Upcoming Exhibition

Cutting Their Own Path

Friends of Metuchen Arts is proud to present the art of three renowned Women artists from Metuchen

Joan Arbeiter, Edith Pletzner and Helen M. Strummer

Opening January 24, 2026, from 2-6pm

Meet us at the Gallery, 315 Main Street, across the street from the Forum Theatre in Metuchen.

Gallery Hours: Wednesdays from 6–8pm and Sundays from 1–3pm from January 24-March 22

Friends of Metuchen Arts (FOMA) and Basecamp Studio & Gallery are proud to present an exhibition titled Cutting Their Own Path, featuring the work of Joan Arbeiter, Edith Pletzner and Helen M. Stummer - three groundbreaking women artists who lived and worked in Metuchen in the 1960’s through the 2000’s.  The work will be on view at the FOMA/Basecamp galleries, January 24th through March 22, 2026.  The galleries are located at 315 Main Street, Metuchen, directly across from the Forum Theatre.  The public is invited to an opening reception on Saturday, January 24, 2026, from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Each artist in this show carved her own path in a profession where few women were given the opportunity to do so.  They made their own opportunities through perseverance and hard work.  The subjects of their work were challenging, as were the social norms in which they grew up. 

JOAN ARBEITER, American artist, educator and feminist (1937-2024) grew up in Brooklyn, NY.  At a very young age she was enrolled in the Brooklyn Museum Art School for children. Joan graduated from Douglas College 1958, earned her BS in Education from Brooklyn College in 1959 and her Master's of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in 1981.    Joan taught elementary school in Manhattan before moving to Metuchen in the early 1960’s where she and her husband, local attorney Jay Arbeiter, raised their two daughters.   

Joan credited her association with the New York Feminist Art Institute with expanding her interest in feminist themes in her own work and that of others. One of her first art shows, called CAA Job Search Documentation, exposed the futility of women seeking tenured teaching posts at the university level at that time.    Another of her on-going series started with a work she called Portrait of the Artist As A Young Girl Fulfilling Societies Limited Expectations, a multi-media work exploring cultural themes from the 1950’s.  Other portrait series included:  Street People, in which she paid homeless individuals in NYC to model. She painted their stories in their own words by hand on the canvas.  One of those portraits, simply called Melvin, is included in the Metuchen exhibit.  Another series was titled Vanishing Vistas in which she presented renditions of bucolic Ringoes, NJ landscapes while juxtaposing research about environmental poisoning. 

Joan established the Joan Arbeiter Studio School in Metuchen which she operated from 1976 until 1990.  She was an art instructor and Foundations Coordinator at the duCret School of the Arts.  In Metuchen in the 1960’s and 70’s, Joan was a community activist registering women to vote with the League of Women Voters; supporting efforts to create a resident theatre company in town known as Theatre Six; and raising funds for the building of JFK Hospital and Temple Emanu-el.  During the racial troubles in the 1960’s, Joan and her family supported Brotherhood Supers organized by the Metuchen Borough Advisory Coalition.  Joan’s correspondence and papers are in the Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists at Rutgers University.  The Noyes Museum of Stockton University holds much of her collection of artwork, including the Vanishing Vistas series.

EDITH HODGE PLETZNER, noted 20th-century American Impressionist (1924- 2019), was born in Orange, NJ.  Self-described as “the worst student you could imagine,” Edith found her way to the Essex County Vocational School at age 13.  In a program called “The Practical Arts,” she studied photography, painting and fashion illustration which set her on her artistic journey.  She was a Cartographer and Draftsman for the Women’s Army Corp in World War II and rose to the rank of Corporal.  Upon release from the army she attended and graduated from the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts.  She met her husband, C. Robert Pletzner, while working as a dance instructor.  They had three children.  Edith ran antique shops, galleries and art studios in Highland Park, Metuchen, Elizabeth and Point Pleasant.  She was a teacher and mentor to many, especially in Metuchen, where she resided for many years.  Among the most valuable lessons her students left with was not only good technique, but also, how to see.  She preached, “Before you can paint, you have to learn how to see.”  

A student of anatomy, Edith’s portraits contain defining lines that are at once impressionist and realistic.  Her works continually were shown in many fine galleries over the years.  Her portrait of her two daughters Lauren and Suzan hung in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.  At the end of her life she happily resided at the Menlo Park Veterans Memorial Home where she continued to give art lessons and draw portraits of the residents there.

HELEN M. STUMMER (1936-2023), award-winning social documentary photographer and author of three books, was a longtime resident of Metuchen.  Her photography and writing examined race, class, social justice and the dignity of individuals surviving under difficult conditions.  Her early life experiences shaped her sensitivity toward others’ suffering.  As a proud feminist and social activist, she was always fighting for those who are unseen and not heard.  Helen studied photography at the International Center of Photography in New York City as a way to deepen her work as an artist.  She later earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from Kean University and a Master’s in visual sociology from Norwich University/Vermont College.

Helen is best known for her groundbreaking photographs documenting the lives and struggles of families in Newark, NJ throughout a multi-decade period highlighted in her books No Easy Walk: Newark 1980-1993 and Risking Life and Lens: A Photographic Memoir.  Her work has been exhibited and published widely in permanent museum and library collections such as the Library of Congress, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of the City of New York, the Brooklyn Museum and the Rutgers University Libraries Special Collection.  Her artist archive is housed in the New Jersey Historical Society in Newark.

For the Metuchen exhibit, the artists’ work will be divided among the three rooms that make up the joint galleries.  “We are excited that each artist will have her own room,” said Basecamp Studio owner Robert Diken.  “Our curation team all agreed that while each of these women knew each other well, they would have preferred their own solo space in this exhibit since, as the title indicates, they created their own spaces and cut their own artistic paths.”

The exhibit will be on view January 24 through March 22.  Gallery hours are Sundays from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. and Wednesdays from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

For more information about gallery events connected to this exhibition, visit www.friendsofmetuchenarts.org and www.theBaseCamp.art.