Art
Art Education
Linda (Greco) Townsend '59 is a retired art educator and now lives in Minden, Nevada. She belongs to a few art galleries where she exhibits her watercolors and pastels. "When I was attending New Paltz, the Art Department was only five years old," wrote Townsend. "It has certainly grown over the years."
Debra Kramer Branitz '73 is currently showing work at POSH Design Studio Art Gallery in Delray Beach, Florida.
Debra Kramer Branitz, "Wash Day II” 30” x 40” Oil on Canvas
Ceramics
Ceramics BFA students Taussen Brewer, Ibrahim Khazzaka, Erika Port, Avery Wells, and Hee Joo Yang, and Associate Professor Bryan Czibecz showed their work in the group exhibition "Object/Image" from late March through mid-May at the Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY, in tandem with Associate Professor Anat Shiftan's exhibition "The Garden."
Metal
Funlola Coker '22g is the recipient of the Thayer Fellowship, a $7,000 award given to one graduating student from across the SUNY system. The Fellowship is awarded based on talent, achievement, and potential as a professional artist. Coker will use these funds to continue her art practice and plan a trip to Nigeria to support her creative research.
Funlola Coker
Kaitlyn Graves '18 helped craft the Lombardi Trophy for this year's Super Bowl as silversmith for Tiffany & Co. The seven-pound piece takes four months of labor to complete. Check out more photos @newpaltzmetal on Instagram.
Kaitlyn Graves '18
Dawoon Jeong '22g has been awarded a coveted Emerging Artist Residency at the Baltimore Jewelry Center. The residency will be for three months, beginning this winter. The residency is well supported, allows the artist time and space to develop their work, and culminates in an artist talk and exhibition at BJC.
Daewoon Jeong "Series of Harpoons," 2022, formed and fabricated copper
Painting & Drawing
Eileen Townsend '22g won a Best in SUNY Award as part of the 2022 SUNY Art Exhibition Series for their piece "Drawings From The Death of Sardanaplus."
Eileen Townsend, "Sardanaplus #1," walnut ink, charcoal, gouache, and pencil on paper, 40” x 33”, 2021
Photography & Related Media
The Ford, Mellon Foundations named photography and related media MFA student Koyoltzintli one of the winners of a $50,000 Latinx Artist Fellowship. Read ArtNet's coverage of the winners here.
Printmaking
Keri Sheheen '13 was featured in the Staten Island Advanvce/silive.com, where she talks about her transition from working as a cake designer in her family's bakery to launching her own "creepy but cute" art business, Parlor Tricks LLC.
Carly Still '06 was interviewed by ArtNet about her job as the managing horticulturalist of the Met Cloisters.
Sculpture
James Biederman '69 presented his one-person exhibition, "Hand Written Letters," at Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York City in January and February of this year.
Art History
Clara Pierson '22 gave an excellent presentation on her Honors Program thesis, entitled "Beautiful Losers: Street Art and the Museum." Pierson's thesis is about the exhibition "Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture," which opened in 2004 and traveled to several venues in the U.S. and abroad in the next few years, each venue presenting a unique version. The exhibition's approach to bringing street art into the museum, including in one venue, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in San Francisco, a skateboard bowl, was controversial. Some critics viewed it as a "sell-out." Pierson proposes, however, that the exhibition was a positive move and successful because it brought street art to a broad audience.
Clara Pierson with her Honors Program thesis advisor, Professor Reva Wolf, at Clara's May 5 Honors Program presentation.
Music
Rose Stoller '19 (Music/Jazz Vocal Performance) was booked to perform a Sofar Sounds tour across the U.S. Sofar Sounds, a global movement which intends to bring the spark back to live music, creates intimate performances in unique locations in over 400 cities around the world. Stoller had show dates in New York City, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, and Denver. Sofar Sounds supports burgeoning artists by providing a guaranteed listening environment, letting artists take new risks, share new music, and connect with new fans.
Rose Stoller and Brian van Oosterum perform in Austin, Texas in October 2021. Photo by Tiffany Jean Chen Photography
Theatre Arts
Martin Benesh '22, a theatre arts major with a concentration in design and technology and a minor in digital design and fabrication, was named the SUNY New Paltz Class of 2022 Valedictorian. Benesh came to New Paltz from Iowa to pursue a career as a stage designer, and will be heading to New Mexico to start a position with the Santa Fe Opera. Read the full campus news story on Benesh.
Class of 2022 Valedictorian Martin Benesh (Theatre Arts)
An original puppet short by Spencer Cohen '16 called "Eye Can't See You" has been selected to be included in the New York Flash Film Festival.
Nico Torrez '22 debuted their devised theatre piece "Pages from a Love Manifesto" as part of the Department of Theatre Arts' Praxis Series at the end of April. Read a Q&A with Nico about their inspiration for the play, and the exhilaration of finally getting to direct live theatre after two years of virtual productions.
"Pages from a Love Manifesto" rehearsal photo by Ashley Morrison
