Photo CMaile

“Ultimately, Westbeth forces us to consider why it’s so difficult to value the function of artists in society. The work of an artist isn’t always about productivity, and we don’t always see the results of this creative labor. “Imagining is something you do,” Gruen clarified, “not something that happens. It’s the job of the artist to daydream.” This might seem quaint, but Gruen knows that “being successful doesn’t necessarily mean fame or gallery representation. It is simply having the time and space to work.”

– Julia Wolkoff
! February 2019
All photos in article are by Frankie Alduino
Artsy.net

Read full article HERE

This is a lovely article about Westbeth that explores the complexity of artists’ lives and how providing affordable housing supports their immeasurable contribution to the cultural and economic life of the city.

A few minor corrections:

1. Residency Limitation: Although the co-founders of Westbeth had intended a residency limit of 5 years, it was not incorporated into leasing documents or any other written requirement. Early on, the new tenants voiced concern for the need for stability in their own creative lives, and the lives of the children. Westbeth was unusual in its time for its welcome to artists and their families.

Therefore there was no Board failure to enforce a 5 year limit, because in effect it was never formally required.

Invigorated by the optimism at the time, the co-founders had hoped Westbeth would be a springboard for commercial success for its artists residents. Rather that success is evident in the tangible and intangible benefits that Westbeth artists contribute by their work and presence to the immense vitality of the city.

2. Opening of Wait List. There is no cap on residency in the anticipated opening of the wait list.

3. Westbeth is rent stabilized. It is not rent controlled. It became rent stabilized in 2012.

4. There are other artists housing in New York City: ArtSpace in East Harlem which opened a few years ago, and Manhattan Plaza which opened in 1977 and is approx 70% performing artists.

5. New School Drama has its own building in the Westbeth complex. Their students use that building’s entrance on Bank St. They along with Martha Graham students and Westbeth residents all use the Bank St courtyard to relax, and rehearse in warm weather.

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

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

Photo Gabriela Herman for NY Times

After Kate Walter, a memoirist and essayist, was accepted onto Westbeth’s wait list in 1987, she tried to put it out of her mind. “You can’t think about it too much,” Ms. Walter said, explaining that, even back then, when Manhattan still had a relative abundance of inexpensive apartments where artists could live and work, spots at Westbeth, a well-known artists’ housing complex in the West Village, were highly coveted.

“It was secure; you knew you wouldn’t have to leave,” Ms. Walter said. But affordable rent wasn’t the only, or even the primary, draw. Moving into Westbeth — which opened in 1970, after a young Richard Meier oversaw the conversion of the former Bell Laboratories into 383 live-work spaces — also meant joining an artistic community.

“It’s a legendary place, living among all these artists. I liked the idea of that,” said Ms. Walter, 69, who was ecstatic when she finally made it to the top of the list after a decade. “I remember calling up all my friends and my parents, screaming.”

Read full article by Kim Velsey at NY Times HERE

JOAN HALL

Born in New York City to art professionals, I began training in my teen years with the Martha Graham Dance Studio. Following a course of study at the Juilliard School, a company membership with The American Mime Theater provided the opportunity for me to teach American Mime at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.
With early experience in the dramatic arts as a guide, I designed sets and costumes for the ballet Yequana for The Nederlands Dans Theater, Den Haag.
Out of a diverse background, a lifelong devotion to the genres of collage and assemblage began to take shape with parallel careers in commercial illustration and the fine arts. With an invitation from Milton Glaser to conduct classes in Collage for Illustration, my teaching career at the School of Visual Arts was launched.
International fine art venues have been concurrent with commercial application. The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico, are among the institutions where my art has been on view. At home in New York, Pavel Zoubok and the South Street Seaport Museum have hosted two of my one-person exhibitions. Publication credits include editions of my collage for Warner Books and Book of the Month Club.
I have also lectured to many organizations on Collage: Past & Present
illustrated by a Power Point presentation. The American Cultural Centers have commissioned these lectures in France, India, Brazil and Mexico. I was honored to receive a CEDADESU Mexican/American Cultural Specialists Grant from the US State Dept. to present my lecture on Collage, Assemblage and the Environment and to conduct 10 workshops to train educators to teach recycling through the art of collage.
Today as previously, world travel is a great inspiration. My itinerary includes numerous locations in Europe, China, Tibet, India, Africa, Cambodia, Brazil, and Central America. Locally, I live and work in my studio at Westbeth in Greenwich Village .

Further info at joanhallcollage.com

Heather Booth (born December 15, 1945) is an American civil rights activist, feminist, and political strategist who has been frequently cited for her effective activism in progressive causes. During her student years, she was committed to both the civil rights movement and feminist causes. Since then she has devoted her career to feminism, community organization, and progressive politics.

Lily Rivlin’s film Grace Paley: Collected Shorts (2010) was awarded Best Documentary and Audience Award at the Woodstock Film festival as well as at the Starz Denver Film Festival, Washington Jewish Film Festival and others. The film was nominated for the Gotham Film Prize. Most recently she was awarded The Miller Reel Jewish Woman Filmmaker Award 2013). Rivlin is listed in Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975 (2007) and Jewish Women, A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia (2007).

Westbeth resident, Huguette Martel, with her second illustrated article for the New York Review of Books.

Read it HERE

Hugh Seidman was born in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry has won several awards including the 2004 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press (Western Michigan University) for his sixth poetry collection, SOMEBODY STAND UP AND SING (2005).

Seidman’s other awards include two New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) grants (2003, 1990), a New York State Creative Artists Public Service (CAPS) grant (1971), and three National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) fellowships (1985, 1972, 1970).

His first book, COLLECTING EVIDENCE (Yale University Press), won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize (1970); his fourth book, PEOPLE LIVE, THEY HAVE LIVES (Miami University Press, Oxford, OH), was judged the winner of the Camden Poetry Award (Walt Whitman Center for the Arts) [1990].

Seidman’s SELECTED POEMS: 1965-1995 received a 1995 Critics’ Choice “Best Books” citation and was chosen as one of the “25 Favorite Books of 1995” by The Village Voice. His other books are: THRONE/FALCON/EYE (Random House) [1982] and BLOOD LORD (Doubleday) [1974]. A chapbook, 12 VIEWS OF FREETOWN, 1 VIEW OF BUMBUNA (Half Moon Bay Press), was published in 2003.

Seidman has taught writing at the University of Wisconsin, Yale University, Columbia University, the College of William and Mary, the New School University, and several other institution

STATUS OF THE MOURNED is available at:

Amazon:

and Spuyten Duyvil

Nancy Gabor Westbeth Artists Residents Council, Patrica Jones Westbeth, Andrew Berman GVSHP, Joan Davidson JM Kaplan , Domhnaill Henon Nokia Bell Labs Photo: Tequila Minsky

THE VILLAGER Nov 29, 2018
BY TEQUILA MINSKY | The latest plaque to grace the portal of the Westbeth Artists Housing complex in Greenwich Village completes a trifecta of acknowledgements that recognize the historical significance of 55 Bethune St.

Early Tuesday afternoon, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation unveiled a plaque honoring the building’s history as a place of sound-technology innovation and as a groundbreaking home to artists.

Dedicated to provide affordable living and working space for artists and arts organizations in New York City, Westbeth comprises the full city block, bounded by West, Bethune, Washington and Bank Sts., and takes its name from two of these streets. Nearly 400 artists and their families live in Westbeth. Artists use their homes to make art, and musicians and dancers practice in their studios.

The building complex, built from roughly 1860 to 1934, originally was the home of Bell Telephone Labs from 1898 to 1966. Many technological innovations were developed or advanced there, including radar, television and video telephones.

The original High Line freight rail line ran through the complex’s eastern side, and the rail bed is still carved through and visible in this former industrial landmark building.

In 1970, it reopened as Westbeth, an early example of large-scale adaptive reuse of an industrial building.

This latest Westbeth Artists Housing plaque sits to the right of a Historical Physics Sites plaque, indicating the building is on the Register of Historic Sites of the American Physical Society.

A red medallion installed this September by the Historical Landmarks Preservation is dedicated to dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham, whose dance studio was in Westbeth.

At this week’s plaque dedication, Nancy Gabor, vice president of the Westbeth Artist Residents Council, or WARC, listed a panoply of programs and activities that weave residents together, as well as contribute to their being part of other artistic communities and Village activities.

Senior wellness classes — yoga, singing, sound healing and improvisational acting — are free and open to the public.

GVSHP plaque. Photo: Tequila Minsky

Pen Literary Quests hosts readings in Westbeth apartments; Open House New York/Open Studio offers historical building tours and a self-guided tour of artists’ studios; Westfest Dance Fest combines site-specific dance with a curated performance in the Martha Graham Dance Studio.

The new Westbeth Icons Project honors senior artist residents who continue working beyond their 80s. Because of its aging community, Westbeth legally qualifies as a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community a.k.a. a NORC.

The take from an annual flea market run by the complex’s Beautification Committee goes toward building improvements and funded the iron-and-glass canopy over the Bethune St. entrance.

“It is a privilege to be a part of Westbeth,” said Gabor, “a community of artists which stands together in times of emergency, like Hurricane Sandy, which hit us hard. We mourn together as older residents pass on, and also celebrate in times of joy.

“Affordable rents have created homes where we can live, work, raise families and share our triumphs and struggles together.”

Residents are looking forward to Westbeth’s 50th anniversary in this coming year.

Other speakers at the dedication included Andrew Berman, executive director of G.V.S.H.P.; Patricia C. Jones, Westbeth board chairperson; Joan Davidson, president emeritus of the J.M. Kaplan Fund; and Domhnaill Hernon, head of experiments in art and technology at Nokia Bell Labs.

THE VILLAGER