Author Archives: Christina

Michael Moss
Roots to Shoots

Michael Moss’ group plays LITTLE ISLAND!

Date: Wednesday Sept 8 at 6 PM in the Glade.

MY NEW BAND, ROOTS TO SHOOTS – we will be performing FOR THE SECOND TIME at
the new magical park called Little Island on Wednesday, September 8th at 6 pm at The Glade!  

*Performance is FREE but you need timed entry tickets for this event.

For timed entry Tickets:  https://littleisland.org/timed-entry-reservations

Musicians:
Michael Moss (tenor and soprano saxes, flute)
the legendary Warren Smith (vibes, drums)
Adam Lane (bass)
Michael Wimberly (djembe, African percussion, piano)
Ismael Baiz (cajon, bongos),

Special Guest Bobby Harden (vocals)

Walls and Borders
Sculptors Guild

September 12 – October 9, 2021
Opening Reception Sunday September 12 2PM – 5PM

Hours: Wednesday – Sunday 1PM -6PM

Curator Dr Bruce Weber

The Sculptors Guild celebrates the re-opening of the Westbeth Gallery.

Curator
Dr. Bruce Weber received his Ph.D. in art history at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, where he studied with his longtime mentor Dr. William H. Gerdts. A leading scholar of American art. Dr. Weber has served as a curator at several museums, and as the director of research and exhibitions at a leading New York gallery. He has curated many exhibitions of historical and contemporary art. Among other topics he has written on the art of William Merritt Chase, Robert Frederick Blum, Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Stuart Davis, and has organized shows on such diverse topics as the apple and rose in American art, silverpoint drawing and contemporary figurative sculpture. In recent years he has been researching, lecturing and writing on the art of the historical Woodstock art colony, including such sculptors as Raoul Hague, Alexander Archipenko, Wilhelm Hunt Diederich and Tomas Penning.

The Sculptors Guild
The mission of the Sculptors Guild is to promote, encourage, and support sculptors and sculpture through personal interaction, professional development, exhibitions and community outreach.

The Sculptors Guild was founded in 1937 and is one of the oldest artist-run organizations in New York City. The founders were at the forefront of American Modernism rejecting the staid conventions of traditional figurative art. Their primary objective, as stated in an early exhibition catalogue was: “to unite sculptors of all progressive aesthetic tendencies into a vital organization.”
More info soon.

Karen Santry
Big Book of
Fashion Illustration

Karen Santry
“Women with Pugs”
Book Cover of the
Big Book of Fashion Illustration

Author: Martin Dawber
Forward: Karen Santry
Book Cover: Karen Santry

To smoke out the images in this exciting book, Martin Dawber has become a kind of Pied Piper eliciting, with astounding digital pitch, the cutting-edge visions of hundreds of fashion illustrators around the world.

Encountering his artists in the light of monitors, at the foot of fashion runways, on the streets of Paris and in the pages of little-known magazines, Dawber found fashion art alive and well, albeit changed. HIs subjects do not portray fashion in beautiful isolation as was common in the 50’s and 60’s, they transpose it – with seamless integration – into contemporary lifestyle.

Coffee at Starbucks, skateboard ramps, Shoe Fest at Bergdorf’s, and even the bedroom, all provide a new stage for the daily interaction of fashion and lifestyle. Make no mistake, though, what Dawber captures is anything but mundane. His ability to dictate new trends by showing us images we see every day but in a startling new way amazed me from cover to cover.

Karen Santry Gangsta Rapper’s Daughter Bride
oil on rosewood

Line, like the baton of a skilled maestro, he takes the viewer throughout The Big Book of Fashion Illustration making drawing a central theme. Whether the artist is using a Number 4 pencil, or a Wacom tablet line is tantamount. Throughout history, the skilled use of line has always been one of the most effective artistic methods used to convey emotion. Dawber employs this time-honored technique to delight and surprise us juxtaposing high fashion and tears, heartbroken women face to face with gorgeous, well-dressed, men, bored sprawling youths on skateboards, and angry bad boys flying around the hood like a pack of hornets, to name a few.

In the ongoing and ruthless competition between fashion illustration and fashion photography, the confluence of hands-on materials, the latest digital programs, and the best use of attitude, character, and–of course–style (which always comes from within) are what wins.

And the artists in this book are winning. All born of a generation deeply influenced by comic books, gaming, music videos and cartoons, the multi-vantage points enliven the illustrations, inviting viewers to participate as opposed to keeping them at a distance behind the velvet ropes. Page after page, sexuality is brazenly flaunted, often turning the viewer into a voyeur. This is fashion illustration at its best, incorporating every weapon of seduction. Hang on to your hats and wallets – these formerly endangered artists are out to get you!

What’s more, these illustrators come from many cultures and countries. Any reader attempting to identify the roots of each illustrator will be happy to find that East has been busy meeting West creating a truly inclusive global representation of fashion illustration.

Karen Santry, Associate Professor Illustration
Fashion Institute of Technology, New York NY
Executive Vice President, Fashion Art Bank Inc. (USA and Japan)
Westbeth Artist’s Housing since 1990!

Karen Santry on Westbeth website

YOU’RE NEVER TOO OLD TO PLAY
2022 Acting Workshop
Limited Openings for Westbeth residents

Join this popular acting workshop that focuses on storytelling, improvisation, sound and movement.

We welcome everyone (no experience necessary) who has a story to tell and wants to work with a caring and supportive led by master teachers, Nancy Gabor and Paul Binnerts.

We have limited openings for Westbeth residents.

For further information: Nancy Gabor

gaborworks@gmail.com

Class Hours

December 3, 2021 – July 22, 2022
Thursdays 11am – 2pm
Westbeth Community Room

A sound and movement storytelling workshop performance on July 22, 2021 at Little Island, NYC

Video filmed and edited by Mourrice Papi.

You’re Never Too Old to Play is a workshop for seniors about about their experience with the Covid pandemic and the memories it inspired. Conducted by Westbeth artists Nancy Ganotr and Paul Binnerts.

Paul Binnerts international theater director, author, playwright, acting teacher, novelist and publicist on theater since 1968, renowned expert on the ‘epic theater’ of Bertolt Brecht, presently lives and works in New York and Amsterdam, together with his wife, director and acting teacher Nancy Gabor.

Nancy Gabor “What was it that I loved most about the work of the Open Theatre and
 Grotowski? I think it was the emphasis on the inexhaustible energy and potential of the actor.”

Sponsored by Westbeth Artists Residents Council
Supported by Little Island
Curated by Pigpen Theatre Company

Westbeth Movie Night
Paper Moon

Friday August 13, 2021 at 7PM

FREE
Westbeth Community Room

Paper Moon is a 1973 American road comedy-drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich and released by Paramount Pictures. Screenwriter Alvin Sargent adapted the script from the 1971 novel Addie Pray by Joe David Brown. The film, shot in black-and-white, is set in Kansas and Missouri during the Great Depression. It stars the real-life father and daughter pairing of Ryan and Tatum O’Neal as protagonists Moze and Addie.

Tatum O’Neal received widespread praise from critics for her performance as Addie, earning her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, making her the youngest competitive winner in the history of the Academy Awards.

Masks required for unvaccinated. Masks recommended for vaccinated

The Free screening is sponsored by the Community Relations Committee of the Westbeth Artists Residents Council

Nazanin Noroozi
Riptide

Aug 20 – Oct 15, 2021
Spaces
2900 Detroit Av
Cleveland, Ohio

The Riptide is a visual short story based on super 8 movies that Nazanin Noroozi’s father took in post-revolution Iran. In this 4 minute film, handmade cinema is used as a medium to transform personal and family archives in order to re-create a narrative told by others addressing trauma and displacement. The mundane moments taken from kids’ school choirs, are juxtaposed with the images of glaciers melting, fictional asteroids attacking the earth, and other natural disasters to lift us beyond a singular event and represent a communal effect shared by millions in the anthropocene.

Nazanin Noroozi
Artist at Risk Resident at Westbeth

Nazanin Noroozi, (New York, NY) is a multimedia artist incorporating moving images, printmaking and alternative photography processes to reflect on notions of collective memory, displacement and fragility. Noroozi’s work has been widely exhibited in both Iran and the United States, including the Immigrant Artist Biennial, Noyes Museum of Art, NY Live Arts, Prizm Art Fair, and Columbia University. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship-grant, Artistic Freedom Initiative, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Mass MoCA Residency, North Adams, MA and Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts Residency, NY. She is an editor at large of Kaarnamaa, a Journal of Art History and Criticism. Noroozi completed her MFA in painting and drawing from Pratt Institute. Her works have been featured in various publications and media including BBC News Persian, Elephant Magazine, Financial Times, and Brooklyn Rail.
The Artist Safe Haven Residency Program is designed to house and nurture international artists who are persecuted on the basis of political affiliations, ethnic, locational, religious, and/or gender-based persecution; forcibly displaced; artists who need a respite from dangerous situations; or artists from countries experiencing active, violent conflict.

“I am happy to share the news that I joined the prestigious community of NYFA/NYSCA fellows in the category of Video & Film.
NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship Program has supported artists at all stages of their professional careers for more than 30 years. Many of the past fellows have gone on to become world-renowned artists whose work has touched the lives of many. NYFA has awarded 92 New York-based artists in grants as part of its 2021 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. Selected from an applicant pool of 3,572, the artists represent five disciplines that were selected for this year’s round of grants: fiction; folk or traditional Arts; interdisciplinary work; painting; video or film.”

Nazanin Noroozi website

The Artist at Risk initiative is led by a coalition of organizations working to safeguard free expression, and includes Artistic Freedom Initiative, Residency Unlimited, Westbeth Artist Housing, Fordham University, PEN America’s Artist at Risk Connection, Tasmizdat, and ArtistSafety.net.

Westbeth Artist Housing provides artists of all disciplines a residency for 6 months to two years, depending upon the requirements of the sponsoring program partners. Matthew Rutenberg of the Westbeth Board of Directors spearheaded Westbeth’s involvement in the coalition.

For more information, go to the NYC Artist Safe Haven website: Artistic Freedom Initiative.com