Behold, the Harbor Art Gallery (HAG) has opened its doors for the first show of the semester with an exhibit entitled “I Was Here” (statements from obscurity). The show is a collaborative 3D installation featuring a group of emerging painters, graphic designers, street artists, photographers, and installation artists from Boston and New York City. The artwork is worth checking out. Most of the artists are familiar with the urban scene and their work shows this. Zaremba was able to get the show off the ground with the help of Skye Heitz, curator at the HAG. He remarked, “I said to all the artists, ‘Hey if I give you a section of a wall, how would you tell the audience you were there?'” Hence, the gallery walls display a variety of work that is a unique expression of each artist’s own life, but in a way, also intricate to city life. Many of the works created are already expressed to people everyday just by walking down the street.

For instance, gas stations. They are crucial to life in the city-but could they be considered art? Emily Walter has a piece of the gallery wall dedicated to photographs of gas stations. “She is just photographing the basics in a way; simple, everyday, overlooked, ‘plain,’ visuals,” explained Zaremba.

Mike Hammecker’s artwork was also created with everyday objects-in this case, paint swatches and origami paper. The paint swatches are free and biodegradable-but this is not the sole reason Hammecker has painted “cherished” images on them. The swatches, according to Hammecker, provide a nice color variation.

The origami paper, “shows my influences in Japanese culture,” says Hammecker. He further stated that the images he chose to paint are all “part of his life.” On the one hand, he has painted his family but on the other, he has painted two images of U.N. delegates making the decision to wage war in Iraq. The delegates are posed uniformly behind a line of chairs in both pieces but the backdrops in each one differ, with flowers in one and a checkerboard in the other.

Stephanie Milewski, recent MassArt graduate with a concentration in model print and gloss also has her innovative work featured in the exhibit. Milewski has stitched dried, used tea bags together to make a material similar to rice paper. She then used the tea bag material to paint images on them. One painting portrays a blank billboard towering over a city. About her art, she states, “It’s more about the process. It’s about making nothing into something,” she says.

Another photographer featured in the exhibit is Adam Amengual, a free-lance photographer living in Brooklyn. His work on display in the gallery includes photographs for two magazines he works for-Elemental and Tablist. One of the photographs is of hip-hop artist Kool Keith.

Zaremba is the artist behind the section entitled “Dasmine Cult,” which is an Instant Messenger conversation posted on the wall. “Why isn’t an Instant Messenger conversation art? It’s real in my life,” say Zermba about his piece.

Another section consists of shelves with ET figurines-225 to be exact. The artist, Meghan Farmer, was trying to convey the fact that she actually has 225 ETs. “I mean, when is the last time you saw a quantity of like that of ETs?” says Zaremba.

Artists included in the show are Mike Hammecker, Adam Amengual, Beth Salvini, Dasmine Cult, Stephen Holding, Jesse Stead, Stephanie Milewski, Emily Walter, Moodswings, Dana Woulfe of Illside Ink, Megan Farmer, Josh Falk, Mister Never, Mike Nice, and Nick Zaremba.

“We are all trying to express ourselves in an artistic manner in our lives right now so I thought it would be amazing to do a show of all our products of creative thinking,” Zaremba commented about the idea behind the show, adding, “I arranged the space and the content to give you a whole new experience when you walk in and surround yourself with the work. It’s all the truth and it’s as real as can be…it reflects the thoughts of fifteen different artists.”

For more information contact Nick Zaremba at [email protected] or the Harbor Art Gallery 617-287-7988. “I Was Here” runs from September 10 through October 10. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 11 a.m.- 6 p.m.