SELF PORTRAITS: In this small, intimate self-portrait exhibition nine artists working in different media expose themselves to themselves and in this case to the public as well.
The artist when painting or drawing a self-portrait may often discover, during this process, both subtle and obvious facts about the face which he or she thought to know so well.
This intense looking and seeing over a period of time can reveal an
art work often informed and given weight by a particular psychological insight of which the artist may have not originally expected.

Featuring the work of Avery, Sandra Caplan, Ray Ciarrocchi, Peter Colquhoun, Jack Dowling, William Kennon, Kurz, Gerald Marcus, and Claire Rosenfeld.

January 5, – February 2, 2019

Opening Reception January 5 Saturday 5PM – 7PM
Closing Reception February 2 Saturday 5PM – 7PM

When: Sunday March 10, 2:00PM – 3:30PM
Where: Westbeth Community Room
155 Bank Street between West and Washington Sts.
Enter through courtyard

The third year of the VILLAGE WELLNESS PROGRAM – LET’S TALK ABOUT SERIES sponsored by Grove Drugs and Westbeth Artists Residents Council.

This event features
Grove Drugs’ Ilana AminoV BSPharm RPH
Host: Michael Drew Embrey

Special Guest: Dr Alison Hoffman AuD-CC/A
The Advanced Hearing Center of New York

Catering: Michael Stewart of Tavern on Jane

In general, people who have hearing loss may experience any or all of the following:

Difficulty understanding everyday conversation
A feeling of being able to hear but not understand
Having to turn up the TV or radio
Asking others to repeat often
Avoidance of social situations that were once enjoyable
Increased difficulty communicating in noisy situations like restaurants, lively family gatherings, in the car or in group meetings
Tinnitus, or ringing and/or buzzing sounds in the ears

FIND OUT MORE AT THIS EVENT!!!

The award winning crowdpleaser that pays tribute to the inspirational true stories of the backup singers who shaped some of the most iconic songs of our time, featuring Darlene Love, Merry Clayton and more, backing up Mick, Bruce, Stevie, Bette, and others!

FREE

Hugh Seidman will be reading poetry from his latest work, Status of the Mourned [2018]. Seidman has published seven books of poetry. He has lived in Westbeth for almost fifty years, and is featured in the oral history project “Profiles in Art” on Westbeth.org.

Michael Heller will present excerpts from Constellations of Waking, a libretto/poem for a multi-media opera based on philosopher Walter Benjamin’s life. The presentation will include a number of voices, along with visuals and recorded music. Heller has published over twenty books of poetry, essays, memoir, and fiction.

Exhibition Dates:
March 29 – April 20, 2019

Opening Reception: Friday March 29, 6PM – 9PM

Westbeth Gallery presents the dynamic show “Worlds Seen & Unseen” by five contemporary New York-based women artists: Karin Batten, Caroline Golden, Maggie Hinders, Carolyn Oberst, and Barbara Rachko. Through variations in media, form, and composition, their new works bring unseen worlds into focus. From far away worlds hail masks and animals, myths, inner dreams, and human interactions, offering female perspectives of new environments to be seen.

KARIN BATTEN spent her early years in Hamburg, Germany and London, England, where she attended art school before immigrating to the USA. In her travels throughout Europe, the Americas, India, and North Africa she draws and takes photographs of the environment, and creates mixed media paintings that recall these surroundings. She explores abstraction and representation to focus on the point of balance where the two worlds meet.

CAROLINE GOLDEN Caroline Golden’s collages explore familiar stories and legends from a unique perspective. Caroline draws forth iconic characters, their possessions and the interior spaces they inhabit in a dimensional relief of found paper imagery. Creating surreal new worlds, she invites the viewer in to investigate these narratives anew.

MAGGIE HINDERS is a painter and graphic artist. Her paintings of imaginary animals, derived from Internet photos, garden ornaments, and toys. With their fractured, Their colors kaleidoscopic—wryly echo the discordant opinions we hold of ourselves. She hails from western Ohio and currently lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. She is the creator of “little-pix” cartoon blog at little-pix.com.

CAROLYN OBERST is a pioneering interdisciplinary artist working across painting, drawing, mixed media, and wood relief. Originally from Philadelphia she settled in NYC after living in London, Southern Spain and Morocco. In her current paintings, Oberst combines figures and objects with abstract elements, which are placed in dream-like, non-literal settings, their animated quality capturing a sense of movement through time. While invoking memory, dreams and passing thoughts, narratives are suggested, but not defined.

BARBARA RACHKO is an American contemporary artist and author who divides her time between residences in New York City and Alexandria, VA. Barbara travels regularly to Mexico, Central America, South America, and Asia. She uses her large collection of Mexican and Guatemalan folk art­—masks, carved wooden animals, papier mâché figures, and toys—to create one-of-a-kind pastel-on-sandpaper paintings. These combine reality and fantasy and depict personal narratives.

Westbeth Gallery
55 Bethune Street b/w
Washington and West Sts.

Gallery Hours:
Wed- Sun Noon – 6PM

Contact:
Maggie Hinders
mahindersart@gmail.com

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.

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

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.