Author Archives: Christina

PENNY JONES
Westbeth Icon

Date: Thursday April 4, 2019 at 7 PM
At: Westbeth Community Room
155 Bank St (enter through courtyard)

PENNY JONES has been a mainstay of children’s theater in New York since the 1970’s. Her company, Penny Jones and Puppets, specializes in informal puppet shows for children aged three to eight, and puppet ballets with live music for audiences of adults, children or both. The company performs in collaboration with chamber ensembles and orchestras. The repertory includes adaptations of classical works as well as original stories and scores. In schools, the company has performed hundreds of times, and Penny has a wide variety of programs from puppet pageants with a cast and crew of 30 to 90 school children, to workshops for small classes, and Penny’s “One on One” – interweaving puppetry, storytelling, movement and arts.

The company has appeared on television, in the Henson International Puppet Festival at the Public Theatre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, at BAM with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, at City Center, Avery Fisher Hall, and in museums including The Museum of the City of New York, The Children’s Museum of New York, the American Museum of Natural History, at Emelin, Wave Hill, the Washington Square Music Festival, at venues from Macy’s to Barnes & Noble, and with orchestras at Bargemusic, Casa de España, Greenwich House Music School, the New Jersey Symphony, and many, many, more…

Westbeth Icons is a project that celebrates the life and work of senior Westbeth artists who continue to work passionately in their artistic field. It is produced by the Westbeth Artists Residents Council.

The Icon evening features a filmed interview produced and directed by Ted Timreck with Terry Stoller, interviewer, as well as tributes by colleagues of the artist and words by the honoree. A special Icon gift is presented to the artist at the close of the evening.

The evening is free, open to the public, and refreshments are served.

For more info on previous Westbeth Icons, go HERE.

MATEWAN
Thursday Movie Night

Date: Thursday April 11, 2019 at 7PM
At: Westbeth Community Room 155 Bank St (enter through courtyard)

Matewan is a 1987 American drama film written and directed by John Sayles, and starring Chris Cooper (in his film debut), James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell and Will Oldham, with David Strathairn, Kevin Tighe and Gordon Clapp in supporting roles.

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, “Matewan” celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper), a scab named “Few Clothes” Johnson (James Earl Jones) and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan’s vested interests so that justice and workers’ rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

Westbeth Friday Movie Night is sponsored by Westbeth Artists Residents Council. FREE

3rd Annual Miriam Chaikin
Writing Award
Jack Dowling and Elizabeth Lash

Date: April 17, 2019 at 7PM
At: Westbeth Community Room

Join us for the 3rd Annual Miriam Chaikin Writing Award Evening, with winners Jack Dowling, prose, and Elizbeth Lash, poetry, reading from their work.

Jack Dowling was a “country” boy from New Jersey when he moved to New York City to attend Cooper Union, where he studied with Robert Gwathmey and Morris Kantor.Jack’s early work as a painter was in abstraction, but his artwork later took a new direction, with compositions inspired by photos of family and friends.
He achieved recognition by the mid-sixties, selling and exhibiting his work in both group and solo shows. A highlight was “The Dominant Woman” show at the Finch College Museum of Art (Dec. ’68/Jan. ’69), which included artists Claes Oldenburg, Willem de Kooning, and Jim Dine, among others.
In the nineties, Jack turned to writing for creative expression. His stories have been published in the Hamilton Stone Review, the Barcelona Review, A&U magazine, American Writing, and CreamDrops
– from Profiles in Art by Terry Stoller. Read more here.

Elizabeth Lash is a NYC-based attorney who has written on a variety of subjects—from art law and ex-KGB agents to women engineers and corruption in Azerbaijan. Her poetry has appeared twice before at The Five-Two, and her non-fiction articles have been published by the Center for Art Law, the Holy Cross Journal of Law and Public Policy, Transparency International, the Engineering News-Record, and GetCrafty.com, among others.

Miriam Chaikin Foundation Writing Award was established in memory of Miriam Chaikin, a longtime Westbeth resident and prolific writer. Born in Palestine, Chaikin grew up in Brooklyn, and her childhood memories and life in a close-knit Jewish community are all themes represented in her writing. She worked earlier in her career as an editor of literature for young people, and most of her books are intended for children and youth. Her works include lushly illustrated retellings of Old Testament lessons, humorous stories of the misadventures of “Molly and Yossi” (based on her childhood and that of her beloved younger brother Joseph), and collections of poetry. The last two books she completed were for adults – Jewish Wisdom for Daily Life, and Jerusalem: An Informal Autobiography of the City. For Miriam/Molly/Chickie as she was known, the written word and the book were essential to her life and wellbeing.

PARSONS FINE ARTS
2019 MFA THESIS EXHIBITION
Beneath Them Was Forever

April 26-May 4, 2019

Opening Reception:
Thursday, April 25, 6PM – 9PM

Westbeth Gallery
55 Bethune St
New York, NY 10014

Gallery hours: 12-6pm daily

Parsons School of Design at The New School is pleased to announce the Parsons Fine Arts 2019 MFA Thesis Exhibition Beneath Them was Forever curated by Kathleen Forde, and showcasing work by:

Arpi Adamyan, Natalia Almonte, Tunie Lauren Betesh, Alonso Cartú, Liyen Chen, Michael Grasso, Nicole Economides, Liliana Farber, Utsa Hazarika, Sarra Margaret Hochberg, Julia Jueun Jo, Elyse Faith Dahlum Johnson, Nadine Käser Cenoz, Geraldine Kang, Laramie Marshall, Mylo Mu, Alymamah Rashed, Alex Dolores Salerno, Laina Michelle Weiss, and Leonard Yang.

As a thesis exhibition, Beneath Them Was Forever presents artists at a moment of transformation at a radical scale. The artists on view are launching from their recent pasts as students and are now looking directly outward into their future working lives. It is a moment of trust— trust in progress, in the continuing evolution and power of their art and vision. In ways, both deliberate and unconscious, their work distills many common threads: the risk of exploration and experimentation; the hybridity of practice that dissolves standard boundaries of genre and the inquiry into the desire to empathize, with each other and in broader, more global terms. For the artists in this exhibition, having survived transformative cycles of their practice, this moment, as contrived as it may seem, is an opportunity to argue for the power of art-making to manifest the past and to construct the future.

Kathleen Forde is Artistic Director at Large for Borusan Contemporary, a collection-based space for media arts exhibitions, commissions, and public programming in Istanbul. Primarily based in New York, she also works as an independent curator with various institutions both nationally and abroad. From 2005-12 Forde was the Curator of Time-Based Visual Arts at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY. Prior to EMPAC, she served as Curatorial Director for Live Arts and New Media at Goethe Institute in Berlin and Munich, and Assistant Curator for Media Arts at SFMOMA.

Parsons Fine Arts MFA is a dynamic two-year, cross-disciplinary program committed to expanding the formal, intellectual and conceptual dimensions of emerging artists’ work. Studio-based research and scholarship extends the boundaries of contemporary cultural expression, developed through a global understanding of the arts.

Parsons Fine Arts is committed to diversity among students and faculty that provides a potent learning community. Housed within both Parsons School of Design and The New School University, the Fine Arts program is uniquely positioned within a progressive educational environment. Our international student body has access to a wide spectrum of activities, ranging from rigorous formal and aesthetic investigations to cross-disciplinary collaborations with design, performing arts and humanities students, to public forums that address pressing social and political concerns.

Our Visiting Artist Lecture Series and our Critic and Curator Series features renowned, multidisciplinary artists, curators and critics. In 2018-19 visitors have included: EV Day, Carlos Motta, Penelope Umbrico, Cullen Washington Jr., Mika Tajima, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Meleko Mokgosi, Salman Toor, Hakan Topal, Elana Herzog, Patricia Cronin, Natalie Bookchin, Carolyn Lazard, and Taryn Simon.

About Parsons School of Design. Founded in 1896, Parsons has served as a pioneer in the field of Art and Design for more than a century. Based in New York and internationally active, the school offers undergraduate and graduate programs in the full spectrum of design disciplines. Critical thinking, research and collaboration are at the heart of a Parsons education. An integral part of The New School, Parsons builds on the university’s legacy of progressive ideals, scholarship and pedagogy. Parsons graduates are leaders in their respective fields, with a shared commitment to creatively and critically addressing the complexities of life in the 21st century. In 2018, QS World University Rankings, a London-based higher education organization, once again named Parsons the number one college for art and design in the United States, and number two internationally.

For more information please visit:
Program URL: finearts.parsons.edu
MFA Thesis Catalog: finearts.parsons.edu/2019mfathesis
finearts.parsons.edu
or contact the MFA Program Director, Simone Douglas at douglass@newschool.edu

PEN America
World Voices Festival
Literary Quest: Westbeth Edition

Thursday: May 9, 2019
6:30PM – 10:00PM

Meet at Westbeth Gallery

Residents of New York City’s historic Westbeth Center for the Arts open their homes to Festival-goers for this perennial favorite festival event. Join your fellow writers and readers in the West Village, grab a map, and wander through the hallways of the city’s oldest and largest artists’ community for intimate, salon-style readings and discussions by Festival authors, including Felicity Castagna, Inês Pedrosa, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Pajtim Statovci, Najat El Hachmi, Wu Ming-yi, and others. This uniquely immersive literary experience concludes with a special reception in the Westbeth Gallery.

Tickets

Get Tickets: $20

Presented with the Westbeth Artists Residents Council

PARENT PORTRAITS
Group Show

Show Dates:
May 11 – June 8, 2019

Opening reception
Saturday, May 11, 2019, 4-8 PM
Closing reception
Saturday, June 8, 2019, 5-7 PM

FOR SPECIAL EVENTS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS EXHIBITION, SEE BELOW

At Westbeth Gallery, 57 Bethune Street, NY, NY 10014
Gallery hours: Wednesday – Sunday 1-6 PM, or by appointment.

Robert Bunkin, Anniversary Portrait, 1977, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches

Westbeth Galleryis pleased to present Parent Portraits, an exhibition focusing on artists’ representations of their parents, curated by artists Robert Bunkin and Jenny Tango. The exhibition will offer works by these contemporary international artists working in diverse media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, intaglio printmaking, and embroidery:

Participating Artists:

Sigmund Abeles, Ken Aptekar, Anneli Arms, Joan Banach, Isabel Barber,
Brian Brooks, Robert Bunkin,Susanna Coffey, William Crist, Patricia Dahlman,
Harvey Dinnerstein, Elise Dodeles, Jenny Dubnau, Richard Estrin, Donna Festa,
Leonid Gervits, Dan Gheno, Susan Grabel, Amaya Gurpide,
Patrick Earl Hammie, Mark Hanson, Melanie Hickerson, Jayne Holsinger,
Sedrick Huckaby, Sara Issakharian, Karen Kaapcke, Catherine Kehoe, Brian Kreydatus,
Mel Leipzig, Beverly McIver, Marybeth McKenzie, Ron Milewicz, John Mitchell,
Arnold Mesches, Bill Murphy, Danielle Muzina, Jennifer Pochinski,
Carolyn Pyfrom, James Rauchman, Joseph Santore, Elinore Schnurr,
Ryan Schroeder, Frances Siegel, Orly Shiv, Jenny Tango, Polly Thayer,
Audrey Ushenko, Clarissa Payne Uvegi, Costa Vavagiakis, Jerome Witkin.

Beverly McIver, Cardrew III, 2015, Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 in. (91.44 x 91.44 cm), courtesy of Betty Cuningham Gallery.

Among the most significant and intimate relationships we all share, parents are defined here as biological or adoptive, but not “spiritual” or metaphorical.

Sigmund Abeles, Artist’s Mother, Henrietta Banner Abeles, 1971, plaster, 10 ½ x 10 ½ x 10 inches

This subject has rarely been the theme of an art exhibition. Many artists have depicted their mothers and fathers as a kind of search for their own identity or as a tribute to their nurturers and first patrons. We often have conflicted relationships with our parents and this complexity can motivate the work. Interpretations of this subject run the gamut from highly charged narratives to straightforward realism, with humor and affection along the way. All of the works are extremely personal expressions of the artist’s relationship.

Jenny Tango, Mom and Dad Napping, 1947, pencil on paper, 9 x 12 inches

The exhibition offers works by a cross-section of younger and older artists of diverse backgrounds, including works by Arnold Mesches (d. 2016) and Polly Thayer (d. 2006). The exhibition contextualizes these contemporary works with a visual timeline of historic artists’ portraits of their parents, including such masters as Dürer, Rembrandt,
Whistler, Cassatt, Picasso, Motley, Neel, Freud and Hockney. Additional historic images submitted by participating artists will be posted over the course of the exhibition.

Special Events

May 12, 2019, Sunday at 3PM – 4:30PM
MOTHER ‘S DAY TOUR:

This interactive tour will offer highlights and insights into some of the over 70 works in the exhibition, which features 50 contemporary artists and a timeline of past artists’ portraits of their parents, collected by the curators and the artists in the exhibition.
This program is free and doesn’t require reservations.

Further information: rbunkin@mail.com or tel./text 347 979-4009

May 18, 2019 Saturday at 3PM
CHILDREN OF WESTBETH PARENTS

: Three generations of children will discuss Westbeth’s impact on parents and on themselves, followed by an open forum.
Geoffrey Jones, multimedia director, video artist and composer/musician – son of Penny Jones, puppeteer
Nelly Rieffler, award winning author, daughter of choreographer/dancer Ellen Marshall
Melika Dave, cross-media artist, daughter of painter Vinod Dave
This program is free and doesn’t require reservations

May 25, 2019 Saturday at 3PM
MAGDALENA: A family story of love and dementia

Conceived, written, and performed by Gabri Christa
Directed by Erwin Maas
Design and dramaturgy by Guy de Lancey
MAGDALENA is an intimate multimedia solo work by the award-winning filmmaker and a Guggenheim Fellow Gabri Christa. Utilizing storytelling, visuals, and dance, the artist reveals a deeply personal account of experiencing her Dutch mother’s dementia, and an effort to piece together her past, marked by struggles with war, interracial marriage and unconventional motherhood. The piece premiered last fall in Theaterlab NYC where it received rave reviews. 2 PERFORMANCES ONLY:

$10. Tickets (Seniors tickets free with reservation) can be purchased at Brown Paper Tickets
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4215424

June 1, 2019 Saturday at 3PM
PARENT POEMS will be offered in conjunction with the exhibition PARENT PORTRAITS at Westbeth Gallery, 57 Bethune Street, NYC, on Saturday, June 1, at 3 pm.
Admission to the Parent Portraits exhibition and Parent Poems is free.


This thematic reading will feature seven poets: Edward Field, Hugh Seidman, Edith Chevat, Elizabeth Lash, Perry Brass and James K. Zimmerman. Parent poems from Anything You Don’t See by Enid Dame will be read by Robert Bunkin.

The six books of poetry by Westbeth Icon, Edward Field, have won him acclaim and honors. He has edited anthologies, translated Eskimo songs and stories, and written the narration for the Academy Award-winning documentary, To Be Alive. He is the editor of the Alfred Chester Newsletter and has prepared several volumes of Chester’s work for Black Sparrow Press. Field has also collaborated on several popular novels with Neil Derrick under the joint pseudonym of Bruce Elliot.


Hugh Seidman has taught writing at the University of Wisconsin, Yale, Columbia, the College of William and Mary, and The New School. His work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. His many awards include The Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press (Western Michigan University) for SOMEBODY STAND UP AND SING. His poems have been published by Miami University Press, Random House, Doubleday, Yale University Press, and Half Moon Bay Press.

Edith Chevat is the editor of Girls: An Anthology. Her novel, The Book of Esther, takes a haunting American past—the McCarthy era—and shows how individual lives are changed by history. Her novel, Love Lesson received a starred review in Booklist. Her chapbook Lost, is a poem of personal loss and the loss of 9/11. Her stories, interviews, and poems have appeared in various periodicals and journals. She lives in New York City within sight of Ground Zero.
Elizabeth Lash, winner of the 2019 Miriam Chaikin Foundation Writing Award (Poetry), is a NYC-based attorney who has written on a variety of subjects—from art law and ex-KGB agents to women engineers and corruption in Azerbaijan. Her poetry has appeared in The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, and her non-fiction articles have been published by the Center for Art Law, the Holy Cross Journal of Law and Public Policy, Transparency International, the Engineering News-Record, and GetCrafty.com, among others. She also runs the podcast “Entering the Bar, with Liz Lash,” about the humanistic (and often hidden) sides of lawyers.

Perry Brass has published many books of poetry and science fiction, including The Lover of My Soul, Sex Charge, Mirage and its sequel Circles, Out There, Albert or The Book of Man, Works and Other ‘Smoky George’ Stories and The Harvest in addition to numerous anthologies of Gay poetry and fiction.

James K. Zimmerman is a widely-published, award-winning poet. His second book of poetry, Family Cookout, is the winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Competition from The Comstock Review.

Enid Dame (1943 – 2003) was a poet, fiction writer, teacher, editor, and publisher. She and her husband, poet Don Lev, edited and published the literary tabloid, Home Planet News. She was on the faculty of the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University where she served as Associate Director of the Writing Program. The 2007 anthology, Broken Land, edited by Julia Kasdorf and Michael Tyrell, was dedicated to her memory.

The session will close with volunteers from the audience reading “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath, “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, and “Regina Exler, 1890-1976” by Samuel Exler.


Press contact & further information:
Robert Bunkin, tel./text: 347 979-4009, email: rbunkin@mail.com

Closing Reception Saturday June 8, 2019. 5PM – 7PM

For more information call or text Robert Bunkin at 347-979-4009 or email rbunkin@mail.com

STORIES AROUND THE TABLE #4

WHEN: Wednesday May 15, 2019 at 7PM
WHERE: Westbeth Community Room. FREE
WHY: Returning by popular demand, STORIES AROUND THE TABLE #4, is a performance and reading by writers detailing the lives of women.

WHO:

KAREN LUDWIG – actor, director, and teacher
NANCY GABOR – director and leader of the popular workshop Never Too Old to Play
JOAN HALL – collagist and poet
SHAMI CHAIKIN – OBIE award winning actor
DAWN D’ARCY – musician, writer, and grandmother to Etta
DALE SOALES – actor featured in Orange is the New Black for the past 6 years
JOYCE AARON – OBIE award winning actor
CHRISTINA MAILE – landscape architect

WESTBETH ICON Evening
David Del Tredici composer

Thursday May 16, 2019 at 7PM
Westbeth Community Room

David Del Tredici, American composer and long time resident of Westbeth

The Pulitzer Prize winner in Music and a former Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson fellow, Del Tredici is considered a pioneer of the Neo-Romantic movement. He has also been described by the Los Angeles Times as “one of our most flamboyant outsider composers”

Del Tredici draws on literature for his song cycles including Lewis Carroll (particularly Alice in Wonderland), but he has also been inspired by contemporary American poets, especially Westbeth Icon, Edward Field.

Del Tredici has also created works celebrating “gayness”, acknowledging that many great composers were gay and that “it’s something to be celebrated”. A reviewer has noted that themes in his work examine “tormented relationships, personal transformations, and the joys and sorrows of gay life”. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has held additional residencies at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the MacDowell Colony.

Westbeth Icon Series celebrates the life and work of senior artists who continue to work and who inspire others by their passion and dedication.

The evening consists of a filmed interview, live performances of Del Tredici’s work, and remarkes by the composer himself.

This is a special, not to be missed evening!

Westbeth Movie Night
EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

When: Friday May 10 at 7PM
Where: Westbeth Community Room
FREE SCREENING

A 2010 British documentary film, directed by street artist Banksy. It tells the story of Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant in Los Angeles, and his obsession with street art. The film charts Guetta’s constant documenting of his every waking moment on film, from a chance encounter with his cousin, the artist Invader, to his introduction to a host of street artists with a focus on Shepard Fairey and Banksy, whose anonymity is preserved by obscuring his face and altering his voice, to Guetta’s eventual fame as a street artist himself. It is narrated by Rhys Ifans. The music is by Geoff Barrow. It includes Richard Hawley’s “Tonight The Streets Are Ours”.

The film premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival on 24 January 2010, and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Since its release, there has been extensive debate over whether the documentary is genuine or a mockumentary, although Banksy answered “Yes” when asked if the film is real.

Sponsored by Westbeth Artists Residents Council