Author Archives: Christina

Marilynn Grant Barr
THE FIRST SHOE COLLECTION
Is How We Walk Who We Are?

Marilynn Grant Barr’s The First Shoe Collection features life-sized ceramic shoes that merge utility, history, and creativity—begging the question “Is how we walk who we are?”

February 2- February 23, 2019.
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 2, 2019, 6-9pm.

Westbeth Gallery, 55 Bethune Street, NYC.
Gallery hours: Wednesday to Sunday 1-6 pm.

“Besides protection from the elements…” Barr writes, “Shoes continue to attract commoners and celebrities alike—you, me, ‘Carrie Bradshaw,’ Parineeti Chopra, Whoopi Goldberg, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Wendy Williams, and more to a sumptuous footwear feast to wear, collect, and display.”

“Every shoe has a story” Barr states. Inspired by a vintage, wooden shoe last liberated from a second-hand store, Barr made The First Shoe (a pink spiral design with cerulean lace and a chunky heel ceramic shoe) that harkened to “my love of carnival cotton candy.” Then dozens of sketches followed, which served as blueprints for a collection influenced by music, art, history, … and continues to grow.

Barr is a practicing artist based in Greensboro, NC. She is an alumna of the high school of Music & Art, NYC where she majored in art and the University of North Carolina where she earned her Bachelor and Masters degrees. Her works have been included in juried exhibits and she is a recipient of the North Carolina Arts Council’s Regional Artist Project Grant.

Barr works to provoke conversations of “iconic imagery that imprinted your style,” adding, “I hope to entertain and intrigue audiences; to initiate chatter about dying industries; answer questions about who we are, and discuss, though vintage is currently buried in the digital-divide, can it be, the new kid on the block? I wonder.”

The First Shoe Collection—Is how we walk who we are? I wonder by Marilynn Grant Barr.

GrowNYC and WARC present
a recycling event

Bring clean, reusable, portable items such as clothing, books, toys, electronics, household appliances.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO BRING SOMETHING TO TAKE SOMETHING.

Please DO NOT bring expired food, opened personal care items, ripped dirty clothing, fabric scraps, non working electronics, large furniture, or incomplete toys and books.

Westbeth Community Room
12:00PM – 3:00PM
155 Bank St b/w West and Washington Sts
enter through courtyard

GrowNY helps New Yorkers by providing essential services and taking action to make NYC a truly livable city, one where every person can flourish.

Karin Batten receives 2019 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant

photo CMaile

The many different materials I use create complex and poetic works layered with meaning of open seas and land. I play organic shapes against geometric patterns. Some forms are scraped and layered while others are fully present. I work spontaneously and intuitively.

– Karin Batten
More Info on Karin Batten HERE

Pollock-Krasner grants have enabled artists to create new work, purchase needed materials and pay for studio rent, as well as their personal and medical expenses. Past recipients of Pollock-Krasner grants acknowledge their critical impact in allowing concentrated time for studio work, and in preparing for exhibitions and other professional opportunities such as accepting a residency.

More Info HERE

Vija Vetra, dancer and choreographer featured in West View News January 2019

Photo from Vija Vetra archives

For Vija Vetra, at 95 years old, spirituality remains an important part of her life.
This comes as a surprise, considering that her profession is an intensely physical one, and that after living for nine and a half decades she exhibits remarkable physical strength and flexibility, as well as a mind that is almost impossibly sharp and quick-witted. Inevitably, she is bombarded by the question, “What’s the secret?”, and after ruminating on it innumerable times, she’s boiled it down to a twofold answer. First: Always be as a child. Never lose that sense of curiosity and wonder and appreciation for the small, daily glories. Second: Dance, dance and dance. With music, or without, it doesn’t matter. Just dance.
– By Stanley Wlodyka
Read the entire West View article Here

Westbeth Icon Evening: Vija Vetra Here

Gloria Miguel
actor and Westbeth’s newest Icon

Gloria Miguel actor, and co-founder of the celebrated Spiderwoman Theater which introduced the Native American experience to audiences in America and all over the world.

Gloria Miguel started out in show business at an early age in circus sideshows with her family. Decades later, in the mid-’70s, Gloria and her sister Elizabeth (Lisa Mayo) joined up with their sister Muriel in forming Spiderwoman Theater. Spiderwoman has been delighting and educating audiences with plays about women’s issues and indigenous matters ever since, both in North America and overseas. Their productions include Women in Violence, Lysistrata Numbah!, Sun, Moon and Feather, Reverb-ber-ber-rations, Power Pipes, and Winnetou’s Snake Oil Show from Wigwam City. In addition to her work in theatre and film, Gloria Miguel has taught drama, led workshops, and served as a drama consultant. She and her sisters each received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from Miami University in 1997. Gloria continues to perform.

More info on Gloria at: Profile in Art

The Westbeth Artists Residents Council created the Icons Project to honor the Westbeth artists who continue to work in the arts and are an inspiration to others.