The Student Art Alliance at SUNY New Paltz is pleased to announce its spring 2020 Visiting Artist Lecture Series, featuring contemporary artists and art professionals discussing their innovative practices with students, faculty, staff and community members.
The series is organized and hosted by the Student Art Alliance, a student-run organization that works to organize opportunities for campus community members to experience fine art and hear from respected creative professionals.
Each semester the Alliance secures an impressive roster of artists, critics, curators and historians to give presentations about their work, their fields and their experiences in creative professions.
Hundreds of internationally known artists and art professionals have taken part in the series over the years, providing insight into their work and sharing their knowledge.
The Visiting Artist Lecture Series also creates valuable opportunities for the members of the Student Art Alliance, who gain applicable experience organizing, curating and promoting arts-related events at the College.
The following presentations are free and open to the public. Each lecture will be followed by a luncheon and meet-and-greet with the artist in the Fine Arts Building.
Susie Ganch, sculptor, jeweler and educator
Wednesday, Feb. 12, 11 a.m.
Lecture Center 102
Susie Ganch is a first-generation American artist of Hungarian heritage living in Richmond, Virginia, where she is interim chair for the Department of Craft/Material Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Ganch is also the director of Radical Jewelry Makeover, an international jewelry mining and recycling project dedicated to raising awareness about the connection between mining, metalsmithing, activism, collaboration and art.
She received her MFA from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has been exhibited across the U.S. and internationally. See her portfolio at www.susieganch.com.
Sue Coe, political artist, printmaker and drawer
Wednesday, Feb. 19, 11 a.m.
Lecture Center 102
Sue Coe is an English artist noted for her political illustrations and activism. Her work focuses on a range of social issues, with special attention given to animal rights and the rights of marginalized peoples.
She has been published in The New York Times, the New Yorker, The Nation, Rolling Stone and several other publications. Her work has additionally been shown internationally in both solo and group exhibitions and has been collected by various international museums.
Coe earned her MA from Royal College of Art and has served as a visiting artist at Parsons School of Design. Read more and see examples of her work at http://www.artnet.com/artists/sue-coe/.
Tanya Crane ’11, metalsmith and jeweler
Wednesday, March 4, 11 a.m.
Lecture Center 102
Tanya Crane is a SUNY New Paltz alumna and current professor of the practice in metals at the Tufts University School Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
Crane’s artwork dwells within a liminal existence between prejudice and privilege. Reared in a white middle class suburb of Los Angeles, Crane’s experience with blackness was limited to visiting her father in South Central Los Angeles. Her dual existence has deeply informed her practice throughout her career.
Crane received her MFA in Metalsmithing + Jewelry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to her role at Tufts, she is serves as a critic in sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design. She is the 2017 winner of the Society of Arts and Crafts Artist Award. See her portfolio at https://www.tanyamoniquejewelry.com/.
Stacy Jo Scott, artist and educator
Monday, March 23, 11 a.m.
Lecture Center 102
Stacy Jo Scott is an assistant professor of art at the University of Oregon. In both artwork and writing she uses ceramic objects and digital processes as anchors from which to navigate shifting landscapes of culture, identity, and embodiment. Scott describes her objects as records of ritualized processes. She access these stories through research and speculation, digital processes, trance practices, and chance operations.
Scott holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. See her work at https://www.stacyjoscott.com/.
Chris McCaw, photographer
Wednesday, April 1, 11 a.m.
Lecture Center 102
McCaw taught himself the art of photography at age 13, and has been in a constant state of production of photographic work from that early age.
His early explorations included working with fisheye lenses and Tri-X black and white film in skateboarding and punk zines. Later in his career he became interested in larger cameras and platinum/palladium printing processes.
McCaw has exhibited widely and has received numerous awards, including the Emerging Icon in Photography award from the George Eastman International Museum of Film and Photography.
His publications include a monograph, “Sunburn,” documenting work at the boundaries of analog photographic media. See more at https://www.chrismccaw.com/.
Kiki Smith, multidisciplinary artist
Wednesday, April 22, 11 a.m.
Lecture Center 102
Smith is a German-born American artist who has lived and worked in New York City since the 1970s. Her primary focus has been the body and the human condition, and she has produced works in sculpture, printmaking, drawing, textiles, photography and tattooing.
The largely self-taught Smith enrolled in the Hartford Art School for a brief period of time before moving to New York. She quickly became a fixture of the Downtown arts scene.
Smith’s works have been exhibited nationally and internationally, and are in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, among other venues. Learn more at http://www.artnet.com/artists/kiki-smith/.
All events subject to change without notice. Visit http://www.newpaltz.edu/art/events/visiting-artist-lecture-series/ for the most current information.
If you have accessibility questions or require accommodations to fully participate in these events, please contact the Department of Art at 845-257-3830 as soon as possible.
The lecture series is funded by the SUNY New Paltz Student Association and administered by the Student Art Alliance. For additional information, please email artlectures@hawkmail.newpaltz.edu.
