Category Archives: Past Events

Westbeth Movie Night
TIM’S VERMEER
A Penn and Teller film

A documentary film directed by Teller and produced by Penn Gilette and Farley Ziegler, about inventor Tim Jenison’s efforts to duplicate the painting techniques of Johannes Vermeer into order to test his theory that Vermeer painted with the help of optical devices. FREE
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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.

Look At Us Now, Mother!
A film by Gayle Kirschenbaum
Friday Dec 21 at 7pm

Emmy award winning filmmaker Gayle Kirschenbaum presents a raw, fearless but bitingly funny portrait of both her childhood, fraught with humiliation, and her adulthood scarred by its fallout.

Woven together from decades of personal home movies, photos and videos, LOOK AT US NOW invites audiences to join her on her quest to love, understand, and forgive her aging mother before it’s too late.

As these two formidable women travel down the bumpy road of discovery, their relationship changes before our eyes, and teaches a universal lesson of family dynamics, empathy and the power of forgiveness.

The film had a small theatrical release and is now on Netflix, Amazon, Itunes, and several other platforms.

Look At Us Now, Mother website for more info

A Winter Gathering
Westbeth visual artists

A Winter Gathering: Westbeth Visual Artists

Saturday, December 1, 2018 – Saturday, December 29, 2018

Opening Reception, Saturday December 1, 5PM – 8PM

This year’s exhibition, A Winter Gathering, organized and installed by a volunteer team of exhibitors, provides a peek into the varied practices of Westbeth’s visual artists. Visitors will find multiple genres of art including abstract work, various forms of representation, collage, assemblage, photography, graphics, mixed media, sculpture, and installation, reflecting diverse perspectives on art making today. A Winter Gathering promises an eclectic mix of styles, themes and approaches in contemporary art.

Located in Manhattan’s historic West Village, Westbeth is the largest artists’ residential community in the USA. It provides 384 live/work units, separate artist’s studios for painting, printmaking and ceramics, a gallery, and community room, which hosts programs sponsored by Westbeth Artists Residents Council (WARC). The New School Drama Program and Martha Graham Dance Studio are among commercial tenants of note. This landmarked architectural complex, the former Bell Labs, faces the Hudson River and is close to the Highline and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Westbeth is a veritable beehive of activities where painters, sculptors, photographers, graphic and mixed media artists work in a broad range of styles and media.

Westbeth Gallery, 55 Bethune Street, Inner Courtyard, NY, NY 10014

Gallery hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 1-6 PM

For further information: Ellen Rosen, 212 691-0439

Celebrate the life of
Madeleine Yayodele Nelson

Madeleine Yayodele Nelson was the founder and guiding light of Women of the Calabash, a company of percussionist/singers that celebrated the music of Africa and the African diaspora. The company performed in concerts and festivals in the U.S. and overseas. Nelson played a variety of percussion instruments, specializing in the shekere, a dried gourd covered with beads, which she handcrafted, played and taught. As a solo artist, Nelson recorded with Paul Simon, Edie Brickell, and Billy Harper. She was also involved with a number of groups in addition to her own, notably mbiraNYC, Kalunga, and Alakande!

Sunday Jan 6, 2018
Westbeth Community Room
3PM – 6PM
Come and Celebrate her life as expressed by the Westbeth musicians who worked with her and loved her.

Pot luck dishes are welcome! Let us know what you are bringing so we can have a healthy balance of savory and sweet. Email us: westbethmusicworks@gmail.com or phone 212.228.1141
!

FOUR PAINTERS Group Show

“Four Painters”
Show Dates: January 13 – January 26, 2019
Opening reception Sunday January 13th 2019, from 4pm to 7pm.

Westbeth Gallery
Gallery hours are Wednesday – Sunday 1 pm – 6 pm and by appointment.

“Four Painters” is an exhibition of four artists and their approach to abstraction and its century long history.The exhibit will focus on abstraction through narrative, color and process.
The four artists, Jeff Elliott, Philip Heubeck, Sarah Huffard and Pavol Roskovensky each have unique styles. Their distinct aesthetic choices will work together in an exhibition setting, encouraging unexpected connections and visual dialogues.

Elliott’s work, gives us surreal examinations of the subconscious human psyche, by emphasising narrative and language, encouraging an ephemeral sense of disorientation and abstraction by dislocating the visual world and its narrative from the logic of our own experience.
Heubeck’s work harnesses the energy of abstraction much like the abstract expressionists and land art movement. His excavations of material on a surface provide a foundation for our understanding of abstract painting in the 21st century.
Huffard’s work is light and airy, like the works of the minimalists and color field painters; she explores abstraction through color juxtaposition and presence. There is a grand scale; even in her smallest works, creating a meditative state.
Roskovensky’s work challenges the viewers notions, not just of painting but of abstraction as well. He takes on the tradition of Dada, neo-Dada and conceptualism; to create visual experiences that feel familiar yet still very unrecognizable.

On the surface these four artists have little in common when it comes to aesthetic choices, but when exhibited together something greater is revealed; the scope of painting and abstraction in the 21st century comes into focus. Individually and collectively these four painters have something meaningful to say.

For questions please email the curator, Pavol Roskovensky
PavolRoskovensky@gmail.comFOUR PAINTERS presents the work of four contemporary artists.

Digital Transfer Workshop 2019

XFR Collective DIGITAL TRANSFER WORKSHOP 2019 : learn what you can do to preserve you audiovisual work. In this workshop we’ll discuss care and identification of analog media, converting analog media to digital, and what to do after your recording has been digitized.

Wednesday Jan 23, 2018 at 7PM – 9PM
Westbeth Community Room
155 Bank Street (enter through courtyard)
NY NY

FREE
XFR Collective is a non-profit organization that partners with artists, activists, individuals, and groups to lower the barriers to preserving at-risk audiovisual media – especially unseen, unheard, or marginalized works – by providing low-cost digitization services and fostering a community of support for archiving and access through education, research, and cultural engagement.

We have the capacity to transfer the following formats:

VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS
Betacam, BetcamSP, DigiBeta
MiniDV, DVCam, HDV
DVCPro 50
Hi-8, Digital8, Video8
3/4″ U-matic
Audiocassette

XFR Collectiver partners with grassroots organizations, artists, and others who wish to learn how to use audiovisual archival principles to support their work. For example, we recently conducted a cataloging and file management workshop with members of the Asian American Oral History Collective.

More info at: XFR Collective

Westbeth Movie Night
ISLE OF DOGS
2018 animated film

Isle of Dogs (Japanese: 犬ヶ島 Hepburn: Inugashima) is a 2018 stop-motion-animated science-fiction comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by Wes Anderson. Set in a dystopian near-future Japan, the story follows a young boy (Koyu Rankin) searching for his dog after the species is banished to an island following the outbreak of a canine flu. The film’s ensemble voice cast includes Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Balaban, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Courtney B. Vance, Fisher Stevens, Harvey Keitel, Liev Schreiber, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, Frank Wood, Kunichi Nomura, and Yoko Ono.