Brianna Rascoe, 2015 BFA Graphic Design
Brianna Rascoe was the Associate Director of Design, Brand Marketing & Strategy at Kinesso, a content management and marketing company where she received the 2022 DEI Trailblazer Award. Brianna was also one of the speakers at the 2023 SUNY New Paltz Women's Leadership Summit and is an adjunct instructor in the Graphic Design Program.
Viktorsha Uliyanova, MFA, 2nd-year Photography
Viktorsha (Viktoriya) Uliyanova is a New York artist whose photographic, fiber, and installation works investigate loss, cultural identity, and trauma narrated through the prism of memory. Her practice is informed by her upbringing in the Soviet Union, political repression, and the immigrant experience. Although her art is grounded in analog photography, her work often features a dialogue between different materials including fabric, video, and found objects. Through working with cloth, alternative processes, and multimedia installations, Uliyanova builds and registers unrecorded traumatic memories that exist outside of historical archives into physical spaces and forms, making them visible.
Viktorsha received her BA in English from Hunter College in New York and is currently pursuing an MFA in Photography at State University of New Paltz. Her work has been supported by a number of grants including Di Palo-Williams grant, Sojourner Truth Fellowship, and Research for Creative Projects grant. She has taught many workshops and is currently an Instructor of Record at SUNY New Paltz.
Viktorsha did an artist talk at the Center for Photography Woodstock (CPW) in Kingston on December 15, 2022.
Demonstration in New York City. (Photo by Maedeh Ojaghlou)
Maedeh Ojaghlou, MFA first-year Photography
A story about Maedeh, Resistance: One young Iranian woman’s story was published in HudsonValleyOne.
Maedeh Ojaghlou, 28-years-old, arrived in New York City via Dubai from Tehran on an F1 student visa in August 2022. Since the 444-day siege of the American Embassy in Tehran, there has been no official American consulate presence there. When Maedeh (pr. MAH-eh-day) received her acceptance for the MFA program in photography at SUNY New Paltz, she was desperate to accept, but didn’t know how her modest, middle-class family — her father is an accountant, her mother a housewife – could afford the funds for travel to Dubai to obtain a visa, and then living expenses once she arrived on campus. Somehow, the family found the money. Read the full story here
Broken Monarchs
Marielena Ferrer-Harrington BFA '22, Current MFA
Marielena is a visiting artist in residence. She has been nominated and mentored by the Sculpture Faculty, Prof. Puthoff and Prof. Asbill, for the prestigious International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award competition.
Marielena's SUNY Ulster residency includes an artist’s talk, the facilitation of two community workshops, and the installation of a solo exhibition, "Broken Monarchs", at the Muroff-Kotler Gallery with the Curatorial Studies class. Last fall, she presented "Broken Monarchs" at the XII International Congress on Migration and Mental Health at the Pontifical Javierian University, Bogotá, Colombia.
Since last summer, Marielena, Michael Asbill, and Emilie Houssart have been collaborating in a highly experimental art gathering series, "an/aesthetics", at both Century House Historic Society and Rosekill Art Farm, in Rosendale. Marielena also has an interspecies collaboration project at Rosekill as part of "an/aesthetics".
Marielena’s work is currently being exhibited in the "HERstory show" at the Arts Society of Kingston, in the "120 Intercollegiate Regional" at Saratoga Arts, in the "Time & Space International Artists Exhibition" at The Station Art Center, Cleveland, Ohio, and in the "FREEDOM Project" at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art & Design, Wrocław, Poland.
Marielena was awarded the Graduate Student Research and Creative Projects Award (RCPA) for Fall 2022; the Sojourner Truth Fellowship and Floyd Lattin & Ward Mintz Dorsky Museum Fund for Education and Outreach, for both Fall 2022 and Spring 2023; the Visiting Artist Director Graduate Assistantship for Spring 2023; and a Graduate Teacher of Record in Sculpture for Fall 2022 and in Foundation for Fall 2023.
Also, Marielena was awarded the “Most Likely to Fall Into The Lane” in the First Narwhal-Sculpties Bowling Tournament in Kingston, Spring 2023.
Joseph Kattou, BFA, MFA ’23 and Michael Fortenberry, MFA ‘23
Marielena, Joseph, and Michael have been nominated and mentored by the Sculpture Faculty, Prof. Puthoff and Prof. Asbill, for the prestigious International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award competition.
Funlola Coker, 2022 MFA/Metal
Funlola taught a Summer metalsmithing workshop at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. She was the 2022 recipient of the Thayer Fellowship from the State University of New York.
Erin Dougherty, 2022 Sculpture/BFA
Erin Dougherty (Sculpture BFA ‘22) was appointed the Art Studio Manager at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.
Laura Dortmans, Current MFA/Ceramics
The Emerging Australian Artist Prize
Exhibition at The Australian Consulate in New York, Perpetual Motion
Laura Dortmans’ ceramic sculptures respond to a playful curiosity about material behavior. Intuitive, physical, and careful interactions with clay allow Laura to explore the material potential whilst testing its structural and gravitational limits. The resulting works take form as long, fluid lines drawn in space. Momentary gestures are paused in motion – silently moving, turning, and folding. Tenuously balanced, each piece seeks to achieve a sense of buoyancy that defies its true mass.
Laura is from South Gippsland in South-Eastern Victoria and is now based in upstate New York. She completed her undergraduate degree in Printmaking and Anthropology at Monash University, Melbourne in 2009. After spending four years working in Japan, Laura returned to Australia where she built her woodfire kiln and studio at home in South Gippsland. Laura moved to New York in 2022 to pursue her MFA in Ceramics at SUNY New Paltz.
Rachel Gee installing Jean Shin's "Something Borrowed, Something Blue" at the Brooklyn Heights Library.
Rachel Gee, 2023 BFA/Sculpture
As a studio assistant for Jean Shin, Rachel helped make and install her work "Something Borrowed, Something Blue" at the Brooklyn Heights Library. This piece is a permanent artwork that was commissioned on Brooklyn Public Library’s 125th Anniversary.
Rachel Gee recently exhibited work in "Un-Homely" at Unison Arts Center and will be exhibiting work in "The Feels" at the Albany Barn. Her work "I’ll See You Saturday Morning" and "Trowel" can currently be seen in the "120 Intercollegiate Regional" at Saratoga Arts.
Rachel Gee has also started a flax apprenticeship with the Friends of Tivoli Lake Preserve and Farm.
Michael Fortenberry, 2023 MFA/Sculpture
Michael is concluding his master's degree with a sensory-somatic installation of interactive rolling sculptures that control a collective soundscape with the intent to soothe growing anxieties; this installation will be presented in a group show at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, on May 12th, 2023.
The installation will also be shown, beginning June 2, at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, located in Tivoli NY, where it will include two outdoor works.
Michael concluded a six-month residence at Glasshouse Art.Life.Lab resulting in a permanent outdoor installation in the art center's art garden.
Michael collaborated with Michael Asbill to create "Encroachments", a durational piece shown at the "SHELTER", Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition at Byrdcliffe’s Historic White Pines, Woodstock, NY.
Michael's work is being exhibited at the Rosekill Art Farm for the durational show an/aesthetics and his work "Tub Time" in the show Un-Homely at Unison Arts Center. In the last year, his work has been published in the Art in America Guide, I Love New York, Inside + Out Upstate New York, Hudson Valley One, Patch, and the Telluride Arts District.
Lucifer! Kern, 2024 BFA/Sculpture
Lucifer! Kern (Sculpture BFA ‘24) will exhibit his work “Codpiece” in the 2023 "Rochester Erotic Arts Festival’s Fine Arts Exhibition" in Auburn, NY on April 14-15th, 2023.
Joli Perfit, 2023 Sculpture/BFA
Joli is exhibiting her two works, "Bowling Pin Bench" and "Shapeshifter" in the juried "120 Intercollegiate Regional Show" at Saratoga Arts through mid-April. She has previously shown work in the "Small Works O-Z" exhibition at the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum (WAAM), and in the "Unhomely" exhibition at Unison Arts Center in New Paltz, NY.
Mariah Day, 2024 Sculpture/BFA
Mariah Day spent this past summer working alongside SUNY New Paltz alumnx Erin Dougherty and Kazia Thatch at the Kate Millett Farm. They prepared the work of Kate Millett for the Carnegie International Art Show in Pittsburgh, PA and conversed with Sophie Keir on Millett’s work and legacy.
Mariah also worked as a docent at the Jack Shainman Gallery: The School in Kinderhook, NY this past year.
Mariah was awarded the William and Yvonne Allenson scholarship for the 2022-2023 school year for her work with wood as a material form.
Mariah has worked alongside Professor Emily Puthoff this semester learning how creative businesses and maker spaces are founded and sustained as part of an independent study. She visited local arts leaders, Jennifer Edwards of Unfettered Arts, and Lara Giordano of The DRAW in Kingston, NY, engaging in conversation about the importance of arts in the community and how to make space for others to create in.
Mariah has recently shown her piece “Blister and Callouses” in the "Unhomely" exhibition at Unison Arts Center in New Paltz, NY.
