Show Dates:
March 4‐ March 25, 2017
Opening Reception
Saturday March 4 from 5pm – 8pm
Panel Discussion: Friday March 24 at 6pm
Closing Reception
Saturday March 25 from 5pm – 7pm

“On the Shoulders of Giants,” an exhibition of contemporary painting and sculpture curated by Thaddeus Radell, celebrates the millennia‐old struggle to capture the human form. The 35 artists in the exhibition render the human figure in a wide variety of ways and mediums, but every work nevertheless shows a reverence for the formal language that animates all great art, from prehistoric times to the present. While the postmodern age has tended to emphasize ironic appropriation over earnest expression and compositional values, each of these artists seeks to animate the human figure through
an authenticity of form and structure.

The painters and sculptors fall roughly into two generations, many of the second, younger group having studied with members of the first. In these cases the teachers inspired an understanding of great traditional art and helped set a foundation from which new art might arise.

Every artist must be a part of his or her time, but every good artist also benefits in some way from the past. Learning from the art in museums, as well as from their teachers, the artists in this exhibition indeed find themselves standing on the shoulders of giants.

Show Dates February 5 – February 24, 2017
Opening Reception: Sunday February 5h 1pm – 4pm
Closing Reception: Friday Febrary 24th 6pm-8pm

Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Sunday 1pm – 6pm

The Sculptors Guild celebrates its historic 80th anniversary with an exhibition curated by distinguished poet and critic John Yau at Westbeth Gallery in the West Village from February 5-24, 2017.

The Sculptors Guild is a collective of contemporary professional sculptors “…looking to have the freedom to make and show work within a community that supports and encourages their practices. A rare feat in a world full of the detritus of pop culture and commodity-driven creation”, writes Brienne Walsh, art critic and historian.

Curator, John Yau, will be curating signature works by current Sculptors Guild members alongside historical pieces from the Guild’s collection. Works by founding member Chaim Gross as well as pieces from the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation, including drawings by member Louise Nevelson will be exhibited.

The founding of Sculptors Guild in 1937 was a seminal event for modern sculpture in America. Its members were at the forefront of American Modernism especially in their openly expressed rejection of the staid conventions. The result was an esthetic paradigm shift that would have significant impact on the international art scene during the years of reconstruction following the global devastation of WWII.

The primary objectives of the founders as stated in an early exhibition catalogue were: “to unite sculptors of all progressive aesthetic tendencies into a vital organization in order to further the artistic integrity of sculpture and give it its rightful place in the cultural life of
this country.”

Sculptors Guild is a not-for-profit organization based in New York City with a professional membership of acclaimed international sculptors of diverse esthetics. Our mission is to promote, encourage, and serve as an advocate for sculpture and to make contemporary sculpture a relevant part of the cultural experience.

SCULPTORS GUILD INC FOUNDED IN 1937 is a 501c2 Artist Collective

For further info: contact sculptorsguild@gmail.com

The PEN World Voices
Festival 2017:
Gender & Power

Empower yourself with
literature and ideas across borders.
http://worldvoices.pen.org

Founded in the aftermath of 9/11 by Salman Rushdie, Esther Allen, and Michael Roberts, the United States’ only international literature festival aims to broaden international dialogue and combat isolationism. We invite you to join more than 150 authors and artists from all over the world in this moment of unprecedented threats to freedom and truth—and of emboldened mobilization and resistance—and examine bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia and to bolster the movement to counter them. Exploring the theme Gender and Power, these events will celebrate the transcendent power of art to enable people to see beyond their differences.

READINGS AT WESTBETH – HOME TO THE ARTS
Thursday May 4, 2017 at 6:30PM
http://worldvoices.pen.org/session/literary-quest-westbeth-edition/

Westbeth artists open their homes for readings by PEN authors and a party in their legendary Westbeth Gallery. With Moustafa Bayoumi, Rita Mae Brown (US), Farah Jasmine Griffin (US), Abeer Hoque (Nigeria/Bangladesh/American), Thomas Meinecke (Germany/US), Haroon Moghul, Tanwi Nandini Islam, Idra Novey, Igor Stiks (UK), Han Yujoo (Korea), Filip Springer (Poland), Gabby Rivera (US) and Emanuel Xavier (US).

Read about Westbeth and its history HERE

HOTSPOTS
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, ZÜRICH

>URBAN LANDSCAPES BY

Karin Batten, New York

Ralph Raphael Fleming, Brooklyn

Eugen Meier, Zürich

Josette Urso, Brooklyn

WESTBETH GALLERY

55 Bethune Street Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Sunday
New York, NY 10014 1pm – 6pm

Show Dates: March 31st-April 15th
Reception: March 31st 6-8pm

The artists in this diverse group share a lineage to 1990’s Switzerland with their connection to the artist Fred Engelbert-Knecht who ran Galerie A-16 in Zürich. Karin Batten, Eugen Meier and Josette Urso had solo exhibitions at Galerie A-16 and Ralph Raphael Fleming joins the extended family via Al Loving. Each artist also shares unique impressions from their immediate urban environment. Working with abstraction and representation, these artists reveal stories of city life through their involvements with the urban setting.

Karin Batten explores the city from unique perspectives and vantage points. Witnessing the city from above, she sees the cohesive unit of the fragmented city emerge. Using oil sticks she constructs deep textures that capture the magnificence of New York City’s skyline and terrain.

Ralph Raphael Flemming creates intricate collages from urban billboards and commercially printed advertisements. Although his process involves the tearing, cutting and manipulating of found paper, he refers to his pieces as “paintings”.

Eugen Meier is an architect and painter currently living and working in Zürich and the South- West of France. His city-reliefs, made with remnants of paper, plywood and iron are cut, painted and polished and reference the tangled flow of city streets, railway connections and skyscrapers.

Josette Urso makes paintings, drawings and collages. She sees the city less as a series of architectural forms and more as a living, breathing entity – literally a buzzing environment made up of layers upon layers of human history and mystery.

”

WHERE WAS I? tells the funny and poignant story of a lifetime spent in one of our most passionate and public professions. From playing Meryl Streep’s lover in Woody Allen’s Manhattan, to her heart-rending film portrayal of Ethel Rosenberg in Citizen Cohn, to her many memorable theater performances, Karen Ludwig has shared the New York stage and screen for over four decades with some of Broadway and Hollywood’s biggest stars. WHERE WAS I? is a moving and often hilarious journey of a dedicated artist in search of her identity. It is a vital and compelling story of a lifetime working in the arts.

WHERE WAS I? is directed by two-time Emmy Award winning Dorothy Lyman.

KAREN LUDWIG, actor, director, writer and teacher has appeared on Broadway in Craig Lucas’, PRELUDE TO A KISS with Steve Guttenberg and John Randolph, Neil Simon’s BROADWAY BOUND with Joan Rivers, THE DEVILS with Anne Bancroft, THE BACCHAE with Irene Pappas. Her many Off-Broadway performances at The Public Theater include MUSEUM by Tina Howe and, as a member of Andre Gregory’s Manhattan Project for two years, she performed in THE SEAGULL and Wallace Shawn’s OUR LATE NIGHT traveling with the Company throughout the United States and Europe. She was in the world premiere of MOONCHILDREN at The Royal Court in London as well as playing Lady McDuff in MACBETH at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada; both directed by Peter Gill. Her first film was Woody Allen’s MANHATTAN, (Meryl Streep’s lover), SPIDERMAN 2, THIRTEEN DAYS opposite Kevin Costner, THE FIELDS, opposite Cloris Leachman and THAT AWKWARD MOMENT with Zach Efron. Ms. Ludwig is very proud of her work as Ethel Rosenberg in HBO’s CITIZEN COHN opposite James Woods after which she helped raise money for the Rosenberg Foundation for Children. TV includes NYPD BLUE, ER, PARTY OF FIVE, JUDGING AMY, BLUE BLOODS, ELEMENTARY and many LAW AND ORDER episodes.

WHERE WAS I? is part of the 15th Anniversary season of the Theater series at the Downtown Urban Arts Festival.

This 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.

In her memory we honor a member of the writing community, especially those who live in Westbeth. The first annual Chaikin award will be presented on April 12, 2017 to two winners whose works resonated with the review panel – Carol Hebald and Christina Maile. Both writers captured our imaginations with very human stories, both with works set in exotic locales fraught with complex political and religious tensions.

Carol Hebald’s new book, A Warsaw Chronicle, is based on her experiences as a visiting academic in Warsaw at a time of great upheaval, as Poland experienced the imposition of martial law and threat of Soviet invasion due to the growing power of the Solidarity movement. In this politically-charged context, the American protagonist Karolina Heybald’s life becomes linked with her gifted student Marek, and complicated by her search for her long-lost Jewish relatives. The book will be published in March 2017.

Christina Maile submitted a series of short stories, half of which are in the manner of a memoire, while the others are set in Iran. Her characters are remarkably rich and developed for their presence on a few short pages, and her descriptions evoke all of the readers’ senses as she writes about a garden in an Iranian home, the texture of marshmallow fluff, the touch of scissors on hair during a haircut, or the sweetness of ripe fruit.
Carol and Christina will both read from their works at a celebration in the Westbeth Community Room on April 12th at 7 PM and all are invited to attend and share in their fine works.

CHRISTINA MAILE
Really I have gone from one thing to another. After studying Russian Medieval History in college, I co-founded the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective, one of the first feminist theater groups in New York City – Wikipedia article. I became a landscape architect because I fell in love with drafting tools. Some of my designs were published in Landscape Architecture Magazine, among others. My essays on the philosophy of landscape appeared in the Canadian journal, On-Site.

On a vacation 20 years ago, I joined the Friday Night Painters, taught by Dan Rice, a second-generation abstract expressionist painter, and one of the finest painters I have ever known. His class met on Fridays. We are exhibiting at the Guilford Art Center in Connecticut in July 2017

I became a printmaker because there was a communal printmaking studio in Westbeth. In 2013, I received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Studio Grant. My print work is in the Elizabeth Sackler Collection of Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Musuem, NYC, as well as in various living rooms all over the USA.

Intermittently I have taken Karen Ludwig’s weekly writing workshops. She and the other workshop members – Diane Spodarek, Dawn DÁrcy, Joyce Aaron, Nancy Gabor, Shami Chaikin – are the most encouraging people a writer could ever have. Also pretty inspiring, are my writer friends Deb Lucke and Anja Murmann whose graphic novels and screenplays I am lucky enough to read ahead of everyone else.

That such an itinerant life would lead to this writing award from the Endowment points to the lives of Miriam and her family who were always ready to take a chance, and in so doing gave a lot of people a chance to be themselves.

I am never any good at readings. Still I will be giving one with Carol Hebald on April 12, 2017. She is truly a wonderful reader of her work. So if you come on the evening when we read, come to hear her. I might even ask her to read mine.

CAROL HEBALD
A former Teaching and Writing Fellow in fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Carol Hebald received her MFA in 1971. Having taught creative writing at the university level for the next thirteen years, she resigned a tenured associate professorship in English at University of Kansas to write full time.

She has since published the novella collection, Three Blind Mice (Unicorn Press, 1989), the memoir, The Heart Too Long Suppressed (Northeastern University Press, 2001); and more recently four books of poetry: Delusion of Grandeur (2016), Colloquy (2015), Spinster by the Sea (2005), and Little Monologs (2004).

Co-winner with Christina Maile of the Miriam Chaikin Writing Award for her novel, A Warsaw Chronicle, forthcoming from Regal House Press on March 24th, she will be reading from it on Tuesday, March 28th at Cornelia Street Café at 6 p.m., and will share the podium with Christina at the Westbeth Community room on April 12th.

Carol is currently working on a play about Watergate heroine Martha Mitchell. Her website is: www.CarolHebald.com.

Join Westbeth Abstract Painters Group for a presentation on abstract painting from four historical cultural periods: Chinese, Romanticism, Russian Supermatism, and Twentieth Century to present.

It is claimed that abstract painting has exhausted all its formal possibilities and has reached its end. The common standard and misunderstood view of modern abstract painting is about haunted view of the empty canvas: what is not figurative, not narrative, not pictorial illusion, and not literary.

The discussion will center on how the pictorial spaces of abstract paintings are the potentials of the not quite real.

This is a shift or turning away from pure and empty space to un-centered, unlimited, informal and multiple layers in paintings. To understand abstract pictorial space and its potentiality, one needs to start with abstractions in order to end up with abstractions.

Participants:

Alison Armstrong has taught literature and art critical writing in colleges for over 40 years including The Cooper Union, Marist, the New School, and, since 2002, at the School of Visual Art and in 2016 art history at CUNY’s Borough of Manhattan Community College. She is an active member of Japanese Artists Association of New York (JAA); of the James Joyce Society of New York; of Artists Without Walls; of Glucksman Ireland House, and is on the Board of the W.B. Yeats Society of New York.

Alison Armstrong received an M.A. in English from The Ohio State University in 1972, the M.Litt. from Oxford University (UK) in 1980, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from New York University in 1989.

Her paintings and small sculptures, exhibited since 1980 at Westbeth Gallery and Tenri Gallery (with Japanese Artists Association), are held in private collections in several countries.

Parviz Mohassel , architect, painter, and philosopher has shown in numerous groups and solo shows in NYC, Maine, Connecticut. He has a Ph.D degree in philosophy from New School for Social Research. His dissertation related phenomenology to visual art and architecture.

He studied painting at NYC Art Students League and later with Dan Rice in Madison, CT. He has a Masters in Urban Design, and another Masters in Architecture and is a licensed architect. He has been guest lecturer at Stony Brook University and Parson School of Art.

His most recent painting show, 2013, FREE VARIATION a group show at Westbeth Gallery featured paintings bearing upon ambiguity and place. He also was part of the Westbeth Printmakers Show in 2016 with work dealing with time.

Robert Ludwig received a B.S. in physics at The George Washington University and did graduate work at Princeton University. Then he received a B.A. in Painting and Sculpture with a minor in mathematics at the University of Minnesota. He studied drawing at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

He shows at the Carter Burden Gallery in Chelsea. He has two shows coming up at Carter Burden, one in July and the other in September. He has exhibited at the Westbeth Gallery since 1990 and had a one-man show there in 2013. He will be in a group show this summer in the Westbeth Project Room.

He is a member of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors.

He has taught physics at City College, CUNY. He now teaches art at the College of Staten Island, CUNY.