WSW Bids Farewell to Ann Kalmbach at 10th Annual Gala & Auction

  |  May 16, 2017

Women Studio Workshop’s founders in 1979. Left to right: Barbara Leoff Burge, Ann Kalmbach, Tatana Kellner, and Anita Wetzel.

 

Ann Kalmbach is retiring, but you’d never know it. Her life is intimately entangled with the Women’s Studio Workshop, which she’s run for the past 43 years.

The last of the Workshop’s four co-founders to leave the organization, she is devoted to positively impacting people’s lives. At WSW, success means that more women have the time, resources, and agency to articulate their experiences of the world—whatever that looks like.

 

Excerpt from Scene Around Rosendale, a series of photographic postcards by Tatana Kellner.

“I think people can easily do good with what they’re given,” she says. “In that sense, I always thought of the Workshop as church work. It’s a safe place. It’s a voice and a community. If I’m proud of anything, it’s the sense that for some artists, the experience here has been life-changing.”

Ann Kalmbach and a resident artist working in WSW’s silkscreen studio, 1984.

The principle of serving where you are with what you have is the banner WSW has been waving for the last 43 years, and, if Ann has her way, will be waving the next 43—and beyond.

Join WSW in celebrating Ann Kalmbach at their 10th Annual Gala & Auction, Sunday May 21, 2017 at the Senate Garage in Kingston, NY. Visit wsorkshop.org/gala to purchase tickets.

 

Ann Kalmbach working with resident artist Zarina in WSW’s printmaking studio, 1991.

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