VOICES from The Garden. The Civil Rights Garden at Carnegie Library in Atlantic City, New Jersey, is the first major monument to the civil rights movement in a northern state. We'll visit the garden and meet the creators of this groundbreaking memorial.

The Civil Rights Garden is located on Atlantic City's Martin Luther King Boulevard next to the Carnegie Library two blocks away from the boardwalk. For further information call (609) 407-9612 or visit www.njcrda.com/civilrightsgarden.html.

Victor Davson is both the founding director of Aljira, a contemporary art center, in Newark, as well as an artist. And, as you'll see when State of the Arts visits him at his two jobs - running an expanding art gallery and painting in his studio - he has some unique ideas to share and stories to tell.

Aljira will open its new gallery space at 591 Broad Street in Newark this fall. You can e-mail Aljira at Aljirainc@aol.com, or call 973-643-6877. Victor Davson's work will be shown in September 2003 at Cedar Crest College at the Tompkins College Center Gallery, 100 College Drive, Allentown, PA 18104. For more information call Aljira.

Manabu Saito, professional horticultural artist, watercolorist, and naturalist, travels the world to find and paint rare orchids, cacti, and exotic tropical plants, but some of his best work is done from his own garden in Stillwater, New Jersey. Saito is an accomplished botanical illustrator. He has created illustrations for Audubon and National Geographic magazines, and for many books on plants and flowers such as Wildflowers of North America, A Guide to Field Identification and A Passion for Plants: Contemporary Botanical Masterworks. He also designed the Orchid Stamps for the U.S. Postal Service, depicting four orchids native to the United States.

Manabu Saito was born and educated in Tokyo, Japan. He came to the US in 1953 and has been here ever since. During the 50s he studied Industrial Design at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and in the 1960s he was employed as an industrial designer for Raymond Loewy in New York City. He has been a freelance botanical artist since 1972.

Saito is represented by Zyt Gallery in Los Altos, CA. To see more of his work visit www.zytgallery.com.