SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD, NJ — If you were driving down South Orange Avenue on the morning of Sept. 13, you might have seen a group of almost 40 senior citizens from South Orange and Maplewood traversing the street. They were taking part in the inaugural SOMA on the Move walk, a 1.5-mile long tour of the village’s public art. The Village Art Trail is the debut trail in the SOMA Two Towns for All Ages program, an initiative that encourages seniors in the towns to walk by offering them maps that include places to go. The art walk started and finished at the Baird, led by South Orange Arts Advisory Council members Jason Rulnick and Ken Krasner.
“We wanted to find ways to encourage people to walk,” Two Towns for All Ages coordinator Cathy Rowe said in an interview with the News-Record at the event. “But it can be kind of boring. So now there’s something to look at.”
Krasner, a real estate agent and South Orange resident, is creating the maps. An amateur cartographer, he has made other town and historical maps of the area and, after seeing his work, Rowe asked him to make the SOMA on the Move maps.
“I’ll do it in pencil at first,” Krasner told the News-Record at the event about how he begins a new map. He then adds detail and color. “I look at Google maps first. They’re practical, but they’re really boring. Then I go from there.”
The Village Art Trail map shows the Meadowland Park area stretching from Scotland Road to North Ridgewood Avenue. Beginning with “Walking Away,” a sculpture by Meryl Taradash near the tennis courts, it also includes “Tau,” by Tony Smith, and the rain garden by the duck pond; the Gateway murals behind the South Orange Train Station retaining wall on South Orange Avenue; and the mural and music animal instruments at Spiotta Park. The 10th and final stop on the walk is the post office on Vose Avenue, where an old mural hangs on the inside wall.
Krasner’s map also features South Orange Middle School, the pool and the station. The 10-stop walk is mostly on flat terrain and is marked by benches along the way in case anyone needs to take a seat. And Krasner is working with SOMA on the Move on maps for Notable Buildings of Maplewood, the Springfield Avenue Murals, Historic Buildings of South Orange, Local Houses of Worship and War Memorials. As they become available, the self-guided maps can be found at www.SOMATwoTownsforAllAges.org, the Maplewood Senior Center and South Orange Village Offices.
Rulnick, an art specialist at an auction house, used the walk to get residents excited about the art they see every day without noticing.
“People drive through, people take the train through South Orange and might not even notice it,” he said in an interview with the News-Record at the event. “Without art, you can’t say this is a diverse community. There’s not a lot of signage, which is something we’re looking at ways to improve. There’s a lot of people here all the time, but not everyone knows what it all is.”
The guided walk lasted about an hour and a half, and while Rulnick thinks it’s a good idea for all residents, not just seniors, to use the new map for a walk, he was impressed with the turnout at the premier walk.
“They’re a spry group of seniors,” Rulnick joked. “This definitely exceeded my expectations.”
In addition to making a walk more exciting, Rowe said the maps are a good introduction to the area for new residents in the towns.
“There’s a lot of new seniors who move here to be near their kids and their grandkids,” she said. “They don’t know the area, and this is a good way to get to know it.”
South Orange resident Tracy Carroll walks all around the village, and attended the Sept. 13 event as well. She’s working on ideas for map themes with Rowe.
“You have to keep it local, because not everybody is going to do the 5 to 10 miles a day that I do,” Carroll joked in an interview with the News-Record at the event. “It’s good to have destinations to go for people to stay motivated.”
Photos by Amanda Valentovic
SOMA on the Move premieres with art walk added by Amanda Valentovic on
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