Join us to celebrate the life and work of Robert Ludwig, painter and drawing artist. Continue reading →

When: Thursday Sept 20, 2018 at 12pm
Where: 55 Bethune Street Entrance of Westbeth Artists Housing

On September 20, at 12 pm, Westbeth and the Merce Cunningham Trust will host a celebration of the life and work of Merce Cunningham.

The event, which will take place at the 55 Bethune St. entrance, will include the installation of a commemorative cultural medallion by the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center led by Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, with featured speakers including:

· Alastair Macaulay, Chief Dance Critic, The New York Times

· Mikhail Baryshnikov, Artistic Director, Baryshnikov Arts Center

· Joan Davidson, President Emeritus, J.M. Kaplan Fund

Reception: The event will be followed by a reception in the Westbeth Gallery.

Open Master Class: An open masterclass in the Cunningham style will be held from 3:30 to 5:30 pm in the Martha Graham Studio. All Westbeth residents are welcome to attend the day’s events.

The occasion is part of a year-long celebration of Merce Cunningham’s life, with a special performance on April 16, 2019, which would have been his 100th birthday. In memoriam, the Merce Cunningham Trust will join together with the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Barbican London, and the Opéra Comique in Paris, to present the largest Cunningham event ever staged. For more information please visit www.mercecunningham.org/centennial.

Dates:
Sept 8 – Sept 29,2018
Opening Reception:
Sept 8, 5:30PM – 8PM
with Young Jazz Ensemble

Coinciding with the 50th Anniversary of Westbeth Artist Housing, a very special exhibit of the work of seven artists who have been actively creating beyond the age of 75 will open on Saturday, September 8th in the Westbeth Gallery. Entitled A Diamond Jubilee, this exhibition will feature a wide variety of art forms: abstract, figurative and impressionistic paintings, as well as masks, puppetry, embroidery, and photographs.

By the year 2050, experts predict that the segment of the population over the age of 60 will more than double, jumping from 900 million to 2.1 billion. Further complicating the situation, the United States Social Security Administration is running a deficit year in, year out. The only way they’ve been able to stay afloat is by eating into a reserve accumulated from surpluses of past years. However, that well is expected to dry up by 2034, and unless the age of retirement is increased, the SSA will only be able to pay out 79% of the need from the amount accumulated through taxes.

Jenny Tango may provide the solution. At 92 years old, she is renowned for her vitality, quick wit and lust for life, which she attributes, in part, to marrying a man 28 years her junior. Active since the 1970’s in the Feminist Movement, Tango is a figurative painter who often uses her own naked body in her portraits. By her own admission, she lives in a different world than most people and wouldn’t have it any other way: “If you conform to the middle class idea of [society], boy can you be boring. I mean look at Trump! He is the perfect example of someone who has more than everything, and as far as I’m concerned, he has nothing.”

Ralph Lee, a mask maker whose creations have appeared in everything from the Metropolitan Opera to Broadway to Saturday Night Live, is perhaps best known for founding the Village Halloween Parade, which today draws 60 thousand costumed participants and 2 million onlookers each year. He, too, believes that conformity is over-rated, especially since one of the great things about being human is the freedom of choose which mask to wear. Just as the widely popular television show RuPaul’s Drag Race promotes the idea that “We are all born naked and the rest is drag”, Ralph Lee explains, “In a lot of cultures, you become the deity when you’re wearing the mask. It allows you to behave in a lot of different ways, to use your body in a different way.”

Judy Lawne came up with the idea for A Diamond Jubilee shortly after she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. As a photographer, she considered the camera an extension of her body, and now must use a tripod to continue her work. She persists because she’s devoted to capturing, “a moment in time. There may be 60 to 100 pictures taken of any one [subject], but there’s only one that is really a moment in time. That’s what photography is: a moment in time that no other medium can capture. “

You are invited to attend the opening reception of A Diamond Jubilee on Saturday, September 8th from 5:30pm to 8pm. The show will run until September 29th in the Westbeth Gallery (55 Bethune Street, New York, NY 10014).

Featuring the work of:
Penny Jones, puppets and marionettes
Edith Isaac Rose, figurative paintings and embroidery
Robert Ludwig, abstract paintings
Jenny Tango, figurative painting
Judy Lawne, photography
Ralph Lee, masks and puppets
Bea Kreloff,figurative paintings and drawings.

More info:
Stanley Wlodyka
(646) 474-4275
wlodyka.stanley@gmail.com

This is the one year anniversary of these healthful and informative talks!
This Sunday find out the answers to: Do I have to rinse my mouth after oral inhaler?; Can I get an asthma inhaler over the counter?; and more!

Featuring Ilana Aminov BSPharm and
Rebecca Aminov, Pharmacy Intern.

Refreshments and bag a goodies.

Entertainment by Eve Zanni and Isaac Raz.

FREE EVENT

Continue reading →

Exhibition: July 11–26, 2018
Opening Reception: July 10, 2018, 6–8 pm
Gallery Hours: Wednesday–Sunday, 1–6 pm

From its origins in Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s Greenwich Village studio in 1914 to its relocation to the Meatpacking District in 2015, the Whitney Museum of American Art has always sought to support living artists at critical moments in their careers. Many of the Museum’s staff members, who make the Museum’s exhibitions, programs, publications, and day-to-day operations possible, are artists themselves. For the third time in its history, the Whitney’s Staff Art Show will be held in a public space, offering staff an opportunity to share their work and deepen connections with one another as well as a wider audience. This year’s exhibition will include the work of over ninety artists, presenting a wide range of mediums and content and reflecting the diversity of thought and artistic practice among the Whitney’s staff.

When: Wednesday Sept 26, 2018 at 7PM
Where: Westbeth Community Room

An evening of selected short stories and memoirs.

Alison Armstrong’s books include The Joyce of Cooking (1986); Gazelle: Nine Monologues (2017); and Pentimenti: Selected Memoirs (2018). Her essays and reviews have appeared in literary journals, and her fiction and poetry in BOMB, Exquisite Corpse, Mid-American Review, and Notre Dame Review. Armstrong teaches at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and exhibits annually with Japanese Artists Association.

More info about Alison, Here

Jack Dowling had a successful career as a visual artist but more recently has devoted himself to writing, publishing stories in the Hamilton Stone Review, among other publications. As Westbeth’s visual arts chair for some fourteen years, he lent his considerable curatorial skills to the shows at Westbeth’s gallery—and he continues help artists exhibit their work to great effect.

More info about Jack, Here

Exhibition Dates:
August 4 – 24, 2018

Opening reception:
August 4 Saturday
3pm – 6pm
Closing reception:
24 August Friday
3pm – 6pm

Artist talk:
18 August Saturday
3pm – 5pm

Gallery Hours: Wednesday through Sunday 1-6pm.

Through her work, Brigitta Varadi explores pattern and repetition of gesture that relate to the invisible and everyday rituals of working life and the constructed environment. Her projects combine painting, textile, video and public interventions.

Brigitta’s latest project MARKINGS gathers together and explores the different marks used by farmers to identify their sheep in the North West region. With the use of traditional techniques and a system of marks used by shepherds, her works examine the mechanics of remembering and reminding. Creating a dialogue with farmers and place the project also opens on to a broader reflection concerning the signs and forms of identification humans use to identify animals, plants and territories.

Váradi’s works bear affinities with socially committed art, but they were not created in the name of political activism. Instead, she examines the disappearing traditions and daily activities of small, secluded communities around the world: her grandmother mopping up her kitchen floor several times a day, the “liberty” tea made by inhabitants of New York State and the marking system of the dwindling community of shepherds in Ireland. Research always plays a key factor in her creative process, for instance taking pictures and recording videos, and her finished works often necessitate experimentation with an entirely new technique.

‘The act of inscription—more than the content of the inscribed markings—is paramount. In visual and material fidelity, each artwork represents a person, one whose occupation and knowledge, their ownership and memory, leave a bold mark on the canvas. These graphic representations—and they are both mimetic representations and abstractions—could be equally at home on a damp Irish hillside or in the modern art gallery. In the shared gestures of the farmer and the artist, two lineages come together…..Indeed, embedded into these artworks—literally felted and matted, smeared onto their surfaces—is a history of labor and tradition: men’s and women’s, commercial and domestic, craft and fine art. Like Pollock straddling his drip paintings, Varadi crouches atop the wool as she felts it, counting, rolling a single piece—the fleeces of five sheep—up to 25,000 times. She works each textile as if making pastry, turning it to ensure even shrinkage as its wet fibers hook together. The physical properties of wool fight back, taxing Varadi’s body as she transforms it from raw material into singular artwork.’
excerpts from essay by Andrea Alessi (Link to full essay: Marking memory

BIO:
Brigitta Varadi was born in Hungary and currently she divides her time between Co.Leitrim, Ireland, New York, USA and her native Hungary. Brigitta’s work is found in many public and private collections including a government commission by the Office of Public Works for The Department of Education and Science, Athlone, Ireland and is recently completed a collaborative public art commission for Sligo County Council, Ireland (2017).
Brigitta Varadi latest solo shows were held at the Budapest Gallery, Hungary (2017), Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Ireland (2015), Serbian Church Gallery Hungary (2015), Textile Arts Centre New York. (2014). She has participated in the New York Foundation for the Arts IAP Mentoring Program (2016) and been awarded fellowships by the Wassaic Project, NY (2016) Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Ireland (2015), Textile Arts Centre, Brooklyn (2014), LOCIS, European Cultural Program (2014) and TRADE, Ireland (2011). She has been artist in residence at the Marble House Project, Vermont, NARS Foundation, NY, Chashama, NY, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Ireland and KulttuuriKauppila, Finland.
She is a recipient of numerous awards from the Arts Council of Ireland, Leitrim County Council and Culture Ireland. She was the grand winner of the Art Slant 2016 Prize. Her work has been reviewed in the Irish Times and included in several books. Brigitta was acknowledged for her contribution to the arts of Ireland by the President, Mary Mc Alesse, 2008.

In addition to developing her own practice, Brigitta works on commissions and exhibitions, developing projects with people of all ages and abilities within the community sector, schools, prisons and arts centers. She has co-designed and facilitated the Creative Lab for the United Nation, Framework Convention on Climate Change, Bonn, Germany (2013). She is currently the Residency Director at chaNorth, chashama a nonprofit organization that supports artists by giving them space to create and present their work, while fostering community development through the arts

‘Indeed, embedded into these artworks—literally felted and matted, smeared onto their surfaces—is a history of labor and tradition: men’s and women’s, commercial and domestic, craft and fine art. Like Pollock straddling his drip paintings, Varadi crouches atop the wool as she felts it, counting, rolling a single piece—the fleeces of five sheep—up to 25,000 times. She works each textile as if making pastry, turning it to ensure even shrinkage as its wet fibers hook together. The physical properties of wool fight back, taxing Varadi’s body as she transforms it from raw material into singular artwork.’
excerpts from essay by Andrea Alessi

Link: Brigitta Varadi website

Some images from the show!

Benedict Gallagher, sheep farmer with sheep

Sheep Markings
County Donegal, Ireland

Benedict Gallagher and son, sheep farming County Sligo, Ireland

Noel Ruane sheep marking 80″x80″
Ox Mt sheep wool, silk, merino wool.

Denny Dolan, sheep farmer, County Lettrim