Category Archives: Past Events

Westbeth Winter Show 2021
Virtual Gallery Tour

In December 2021, WestBeth, Westbeth Artists Residents Council and the WestBeth Gallery celebrated Winter 2021 and the 50th Anniversary of Westbeth with a blockbuster show of over 100 artists.

The virtual video tour, featuring work by the artists in the exhibit, was produced and filmed by Mourrice Papi, Westbeth Visual Arts chair, with music by Madonna and Child by Alvin Curran, live at the West German Radio in Cologne. Recorded and included by Beth Griffith.

The Exhibit

Working within the parameters of self-quarantine and the unsettled times, the exhibit explores both implicitly and explicitly the eloquent response of visual artists’ through a range of artistic practices including painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, photography, mixed media, multi-media, textile art and installation. In a tradition of art questioning the status quo, artists explore issues of racism, identity and environmental degradation.

At WestBeth, the COVID-19 pandemic quieted our public art spaces & isolated resident artists. With the WestBeth Winter Show 21’, the Westbeth Gallery is fortified as a place of beauty and vitality, capturing the essence of artistic dialogue and inspiration at WestBeth.

The WestBeth Winter Show 21’ is testament to WestBeth’s achievements in supporting its vibrant community of artists & empowering artists with a connection to a local and global art community.

Featured Artists

William Anthony
Alison Armstrong
Olive Ayhens
Joan Banach
Karin Batten
Jonathan Bauch
Susan Berger
Roger Braimon
Werner Brause
Deborah Bitter
Robert Bunkin
Tony Candido
Bridget Carey
Simon Carr
Sandra Caplan
Karina Cavat
Ray Ciarrocchi
Steve Clorfeine
Jem Cohen
Carolyn Cross
Peter Colquhoun
Alison Cooke
Al Cooke
Judy Cuttler
Vinod Dave
Elisa Decker
Jon D’orazio
Julie Dubow
Judite Dos Santos
Edward Eichel
Gwen Fabricant
Inez Foose
Francia
Dennis Golden
Stacy Greene
Bob Gruen
Elizabeth Gregory Gruen
Ann Hamilton
Joan Hall
Stephen Hall
Jayne Holsinger
Rezendes J
Diana Jensen
Penny Jones
Annie Katzman
Susannah Kelly
William Kennon
Ana Garces Kiley
Gayle Kirschenbaum
Judy Lawne
Ralph Lee
Jan Leslie Harding
John L. Silver
Gerard Marcus
Emil Mare
Scott Marshall
Anthony Martino
Lauren Martino
Patricia Melvin
John Menegon
Christina Maile
Parviz Mohassel
Paul Muranyi
Ethan Mass
Avri Ohana
Mourrice Papi
Bosiljka Raditsa
Natalia Rudychev
Mary McKenna Ridge
Ruth Rioux
Ellen Rosen
Claire Rosenfeld
Cari Rosmarin
Margie Ruben
Karen Santry
Sheila Schwid
David Seccombe
Shelley Seccombe
Natalia Sharymova
Eric Sheehy
Charles Seplowin
Frances Siegel
Anthony Sorce
Jenny Tango
Jacqueline Taylor Basker
Ted Timreck
Rachel Urkowitz
Carolyn Virgil
Ken Wade
John Whittaker
Jean Wolff
Tamara Wyndham

Credits:

The Westbeth Winter Show 2021
Designed by Westbeth Artists Residents Council, Visual Arts Chair Mourrice Papi & the WestBeth Community

Music:
Madonna and Child by Alvin Curran, live at the West German Radio in Cologne. Recorded and included by Beth Griffith

Thank You

Westbeth Artists Residents Council
Ellen Salpeter WestBeth CEO
Roy Rub @Topos Graphics
DaSign

Contact:

westbethgallery@gmail.com
Info: Westbeth.org
@WestBethGallery
@Westbeth_Artists_Housing

Original Dates of Show

November 20 – December 17, 2021
Opening Reception: Nov 20, 2021 4pm – 7pm

Kate Walter Behind the Mask: Rave review

Red Hook Star Review

Walter recorded what was happening in real time (many of the essays were originally published in the Manhattan newspaper The Village Sun) so they have a fantastic immediacy. She writes in a clear way with an eye for interesting details. Her observations poke awake our own dormant memories and make us realize things we’d noticed, but had forgotten, busy as we were absorbing so much change.
Walter lives alone in a 600-square-foot apartment in Westbeth Artists Housing, a naturally occurring retirement community in the West Village. Finding herself alone after a decades-long relationship goes belly up, she never gives up hope for a chance to have one more great romance.

-Michael Quinn
March 11, 2022

Read entire article here: Red Hook Star Review

Kate Walter’s Book Behind the Mask was chosen by Pretty Progressive.com as one of the ’16 Most Powerful Books on Courage for Adults”

https://prettyprogressive.com/16-powerful-books-about-courage-for-adults/

Kate Walter loved her life as a single gay woman living in New York City’s famous Westbeth Artists Housing in Greenwich Village. She was in that sweet spot—recently retired from a long teaching career, but hardly retired, she was living the dream. Finally, her time was her own, a chance to expand and explore.

She was embedded in a vibrant artistic community. She was a published writer, met friends for lunch, went to museums, and concerts, and readings. She took yoga classes and belonged to a writing workshop, a singing group, a church. She celebrated all the holidays with her family in New Jersey.

In early 2020, the lively community of Westbeth Artists Housing was gearing up to celebrate its 50th anniversary. But when New York City went into Covid 19 pandemic lockdown, Westbeth turned into a ghost town. Kate’s carefully constructed social life crashed. Suddenly, she was trapped at home, living in the pandemic epicenter. The brief conversations with masked neighbors in the hallway or on the sidewalk became her lifeline. Her life moved onto Zoom and she took comfort watching worship services streamed every Sunday. Then the unimaginable happened. Her church burned down in a six-alarm fire. Now there literally would be no sanctuary left to return to after the pandemic – whenever that would be.

Kate was lonely and scared. The isolation was hard on everyone. For cultural creators, perhaps an extra degree of hard. She melted down in lockdown. She dreamed the city was on fire. She hit the wall. But she picked herself up and called upon her resilience and spiritual practices to stay safe and get through the isolation. In a welcome break from the pandemic, she celebrated in front of the Stonewall Inn when Biden won the election. And she started penning columns for The Village Sun, a local community publication. Writing became her salvation. Behind the Mask Living Alone in the Epicenter is Kate’s memoir in essays detailing her life from March 2020-May 2021 about this traumatic time in New York City.

More than a year later, as Westbeth and New York City reawakened, Kate emerged with a deeper appreciation for her home and the everyday things she took for granted. As she gradually took off her mask and started to enjoy life again, she felt forever changed.

Kate Walter gave a reading of her memoir, Behind the Mask, at the Westbeth Community Room on Dec 1, 2021

Behind the Mask: Living Alone in the Epicenter
By Kate Walter
Heliotrope Books
November 16, 2021
Nonfiction; Memoir Of Essays
Price: $16.00 paper; $8.99 e-book
ISBN: 978-1-942762-81-2 paperback; 136 pages
978-1-942762-82-9 e-book

BONUS CONTENT
• 12 Pandemic Writing Prompts and blank pages for the reader to journal their own Covid 19 Pandemic lockdown memories
Writing helped me cope with anxiety, and I felt it was important to record what was going on during this unprecedented time. Now it’s your turn to journal about your experiences during the pandemic. Here are some prompts to use as some jumping-off points. -Kate Walter
• Part Two: Life Before the Pandemic – four additional essays by the author

PODCAST WITH KATE WALTER An Interview about the book.

INTERVIEW WITH KATE WALTER: Magnification of Memory

Westbeth Celebrates
Black History Month

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou.

Lorraine O’Grady Concept Artist

Lorraine O’Grady has lived at Westbeth for decades. One of the most significant figures in contemporary performance, conceptual, and feminist art. O’Grady is widely known for her radical persona Mlle Bourgeoise Noire, and has a complex practice that also encompasses video, photomontage, concrete poetry, cultural criticism, and public art. The artist has consistently been ahead of her time, anticipating contemporary art world conversations about racism, sexism, institutional inequities, and cultural oversights by decades, and her prescience has inspired younger generations of artists.

These parallel threads—of outward critique and inward reflection—are some of the many binaries that O’Grady’s work addresses. By putting seemingly contradictory ideas together, O’Grady questions the power attached to such oppositions as Black and White, museum and individual, self and other, West and non-West, and past and present.

NY Times Interview
Brooklyn Museum exhibit

Nasheet Waits Drummer

Nasheet grew up at Westbeth with his brother Shareef, and continues to live here with his own family. His interest in playing the drums was encouraged by his father, legendary percussionist, Freddie Waits.

Receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Music, Waits studied privately with renowned percussionist, Michael Carvin. Carvin’s tutelage provided a vast foundation upon which Waits added influences from his father, as well as mentor Max Roach. It was Max that first gave Nasheet’s formidable talent international spotlight, hiring him as a member of the famed percussion ensemble M’BOOM.

Waits has been heralded for his musicality and creativity by such virtuosos as Ed Thigpen, Max Roach, Andrew Hill, and Stanley Cowell. True to his personal philosophy of the necessity to balance Tradition and Modernism, Waits collaborates and performs regularly with a wide range of artists.

Profiles in Art Interview
Drum Compilation

Patti Bown Musician

Patti Bown (1931-2008)
A resident of Westbeth for almost two decades, and raising her son, Anthony, here, Patti Bown was American jazz pianist, singer, and composer. Born in Seattle, Washington, Bown studied classical piano from a young age. As a teenager, she began performing in Seattle’s Jackson Street jazz scene. She attended the University of Seattle on a music scholarship.

During 1958, she recorded an album, Patti Bown Plays Big Piano. In 1959, Quincy Jones invited her to join a big band he was assembling for a European tour of Harold Arlen’s musical, Free and Easy. . Bown recorded with Quincy Jones several times from 1959 to 1961.

Bown also recorded with artists such as Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, and Benny Golson. Many of the artists Bown recorded with also recorded some of her compositions. She collaborated with lyricists such as Maya Angelou and Buddy Bernier. From 1962 to 1964, she was Dinah Washington’s musical director.

In 1972, Bown was musical director for Joseph Papp’s production, Ti-Jean and His Brothers, which debuted Off-Broadway. She was also active in the theater in other capacities, playing piano and acting in productions such as Woodie King, Jr.’s Christchild (1992).

In 1996, she received a lifetime achievement award from International Women in Jazz, and in 2006 she received the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Award.

Bold Face article
Big Piano

Hugh Hurd Activist/Actor

Hugh Hurd joined with Maya Angelou and Godfrey Cambridge in organizing one of the the first benefits in NYC in support of Dr Martin Luther King, jr. Later he co-founded and let the Committee for the Employment of Negro Performers.

His most notable acting roles were the 1959 film Shadows directed by John Cassavetes and a major role in the Japanese film The Catch (1961), as a prisoner of war.e also had roles in The Winner (1963), For Love of Ivy (1968), The Hot Rock (1972), Blade (1973), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), The First Deadly Sin (1980), Liebestraum (1991), Jumpin’ at the Boneyard (1992), and Who’s the Man?

n 1964, Hurd was the subject of a portrait painted by the noted artist Alice Neel.[6] The painting is titled “Hugh Hurd” and is currently held by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Hugh and his wife Merlyn raised three daughters at Westbeth, Michelle Hurd, Adrienne Hurd, and Denise Hurd. Because of his involvement in the community, Hugh was affectionally known as the “Mayor of Westbeth.”

Shadows film clip
Interview

Olive Ayhens
In Nature Nothing
Exists Alone
Group Show

Artwork by Olive Ayhens oil on canvas 48 x 62 inches

Exhibition Dates: January 27 – March 7, 2022

Masks required and social distancing with be observed and enforced.

NYC Culture Club: 
New York City Culture Club
NYC CC is located within Oculus, World Trade Center, New York City.

Curated by Laziza Rakhimova and Chris Costan

Participating artists:
Kim Abeles, Olive Ayhens, Elena Berriolo,
Chris Costan, Valerie Hegarty, Betsy Kenyon, Oskar Landi, Christopher Lin, Lenore Malen, Laziza Rakhimova, Tattfoo Tan and Marion Wilson.

Statement by Chris Costan

Compelled to act in accordance with concerns about planetary distress, each of these artists has expressed commentary or philosophies in the form of artmaking.

The artists incorporate concerns such as climate change, social justice, health and well-being, extinctions of flora and fauna and habitat loss, Some take a turn at the spiritual. All demonstrate the urgent need to live more responsibly given the Earth’s finite resources.
In Silent Spring, published in l962, Rachel Carson says “in nature, nothing exists alone.” Carson’s premise is that the actions of human
beings have had a profound impact on the natural world. All things in nature are interconnected and impacting just one part of the natural world will create numerous unintended consequences throughout the ecosystem.

The fragility of the natural world is on all our minds. Daily we hear of distress and destruction. Crucial decisions need to be made in the hopes of preventing the environmental crises from destroying

the planet as we know it. This exhibition and interactive event express the varying ways in which concerned artists are experiencing the earth in its currently critical state.

Creating art about these conditions is not new. Artists, writers and scientists have been addressing these challenges for decades. The movement continues to grow given the condition of the natural world and the omnipresence of climate destruction.
While we hope for a livable future, this show serves as a reminder: we must work together to reinforce an awareness that all life on earth is interconnected.

The exhibition is located at the World Trade Center complex in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City, scene of violent occurrences in years past. And today it is indeed ironic that the World Trade Center complex exists in a flood zone from West Street inland to Church Street. In a note of hopefulness, the soaring, white transportation hub (the Oculus) at the World Trade Center was designed (by Santiago Calatrava) to evoke a bird in flight a symbolic, uplifting structure to replace the destroyed Port Authority Trans-Hudson (Path) rail station.

This show is an introduction to a forthcoming expanded version of
“In Nature, Nothing Exists Alone,” which will take place in the United Nations Lobby, scheduled for later in 2022.

Exhibition Dates: January 27, March 7, 2022 


NYC Culture Club: 

Information: https://www.nyccultureclub.com/about 

Press Inquiries please contact NewYorkCityCultureClub@gmail.com

LIGHT OF DAY
The Language of Landscape: Group Show plus Video Talk with Karen Wilkin

Video Talk with curator Karen Wilkin, taped on March 14, 2022

Show Dates: MARCH 4-APRIL 1, 2022

Westbeth Gallery, 55 Bethune St,
New York NY 10014

Light of Day: The Language of Landscape is an exhibition of twelve contemporary artists exploring the possibilities of landscape painting today.

Curated by the distinguished writer and curator Karen Wilkin, Light of Day originated in brainstorming sessions among several NYC-based painters in 2017.

ARTISTS
Lois Dodd, Albert Kresch and Stanley Lewis. Light of Day artists include Temma Bell, William Christine, Diane Drescher, Howard Gladstone, John Goodrich, Elizabeth Higgins, Elizabeth O’Reilly, Tony Serio and Kamilla Talbot.

The Light of Day artists seek to re-engage our visual environment and the contradictory forces that have historically animated painting: the vital gestures of the observed world, and the innate energies of lines on a surface and colors on a palette.

The twelve artists have divergent backgrounds and pursue various styles, from brushy expressionism to resolute, geometric realism. But they share the goal of confirming how, even in the twenty-first century, landscape painting remains vital, just as long as land can be made to press up towards sky—and trees to rise, and clouds to loom— with the eloquent powers unique to painting. The challenges daunt, but the love of nature compels, and traditions of painting inspire.

ARTISTS ‘BIOS

Temma Bell
Temma Bell (born 1945) is a painter who paints her surroundings both interior and exterior. Bell studied at Boston University, Indiana University and received B.F.A from the Philadelphia College of Art. Bell is a Native New Yorker who has also lived in Iceland and France. She currently lives on a farm in Delhi, NY with her husband and the youngest of her four daughters. She travels frequently to Manhattan and Iceland to paint and exhibit.

http://www.temmabell.com/

William Christine
William Christine received his master of fine arts degree from Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Christine has been an exhibiting painter for over 30 years. In 2003 he had a solo exhibition of his Grand Canyon paintings at the Allentown Art Museum. He has had 3 solo exhibitions at Prince Street Gallery, New York City. Currently he is Artist in Residence at the Reibman Hall Children’s Center, Northampton Community College, where he supports the implementation of the Center’s Arts-based curriculum.

http://william-christine.squarespace.com/

Lois Dodd
Lois Dodd was born in Montclair, New Jersey in 1927. From 1945-1948 she attended The Cooper Union in New York. In 1952 she was one of five artists to establish the Tanager Gallery, where she exhibited until 1962. From 1971 to 1992, Dodd taught at Brooklyn College, and has, since 1980, served on the Board of Governors of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is an elected member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and National Academy of Design.

In 2012 – 2013 the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art organized a traveling retrospective of Dodd’s paintings. The exhibition was accompanied by the book Catching the Light (Barbara O’Brien, lead author). This year Lund Humphries published a monograph (Faye Hirsh, author) titled Lois Dodd, which launches the British publisher’s “Contemporary Artists Series” and is available from the gallery.

https://www.alexandregallery.com/lois-dodd

Diane Drescher
Born in Wisconsin, Diane Drescher is a New York City-based artist who finds inspiration in the parks of Northern Manhattan, and in the diverse landscapes of Cape Cod, Florida, and New Mexico. Austere and direct in composition, her paintings rely on the expressive power of color and vigorous brush work.

Drescher was a member of Bowery Gallery 2009-2019. During that time she mounted two solo shows, a two-person show, and participated in several group shows. Additionally, her work has been exhibited at the Manhattan Borough President’s Office, Westbeth Gallery, Space for Public Art- BID, Green Door Gallery in Brooklyn, Columbia University, Woodstock Artists Association & Museum, Long Island Museum, Edward Hopper House, Garner Arts Center, Boricua College, and NOMAA Gallery. Her painting, “The Bride Wore Black” was featured as an MTA subway poster (2017-2019). Her work is in many private collections. She studied at the Art Students League, the National Academy of Fine Art, School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and earned a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin.

https://dianedrescher.com/

Howard Gladstone
“As a visual artist, I negotiate the nominal and phenomenal: what I can name and what I cannot name.”
Howard Gladstone is a painter, sculptor, and filmmaker who was born, lives and works in New York City. He was selected for fellowships by the Illinois Arts Council, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Newington-Cropsey Foundation and the Abbey Mural Workshop. He received an MA from Governors State University; BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design; Certificate from the New York Studio School, and was awarded First Place in Painting at the National Academy. He is currently a Resident Artist with ChaShaMa, and the Founding Director of The Portrait Project, a collaborative of artists that portray one another.

http://www.howardgladstone.net/

John Goodrich
My goal is to capture visual aspects of the world in a language of forms unique to painting. I see this language as a play of colors and shapes that reveals the deeper character of objects: their stature, weight, and motion – in short their pictorial role – within a painting’s rectangle. Matisse’s words serve me as a touchstone: “Giotto is the summit of my desires, but the road leading to an equivalent, in our age, is too long for one lifetime.”
John Goodrich’s paintings have appeared in solo shows at Bowery Gallery in New York City and the Contemporary Realist Gallery in San Francisco and in group exhibitions at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, Kouros Gallery, Lori Bookstein Fine Art and other galleries in New York City. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The New York Sun, The New York Observer, The New Haven Register and other publications. A writer on art, he was a regular contributor to Review magazine, The New York Sun, and CityArts. He currently teaches studio classes at Haverford College and Borough of Manhattan Community College.

https://www.johngoodrich.net/

Elizabeth Higgins
Elizabeth Higgins was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1960. As a Helena Rubenstein Award recipient, Higgins earned her MFA from Parsons School of Design, where she studied with Leland Bell, Paul Resika, Albert Kresch and Robert deNiro, Sr. Prior to coming to New York in 1983, Higgins received her BFA from Queen’s University, Canada, where she studied painting and printmaking with JC Heywood, Ralph Allen and David Andrew.

Higgins’ solo shows include the Prince Street Gallery, New York, The Argazzi Gallery, Lakeville, CT and the Nancy Poole Studio, Toronto, Canada. She has also exhibited in group shows at the Ingber Gallery, New York, the Mangel Gallery, Philadelphia, the Addison/Ripley Fine Art gallery, Washington, DC, the ART/PLACE gallery, Fairfield CT, and the Carriage Barn Arts Center, New Canaan, CT.

She is now featured in two concurrent traveling exhibitions: Zeuxis –The Unstillife will be on display at the Delaware College of Art and Design, The Painting Center, New York, NY and the University of Arkansas Fort Smith. Also Zeuxis – Flowers as Metaphor will be shown at Hendrix College, Santa Rosa College and the Wiegand Gallery at Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, CA.

Her work is in corporate and private collections in the US and Canada.

https://elizabethhigginsartist.com/

Al Kresch
Albert Kresch (born July 4, 1922)[1] is a New York School painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. One of the original members of the Jane Street Gallery in the 1930s, he exhibited in later years at Tibor de Nagy Gallery and Salander-O’Reilly Galleries. He is best known for landscape and still life compositions painted with evocatively rhythmic forms and vibrant colors.

Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Kresch moved with his family to New York in the 1930s. He began studying figure drawing at the Brooklyn Museum, but soon enrolled in the Hans Hofmann School. There he met Leland Bell, Louisa Matthíasdóttir, Nell Blaine, Judith Rothschild, Robert De Niro, Sr., and Virginia Admiral among other artists of note. These friendships proved a source of inspiration throughout much of his life. In the 1940s, he exhibited abstract work in his first two shows at the Jane Street Gallery, at a time when Abstract Expressionism was gathering steam. He soon embarked, however, on an independent path, inspired by his friend Jean Helion to return to representational painting. Friendships with poets Denise Levertov, and Frank O’Hara reflect the breadth of his interests. His painting philosophy was a subject of Levertov’s poems “The Dog of Art” and “Kresch’s Studio.”

Kresch won a Fulbright scholarship in 1953, aided in part by a letter of recommendation from his friend Willem de Kooning. Recent exhibitions of his work at Salander-O’Reilly Galleries won favorable reviews, and he was elected member of the National Academy in 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Kresch

Stanley Lewis
Stanley Lewis was born in Somerville, New Jersey on October 31, 1941. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut in 1963 with a joint major in music and art. His painting teacher was John Frazer. He graduated with high distinction. In the summer of 1962, he studied with William Bailey and Bernard Chaet at the Yale Summer School of Art and Music. He received a Danforth Fellowship for graduate study and received an MFA from Yale University in 1967. His main teachers there were Leland Bell and Nick Carone.

He began teaching at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1969 in the painting department, working under Wilbur Niewald for 17 years. He joined the Bowery Gallery in NYC in 1986. Stanley taught at Smith College from 1986-1990 and then at American University from 1990-2002 working under department chairman Don Kimes. He retired from AU in 2002. He has taught summers at the Chautauqua Institution’s School of Art since 1996 and was on the faculty at the New York Studio School until the end of 2011.

In Sept. 2004 he was in a two man show at Salander-O’Reilly Galleries. A long-time member of the Bowery Gallery, his most recent shows there were in February, 2005 and March, 2008. He was then represented by Lohin Geduld Gallery and had a one man show there October 13- November 13, 2010. The gallery closed in December of 2011. From Feb. 17 through April 8, 2007, he had a major retrospective at the Museum in the Katzen Art Center, American University, Washington, DC. There was a smaller version of that show at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ, that spring. In 2005, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has been elected to membership in the National Academy.

http://www.bettycuninghamgallery.com/artists/stanley-lewis

Elizabeth O’Reilly
Elizabeth O’Reilly grew up in Ireland and moved to the US in 1986. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College, and her B.Ed from the National University of Ireland. She has participated in residencies at the Ballinglen Foundation, Ireland, the Ucross Foundation, Wyoming, and the Ragdale Foundation, Illinois. She has received numerous awards, including a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, a Charles G. Shaw award for painting and a Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant. A documentary on her work, Ealaiontóir Thar Sáile (An Artist Abroad) was shown on network TV in Ireland. O’Reilly has been showing at the George Billis Gallery in Chelsea, New York since 2000, and she participates regularly in the Royal Hibernian Academy annual exhibition in Dublin, Ireland. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, The New York Sun and Art News, among others, and is found in many corporate and private collections both in the US and Ireland. Her paintings are in the State Department, Washington DC, the Office of Public Works, Ireland and the Memphis Brooks Museum in Tennessee.

http://www.elizabethoreilly.com/

Tony Serio
Working from observation, Tony Serio turns his focus to the urban landscape and Hudson River in Northern Manhattan. Using palette knife and brushes, he explores the terrain and architecture with a richly built-up paint surface full of light and atmospheric color observed in the moment.

Serio studied at Yale School of Art and Maryland Institute College of Art. Solo shows at the Bowery Gallery and other New York venues. Group shows include: Alpha Gallery, Boston, MA; The Drawing Center, NY; The Babcock Gallery, NY and The Hopper House, Nyack, NY. Awards include: Alice B. Kimball Grant for traveling in Italy, Yale University; Drawing Center Show Award and NoMAA (Northern Manhattan Arts Association) Grants in 2008 and 2011 to paint a series of Hudson River Greenway landscapes. Collections include Donald and Allison Innes, Columbia University and various other private collectors.

https://www.tonyserio.com/

Kamilla Talbot
Kamilla Talbot studied at the New York Studio School and The Rhode Island School of Design. Solo shows include Trygve Lie Gallery, NY; Charles P. Sifton Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Bruno Marina Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; and at the Johannes Larsen Museum, Kerteminde, Denmark (2017). Artist residencies include a fully-funded residency at the Vermont Studio Center, as well as grants to paint in Maine, Italy, Newfoundland, and Iceland. In 2013 she was awarded a full fellowship to the Austevoll/Marstein Fyr residency in Norway. She teaches or has taught at the National Academy School; Brooklyn Botanic Garden; New York Studio School; New York School of the Arts; The Art Students League; as well as privately.

http://www.kamillatalbot.com/

EVENTS:
MARCH 5: An opening reception will be held 2-6pm

MARCH 14:Karen Wilkin will present a Zoom talk, “Nature and Culture: Some Contemporary Landscape Painters” at 7pm,
Visit www.light-of-day.com for details and to register.

CATALOG
A catalog with essay by Karen Wilkin accompanies the exhibition; preview and purchase at www.light-of-day.com.

GALLERY HOURS:
1-6pm, Wednesday through Sunday.

INFORMATION
For more information, please visit light-of-day.com r contact Diane Drescher at (917)660-0684.

ABOUT THE CURATOR:
New York-based independent curator and art critic Karen Wilkin is the Contributing Editor for Art for The Hudson Review and a regular contributor to The New Criterion, Art in America and The Wall Street Journal.

West Village Originals
book features Westbeth artists

The new book “West Village Originals” by Michael D. Minichiello captures 90 interviews with Greenwich Village activists, business owners, journalists, writers, and artists of all stripes. As they share their stories, we get a clearer picture of both the myths and reality that made this legendary neighborhood what it is. View & share the program recording to relive our discussion of his life, literary process, and latest work.

– “Book Talk” Interview conducted and sponsored by Village Preservation

Link Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H93fwdQqk38

“Village Preservation’s YouTube discussion with Michael Minichiello about his new book, “West Village Originals,” and it’s full of compliments about Westbeth and the many residents he interviewed for the book. It’s an hour long, and the compliments are in the final ten minutes or so. The book is selling like hot chocolate croissants at Three Lives and Company, and I am sure the discussion would make many Westbethians happy.”

– Catherine Revland

The book features interviews with Penny Jones, Jack Dowling, Ralph Lee, David Plakke and many more!

Born in Nyack, NY, Michael D. Minichiello is an author and qualifies as a West Village Original himself, having moved to Perry Street while still a teenager. He received a BFA from Hunter College, a MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts, and pursued a career in graphic design. Since 1990, he has been living on Horatio Street—overlooking Jackson Square Park—with his spouse.

Helène Aylon
Reflections
Solo Show

November 5, 2021 – January 22, 2022

Kerry Schuss Gallery
73 Leonard Street
New York, NY 10013

Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 12 to 6 pm and by appointment.

In collaboration with
Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
401 Broadway, Suite 411
New York, NY 10013

Additional works by the artist can also be seen at Tonkonow Artworks by appointment

More information: Kerry Schuss Gallery

Kerry Schuss and Leslie Tonkonow are pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Helène Aylon that display the presence of reflective surfaces in works from the 1970s to the present and their spiritual, poetic, and political associations.

The central focus of the exhibition is a monumental multi-part piece entitled Mirror Covering (1987) that recalls the formal concerns of Minimalist sculpture while evoking the deeply held philosophical beliefs that underlie the diverse body of work produced throughout Aylon’s career.

Mirror Covering, measuring six and one half feet high by more than twenty-one feet long, is composed of eleven painted wooden structures, each one encasing a mirror that has been casually draped in layers of gauze. Engendered by the Jewish tradition in which mirrors are covered to suppress the ego during the initial mourning period, it commemorates the eleven million people lost in the Holocaust – not only the Jews, but also the Romani, Catholics, Gays, political dissidents, and others.

In describing the work herself, Aylon noted the “human scale” of the box-like elements, suggesting that they allude to windows or doorways into another realm. She chose to use gauze for both symbolic and aesthetic purposes; the bandage-like material referring to healing, and the loose structure of the material recalling drawing:
“I chose gauze because it has this crosshatched thread that looks like a line drawing. You know—it’s just horizontal and vertical … And so it makes a drawing … and I do think that this is going to unravel in time and that’s fine … I just see this kind of thread-like covering as something that could move with the wind, something that could be in the air and somehow breathe. So it’s almost like opening up a window and letting the air come in.”

Also on view are selected paintings from Elusive Silver (1969–73), Aylon’s first distinct series of process-driven artworks in which she introduced an evolving feminist consciousness to a medium that had been firmly dominated by the notion of a heroic, and almost exclusively American male idiom. Refraining from “mark making” (“I didn’t want to be hammered in by exactitudes”) she allowed the works themselves to inform the evolution of her ideas.

The paintings, made using industrial materials such as aluminum, Plexiglas and spray paint, strongly reflect and refract an inner glow that changes visually with the viewer’s stance and the light conditions. The perceptual changes inherent in these works anticipate her later series of the nineteen-seventies (Paintings That Change in Time and Pouring Formations) in which Aylon radically challenged established norms by creating works that were intended to physically change with the passage of time.
The exhibition also includes one of the artist’s more recent works, Tears for the Children (2016). Consisting of eight framed 12 x 12 inch mirrored squares onto which she applied clear acrylic droplets, the piece was originally featured in the multi-part, mixed media installation, Afterword: for the Children, an addendum and conclusion to The G-d Project: Nine Houses without Women (1990 –2016) her more than twenty-year feminist deconstruction of Judaic texts.

Helène Aylon was born in 1931 in Brooklyn, New York, and died in 2020 in New York City. Raised within a modern Orthodox Jewish community in Boro Park, Brooklyn, she was married to a rabbi at the age of eighteen and became widowed, with two young children, at the age of thirty. While in her mid-twenties, she enrolled at Brooklyn College, taking classes with Ad Reinhardt who became her friend and mentor. Reinhardt arranged for a studio visit with Mark Rothko, a transformative event for the young artist who, having entered the secular art world, felt free to share with Rothko the spiritual foundations of their common cultural backgrounds.

Her first solo exhibition took place in 1970 at the Max Hutchinson Gallery in Soho. Following a second solo show there in 1972, she was represented by the legendary art dealer Betty Parsons. Since then, Helène Aylon has participated in one-person and group shows in museums and galleries throughout the United States, Europe, and Israel. She has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards including, among many others, three awards from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art.

In 2018 Aylon joined Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects where a solo exhibition of works from the Elusive Silver series took place in 2019. Her most recent one-person show was presented by Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Los Angeles in the winter of 2020, only months before Aylon died of Covid-19.

Works by the artist are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Weatherspoon Art Museum Greensboro, North Carolina; the American University Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Morgan Library and Museum, New York; and those of many other distinguished institutions and private individuals.

Kerry Schuss Gallery is located at 73 Leonard Street between Church Street and Broadway in Tribeca.

Selected works by the artist can be seen simultaneously, by appointment, at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, 401 Broadway, Suite 411 at the corner of Walker Street and Broadway in Tribeca.

Kate Walter
Behind the Mask
Book Interview

WFUV Interview
with George Bodarky
Part of a series Stories from the Pandemic

1.05.22 6:00am

We all have stories from the pandemic. What was the last fun event you attended before going into quarantine? Did you reconnect with an old friend on Zoom to pass the time? What went through your mind when you got your first vaccination?

Our guest this week has penned a book reflecting on her experiences during the pandemic, and she’s encouraging others to put their pandemic stories on paper too. Kate Walter’s new book is called Behind the Mask: Living Alone in the Epicenter.

Hear Kate’s Interview at:https://wfuv.org/content/stories-pandemic

Kate Walter is the author of two memoirs: Behind the Mask: Living Alone in the Epicenter; and Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, New York Daily News, AM-NY, Next Avenue, The Advocate, The Village Sun and many other outlets. She taught writing at CUNY and NYU for three decades.

BLOOD DRIVE AT WESTBETH

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TO SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT: click on link https://donate.nybc.org/donor/schedules/drive_schedule/300576
or, Use your cellphone’s camera to hover on the QR Code and enter Sponsor number 71021
or call 800-688-0900

Don’t forget to bring photo ID or NYBC donor card. Face covering is required before entering the blood drive. Eat well and drink plenty of fluids before donating.

All registered donors at the Blood Drive will be automatically entered into New York Blood Centers’ August Sweepstakes town a Mirror Home Gym with 1 Year Subscription.

For those that are ineligible to donate please understand you can be supportive by asking others to donate for you. The Need is Constant in All Communities and Every Donation Can Save Three Lives!

West Village Community Blood Drive at Westbeth Sponsored by The Westbeth Artists Residents Council

Do not donate if you have:

a fever or other symptoms of COVID-19 (cough, shortness of breath,
or difficulty breathing)
had close contact with someone diagnosed with or suspected of
having COVID-19 in the last 14 days
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after your illness has resolved
NOTE: close contact is defined by CDC as being within 6 feet of an
infected individual for a prolonged period of time

To learn more about the importance of donating during this time and to answer your questions regarding COVID-19, please visit www.nybc.org/coronavirus.

About New York Blood Center: Founded in 1964, New York Blood Center (NYBC) is a nonprofit organization
that is one of the largest independent, community-based blood centers in the world. NYBC, along with its
operating divisions Community Blood Center collect approximately 4,000
units of blood products each day and serve local communities of more than 75 million people.

NYBC and its operating divisions also provide a wide array of transfusion-related medical services to over
500 hospitals nationally, including Comprehensive Cell
Solutions, the National Center for Blood Group Genomics, the National Cord Blood Program, and the
Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute, which — among other milestones — developed a practical screening
method for hepatitis B.
Our Region’s blood supply has never been lower.