Dual identities
Off the job, Rutgers employees express a range of skills and passions
Archived article from Oct 23, 1998
By Douglas Frank
Day painter Pedro Fuller knows that making it in the art world is not an easy task. That's why he hasn't given up his night job as a custodian at the Camden campus gymnasium.
He joined Rutgers a year ago, having previously worked for Campbell Soup Company in maintenance for many years, and now works the 5 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. shift.
He says the hours are ideal for a fine-art painter. "I paint quite a lot right now. I paint all day and I'm happy about this," he says.
Fuller started in art at the age of 13 in his native Nicaragua with pencils and pastels and eventually took up painting. He came to the United States in 1979, studied art at Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden and then attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, graduating in 1985.
Over the years, he estimates, he has painted some 600 paintings, specializing in intensely colored landscapes.
"My work," he says, "consists of symbolic images in which color, line, semiabstract and representational forms merge and project my impressions of today's realities." His art, he adds, "is intended to be universal in content and does not try to dictate to the viewer a specific political or social conclusion."
He has displayed his work in numerous venues including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center in Camden and the Taller Puertorriqueno, a Hispanic cultural center in Philadelphia, and has paintings in the permanent collections of Rutgers' Stedman Art Gallery and Zimmerli Art Museum.
Dance of the East
At Rutgers, she is an award-winning producer at the Office of Television and Radio. Elsewhere, she is "Farasha" (Arabic for butterfly), practitioner of Middle Eastern, or Oriental, dance.
Together with four friends in the Moon and Star Dance Troupe, based in Central Jersey, Marisa Pierson dances at various private and public events, including First Night celebrations in various municipalities, community and diversity fairs, Renaissance fairs and for senior citizens.
The term "belly dance,"coined by promoter Sol Bloom at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, where he introduced "Little Egypt," is actually a misnomer, says Pierson. "It is an oversimplified term for a dance that, in fact, involves the entire body, especially the hips," she points out.
The Arabic name is Raks El Sharki, which literally translates as Dance of the East, hence Oriental dance. Perhaps 5,000 years old, the dance traditionally is performed at celebrations, births and weddings in the Middle East.
A ballet dancer as a child and a lover of folk dancing, Pierson recalls becoming hooked when introduced to Oriental dance in Harrisburg, Pa., in the early 1980s. Now, she continues to go into New York periodically for weekend workshops. "I always like to study with the masters when I can, because there is always something new to learn." She has been teaching the dance herself for East Brunswick's adult-education program for three years.
Besides shimmies, undulations and lots of moving muscle parts, the dancers are known for wearing beautiful, handmade, lavishly beaded costumes and using the "tools of the trade" -- finger cymbals and veils.
"I continue to dance because it makes me feel so good about myself. It's a great builder of self-esteem, and I try to share this with my students," Pierson says. It's also a great workout.
"When you stand and shimmy (rapid up-and-down movement of the hips) for 30 seconds or a minute, you can use up a heck of a lot of calories, and you don't have to move a foot," she says with a laugh.
Presto, chango
Bill Greenhalgh doesn't like to talk much about his talents as a magician, but don't be surprised if he changes his tie in the blink of an eye or pulls a huge coin out from behind your ear.
The 14-year Rutgers employee is the supervisor of the Livingston Computing Center in Tillett Hall and sometimes uses magic to attract and keep his students' interest as part of the RUCS Education Series.
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