Freedom of the Press
Westbeth Graphics Studio

Show Dates: May 5 – May 26, 2018
Opening Reception: May 5, 2018 Saturday 6pm – 8pm

Where: Westbeth Gallery 55 Bethune St New York NY
Hours: Wednesday – Sunday 1pm – 6pm

Twelve printmakers using techniques that range from traditional to digital express the freedom of printmaking to cross boundaries both technically and conceptually.

Printmaking is found both in galleries and in the streets. In fine art and in revolution. Because of printmaking’s foundations in reproducibility, multiplicity and versatility, it negotiates the entire spectrum between the static and the temporal.

Each of the printmakers in the show uses printmaking to respond to profound aesthetic beliefs, to explore social and environmental issues as well as to investigate the implications of culture on the natural world.

The world has become pure image. This show examines the nature of seeing.

Participating Printmakers

Printmakers Bios

Christina Maile
is a printmaker, painter, and landscape architect. Formerly a playwright she –co-founded the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective, one of the first feminist theater groups in the USA, and later attended Dan Rice’s master classes in painting. Her landscape architectural work has appeared in Garden Design Magazine, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. In 2013 she received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Joan Mitchell Studio Grant for painting and printmaking. Her work has been featured in the International Print Center in New York City, has been included in the Feminist Artists Database at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, and is represented in many private collections. . www.christinamaile.com.

William Kennon
William Kennon is a printmaker, painter and draftsman. His work, though realistic and influenced by photography is organized around strongly formal designs and chiaroscuro lighting effects. He holds a B.A. in comparative literature/comparative arts from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.A. in art history from Columbia University. He studied drawing, painting, printmaking and anatomy at the Art Students League of New York and the New York Studio School. Mr. Kennon is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and his work has won awards from the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA), the Butler Institute of American Art, the National Arts Club, Allied Artists, Audubon Artists, the Salmagundi Club and the American Artists Professional League. He has been affiliated with Hirschl & Adler Galleries and the Westbeth Gallery in New York City and the Galerie Albert Benamou in Paris. His work is represented in numerous private collections.

Website: williamkennonartist.com
E-Mail: williamakennon@gmail.com

Charlene Tarbox
Charlene Tarbox grew up in Andover, Massachusetts and attended Connecticut College and the Philadelphia College of Art. With a background in painting, she now works as a printmaker at the Art Students League of New York.

When creating her prints, she employs experimental techniques, concentrating on color relationships and focusing on images that depict the natural world.

Her work has appeared in solo and group shows in New England, New York, and Virginia. Ms. Tarbox is a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists. Her prints are part of the permanent collections of the Hofstra University Museum, The Art Students League of New York, and the Syracuse University Art Galleries.

www.ctarbo4.wix.com/charlene-tarbox-art
cetarbox@gmail.com

Gerald Marcus
Gerald Marcus, painter and printmaker, lives and works in New York City. He studied at the Art Students League of New York with Jean Liberte, Julian Levy, Sol Wilson and Jacob Lawrence.

Marcus has shown his work in many exhibitions in New York City and internationally including, The National Academy of Design; The Hollar Society, Prague; The International Print Center New York; The Susan Teller Gallery, New Yorik; Smith College; Iowa State University; The Lancaster Museum; The City University of New York; the De Nazelle Gallery, Toulouse, and other museums and universities. His work is in many public and private collections. He is a former president of The Society of American Graphic Artists. His biography is listed in Who’s Who in American Art, and The Biographical Encyclopedia of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers of the United States.

Francia Tobacman Smith
Francia has been a practicing artist for over 30 years, along with being an arts activist. She has played a major role in the Women’s Caucus for Art and in that organization organized the Jewish Women Artists Network.
In recent years she has shifted more of her painting to printmaking, specifically Linoleum Reduction prints. This technique involves layering of colors and the design created with each cutting. The positive negative space is created with color and paper as a ground and how they work together. The cutting depends on the tools and the nuances of textures they create. Her prints focus on how lines can become shapes.
Earning her MA in printmaking from Lehnman College, Francia has been a teaching artist for Project Arts, Studio in a School, and for 10 years was co-director of a summer study abroad program for art and music in French-speaking Switzerland.
Selected museum exhibits include: Musee des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, CH, Indianopolis Museum, JB Speed Musuem, ERvansville Museum, National Jewish Museum, Mizel Museum, Hartwick College Museum, Owensboro Museum, Tyer Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Bibliotecque Nationale, PR.
The artist has received grants from the Gottlieb Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, Artists Space, and National Endowment for the Arts.She has lectured at museums and galleries around the country.

As an artist resident of Westbeth, and a member of the Westbeth Graphics Studio, Francia’s newest work examines color, shape, line and how they interact with the concept of Freedom of the Press in the 21st century.

Claire Rosenfeld
Claire Rosenfeld is a New York City based visual artist who has shown her figurative expressionist paintings, drawings and prints in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad. She has had solo shows at the Museo de la Ciudad, Querétaro, Mexico, and at the Painting Center, Prince Street Gallery, Westbeth Gallery,
Michael Ingbar Gallery and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York. She has
exhibited her work in group exhibitions at Galería Rae Miller and Generator Gallery in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and La Galería in Altos de Chavón, Dominican Republic.
New York group shows include Lori Bookstein Gallery, David McKee Gallery, Broome St. Gallery, A.I.R Gallery, the New York Studio School, Parsons School of Design, Grey Gallery, Lillian Heidenberg Gallery, amongst others, and the Silvermine Guild Arts Center, in
New Canaan, Connecticut.

Rosenfeld has been awarded residencies at Fundación Valparaiso, Mojácar, Spain; Fundación Central Cultural, Altos de Chavón, Dominican Republic; Michael Karolyi Foundation, Vence, France; and at residencies in the United States, including the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ossabaw Island Project, Dorland Mountain Colony, Millay Colony for the Arts, Cummington Community of the Arts, Hambidge Center, and Byrdcliffe Arts Colony.

Rosenfeld received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MFA from Queens College, CUNY, and attended the New York Studio School. She has traveled widely in India, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, Morocco, Turkey, Mexico and throughout Europe, where the study of ancient cultures often provided inspiration for her work. Painting in New Mexico for extended periods initiated imagery influenced by the light and landscape there.

Ms. Rosenfeld has taught widely, and is currently on the faculty of New York University, where she teaches drawing, painting and printmaking.

www.clairerosenfeld.net

Mindy Belloff, INTIMA PRESS
Mindy Belloff produces fine letterpress printed book and broadside editions at her Union Square studio, under the imprint Intima Press. She has been creating art for over 30 years as a painter, photographer, mixed media installation and book artist. Her works are in numerous permanent collections including the Library of Congress, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Ms. Belloff has exhibited at multiple venues nationally and internationally, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Sculpture Center, and PS 122. Her mixed media artwork was favorably reviewed by Holland Cotter in The New York Times, her artist’s books have been included in publications such as 500 Handmade Books, and her edition titled W2LZX received an award for Excellence in Book Design. She holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University, is a Mac-Dowell Fellow, and recipient of an NEA Book Residency grant. Inspired by Stieglitz’s Intimate Gallery, Ms. Belloff opened Intima Gallery in upstate New York (2013-2014), which showcased fine prints on paper.

Ms. Belloff meticulously recreated the Unanimous Declaration of Independence printed by Mary Katha-rine Goddard in January 1777. Through her lectures and essays, she hopes to shed light on Goddard and write this Daughter of Liberty back into the historic record. Ms. Belloff is the recipient of a Puffin Foundation Grant supporting “creative and innovative initiatives that advance progressive social change,” for her second, contemporary printing of the Declaration, proclaiming “all People are created equal.” Visit IntimaPress.com for more information.

Samantha Beste
Samantha Beste began her art studies at eleven, painting at the Art Students League of New
York, followed by two years of study in Florence, Italy.
Samantha attended the BFA program at Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio, but moved to Canada, and received her BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. Samantha then spent a decade in London, England, where she painted commissioned portraits and exhibited, culminating in
two successful solo shows of her urban landscapes. When she returned to New York and the Art Students League, she studied printmaking with William Behnken and Richard Pantell, and collage/mixed-media with Martha Bloom.
For the past seven years, Samantha’s painting studio has been based in Beacon, N.Y., and she enjoys experimenting with print media at Garrison Art Center while looking out at the river. Samantha still finds inspiration in the city as subject in her paintings and prints, but has recently been working in mixed-media on a theme of climate change.
www.besteart.com

Jackie Lipton
Jackie Lipton is an artist, painter, printmaker and educator. She equates creative process with survival and intends that her “art and painting as an idea is to touch you and shake you”. She equates the experience of painting to survival, where the work itself becomes alive.

She is currently showing work at (Art Market Provincetown) AMP Gallery in MA with a show of paintings and prints scheduled for September 2018.

Exhibitions include David Schweitzer Contemporary, Life on Mars Gallery, and Anthony Philip Gallery in Brooklyn; and in Chelsea, NYC, the Art Resources Transfer Gallery and Gale/Martin Gallery, others. Others include the ARC at the Whitney Museum, plus the Whitney Museum Gallery at the Art Resources Center, the Aldrich Museum, Condeso/Lawler Gallery, WARM Gallery, Gallery Boreas, Corinne Robbins Gallery, and Westbeth Gallery in NYC; the Schoolhouse Gallery and AMP Gallery in Provincetown, Mass.

Selected grants and awards include the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the Whitney Museum Arts Resources Center (ARC), Bob Blackburn Print Studio, Feminist Art Institute (FAIA) Collaborative Arts project, MacDowell Colony for the Arts, repeat residencies at Cummington Community of the Arts (CCA) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA). The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation emergency grants and Gallery Boreas’ award of travel with a studio and apartment in Reykjavik, Iceland, and others.

Lipton works in her studio in Chelsea and lives in Westbeth Artist Housing with her life partner, J. Christopher Bolton and their two amazing cats.
www.jackielipton.com

Sheila Schwid
Artist’s Background: I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1932. I have been painting since I can remember. Growing up in Omaha, I studied with the local artists, Bill Hammon, Milton Wolsky, Frank Sapousek, John and Hettie-Marie Andrews. From these mentors I learned the basics of life drawing, landscape and still life. After completing my BA at Omaha U, I studied at the Art Center School in Los Angeles. Later I came to New York just in time to join in the excitement of the 10th Street Galleries where I showed in a few group shows. I also participated in the Happenings of Red Grooms, and was an angel in the movie by Robert Frank, “The Sins of Jesus,” by Babel.