Kate Walter Reading Her Work on March 4, 2020 photo: @Maile Studios

I live in Westbeth Artists Housing, in Greenwich Village, and had a successful reading of my novel in progress in the community room on March 4. About 50 people attended.

Everyone liked the chapter I read and told me I had to finish the book. We chatted and drank champagne. Hard to believe that wonderful evening was only two weeks ago. All events in my building are now postponed, including the flea market and a big exhibit in the gallery.

Along with my neighbors at Westbeth, we survived 9/11, watching the horror from our rooftop. We survived Hurricane Sandy, which flooded our basement. But those disasters brought us together. The virus is isolating us. We got a memo from management not to hang out in the lobby.

All of this is depressing. I feel like I need an extra therapy session. But the virus has helped me to put things in perspective…

Read the complete article published online at AARP Magazine HERE

Karin Batten // "New Paintings" // June Kelly Gallery from Izzy Nova on Vimeo.

“My new series of work is inspired by the evocative and distinct places I find while traveling. In 2018, I went to Puerto Rico and Costa Rica to find inspiration for my new works and I help with the relief effort. While there, I visited Playa Negra, a black sand beach, formed from an earlier volcano. Inspired by the magma, I brought some back and integrated its rich mysterious color and texture into this body of work. Seeing the uniquely colored feather patterns of Costa Rican birds first hand while surrounded by fauna and butterflies left me with a feeling for intense color that I work to capture in my paintings. These authentic discoveries and moments help enrich each work with its own story and its own unique world.”

Video by Izzy Nova and Wyatt Rexach

See more work by Karin Batten HERE

June Kelly Gallery 166 Mercer Street NYC
For info regarding Gallery visits, click Here

Music by Ravel and Bach. “These flute classics speak of perseverance, stamina, and rigorous beauty. I would love to share them with you.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of7_ZkS0ROc

Originally live streamed on March 19 on YouTube.

Louna Dekker-Vargas is a flutist, chamber musician, improviser and composer. Her open, curious ears have led her into adventures with classical, jazz and experimental music. She has traveled around the U.S. and Canada as a chamber musician, soloist and teaching artist.

Louna has served as a substitute flutist for the International Contemporary Ensemble, and is a regular substitute for the Broadway musical, Wicked. She also plays with NY jazz quintet Atlantic Extraction, led by bassist Nick Dunston. Her minimalist composition Ah was commissioned for chamber orchestra by Mind on Fire in September of 2018.

Her duo, The Witches, with Ledah Finck combines classical chamber artistry with inquisitive free improvisations and their own compositions for flute, violin and voice. The duo has performed in the Evolution Contemporary Music Series, Spectrum, the High Zero stage at Baltimore’s Artscape Festival, the Red Room, Rhizome, Andrea Clearfield’s Salon Series, The Union Square Chamber Music Series (Baltimore), and at the Baltimore Art Museum. Their album project Behind the Curtain: New Music on Women was the recipient of a Johns Hopkins Research Grant.

She is also a founding member of Trio Jinx- a flute, double bass and viola trio active from 2015-2018 performing residencies at the Sikta Chamber Music Festival, El Paso Pro Musica, the Mesa Performing Arts Center, and the Iowa Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival.

via the Comité Français pour Yad Vashem. The elderly Aristide Gasnier, mayor of Vibraye, with two US soldiers and some of the Jewish refugees he helped save during the Nazi occupation; Huguette stands directly in front of Gasnier; her older brother Maurice is the boy at the far right. Sarthe, France, 1944

Matt Seaton
New York Review of Books
March 12, 2020

Our friend Huguette Martel is an artist and French teacher. When she was younger, she drew cartoons for The New Yorker, and also gave language lessons to staff there. Not long ago, she moved into the same building in Manhattan where my wife and I live, and, seeing her more frequently than before, I learned more of her history—not something that she, a compulsively modest person, naturally presses upon one.

So it was that I heard the miraculous saga of how she, a child of French-Jewish refugees, had survived the Holocaust; and the Daily subsequently published her pictorial memoir, “Growing Up in Wartime France,” which relates the main elements of her story. But the tale turned out to have quite the dénouement, for that version—the only one she’d known for the first eight decades of her life—was significantly incomplete. The full history was even more remarkable.

Huguette was born in Paris in 1938, the second child of Mendel Fajwelewicz and his wife, Ryvka, immigrants from Lithuania. She also had a brother, Maurice, who was five years older, and together the family lived in the Marais district of central Paris, where Mendel was a wholesaler of workmen’s clothing. After the Germans invaded in 1940, the family fled to the countryside. They never made it to the “free zone” of Vichy France, but instead found shelter in a rural area under occupation called Sarthe, named for a tributary of the Loire. They settled in Vibraye, a village about a hundred miles southwest of Paris, not far from the city of Le Mans, famous for its motor-racing circuit.

Huguette was a two-year-old at the time, so the precise circumstances have always been murky to her, but somehow she and Maurice were placed with a peasant family, while their parents found similar refuge nearby. Her father paid the family for the children’s upkeep, but at a certain point he was running out of money. So, in July 1942, the Fajwelewiczes undertook the risky journey back to Paris, taking Huguette with them, so that Mendel could turn some of his stored drapery stock into cash.

It was a fateful venture—and very nearly fatal. They arrived back at their old apartment only hours before French police began the roundup of Parisian Jews that became notorious as the Rafle du Vel’ d’hiv, when more than 13,000 people, including some 4,000 children, were confined in a Paris velodrome before being transported to internment camps in Drancy, Compiègne, Pithiviers, and Beaune-la-Rolande, and thence to Auschwitz. The Fajwelewicz family escaped only because the concierge of their building, one Madame Mignon, tipped them off and helped them hide in the basement for two days and nights, until the coast was clear to flee again to the country.

Back in the village of Vibraye, the family succeeded in evading detection for another two years, until their part of western France was liberated by the Allies sometime in August 1944. Huguette recalls dancing in a field with Maurice, chanting “Nous sommes juifs! Nous sommes juifs!” (We’re Jews! We’re Jews!)—scarcely knowing what it meant, having lived most of the last four years in disguise in a Catholic household, but knowing that it was at last safe to say those words.

Read the complete article: New York Review of Books

Matt Seaton is a writer who lives at Westbeth.

photo: Village Sun

Westbeth feels like a ghost town
MARCH 14, 2020
BY KATE WALTER |

The community room is closed. The gallery is dark. The spring flea market has been postponed. The community room and the gallery are the heart and soul of Westbeth Artists Housing. Everyone looks forward to shopping at the busy flea market in the basement.

The main lobby, normally bustling with activity and conversation, is somber. Management recently issued a memo that residents should only use the lobby for essential activities — no hanging out. I really feel bad for the seniors with mobility issues who use the lobby as a place to sit on a bench and socialize. Thankfully, it will get warm soon and they will be able to go outside into the courtyard. Westbeth is a NORC, a naturally occurring retirement community, with many senior citizens in their 70s and 80s.

It’s hard to believe that only two weeks ago I gave a reading with three other writers in the community room. About 50 people were in attendance and later we talked about the work and drank champagne. I read the first chapter of a novel in progress and everyone told me they wanted to know what would happen next. The feedback was super-encouraging. Just what I needed. It was the kind of interaction that makes Westbeth a great place for artists to live.

I’ve been a resident here since 1997. One of the best things about this complex is all the free and inexpensive activities that take place in the community room — classes, readings, concerts, puppet shows for the kids, under the auspices of the Westbeth Artists Residents Council. I often write in my gratitude journal, “I’m grateful to live in Westbeth.”

Read the complete article at The Village Sun

Date: February 4, 2020 at 7PM

At: Westbeth Community Room

Presented by the Westbeth Literary Arts Committee, Joan Hall, poet and collagist, will read from her new book of poems, “Journey to Somewhere”.

Guest readers include Roger Braimon, Pique Kelly-Buford, Joel Rooks, and Reef Hall.

Native New Yorker Joan Hall is a pioneer in the field of collage and assemblage illustration. Known for her collages and assemblages, she has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City.
Along with careers as a mime, teacher, artist, and lecturer, Joan has also been writing poetry since she was a child.
She is a winner of the 2018 Miriam Chaiken Foundation Award for her poetry. “Journey to Somewhere” is a collection of those winning poems.

Westbeth Community Room
155 Bank St
NY NY
between West and Washington Its
enter through courtyard

Ingenuity writ large; technique knit large

Show Dates: Feb 5 – Feb 23, 2020

Special Closing Event

The Gold Standard: Juror and Artist Talk
Sunday February 23rd from 1pm to 5:45 pm

Between 40-45 artists will be at the gallery on Sunday 23rd to talk about their work.

1:00pm to 3:00pm artists-with name tags on will circulate or be by their work to discuss it with interested viewers.

3:00pm to 3:30pm Lauren Whitley, the juror will speak in the main gallery.

3:30pm to 5:45 pm artists will be by their own art work to speak about it to interested folks and to answer any questions.

6:00pm the show closes

Questions please contact: Joan.mann.diamond@gmail.com

Westbeth Gallery and The Textile Study Group of New York are pleased to announce an exciting new show that explores the visual, dimensional and artistic language of fiber and textile.

“At a time when our collective attention is dangerously adrift, trapped in the freefall of our social-media feeds and snared in a pit of fake facts, handwork provides a firm anchor. It cannot be spun. It gives us something to believe in.”
Glenn Adamson, Senior Scholar,
Yale Center for British Art

How do 80 artists, working primarily in fiber, hone their conception of beauty and truth while integrating a mixture of materials ( both natural and synthetic ) with technique? The amazing feature of this show is how the work of individual artists working within the same medium can be totally different… even provocative.

The debate about fiber art as fine art is, thankfully, moot. Contemporary fiber art prioritizes aesthetic value over utility. Manual labor, choice of materials, and process are prized elements of a work’s significance. Dialectical thinking guides the work of these multi-layered artists in a way demonstrating that ingenuity triumphs over all.

For example, who knew that cable ties could be employed in such a seductive way? Who knew that leather and suede cut with an xacto knife could express so much about urban life… while weaving in social commentary? Who knew that electronic sensors cold be seamlessly integrated into an alluring form? We could go on and on.

Handwork cannot be described. It must be seen. “It gives us something to believe in.”

The Textile Study Group of New York (TSGNY) in its 42nd anniversary this year, is dedicated to the study and appreciation of fiber arts in all forms, from historic cloth to contemporary installation, from textile design to tensile architecture.

Show Juror: Lauren Whitley, senior curator in the David and Roberta Logie Department of Textile and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, helps oversee a global collection of 55,000 textiles, costumes, and accessories. She has curated more than 14 exhibitions including #techstyle and Hippie Chic. A Ph.D. candidate, she is focusing her research on textiles at the 1933 New York World’s Fair.

PARTICIPANTS

Liz Alpert Fay, Ludmila Aristova, Meredith Armstrong, Kate Barber, Polly Barto, Katherine Bennett,Stacy Bogdonoff, Allegra Brelsford, Eva Camacho, Sayzie Carr, Leonie Castelino, Anne-Claude Cotty, Don DonCee Coulter, Virginia Davis,Rachael Dorr, Chiaki Dosho, Emily Dvorin, Patricia Frik, Jayne Gaskins, Irene Gennaro,Sandra Golbert, Joyce Goodman, Carolyn Halliday, Liz Hamilton Quay, Marilyn Henrion, Susan Hensel, Pat Hickman, Eileen Hoffman, Leslie Horan Simon, Lauren Horowitz, Mary Jaeger, Tracy Jamar,Ruth Jeyaveeran, Setsuko Jimbo, Mo Kelman,Julia Kiechel, Judy Kirpich, Nancy Koenigsberg, Dianne Koppisch Hricko, Lisa Lackey, Fannie Lee, Janet Levine, Elaine Longtemps, Mary Lor,Patricia Malarcher, Saberah Malik, Ruth Marchese,mDorothy McGuinness,Susan Moss, Yasuko Okumura, Sui Park, Helen Perry,Bonnie Peterson, Tanya Prather,mEllen Ramsey, Szilvia Revesz, Patricia Rogers,Kari Roslund, CARO, Lois Russell, Ellen Schiffman, Robin Schwalb, Chizuko Sekiguch, Julia Shepley, Adrienne Sloane,Elizabeth Starcevic, Hillary Steel,mAmy Supton, Kim Svoboda,Naomi Tarantal,Sumiko Tasaka, Charlotte Thorp, K. Velis Turan,Betty Vera, Ann Vollum, Shari Werner, Saaraliisa Ylitalo, Ada Yonenaka, Pamela Zave, Betti Zucker.

Show Dates: Feb 5 – Feb 23, 2020
Opening Reception: Wednesday Feb 5 from 6PM – 9PM

At: Westbeth Gallery
55 Bethune St
between Washington and West Sts.

More info on The Textile Study Group of New York HERE

For information on the show:
Contact
Harriet Cherry Cheney hscheney@optonline.net
C:914-330-3335/T: 914-591-0198

After February 10,
Contact Ann Vollum annvollum@verizon.net
862-205-9722

When: Sunday Feb 9, 2020 from 2:00PM – 3:30PM
Where: Westbeth Community Room 155 Bank St between West and Washington Its, enter through courtyard

Grove Drugs and Westbeth Artists Residents Council present West Village Wellness, a free monthly event that deals with health issues of interest to the community. It is led by Ilana Aminov BSPharm RPH of Grove Drugs, the neighborhood drug store on 8th Avenue near 12th St, hosted by Michael Embrey and catered by Michael Stewart of https://tavernonjane.com.

For years, doctors thought the connection between mental health and heart health was strictly behavioral – such as the person who is feeling down seeking relief from smoking, drinking or eating fatty foods.

That thinking has started to change. Research shows there could be physiological connections, too. The biological and chemical factors that trigger mental health issues also could influence heart disease.

“The head-heart connection should be on everyone’s radar,” said Barry Jacobs, Psy.D., a clinical psychologist and director of Behavioral Sciences at the Crozer-Keystone Family Medicine Residency Program in Springfield, Pa. “It’s not just being unhappy. It’s having biochemical changes that predispose people to have other health problems, including heart problems.”

Orphans deals with Operation BabyLift, the name given to the controversial mass evacuation of infants and children from South Vietnam.

In the play, three sisters must come to terms with the past when an unexpected guest forces the family to face an unsettling secret.

Joel Shatzky was Professor of English at SUNY Cortland for 37 years before moving back to NYC and teaching Writing and English at Kingsborough Community College.In addition to his role as Professor, Joel is an accomplished Playwright and Author. He has a half-dozen novels, scholarly, and topical studies to his credit, Shatzky has published articles on theatre and education in the New York Times , Jewish Currents , Studies in Jewish American Literature , Players , and a half dozen other journals. As a playwright, Shatzky has written eight produced OOB shows, among the most recent, “Amahlia,” at 13th Street Rep.

Beth Griffith has performed with Vox Novus, Cosmic Orchid, Brooklyn New Music Collective, Medicine Show Theater, DownTown Ensemble, New York City Opera, Johannes Wieland Dance Company, FullStop Collective, Theater for the New City, HERE, Clubbed, New Georges, Rady & Bloom Collective, Communal Spaces Garden Play Festival, Sachiyo Ito’s DanceJapan, Nylon Fusion, a.o.