Journalism students publish interviews with “Golden Age of New Paltz” artists

New Paltz Art and Art History Department, 1960 yearbook. Photo by Anthony Panzera

SUNY New Paltz students in “Feature Writing,” an upper-level journalism class taught by Associate Professor Lisa Phillips, collaborated this semester with Wired Gallery in High Falls, N.Y., to interview exhibiting artists who lived or worked in the New Paltz area during the mid-1960s.

“The Golden Age of New Paltz,” on view at Wired Gallery from April 7 – May 13, is the second part of a three-part series focusing on Hudson Valley artists.

This second installment connects the old and the new. It collects works by artists in New Paltz from 1963 – 1967 (many of whom were students or faculty at the College), and supplements these with new interviews conducted by current undergraduate students in Digital Media & Journalism.

Phillips and the exhibition curators challenged the students to run professional interviews. The prepared by studying examples of the Q & A format, learning best practices for editing a raw transcript into a publication-quality article, and conducting background research on the artists they were paired with.

The interviews treat a range of subjects; one conversation addresses the artist’s love of fungi; another gets into the artist’s mentorship under former printmaking professor Robert Schuler; a third touches on Vietnam War activism in the Village of New Paltz.

An opening reception for “The Golden Age of New Paltz” will be held on Saturday, April 7, from 5 – 7 p.m. at the Wired Gallery, 11 Mohonk Road, High Falls, N.Y.

Use this link for a complete list of the student/artist interviews, and read more about the exhibition at Roll Magazine.


Visit the Department of Digital Media & Journalism online for more info.