Founded in early 2012, the West Harlem Food & Beverage Association is uniquely positioned as an all-industry trade association, representing the interests of every segment of the food and beverage industry in West Harlem, including:
Restaurants/cafes Bars & Wine shops Local & Regional Manufacturers Retailers/Wholesalers Sales Agents Suppliers
WHF&BA discussions focus on issues that affect our businesses such as marketing, promotion, tourism, rezoning, commercial leasing, and capitalization. We invite key community and civic leaders to our monthly networking meetings.
The West Harlem Art Fund, Inc. is a fourteen year old public arts organization. WHAF offers exhibition opportunities for artists and creative professionals wishing to share their talent with residents Uptown in Manhattan and around the City of New York. The West Harlem Art Fund, Inc. showcases art and culture in open, public spaces to add aesthetic interest in our city; promote historical and cultural heritage; and support community involvement in local development.
Uptown POPS! is a collaboration with other partners to bring food and art together to the community.
Located: Montefiore Park (136th -138th Streets and Broadway) Dates: September 15-16 September 22-23 September 29-30
Montefiore Park
Bounded by Broadway, Hamilton Place, and West 138th Street, this park honors Sir Moses Haim Montefiore (1784-1885), a distinguished nineteenth century Jewish philanthropist. Montefiore was born into a wealthy Italian Jewish merchant family in Livorno, Italy. Several years later, his family immigrated to Great Britain. In 1812, Montefiore married Judith Cohen (bef. 1812-bef. 1885), making him the brother-in-law of the noted British financier Nathan Meyer Rothschild (1777-1836). Soon after the marriage, he became Rothschild’s stockbroker as well. By 1824, Montefiore had amassed a considerable personal fortune on the London stock exchange. He used this money to help found the Imperial Continental Gas Association (which pioneered gas lighting for homes in Britain) and the Provincial Bank of Ireland. At age forty-four, Montefiore retired from business and devoted his time and resources to civic and Jewish community affairs.
From 1835 to 1874, he served as president of the Board of Deputies for British Jews, where he worked to end discriminatory practices against European and Middle Eastern Jews. Montefiore personally financed many efforts aimed at helping Jews living in Palestine, which today is the nation of Israel. There, he acquired land on behalf of several Jewish communities and attempted to bolster the region’s economy by introducing printing presses and factories. He inspired the founding of several agricultural settlements as well as Yemin Moshe, which today is located outside of Jerusalem’s Old City and is named for Montefiore. In 1846, Montefiore visited Russia to ask authorities to stop their persecution of Jews. In 1863 and 1867, he traveled to Morocco and Romania for the same purpose. On each of these visits, Montefiore was able to obtain better treatment for Jewish people. Montefiore’s imposing physical stature (he stood at 6 feet, 3 inches tall) combined with his strong religious beliefs and his philanthropy earned him considerable respect throughout Great Britain and the rest of the world. In 1837, he was elected Sheriff of London. That year, in recognition of his humanitarian efforts, Queen Victoria (1819-1901) knighted Montefiore.
In 1847, she bestowed upon him the title of baronet. In 1884, Montefiore’s 100th birthday was declared a public holiday in Jewish communities around the world. That year, the Montefiore Home for Chronic Individuals was formed on 84th Street and York Avenue (Avenue A) by prominent New York City Jewish philanthropists. Montefiore passed away the following year in his home outside of London; his legacy, however, lived on. In 1889, the Home relocated to Broadway between 138th and 139th Streets, to the north of this very park. In 1913, the institution, now known as Montefiore Medical Center, moved to its present location between Gun Hill Road and 210th Street in the Bronx. In 1906, pursuant to a resolution of the Board of Aldermen, the City of New York acquired this property and designated it Montefiore Park. That same year, Parks assumed jurisdiction over the property. In 1991, a renovation of the park began that was completed in 1993, the rehabilitation project completely transformed the park.
New benches and pavement were installed on the north side, and several new plantings were added. New species included the Sweetgum tree (Liquidambar stryaciflua), the Green Mountain Silver Linden tree (Tilia tomentosa ‘green mountain’), the Regent Scholar tree (Sophora japonica ‘regent’), as well as flowering bulbs, including the crocuses and the daffodils. The Montefiore Park Neighborhood Association, established in 1996, assists Parks in maintaining this gently sloping triangle. The Association initiates new plantings, facilitates community involvement, and organizes events, including an annual Christmas tree lighting. Today, Montefiore Park serves as both a memorial to a dedicated humanitarian and a place to rest the body and restore the senses.
Compass Yoga
Compass Yoga is comprised of a group of committed people with a passion to serve and create a healthier world for all people. We teach the therapeutic benefits of yoga and meditation to beginners. For more information visit
http://compassyoga.com
Harlem Wine Gallery
The Harlem Wine Gallery is a small wine shop that also serves as an art gallery for the works of local artists. And like the wine in this shop, the art is also for sale.
J’s Petit Cacao
offers a variety of artisanal quality chocolates. In addition, we offer information through special events that discuss the health benefits of chocolate and it’s history. J’s Petit Cacao introductory product line will highlight premium chocolate popcorn in several varieties, global and classic chocolate truffles and barks.
Bohemia Realty LLC
is a dynamic team of dedicated real estate professionals that focuses on residential and commercial properties in Harlem, Upper Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods. From pre-war walk up rentals to new development condos to store fronts, our goal is to provide clients with a personal, honest, and complete experience when finding a new home or professional space. We firmly believe that it’s possible for all New Yorkers to have light, space, and a renovated bathroom. . . and not have to give up dinner in order to afford it.
Lorenz Latin Dance Studio
is the Premier Salsa/Latin Dance Studio in New York City, having two locations in Queens (Glendale and Corona), our location in the Bronx on Castle Hill Avenue, and our brand new location in New York City at 2153 Second Avenue (and East 110th Street), and has attracted students from all over Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, New York City and the Long Island areas. Their studio offers many different classes during the week. Classes range from Salsa/Mambo, Latin Hustle, Merengue, Bachata, Swing, and Ballroom. WE ALSO OFFER ZUMBA CLASSES! Our THREE beautifully new spacious Dance Studios are all convenient by public transportation and by car.
Weekend Walks
WEEKEND WALKS is a major component of NYC DOT’s World Class Streets initiative, which seeks to develop and care for the public realm, the space between buildings. For many of us, the streets are literally our front yards.
Weekend Walks sites are in all five boroughs from May through October in 2012. Each event is organized and hosted by a local partner, and will feature a number of activities including music, arts and crafts, classes, and youth programming. Weekend Walks highlight local cultural institutions, non-profits, and economic resources. The events promote healthy, safe recreation as well as local businesses, and create highquality public space where community members can come together.
The Chipped Cup
Hand Crafted Espresso Drinks, Exceptional Drip Coffee, Divine Teas & Pastries that make you wish everyday was a cheat day! A place that you can sit down and read a book in or for outdoor seating and ambience. You've waited long enough and we've been working hard to make it all a reality!
Bike and Roll
Bike and Roll is celebrating 10 years as America’s leading bicycle rental and tours company. We are committed to delivering an exceptional experience to every guest! This is achieved with great rides and fun tours, quality rental equipment, safe routes, and friendly service.
Whether you are a local or a tourist, Bike and Roll is a great way to explore the city, see the sites, and get around town in a fun, healthy, and green way.
Chokolat
Good coffee, friendly service and nice surroundings and vibe, and especially homemade pastries.
West Harlem Art Fund’s Past Works
Three Men Walking
Renka
Gumboot Juba
Remix, Repurpose
Counting Sheep
Ghost Net
Sleeping Beauty
The West Harlem Art Fund Staff & Artists
Executive Director & Chief Curator
Savona Bailey-McClain currently lives and works in New York City. She is an independent curator, producer and preservation advocate. The range of McClain’s practice has included sculpture, drawings, performance, sound, and mixed media. McClain is the Executive Director and Chief Curator for The West Harlem Art Fund, Inc. a fourteen year old public art organization serving neighborhoods around the City. Her public art installations have been seen in the
New York Times, Art Daily, Artnet Magazine, Los Angeles Times, DNAinfo, among others. McClain strives for a soulful, meaningful connection with the public and the “arts”. It simply has to be approachable as far as she is concerned. McClain has installed at Times Square, DUMBO, Soho, NoLita, Williamsburg, Governors Island, Queens and Greater Harlem (East, Central and West). McClain has a liberal arts degree from the University of Pittsburgh.
Curator Assistant
Myla Seabrook has been painting, drawing, and writing from a very young age. Early on in life, she developed a love of forms and colors of all kinds, mainly through constant use of colored pencils, pastels, and watercolor paint. Myla continued to paint in oil until high school in 2004, at which point she attended the High School of Art and Design and began to work in various media. Upon graduation from high school Myla moved back to her first love of painting, and took on a double major in Fine Art and Creative Writing at Hofstra University in 2007. She began to turn her art classes into supplemental material for my writing classes, creating illustrations to go with children’s stories. Myla graduated Magna Cum Laude from Hofstra University in May 2011 with a degree in Fine Art with a concentration in painting and a degree in English – Creative Writing. She am currently an intern with the West Harlem Art Fund, and hope to eventually find a career that allows me to use my creative abilities well.
Communications Assistant
Madeline Stoken is going into her senior year and currently attends Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She majors in General Fine Arts. Madeline is originally from Carlisle Pennsylvania, but has also lived and graduated from Mercersburg Pennsylvania at Mercersburg Academy boarding school. Over the years she has worked for three jobs, and once as a volunteer. This summer, she is interning with The West Harlem Art Fund as a Communications Associate.
Graphic Designer Assistant
Julie Marie Antolijao was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised into the Philippine culture by my parents. At a young age, she had such a strong imagination and loved art. In high school she took several art classes and enjoyed drawing anime and nature landscaping on my free time. Julie still draws from time to time, but now most of her artwork is produced through the computer. She also do some light digital photography as well. At a time Julie had the privilege to work with a company who specialized in colored diamonds and custom jewelry. She worked there as the assistant to the
one assigned to make the catalogs. Julie learned how to use Adobe Photoshop CS2 and incorporate images to the catalog. As she currently is attending Berkeley College, she had taken a few classes and in Web Design and Computer Graphics classes and become familiar in software's such as Adobe Photoshop CS4, Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks. Julie currently works this summer as a graphic, photography, and catalogue development Intern.
Set Designers Nicole DeMeo is a senior at Fordham University. She is double majoring in Communications & Media Studies and Visual Arts (concentrating in photography). She was born in New York City and currently lives on Long Island. This past semester she studied abroad at City University of London and traveled extensively throughout Europe.
Angel Genares is a junior at Bryn Mawr College and is studying Fine Arts (concentrating in sculpture) as well as the Growth and Structure of Cities. She was born in the Philippines and moved to the Bronx, NY when she was nine years old. This summer, she is also working at a non-profit environmental research organization promoting the use of natural gas in our city's refuse fleets and doing research on how our organic waste is managed.
Social Media Assistant
Alia Knight was born and raised in Washington state and lives on Lopez Island. She has lived in San Juan county in the far northwest her whole life. She will graduate from the University of the Pacific, located in central California, in May of 2013 with a BA in Modern Languages. She will be serving as the Social Media intern with the West Harlem Art Fund and contributing her language skills. She is very passionate about multicultural studies and community service.
Scherezade Garcia
born in the Dominican Republic (Oct 1966) has lived in New York since arrived to study in 1986 to attend Parsons School of Design with a full scholarship based in the quality of her portfolio. Her work frequently evokes memories of faraway home and the hopes and dreams that accompany planting roots in a new land. Her solo exhibitions include “Paradise redefined” at Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, NY; Island of many Gods at the Salena Gallery, and “Theories of Freedom” @ The Humanities Art Gallery in Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY. Also, Loosely Coupled, Governors island NYC, This Side of Paradise-No Longer Empty, Souvenir at The Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ; Stories of Fallen
Angels, Museo de Arte Moderno, Santo Domingo, DR; Mary Anthony Gallery and Leonora Vega Gallery, NYC. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including “This Skin I’m in; Contemporary Dominican Art from El Museo del Barrio’s permanent collection and ! Merengue! Visual Rhythms also at El Museo del Barrio, NY, NY; The Caribbean Abroad; Contemporary Arts and Latino Migration, Newark Museum of Art, Newark, NJ. Her work was included in the Caribbean Biennial in Santo Domingo, DR in 2001 and The Havana Biennial in 2000 in Havana, Cuba, also she is a founding member of DYPG (Dominican-York Projecto Grafico. Scherezade Garcia received her AAS from Altos de Chavon School of Design, La Romana, DR, her BFA from Parsons School of Design, NY, NY and received her MFA from The City College of New York, NYC 2010. Scherezade lives with her husband, NYC photographer William Vazquez, and her two budding artist daughters, Gabrielle and Montserrat in Brooklyn, NY, where she also has her studio. Scherezade is an adjunct faculty at Parsons The New School of Design in NYC. For more information, please check her website at http://www.scherezade.net.
Peter Goldwater
was born in NYC and raised in northern New Jersey. He received a BBA from Baruch Collage and my MFA from Pratt Institute. For the last 6 years his studio has been located in The Brickhouse Ceramic Art Center in Long Island City. This past May his work was shown at the Gotham Center in Queensboro Plaza. Last summer he was part of a group show on Governor Island organized by The West Harlem Art Fund. Peter's website is pgceramics.com.
Peter works with cone 6 stoneware. He alter basic wheel throws cone shapes, and combine these shapes with black iron pipefittings. This technique has allowed him to work in a scale not common to ceramics. His pieces move in straight lines or in and out of themselves, twisting and turning dealing with movement, volume and form.
Allen Anthony Hansen
has exhibited work at Whitney Museum of American Art at the Equitable Center, Edward Thorpe Gallery, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Proctor Art Gallery at Bard College, P.S. 122, Governor's Island West Harlem Arts Fund, Abrazo Interno Gallery, ABC No Rio, the Providence Art Windows Invitational and Exit Art. His work is included in the collections of the Readers Digest, Ronald Lauder, Barbara Schwartz, Peter Klein, Edward Thorpe, Kimille Taylor, Stephen R. Weart and Ann Partlow. His 1993 Solo Exhibition at Carolyn J. Roy Gallery was reviewed favorably in Japan's Art Magazine and listed in New York magazine. Catalog essay by Susan Edwards.
Dianne Smithis
an abstract painter, sculptor, and installation artist. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in New York City’s Soho and Chelsea art districts as well as, numerous galleries and institutions throughout the United States. She is an educator in the field of Aesthetic Education at Lincoln Center Institute (LCI), which is part of New York City’s Lincoln Center For the Performing Arts. Since the invitation to join the Institute over six years ago she has taught k-12 in public schools throughout the TriState area. Her work as a teaching artist also extends to under graduate and graduate courses in various colleges and universities such as: Lehman College, Brooklyn College, Columbia University Teachers College, City College, and St. John’s University.
Recently she was invited to join the team at The Center For Arts Education (CAE) also in New York City. Its main focus is to restore quality arts education for each of New York City’s more than one million children in public schools. CAE develops model teaching and learning programs for schools, parents, cultural organizations, and teaching artists, as well as help parents become advocates and campaigners for arts in their children’s education. In 2007, she was one of the artists featured in the Boondoggle Film Documentary Colored Frames. The film took a look back at fifty years in African-American Art, and also featured other artists such as Benny Andrews, Ed Clark and Danny Simmons. That same year the historical Abyssinian Baptist Church, which is New York’s oldest African American church commissioned Smith to create the artwork commemorating their 2008 Bicentennial. In addition, she co-produced an online radio show the New Palette, for ArtonAir.org (Art International Radio) dedicated to visual artists of color. In1995, she presented Poet Dr. Maya Angelou and Broadway Choreographer George Faison each with one of her paintings: Spirit of My Ancestors I and II. Her work is also in the private collections of Danny Simmons, Vivica A. Fox, Rev. and Mrs. Calvin O. Butts, III, Cicely Tyson, Arthur Mitchell and Terry McMillian. Dianne is a Bronx native of Belizean descent. She attended LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, the Otis Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Smith is currently pursuing her MFA at Transart Institute in Berlin, and will receive her degree summer 2012. She currently lives and works in Harlem, NY.
Ina Archer
has had multimedia works and films have been shown nationally including in Cinema Project’s EXPANDED FRAMES: a celebration and examination of critical cinema in Portland, Oregon, “Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970″ at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, GA., and The Contemporary Art Museum, Houston. Her awards include residences at Vermont Studio Center, Blue Mountain Centers and Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy. Ina was a Studio Artist in the Whitney Independent Study program, a NYFA multidisciplinary Fellow, a 2005 Creative Capital grantee in film and video, and a 2010 nominee for the Anonymous Was A
Woman award. Archer is adjunct faculty in Foundation at Parsons The New School for Design. She is a longtime member of New York Women in Film and Television’s Women’s Film Preservation Fund and a board member of IMAP, Independent Media Arts Preservation. She earned a BFA in Film/Video from RISD and a Master’s in Cinema Studies at NYU focusing on race, preservation, early sound cinema and technology.
Patrick Singh
was born to an Indian father and a French mother, Patrick was predestined to multicultural encounters. He spent his childhood traveling between the South of France and London, England. He is a holder of a State Diploma in Managing Leisure and Cultural Activities – French “Diplome d’Etat Relatif aux Fonctions d’Animation”.
Since 1997, Singh’s career has been punctuated by international exhibitions – collective and individual – along with artistic residencies throughout Europe, South America and Asia. Singh’s work is exhibited in multiple collections, including the Anne Cros Gallery located in the South of France. His visions come to life under his brush with out his using models.
Kyu Seok Oh
is a sculptor based in New York who works with handmade paper. He uses paper because it is a diverse material. It can be strong like the roots of the trees from which it was made, or it can be delicate, easily breaking down and crumbling at the slightest touch. In this way, paper is similar to life in the fact that there is no sure thing. The process of sculpting with paper expresses this delicate balance that exists in everyday life.
Contact Info: The West Harlem Art Fund, Inc. 131 Edgecombe Avenue Suite 5D New York, NY 10030
347.365.0132