Creativity served on the side at restaurant Fiddleheads offers quarterly exhibits featuring local artists BY SETH MANDEL Staff Writer SEAN DWYER Larry Gottlieb, a floral photographer from Long Island, sits with some of his work while chatting with patrons Sunday during an artists’ reception at Fiddleheads, East Railroad Avenue, Jamesburg. JAMESBURG –– When Fiddleheads was purchased in June 2004, it was a restaurant. A dash of new lighting, a pinch of new flooring and a double portion of local creativity later, customers are finding themselves dining in an art gallery. “We wanted access to the community and we wanted to have nice art on the walls, rather than just going out and buying framed posters,” said Fiddleheads co-owner Brian Blatz. “We wanted something that really had some quality.” SEAN DWYER Some of Jennifer Wiessner’s photographic works are displayed during Sunday’s reception. So Blatz and co-owner/cook Dan Davis made some changes to the decor at the East Railroad Avenue bistro and gave the restaurant a personal touch, seeking out local art to adorn the walls. “When we bought the restaurant, one of the first things we did was just walk down the street and meet some of the businesses … and one of them was [borough art gallery] Family Framers,” Blatz said. “And my partner came up with the idea that it would be nice if we hung local artists’ work around here.” Fiddleheads is now conducting an exhibit featuring the works of several local artists, including Family Framers co-owner Teddy Ehmann. “It’s all about a certain quality of life,” Ehmann said. “There are people in our society who think that a lot of things are frivolous, like art. But for the truly connected and educated person, fine food, beauty, art, nature, pets, children –– what would life be without all these things?” Ehmann’s display includes a three-painting series titled “What Does Peace Look Like,” which he said involves symbolic combinations of past experiences and imagination. One is set on a beach in the Northwest and depicts Ehmann standing in the water, looking diminutive in comparison to the grand and mighty ocean. Another is of people bathing in a waterfall, and the third is of a person sitting in the woods on a snowy day. “And that one was inspired by how peaceful I felt when I was younger, and just walking in the woods when there was new snow and it was falling,” Ehmann said, adding, “You could actually hear the snow.” Ehmann, whose grandfather was a noted painter in Trenton, has been painting since childhood, and prefers to paint in the wilderness, far from the hustle and bustle of suburbia. “Not the kind of nature that’s manicured, like the rolling landscape, but the other kind, where you go deep in the woods,” Ehmann said. “I go way back, away from civilization.” To Iceland, in fact. “You have incredible terrain, some of the most beautiful land that you’ve ever seen, and mountains and volcanoes and glaciers and seacoasts,” he said, describing the freedom of painting away from the confining restrictions of private land and state parks. Another of the artists whose work is featured at Fiddlehead’s is North Plainfield resident Jennifer Wiessner. An adolescent-and-family therapist, Wiessner has had an interest in photography since her college days. She started with manual photography and then purchased a digital camera a couple of years ago. She mats and frames her own work, and has already sold 11 pieces through the restaurant. Some of her work currently on display includes “Glory Days,” a 16-by-20-inch photograph of a sunset over a crab apple tree in a field in Durham, Maine; “Asian Gardens,” shot in Huntington Gardens in California; and “Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse” in Nova Scotia, Canada. “I am an outdoors person; that’s probably why I’m drawn to doing the nature and the landscape,” Wiessner said. But her favorite painting in the exhibit is one of mussel shells, called “Centrifuge.” “I love the contrast between the sand color and the blue of the mussel shells,” she said. Wiessner, in fact, loves most of what she photographs, which is one of the main reasons she has taken up the hobby. “I want people to see what I see,” Wiessner said. “It gives them the ability to be where I’ve been.” Wiessner and her family are moving to Maine next month, but she plans to continue to visit relatives in New Jersey and contribute to the restaurant’s collection. Her new home will give her the opportunity to photograph a scene that has, until now, eluded her. “With this digital camera, I’ve never photographed fall in New England, so I will be doing that,” Wiessner said. Ehmann described Fiddleheads as the perfect venue for the art — quiet and peaceful. “So you can really just sit there and just enjoy your meal and really have beauty all around you,” he said. The quarterly exhibitions already have Ehmann working on his winter artwork. “It’s driving me to really do my best, and get out there and paint more, so I’m really excited,” he said. Blatz said the restaurant’s menu is identical to its own pre-2004 menu, with one small change –– Blatz’s mother makes several of the desserts every day. And the art, combined with word of mouth, has given Fiddleheads quite a following. “I like to call it a ‘whisper’ restaurant,” Blatz said. “It’s the kind of thing where people love the place, but they don’t want to tell too many people about it because they don’t want it to get too popular.” All 46 of the pieces in the exhibit, which also includes works by Peggy Kahn Heller and Toby Weissman of Monroe, and Larry Gottlieb of East Rockaway, N.Y., are for sale. Blatz said the restaurant has been doing a brisk business on weekends. “Even though we’re not Jamesburg natives, we’ve found that we’ve been embraced very well here,” Blatz said. “Whether I own it, or anybody else owns this restaurant, it needs to be here. This off-beat, unusual restaurant needs to be here in Jamesburg.” Fiddleheads was particularly crowded on Sunday when it held its first artists’ reception, with about 100 locals attending. “They were getting in the door and didn’t know where to go,” Blatz said. “It was great.”