Visible /Invisible:
Westbeth Graphics Studio
Printmakers and Guests

Established printmakers exhibit innovative and traditional fine art prints.

The printed object is created in moments of invisibility. The swirl of ink between press and plate undergoes a secret transformation only made visible when the printmaker pulls the paper away.

The printmakers of the Westbeth Graphic Studio and their Guests using innovative and traditional techniques explore the boundary between the seen and the unseen.

The exhibit features monoprints, polyester plate lithography, collography, aquatint, linocuts, encaustic monotypes, intaglio, woodcuts, and letterpress.

PARTICIPANTS

MARY FRANK
Mary Frank’s career spans 5 decades. She was largely self-taught and never had any formal training as a sculptor. She was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1984, the recipient of numerous awards and honors including two Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Awards in 1973 and 1983, the Lee Krasner Award of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 1993 and the Joan Mitchell Grant Award in 1995. In 1990 she was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1994.
Currently she has works included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Art at Yale University and the Jewish Museum.
She has also produced many paintings and works in various other media, especially printmaking. Her works are in New York’s Whitney Museum, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and many others.

KATHY CARACCIO
Kathy Caraccio is a master platemaker & printer and the proprietor of K. Caraccio Etching/Printmaking Studio in New York City since 1977. She has collaborated with and editioned for many reputable artists: Emma Amos, Romare Beardon, Mel Bochner and Louise Nevelson. She has taught printmaking at the National Academy School of Fine Art, NYU, Columbia University, Pratt Institute, FIT, and Women’s Studio Workshop.
Kathy’s work is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum. She is a member of the Rutgers Archives for Printmaking Studios.

Years of collaborative printmaking, visits to studios and numerous conversations with artist about their artistic journeys have taught me that most of us rationalize our creative process. Most artists, however, function on an unconscious level. Contemplating “the invisible/visible” I thought about the part of my process where my hands take over and I watch them make the art seemingly beyond my control. Maintaining an open mind and a fascination for play, I trust my muscle memory and intuition to guide my subconscious to be the creator of what I am exploring

Statement by Kathy Caraccio for the October 17th to Nov 20th 2015 at the Westbeth Gallery

MINDY BELLOFF
Artist Mindy Belloff produces fine letterpress printed book editions and broadsides at her Union Square studio, under the imprint Intima Press. She has been creating art for over 30 years as a painter, photographer, mixed media installation and book artist. Her works are in numerous permanent collections including the Library of Congress, the V&A Museum, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Mindy has exhibited at multiple venues nationally and internationally, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Sculpture Center, and PS 122. She is a MacDowell Fellow, recipient of an NEA Book Grant, and a Puffin Foundation Grant for her contemporary printing of the Declaration of Independence, re-written to include “all People.” Her mixed media artwork has been reviewed by Holland Cotter in The New York Times, her artist’s books have been included in publications including 500 Handmade Books, and her book edition titled W2LZX received an award for
Excellence in Book Design.

A native New Yorker born in Brooklyn, she holds an MA from NYU, and has numerous years as an art educator and university art professor. She offers ongoing workshops and private tutorials in printmaking, letterpress printing, book arts, and bookbinding at her studio. Inspired by Stieglitz’s Intimate Gallery, she opened Intima Gallery in upstate NY last year, showcasing fine prints on paper. Mindy Belloff’s new book edition “In the Garden of Earthly Delights,” is inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s 3-panel painting. Please visit IntimaPress.com for more information.

CHRISTINA MAILE
Christina Maile is a printmaker and painter. She works in polyester plate lithography, lino cut and monoprint. Her work was featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is shown regularly in galleries in NYC and Maine.

She is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Studio grant, and is part of the artist database of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. She is a licensed landscape architect with work featured in Garden Design Magazine, and Landscape Architecture Magazine. Her design writings have been published in On-Site Journal. She is a co founder of one of the first feminist theaters in New York City, the Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective.

CLAUDIA VARGAS
Claudia Vargas received her MFA from The Ecole Nationale des Beaux Artes in Paris where she studied for 6 years. She has been actively involved in international residencies, having completed a one month residency in Tibet at the Studio of Master Tsering Wangchok and a two month residency at the Cholamandal Artist’s Colony in India.

Claudia Vargas’work has been written about in Cambio 16, New York Magazine, and the America Journal of Germany.

An interview with Louise Bourgeois discussing Claudia’s work was included in La Riviere Gentilee”, a film by Brigitte Cornand. Her works are included in the collections of The W. Pincus, J Peabody, and La Fondation Salomon pour lÁrt CVontemporain. Solo exhibitions venues include La Maison de l’Amerique Latine, Galerie A.S. in Knokke le Zoute, De Fabriek in Eindhoven, and the Durst Organization in New York. Group exhibition highlights include “Polarities”curated by the late Willoughby Sharp at the Durst Organization in New York, Musee des Beaux Arts de Caen and ART/MA in Budapest.

PARVIZ MOHASSEL
Parviz Mohassel studied with Dan Rice, Abstract Expressionist painter and Black Mountain graduate. Mohassel attended The Art Students League in New York, and holds degrees from Tehran University, Iran, and City College, New York, as well as a MA degree in Architecture from Pratt Institute and a Ph.D in Philosophy from The New School.

Currently he is working on the concepts of transformation in Persian miniature paintings and depiction of the fragmented landscapes of ancient Persian ruins particularly of the Parthian and Sasanian periods. These references and painterly interpolations are presented in an abstract pictorial language in my paintings and monoprints.

He has participated in numerous exhibitions, and his work is in many private collections.

CLAIRE ROSENFELD
Claire Rosenfeld, MFA, exhibits her figurative expressionist paintings, drawings and prints nationally and internationally. Solo exhibits include Museo de la Ciudad (Queretaro, Mexico), the Painting Center, Prince Street Gallery, Westbeth Gallery, and Michael Ingbar, and Silvermine Guild, in the United States.

Rosenfeld was awarded artist residencies at Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain), Fundacion Central Cultural (Dominican Republic), Michael Karolyi Foundation (France), MacDowell Colony, Ossabaw Island Project, Millay Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, amongst others in the United States, and a Gottleib Foundation grant.

FRANCIA TOBACMAN SMITH
Francia Tobacman Smith has had a long career as a painter, printmaker and teacher.
She has exhibited widely in the USA and Europe at museums, colleges and galleries.

The artist is the recipient of grants from the Gottlieb Foundation,
National Endowment for the Arts and NY Foundation for the Arts.

Francia was co-director and teacher for the Atelier des Arts,
a summer study abroad program in French Switzerland for 10 years.
She has also been a visiting artist at numerous colleges and museums
around the country.

Francia with Christina Maile is currently working on a documentary about the
” Children who grew up at Westbeth Artists Housing ” in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

WILLIAM KENNON
William Kennon is a printmaker and painter. He holds a B.A. in Comparative Arts from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.A. in Art History from Columbia University. He studied drawing, painting and printmaking at the Art Students League in New York.

Mr. Kennon has received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and awards from the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA), the Butler Museum of American Art, the Art Students League, the American Artists Professional League, Allied Artists and Audubon Artists.
He has been affiliated with the Westbeth Gallery and Hirschl and Adler Galleries in New York and the Galerie Albert Benamou in Paris.

“As an artist my primary concern has been to express an emotional response to particular locations. I organize my work around strongly formal designs emphasizing relationships between lights and darks to create specific moods, times of day, weather conditions and qualities of atmosphere.”

GERALD MARCUS
Gerald Marcus works mainly with intaglio techniques. He has shown his work in many exhibitions in New York, nationally and internationally including, The National Academy of Design; The Hollar Society, Prague; The International Print Center New York; The Susan Teller Gallery, New York; Iowa State University; The Lancaster Museum, Lancaster, PA; The City University of New York; The Trenton City Museum; The Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ; and Smith College.

He is a former president of the Society of American Graphic Artists. He is represented by the Prince Street Gallery in New York, and the Concept Gallery in Pittsburgh.