Author Archives: Christina

Robert Bunkin
An Argument for Figurative Art Now

Michael Andrews 1928-1995 detail from portrait of Timothy Behrens, Oil on cardboard, Thyssen-Bornemiszra National Museum, Madrid

Thursday September 9 at 5:30 PM
Hudson Park Library
66 Leroy Street
New York, NY 10014
212-243-6876

FREE

This talk will present a selective overview of post-World War two painting, focusing on the revival of figurative art starting in the 1950s, as a response to the increasingly narrow parameters of modernist abstraction, and a desire to reintroduce human experienc back into “serious” art. Artists discussed will include Larry Rivers, Alice Neel, Lucian Freud, Kerry James Marshall and Jennifer Packer, among others.

Robert Bunkin is a figurative painter living in Westbeth. He has extensive experience as a curator, educator and art historian.

*The event will take place in person at Hudson Park Library.
** Face mask required

Robert Bunkin
Recent Paintings
Family, Friends, Neighbors

Orly in Her Studio 2020 acrylic on canvas 30×22 inches

GALLERY AT HUDSON PARK LIBRARY
October 2 – October 30, 2021
Mon – Fri 10am – 6pm
Saturday 10am – 5PM
Sunday Closed

OPENING RECEPTION
Saturday October 2, 2pm – 4pm
No refreshments will be served due to Covid restrictions.

GUIDED TOUR LED BY THE ARTIST
Saturday October 9, 2021 at 2PM
Works can be purchased directly from the artist.

The works on display were produced since the artist moved to Westbeth in 2014.

They are all done from life, incorporating the sitter’s works or relating to the subject’s life and environment.

Several sitters are represented in a series of works offering more varied insights than the ‘traditional’ definitive image portraiture offers.

Robert Bunkin is a painter, curator, art historian, and educator with an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.

Penny Jones and Ralph Lee
Puppets of New York

August 17, 2021 – April 22, 2022
Museum of the City of New York

1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street
Friday – Monday 10AM – 6PM

“The International Puppet Fringe Festival NYC, which arrives this week with over 50 shows and events, more than a dozen short films and five accompanying exhibitions, including “Puppets of New York” at the Museum of the City of New York, is far from a kiddie celebration.

But perhaps this festival’s most novel element is its partnership with the Museum of the City of New York, which will open its 2,500-square-foot exhibition with a sold-out celebration on Thursday evening. “Puppets of New York,” which runs until early April at the uptown Manhattan museum, features photographs, videos, films and sets, as well as more than 60 puppets. They range from cardboard finger models designed by Penny Jones to José A. López Alemán’s 12-foot-tall Titanya, the fairy queen from “Sueño,” Teatro SEA’s Afro-Caribbean version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“The main argument of the show uptown is that the history of puppetry in New York City mirrors the demographics of the city,” said Monxo López, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellow who curated “Puppets of New York.” And, he noted, “many different puppeteers that reflect that diversity have not been as visible as others. It was important to tell that story of diversity, of visibility, of inclusiveness, in a way that also showed joy and possibility.”

To that end, the exhibition includes not only designs by famous masters like Jim Henson and Ralph Lee, but also work by artists like the Manteo family, who brought complex metal-armored Sicilian marionettes when they immigrated to New York a century ago, and Derek Fordjour and Nick Lehane, whose 2020 puppet production, “Fly Away,” featured a nameless young Black
man.”

–Laurel Graeber
NY Times August 121, 2021
Read entire article HERE

Westbeth Movie Night
Joan Didion

Across more than 50 years of essays, novels, screenplays, and criticism, Joan Didion has been our premier chronicler of the ebb and flow of America’s cultural and political tides with observations on her personal – and our own – upheavals, downturns, life changes, and states of mind.

In the intimate, documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, actor and director Griffin Dunne unearths a treasure trove of archival footage and talks at length to his “Aunt Joan” about the eras she covered and the eventful life she’s lived, including partying with Janis Joplin in a house full of L.A. rockers; hanging in a recording studio with Jim Morrison; and cooking dinner for one of Charles Manson’s women for a magazine story. Didion guides us through the sleek literati scene of New York in the 1950s and early ’60s, when she wrote for Vogue; her return to her home state of California for two turbulent decades; the writing of her seminal books, including Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album; her film scripts, including The Panic in Needle Park; her view of 1980s and ’90s political personalities; and the meeting of minds that was her long marriage to writer John Gregory Dunne.

Rotten Tomatoes’ 89% rating consensus states: “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold pays tribute to an American literary legend with a richly personal perspective that should thrill devotees while enlightening newcomers.”[6] On Metacritic it has a score of 72% based on reviews from 9 critics, indicating “generally favorable reviews”.

Note: Masks required for the unvaccinated. Masks recommended for the vaccinated.

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