September 12 – October 9, 2021
Opening Reception Sunday September 12 2PM – 5PM

Hours: Wednesday – Sunday 1PM -6PM

Curator Dr Bruce Weber

The Sculptors Guild celebrates the re-opening of the Westbeth Gallery.

Curator
Dr. Bruce Weber received his Ph.D. in art history at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, where he studied with his longtime mentor Dr. William H. Gerdts. A leading scholar of American art. Dr. Weber has served as a curator at several museums, and as the director of research and exhibitions at a leading New York gallery. He has curated many exhibitions of historical and contemporary art. Among other topics he has written on the art of William Merritt Chase, Robert Frederick Blum, Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi and Stuart Davis, and has organized shows on such diverse topics as the apple and rose in American art, silverpoint drawing and contemporary figurative sculpture. In recent years he has been researching, lecturing and writing on the art of the historical Woodstock art colony, including such sculptors as Raoul Hague, Alexander Archipenko, Wilhelm Hunt Diederich and Tomas Penning.

The Sculptors Guild
The mission of the Sculptors Guild is to promote, encourage, and support sculptors and sculpture through personal interaction, professional development, exhibitions and community outreach.

The Sculptors Guild was founded in 1937 and is one of the oldest artist-run organizations in New York City. The founders were at the forefront of American Modernism rejecting the staid conventions of traditional figurative art. Their primary objective, as stated in an early exhibition catalogue was: “to unite sculptors of all progressive aesthetic tendencies into a vital organization.”
More info soon.

Author: Martin Dawber
Forward: Karen Santry
Book Cover: Karen Santry

To smoke out the images in this exciting book, Martin Dawber has become a kind of Pied Piper eliciting, with astounding digital pitch, the cutting-edge visions of hundreds of fashion illustrators around the world.

Encountering his artists in the light of monitors, at the foot of fashion runways, on the streets of Paris and in the pages of little-known magazines, Dawber found fashion art alive and well, albeit changed. HIs subjects do not portray fashion in beautiful isolation as was common in the 50’s and 60’s, they transpose it – with seamless integration – into contemporary lifestyle.

Coffee at Starbucks, skateboard ramps, Shoe Fest at Bergdorf’s, and even the bedroom, all provide a new stage for the daily interaction of fashion and lifestyle. Make no mistake, though, what Dawber captures is anything but mundane. His ability to dictate new trends by showing us images we see every day but in a startling new way amazed me from cover to cover.

Line, like the baton of a skilled maestro, he takes the viewer throughout The Big Book of Fashion Illustration making drawing a central theme. Whether the artist is using a Number 4 pencil, or a Wacom tablet line is tantamount. Throughout history, the skilled use of line has always been one of the most effective artistic methods used to convey emotion. Dawber employs this time-honored technique to delight and surprise us juxtaposing high fashion and tears, heartbroken women face to face with gorgeous, well-dressed, men, bored sprawling youths on skateboards, and angry bad boys flying around the hood like a pack of hornets, to name a few.

In the ongoing and ruthless competition between fashion illustration and fashion photography, the confluence of hands-on materials, the latest digital programs, and the best use of attitude, character, and–of course–style (which always comes from within) are what wins.

And the artists in this book are winning. All born of a generation deeply influenced by comic books, gaming, music videos and cartoons, the multi-vantage points enliven the illustrations, inviting viewers to participate as opposed to keeping them at a distance behind the velvet ropes. Page after page, sexuality is brazenly flaunted, often turning the viewer into a voyeur. This is fashion illustration at its best, incorporating every weapon of seduction. Hang on to your hats and wallets – these formerly endangered artists are out to get you!

What’s more, these illustrators come from many cultures and countries. Any reader attempting to identify the roots of each illustrator will be happy to find that East has been busy meeting West creating a truly inclusive global representation of fashion illustration.

Karen Santry, Associate Professor Illustration
Fashion Institute of Technology, New York NY
Executive Vice President, Fashion Art Bank Inc. (USA and Japan)
Westbeth Artist’s Housing since 1990!

Karen Santry on Westbeth website

Women Celebrate Women

August !2 – August 31, 2021

El Barrio’s Art Space
PO 109
215 East 99th Street
New York, NY

Yvonne Lamarr-Rogers in collaboration with El Barrio’s Art Space PS 109 presents the SECOND ANNUAL WOMEN CELEBRATE WOMEN

A multi-media group exhibition celebrating women as reflected in the creative work of New York women artists.

Exhibition curator and New York-based mixed media artist, teaching artist and jewelry design- er, Yvonne Lamar-Rogers says the mission of this year’s Women Celebrate Women exhibition is to celebrate and honor women of all backgrounds. In the words of playwright Ntozake Shange, “Where there is a woman, there is magic.”

Originally planned for Women’s History Month in March 2020, the annual exhibition will instead be held this year in August due to the coronavirus pandemic. Organizers look forward to hold- ing future Women Celebrate Women exhibitions in March.

The public is welcome to view the amazing collection of multi-media creative works in the heart of an East Harlem artistic community at the beautiful El Barrio’s Artspace PS109, a previously abandoned public school building that was transformed into a community housing complex for artists. The circa-1899 landmark building offers beautiful space for the arts as well as important cultural programming in the East Harlem community.

Links: Christina Maile website

Westbeth Community Room
July 16, 2021 at 7PM
FREE

I Called Him Morgan is a 2016 Swedish produced documentary film written and directed by Kasper Collin which gives an account of the life of and relation between jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan and his common-law wife Helen Morgan, later responsible for his murder in February 1972.

In Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan noted: “Artistic, obsessive and intoxicating, “I Called Him Morgan” is a documentary with a creative soul, and that makes all the difference. Using a dazzling blend of cinematic tools, aural as well as visual, Collin recreates both individual lives and an entire world. As a slice of recovered and illuminated time, “I Called Him Morgan” has few peers. /…/ The film’s centerpiece interview is an arresting one-of-a-kind narrative that Helen Morgan herself recorded on a cassette-tape recorder a month before she died. Speaking with writer and teacher Larry Reni Thomas, she details her difficult life, her relationship with Morgan and how and why she came to shoot him at a Manhattan jazz club named Slugs in the midst of a blizzard so terrible that it delayed ambulances, contributing to her husband’s death. What makes “Morgan” such an exceptional film is that Collin, with a combination of good fortune and great skill, has built on this excellent verbal foundation with transfixing visuals that set a powerful mood. Regardless of whether you care deeply about jazz, the poetry of Collin’s filmmaking and the poignancy of the couple’s story will win you over. As a piece of history and a personal journey, “I Called Him Morgan” is cinema to cherish.

Edward Lee Morgan (July 10, 1938 – February 19, 1972) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer
One of the key hard bop musicians of the 1960s, Morgan came to prominence in his late teens, recording on John Coltrane’s Blue Train (1957) and with the band of drummer Art Blakey before launching a solo career. Morgan stayed with Blakey until 1961 and started to record as leader in the late ’50s. His song “The Sidewinder”, on the album of the same name, became a surprise crossover hit on the pop and R&B charts in 1964, while Morgan’s recordings found him touching on other styles of music as his artistry matured. Soon after The Sidewinder was released, Morgan rejoined Blakey for a short period. After leaving Blakey for the final time, Morgan continued to work prolifically as both a leader and a sideman with the likes of Hank Mobley and Wayne Shorter, becoming a cornerstone of the Blue Note label.

Monday July 5, 2021
3:00PM – 4:30PM
AT THE PLAYGROUND
LITTLE ISLAND (located at 14th St and the Hudson River)

*Performance is FREE but you need timed entry tickets for this event.
LINK for timed entry tickets.*https://littleisland.org/timed-entry-reservations/

SO EXCITED TO INTRODUCE MY NEW BAND, ROOTS TO SHOOTS

Michael Moss (tenor and soprano saxes, flute), Alexis Marcelo (keys),
Adam Lane (bass), Michael Wimberly (djembe, African percussion),
Ismael Baiz (congos, bongos, South American percussion)

FYI: We also have been invited to perform again at Little Island on Wednesday, September 8th at
6 pm in the Glade — letting you know way in advance!

Chase Bank 302 W 12 St NY, NY
Opening Reception, Thursday, July 1, 2021, 3:00-5:00PM

July 1 – 31, 2021 •:
Mon – Fri 9am – 5pm; Sat – 10am-3pm

Celebrating her 50th anniversary living in Greenwich Village’s historical Westbeth Artist Housing photographer, SuZen, will be exhibiting her evocative, dream-like color landscapes, taken along the Hudson River and other places, capture ethereal atmospheric realms to enter. Fog, usually associated with the unknown, is much like our living in the pandemic. Its veils of Reality and Illusion have been SuZen’s constant artistic exploration. The FOGseries is a culmination of her ongoing theme of Light & Spirit.

The trajectory of her art from the darkroom and galleries and museums exhibitions to gracing Times Square with her 40’ x 25’ painted mural, Flowing Light, transformed her artistic energy into NYC’s public arena. In 1982, she founded, Art for the People – bringing artists together creating numerous inter-arts events with installations and performances in such NYC iconic venues as the World Trade Center, JFK Airport, Port Authority Bus Terminal and Central Park, with grants from National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts and New York Foundation for the Arts.

Her artwork is exhibited and collected internationally. Most recently, during lockdown in Portugal, she wrote a book, “Things I Learned Along the Way”, which is available on Amazon (bit.ly/Things_Learned).