Metalsmith Sharon Church to Lecture at SUNY New Paltz

NEW PALTZ — Metalsmith Sharon Church, whose jewelry utilizes the symbolic language of natural forms, will be the guest lecturer for the SUNY New Paltz Art Lecture Series on Wednesday, October 25, at 7:30 PM. The lecture will be held in Lecture Center 112. It is free and open to all. The Student Art Alliance, a funded organization of the Student Association, organizes the series.

Metalsmith magazine says, “The jewelry of Sharon Church is a pungent marriage of geometry and biology that addresses the body and the bodies of natural growing things. Church’s jewelry comprises iconic forms forged from sheet and carved from wood. Speaking of loss, growth, and renewal, her pieces can be considered essentialist in their biological referents; that is, they are essentially female because they are linked to a wellspring of creative force, an elemental life force that is germinal.”

Church is a Professor at The Philadelphia College of Art and Design of The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has taught in both the Crafts and the Foundation Departments. Church has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Craftsman’s Fellowship Grant and was twice named a finalist (Discipline Winner) by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts. In 1999 Church received the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of the Arts.

Church has exhibited and lectured at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The American Craft Museum in New York and at the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. She is currently exhibiting in “Brooching It Diplomatically: A Tribute to Madeleine K. Albright” and “The Politics of History,” both travelling exhibitions.

To learn more about this and other Art Lecture Series events, visit the SUNY New Paltz Events Calendar on the web: http://hawk.newpaltz.edu/artsnews. For directions or specific questions call 845-257-3872.

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