be hired as a creative media director or a technician.”

Regarding Wilkinson’s art, his biography statement lists exhibits at the Jersey City Museum, Newark Library Prints Collection, Hudson Valley Center of Contemporary Art, Arizona Museum of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, Arts Council of Princeton, D&R Greenway, Artworks Trenton, West Windsor Arts Council, and Trenton City Museum, as well as venues in Russia and Beijing.

Currently, he is represented in two current shows: “Fresh Art II” at the Trenton Free Public Library through May 27 and “The Right Shot,” photography exhibit at Mrs. G’s Appliances in Lawrence through April 14.

While the work at both exhibitions may differ in medium and visual subject, they share Wilkinson’s thematic interests, process, and influences.

“Graphics and photography are what I trained in,” he says. “With the fine art photo-based work, there are areas of exploration that interest me — consumption, apathy, consumerism, identity. No matter what I do (the art works) will fit into the categories in some way.”

Seeing himself as “a custodian of our culture,” Wilkinson says he is drawn to images and ideas he finds interesting or perplexing. And while he says some of his art will be humorous, its spirit is connected to something he calls “art activism” and being “a mirror of what our culture is.”

Recently, he has been creating moving video images supported by sonic backgrounds featuring another one of his longtime artistic practices, music.

He connects his habit of examining the world around him to “being an expatriate coming to the states at a young age in the ’80s. The cultural shift was surprising and overwhelming, and I was drawn to pop culture. I had a new language to learn — visually.”

Wilkinson was born into a family in Kent, England, a region about 40 miles southeast of London. His father was an engineer and worked for an Americanowned company that transferred him to the United States.

“I grew in Bucks County, Doylestown. I have sweet memories of Woolworths,” he says about the town’s “a wholesome suburban American life.”

Artistically, he adds that by the age of 16 he found himself making music and taking photographs, “same as I’m doing now.”

He followed his graduation from Doylestown Central Bucks West by studying communications at East Stroudsburg University in northeast Pennsylvania.

Referencing a television show by American director David Lynch, Wilkinson says the college had a “‘Twin Peaks’ type of feel” — or something oddly unsettling in its ordinariness — where he found a hard balance, taking classes, needing to take a waitering job to pay for classes, and performing in a band.

Wilkinson says his decision to study communications was part of a continuum of what he had been doing as a teenager and “what I am doing today.”

His ESU course work included an introduction to the then-new process of digital recording, “a lot of theory” and “what I wanted to do with software.”

More importantly, he says he was drawn to the field because “communications it is one of the most important things, really.”

After college he explored various opportunities in equally varied markets.

That includes returning to England and finding work with a London PR and design firm, moving back to the U.S. and working with the New York City creative service company Ernst & Young, and then moving to Merrill Lynch in Princeton.

He says despite enjoying working in urban centers and being part of urban culture, he says he realized that he “was a country mouse.”

He was also bored with corporate work, and after earning enough money to purchase his home in Titusville, he started his own company in 2003.

He found new footing in Trenton, where he says he was “adopted and supported by the community” and “made my business.”

Wilkinson reciprocated by donating his time to a number of creative projects as a volunteer and investing in the city. “(Otis) and I bought this building as an investment. It made more sense later than it did at the time. The idea of dedicated studio space helped my business’ success.”

He says the region also contributed to his growth as an artist and helped him “interlope between mediums. I met a lot of sculptors at Grounds For Sculpture. They made their work and work for others. I found them accommodating, and they were there for me and became a helpful community to get things made. I had series of dimension pieces” — including those that are part of the Jersey City Museum Collection (now absorbed by the Zimmerli Gallery in New Bruns-

Additionally, finding ways to support area nonprofits through the donation of work led him to consider other mediums such as print making and silk screening — processes often connected to Andy

See WILKINSON, page 10

Warhol and the pop art movement.

Despite the variety of art forms, he says they are unified by his ongoing thematic interest and interest in the work of artists ranging from American pop art artist Roy Lichtenstein and contemporary Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, whose work is a blend of traditional, commercial, and animated art.

Wilkinson also shares some attitudes with Brian Eno, the contemporary British artist whose music, videos, and light works are charged to produce a personal alertness to existence.

Then there is Wilkinson’s own orientation as an observer. “I feel I am a part of British culture and such a part of American culture,” he says.

Assessing his business and art over the past few COVID years, Wilkinson notes “Media work disappeared. People were not buying photography or design. What I decided to do was to think about my creativity and organize house and self and, given the opportunity of time, to learn music theory.”

He has also realized a new digital series blending his designed images and sound and creating music for a film by Trenton-based filmmaker Jeff Stewart.

But currently his mind is busy considering the value of exhibiting outside es- tablished galleries and museums, where artists and community members come together in unexpected ways.

“I like things that are outside the system,” he says. “Outside the traditional construct of display. Such as Mrs. G., a library, or a barber shop, where art could be part of the everyday” — maybe even in a Trenton coffee shop.

See Andrew Wilkinson’s art at “The Right Shot,” photo exhibition at Mrs. G’s, Brunswick Pike, Lawrence, through April 14, and “Fresh Art II,” Trenton Free Public Library, Academy Street, Trenton, through May 27.

For more on Wilkinson’s art, visit www.arwilkinson.com

For information on his media and photography services, visit wilkinsonmedia.net and www.princetonproductphotography.com.

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We’re so proud to offer our residents the best of the best—from dining and fitness centers to social calendars—because we don’t just care for you, we care about you. As a nationally ranked Senior Living community, we’re proof that doing what you love is always worth it. So come do it here.