Anita Wetzel (1949 – 2021) received a BFA in Painting from SUNY New Paltz and subsequently co-founded the Women’s Studio Workshop along with artists Barbara Leoff Burge, Ann Kalmbach, and Tatana Kellner. Wetzel’s love of music, especially jazz, connected her to the Creative Music Studio (CMS) in the late 1970s/early 1980s, where she wrote grants for state and federal funding. There, she met and heard the live music of celebrated jazz greats Ornette Coleman, George Lewis, John Zorn, and Cecil Taylor, among others. Jazz greatly influenced her art — her canvases are striking for their playful rhythms of line and color, and jaunty angular convergences that come alive, eliciting a unique buoyancy. Her 2021 memorial exhibition, Walking Lightly With Intention, was held at WSW later that year.

The Anita Wetzel Fellowship for Visual Artists was founded with financial support from her memorial fund.