Newsletter

Robin Arnold

Longtime painting and drawing professor Robin Arnold retired from SUNY New Paltz in summer 2024, after decades of dedicated service to the Department of Art.

According to her website biography, Arnold has received numerous awards for her creative work, including a residency fellowship at the Millay Colony for the Arts and a Ford Foundation Grant. Her work has been exhibited nationally at such venues as the Axel Raben Gallery and Steinbaum Krauss Gallery in New York City; the New York State Museum in Albany; Wake Forest University; and Cornell University.

We are honored to have counted Arnold among our Department of Art colleagues for decades, and wish her an enjoyable and well-deserved retirement.

Michael Asbill

Assistant professor of sculpture Michael Asbill is the recipient of a 2025 Support for Artists Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts for his project "Processing Collapse," a collaboration with student and emerging artist Ripley Butterfield ’26 (Contract).

The project was supported by Glasshouse Project, Inc, founded by MFA alum Lital Dotan and Eyal Perry. Through New York State’s continued investment in arts and culture, NYSCA has awarded $82 million this year to 509 artists and 1,497 organizations across the state.

Lynn Batchelder ’13g

Work by professor of metal and Department of Art chair Lynn Batchelder ’13g was presented in the "Missed Connections" exhibition, which was on view during Society of North American Goldsmith conference in San Diego, CA, and also during New York City Jewelry Week in November 2024.   

Additionally, Batchelder was accepted to the Winter Residency program at Penland School of Craft in Bakersville, NC, where she will continue work on projects combining stone and metal into wearable works for exhibition in the United States and Estonia.  
 

Rimer Cardillo

Professor Emeritus Rimer Cardillo was featured in Sara Fernandez Gomez's "Approach to pre-Hispanic uses in Latin American contemporary art," a scholarly article included in the January 2024 issue of Visioni LatinoAmericane. In the piece, the author investigates the works of some contemporary Latin American artists who appropriate the poetic and formal possibilities of pre-Hispanic antiquity. She highlights how these question modern identity and the oblivion of subaltern groups.

Bryan Czibesz

Bryan Czibesz, associate professor of ceramics, will serve as the juror for the International Museum of Dinnerware Design’s Sixth Biennial Juried Exhibition on the theme of "Picnic." The exhibition will be presented at the museum’s new location in Kingston, NY. Check out the call for entries on the museum's website.

Bryan Czibesz and Anat Shiftan

Associate Professor Bryan Czibesz and Professor Emerita Anat Shiftan both returned as participants in the eighth annual Hudson Valley Pottery Tour, an established studio event that builds creative community in the region and includes a number of alumni from the Ceramics Program.

Aurora de Armendi Sobrino

Assistant Professor of Printmaking Aurora De Armendi Sobrino showed six watercolors as part of "Cartografías del Alma: Echoes of Place and Memory" at Unison Arts and Learning Center in New Paltz. According to the show's curator, sculpture BFA/MFA alum and Unison executive director Marielena Ferrer-Harrington ’22 ’24g, "'Cartografías del Alma: Echoes of Place and Memory' explores the inner landscapes that shape our identities and experiences. Through the works of three artists of Hispanic Heritage, this exhibition delves into the emotional and psychological maps we carry within us—formed by memories, emotions, and the places we've known."

Additionally, De Armendi Sobrino was awarded a Dr. Nuala McGann Drescher Leave Program for her project/activity "Somos los colores de la tierra / We are the colors of the earth." In spring 2025, she will develop a new body of work at the Women’s Studio Workshop in papermaking using color pigments, plant fibers, and recycled clothing from family members. She will also conduct research on plants that produce dyes and pigments in Cuba and in her mother’s garden in Florida. De Armendi Sobrino is very grateful to Department of Art Chair Lynn Batchelder, Fine & Performing Arts Dean Jeni Mokren, the Center for International Programs' Beth Mugler Vargas, the Office of the Provost, and printmaking faculty Emilie Houssart and Kate Collyer for their support to do this creative work and research.

Cheri Ehrlich

Assistant Professor of Art Education Cheri Ehrlich presented a workshop at the NYSATA conference in November on the topic: "Does AI imitate art or does art imitate AI?"

Andrea Frank

Professor of Photography Andrea Frank is collaborating with Professor Oscar Mauricio Moreno Escarraga of UTADEO University in Bogota, Colombia on "Somatic Choreographies: Spaces of encounter between art, community, and territory." In spring 2025, they will together engage students, community, and Indigenous leaders in choreographed co-creative processes and talking circles in New Paltz and Bogota.

Escarraga will visit March 22-30, 2025 to engage with the SUNY New Paltz community and give an artist talk. Students will have the opportunity to create artwork in response to UTADEO student work for an exhibition in Bogota. An exhibition and creative System Drawing workshops are confirmed at the Art and Design Gallery of UTADEO in Bogota, Colombia in April. Interested students are encouraged to contact Frank at franka@newpaltz.edu. 

Andrea Frank and Aurora De Armendi Sobrino

Andrea Frank, associate professor in photography, and Aurora De Armendi Sobrino, assistant professor in printmaking, were awarded an Arts Mid-Hudson grant for 2025 to continue their collaborative project "Water Lines." In the early stages of this project, the artists are visiting local bodies of water including the Wallkill River, Rondout Creek, Coxing Creek, Black Creek, Esopus Creek, Peters Kill Creek, and the Hudson River, making drawings with string in collaboration with the water’s current. These drawings are being translated into watermarks. Other research for this project includes learning from waterkeepers around the world, their embodied knowledge of water, and related stories.

Matthew Friday

In his role as vice-president of the Unison Art Center, Art Professor and Graduate Coordinator Matthew Friday is collaborating with artist Lize Mogel to select artists for a National Endowment of the Arts Our Town grant funded project that will address environmental issues along the Wallkill river. Our Town is the NEA’s creative placemaking grants program. Through project-based funding, the program supports activities that integrate arts, culture, and design into local efforts that strengthen communities over the long term.

Friday also reports that SPURSE, the collaborative group he works with, was featured in a recent book "Walking as Artistic Practice" by Ellen Mueller, published April 2024. Learn more about the book on the SUNY Press website.

Eunkyung Hwang

Assistant Professor of Art Education Eunkyung Hwang was honored with the 2024-2025 Harlan E. and Suzanne Dudley Hoffa Dissertation Award in Art Education. This award recognizes the professional relevance, scholarly excellence, and clarity of presentation of a recently completed doctoral dissertation at Pennsylvania State University.

Hwang’s dissertation, "Where Are The Women’s Scars: Challenging Able-Bodied-Centered K-12 Self-Portraiture Lessons Through Misfit Memory Work," critically examines ableist and sexist assumptions about women’s bodyminds within ubiquitous self-portraiture lessons in both South Korean and U.S. K-12 art education. Her work has also been featured at international and national conferences this year, including the Art Education Research Institute (AERI) 2024 Annual Symposium at the University of Cambridge, as well as the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) 2024 Conference.

Jeff Johnson

Jeff Johnson, adjunct lecturer of wood design, was recently given a shout-out by Emmy Award-winning comedic actress Kate McKinnon on "Late Night with Seth Meyers" on NBC. In the interview, McKinnon relays her newfound love of carpentry and shows off a cabinet she recently built herself. Johnson has been one of McKinnon's woodworking instructors and mentors since she adopted the Mid-Hudson Valley as her home.

See the full interview on YouTube.

Andrea Kantrowitz

Professor of Art Education Andrea Kantrowitz was one of three artists featured in "Point of View," an exhibition featuring contemporary landscape paintings and drawings, at Kenise Barn Fine Art in Kent, Connecticut. The exhibition was on display from late October to late November 2024, and also featured David Konigsberg and Thomas Sarrantonio. View Kantrowitz's works featured in "Point of View" at KFBA's website.

Kantrowitz's work was also displayed as a solo exhibition, "Into the Woods," from late October through late November 2024 at the Painting Center in NYC. According to the Painting Center, the show "celebrates the intricate beauty and structural complexity of mushrooms Kantrowitz has discovered on her woodland walks through the forests of the Hudson Valley. The works are characterized by their extreme close-up detail, which emphasize the unique shapes, textures, and colors of each mushroom. The exhibition also features ink drawings of the forests where these mushrooms were discovered, providing a broader view of the rich ecosystem that supports these ephemeral organisms." Read more on the Painting Center's website.

Myra Mimlitsch-Gray

Professor of Metal Myra Mimlitsch-Gray's work is included in the curated exhibition "OBJECTS: USA 2024," currently on view at R and Company in NYC through January 2025. Learn more at the official Objects: USA website. The show also features works by Professor Emeritus Jamie Bennett and Metal alum Sulo Bee ’22g.

Work by Mimlitsch-Gray was also presented in a solo exhibition, "Conduit," at Brooklyn Metal Works from September through November 2024.

Itty Neuhaus

Associate Professor Itty Neuhas is currently the Stephen Pace artist in residence at Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, where she will mount a solo exhibition based on visual and experiential research conducted while camping at the base of a waterfall in Norway during her fall sabbatical leave.

Emily Puthoff

Emily Puthoff, associate professor of sculpture, received the Faculty Development Center Teaching Innovation Award for her work on the Eco Art course, which includes development of the Eco Art Lab as part of the Fine Arts Building complex. Students in the course conducted research and interviews to inform the development of the site for native plants, community, interdisciplinary exchange and learning, creative expression, and sustainable production of art materials like natural dyes and paper. Initial planting of the gardens for Eco Art Lab will commence in Spring 2025.

Nadia Sablin

Nadia Sablin, professor of photography, was selected as a Fulbright Scholar in June 2024. Sablin, who has been teaching at New Paltz since 2016, was previously selected as a 2018 winner of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for her "Aunties" project, in which she photographed more than a decade’s worth of summer visits to Alekhovshchina—a small, rural village in Russia—where members of her family have lived for generations. Congratulations on your impressive new title, Nadia!

This fall, Sablin was also an Artist in Residence at Cill Rialaig Arts Center in County Kerry, Ireland.

Suzanne Stokes, James Fossett, and Adam Mastropaolo

Cave Dogs—a multidisciplinary performing arts group that includes professor and Foundation coordinator Suzanne Stokes, professor and BSVA degree coordinator James Fossett, and Metal instructional support technician Adam Mastropaolo—gave two performances of their latest production, "Liquid States," at the Lincoln Theater in Damariscotta, Maine, in July 2024.

Cave Dogs also presented an installation of shadow and sound, "Two Trains Running," at the Maiden Lane Gallery in Kingston, NY, in October 2024 as part of the annual O+ Festival.

Amelia Toelke

Visiting Assistant Professor of Metal Amelia Toelke’s work was presented in the solo exhibition "Guilty Pleasures" in November and December at Atelier Grandon in Warsaw, Indiana. Read more about Toelke and the exhibition in Kosciusko County's Times Union newspaper.

Cheri Wheat-Schmidt

The Department of Art bid farewell to Professor Cheri Wheat-Schmidt, a longtime instructor in the Foundation program, who retired from SUNY New Paltz in summer 2024.

According to her website bio, Wheat-Schmidt's subject matter focuses on women. She grew up in New York; attended the Accademia di belle Art in Rome, Italy; and completed her graduate schooling in sculpture at Brooklyn College. Wheat-Schmidt has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome; exhibited at the Neuberger Museum, the Morris Museum, the Dorsky Museum, the Bayley Museum in Charlottesville, and other venues; and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts CETA grant. She has created commissioned sculptures for several designers—most notably, Wheat-Schmidt has collaborated with the postmodern architect Michael Graves on projects involving sculpture and architecture. Her work has been included in many publications, exhibitions and private collections.

We wish Wheat-Schmidt the best in her retirement, and thank her for the decades she spent educating and advising our students with dedication and distinction.

Dorsky Exhibit Features Art and Design Faculty

Several faculty members of the Department of Art participated in the Dorsky Museum exhibition "In and Out of Lineage," which was on display from September through December 2024.

According to the Dorsky, "'In and Out of Lineage: Tracing Artistic Heritage Through SUNY New Paltz Faculty' explores the dynamic interplay between teaching and creating. Featuring works by 20 SUNY New Paltz Art and Design faculty, the exhibition invites viewers to consider how traditions are preserved or evolved through pedagogy. By including reflections on artistic lineage from each of the exhibiting artists, the presentation illuminates the reciprocal relationship between teachers and students in the transfer of knowledge and inspiration."

The exhibition featured work by Thomas Albrecht, Robin Arnold, Michael Asbill, Lynn Batchelder, Chad Bridgewater, Bryan Czibesz, Andrea Frank, Matthew Friday, Kathy Goodell, Andrea Kantrowitz, Woojin Lee, Rena Leinberger, Kelly McGrath, Myra Mimlitsch-Gray, Emily Puthoff, Nadia Sablin, Aurora De Armendi Sobrino, Suzanne Stokes, Amelia Toelke, and Lilly Zuckerman.

Visit the Dorsky website to learn more about "In and Out of Lineage" and view more of the works included in the show.