Bennington Magazine Spring 2024

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BENNINGTON MAGAZINE

Ashley Brenon Jowett Editor and Chief Writer

Kat Hughes Art Director

David Morelos Zaragoza Laguera Photographer

Jeffrey Perkins MFA ’09 Vice President, Communications and Marketing

Natalie Redmond Associate Writer

CONTRIBUTORS

Lauren Brady, student from ’14–’16

Alison (Mock) Dennis ’94

Walter Greene ’23

Mollie Hawkins MFA ’23

Oona Kilcommons ’16

Erika Lygren ’16

Marshall McGraw ’18

Jordan McIntosh-Hougham ’16

Liam McRae ’17

Charlie Nadler

Jason Russo MFA ’25

Luise Strauss

Alexander Vidal

Emily (Cleo) Zars ’17

TO SUBMIT

Bennington Magazine welcomes letters, opinions, essays, interviews, thought pieces, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, captioned work samples, and personal and professional updates. Please send submissions, proposals, and story ideas to magazine@bennington.edu. All will be considered. Due to limited space, we may not be able to publish all submissions.

Dear Alumni and Friends,

Idon’t know about you, but whenever I turn on the news or open the New York Times app on my phone, I brace myself. A seemingly never-ending stream of war and suffering, climate change-related disasters, threats to democracy, and hate crimes flood my screen. Hopelessness, sadly, is a logical response.

I am fortunate that my work—first as a journalist, then as a leader at Sesame Workshop and as the president of New York Public Radio, a national public media news and culture producer, and now as the president of Bennington—has been focused on expanding access to both vital information and life-giving culture. I believe that, if there is a way toward a more beautiful, sustainable, democratic, and just world, it will be achieved through the combination of facts and creativity, which unite beautifully within a liberal arts education.

As many of you know, Bennington is deeply committed to the liberal arts and welcomes diverse students from across the United States and the globe, including those with intersecting identities. We embrace them as they find and hone their unique gifts through wildly interdisciplinary exploration, provide opportunities to practice in the world, and release them with a powerful voice for change.

Throughout this issue, our first in print since before the COVID pandemic, look for inspiring stories of students, alumni, faculty, and staff using their boundless creativity, generosity, and skills to make progress against the most daunting challenges of our time—climate change, plastics pollution, and health care reform, to name a few—with indispensable connections to art, nature, and most importantly, each other.

For many of you, it has been some time since you have been a student at Bennington (and some of you have never been!); yet, you are as much a part of this community as ever. You open your workplaces and professional networks to students and alumni. You support scholarships that make this beautiful, historical campus and astoundingly brilliant faculty available to aspiring students from every socioeconomic circumstance. Thank you.

If you have been away from your Bennington family for too long, we hope the stories you read here will remind you of this one-of-a-kind place and all it offered and continues to offer you and the world. We welcome you to rejoin us.

I believe that we—Bennington’s alumni, friends, faculty, staff, and current students—are the link between the desperate needs of the world and the myriad yet-unimagined-but-ever-hopeful possibilities.

Sincerely,

Laura Walker President | Bennington College

Features

14 The Birds of Bennington

Reacquaint yourself with the beautiful avian abundance on campus.

24 Bennington Rocks

Paradox Welcome

Sylvan Esso, Mountain Man, Drama Dolls, and Roomful of Teeth share their unlikely secrets to success in the music industry.

Connected for Life

When recent grads discovered

32

the music industry culture didn’t match their vibe, they created a culture of their own based on what they learned at Bennington.

Lives in Art in the City of New York

Alums from across the decades discuss the intersection between their time at Bennington, their current work, and being at home in New York City.

38

Finishing the Unfinished

Rodeo #2

A current Residential Teaching Fellow for the Bennington Writing Seminars answers the question, what has spurred you to finish the unfinished?

Debt Liberation Laboratory

A collective of Bennington alumni describe how they banded together to retire their student debt.

Photo by Anja Schütz

Photo courtesy of Urban Glass

First & Foremost

1 Rhythm in All Layers of Existence

The extraordinary practices and predilections of longtime Bennington faculty member, legendary jazz innovator, and tireless polymath Milford Graves (1941-2021) come to life in Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal. On display at Usdan Gallery 1:00-5:00 pm Tuesday through Friday through April 27, this traveling exhibition takes on historic resonance in the Bennington context.

The multiform exhibition presents the range of Graves’ activities in sections loosely categorized around science, music, and healing. Together, they demonstrate how these pursuits mutually informed one another.

Exhibition programs include a workshop and solo performance by pianist, composer, and MacArthur Fellow Jason Moran; an improvisational set by renowned bassist William Parker and composer Cooper-Moore; and a screening of the documentary Milford Graves: Full Mantis, directed by Jake Meginsky ’09.

A Mind-Body Deal has toured nationally and is curated by Mark Christman, executive artistic director of Ars Nova Workshop in Philadelphia, with curatorial research by Meginsky, and organized for Bennington by Usdan Gallery Director and Curator Anne Thompson.

www.usdangallery.bennington.edu

On Instagram @usdangallerybennington

2 Commencement Preview

Poet and memoirist Safiya Sinclair ’10 will address the class of 2024 at Commencement. The ceremony will take place at 10:00 am Saturday, June 1, and will be livestreamed from a link on bennington.edu.

“Returning to Bennington as this year’s commencement speaker truly ranks as one of my proudest moments yet,” said Sinclair. “It’s no exaggeration to say that Bennington College quite literally changed the course of my life. Without Bennington, I would not be the writer and poet I am today, and it’s an honor to be invited back to the place where my creative self was molded, where lifelong friendships were formed, and where my professors lit a fire in me that still burns brightly.”

Sinclair is the author of the memoir How to Say Babylon, which was lauded as a best book of 2023 by the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, TIME Magazine, Barack Obama, and many others. Her poetry collection, Cannibal, is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, and many other honors.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to return to pay tribute to the place that opened the door for a young Jamaican girl and her dreams. I am forever grateful,” Sinclair said. “I can’t wait to see you all at the End of the World in June.”

3 Your Next Great Read

Bennington’s literary well runs deep. See how the following authors fit in with the College’s long history of Pulitzer Prize winners, U.S. poets laureate, and MacArthur Geniuses.

Oprah Thinks You Should Read This Book

Named #4 on Oprah Daily’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024, Leaving by Roxana Robinson ’68 was published in February by W. W. Norton & Company. Leaving follows Sarah and Warren, former college loves whose reunion decades later reignites a passion long forgotten. Robinson’s latest, writes the publisher, is an “engrossing exploration of the vows we make to one another, the tensile relationships between parents and their children, and what we owe to others and ourselves.”

From Catching Trout to Catching Killers

Hidden in the Pines by Victoria Houston ’67 was published in January by Crooked Lane Books. Houston is no gumshoe to the crime fiction world—she’s published more than 20 novels, many of which are set in the Wisconsin Northwoods, from which she hails. Hidden in the Pines is the second in Houston’s latest Lew Ferris mystery series.

A Fresh Look at a Dance Legend

Errand into the Maze: The Life and Works of Martha Graham by Deborah Jowitt was published in January by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This definitive biography—titled in homage to one of Graham’s most famous ballets, which itself is based on the

poem by longtime Bennington faculty member Ben Belitt traces modern dance pioneer Martha Graham’s life and artistic path, including her time at Bennington College.

Lessons in Action

In his recent release How to Make a Few Billion Dollars, Brad Jacobs ’77 shares how his Bennington education influenced his career in business. An excerpt reads, “I believe lively discussion is the best way to encourage people to learn in a business setting. In every meeting I’ve led, I’ve tried to re-create that sensation of 17-year-old me in a Bennington classroom surrounded by peers, with everyone eager to jump into the conversation.”

4 Carbon Cycle Discovery at the Bottom of the Ocean

Geology faculty member Tim Schroeder was a part of a research team that analyzed rocks collected from a transform fault, where tectonic plates move past each other, about 500 km off the coast of Brazil. The trapped CO2 in the rocks reveals significant carbon fluxes related to magmatic activity, a previously unknown part of the geological (very long term) carbon cycle that regulated Earth’s climate during prehuman times. Their research, titled “Mineral Carbonation of Peridotite Fueled by Magmatic Degassing and Melt Impregnation in an Oceanic Transform Fault,” was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Photo by Novus Select

5 Visiting Faculty: National Book Award

Winner Bruna Dantas Lobato ’15 and New Yorker Staff Writer Jia Tolentino

Writer, translator, and alum Bruna Dantas Lobato ’15’s translation of Stênio Gardel’s The Words that Remain won the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, is forthcoming in October 2024 from Grove Atlantic in the U.S. and Companhia das Letras/ PRH in Brazil (in her own translation into Portuguese).

“I’m thrilled to be teaching at Bennington this spring, the place where I learned to be my full self and where I first saw myself as a writer and translator,” said Dantas Lobato.

At Bennington during Spring 2024, Dantas Lobato is teaching three courses: The Immigrant Novel, Reading and Writing the Short Story: The Body, and Experimental Fiction by Women. Top

Jia Tolentino, a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of the bestselling essay collection Trick Mirror, is Bennington’s 2024 Ben Belitt Distinguished Visiting Faculty Member in Literature.

In 2022, Tolentino first visited campus to participate in “How to be an Art Monster” as part of the Ben Belitt Colloquium on Arts and Literary Culture, along with novelists Sheila Heti and Jenny Offill.

“It was such a perfect spring day that I was totally spellbound, and I kept making ‘jokes’ about my availability to teach on campus,” said Tolentino. “I’m thrilled that Bennington’s Literature faculty is allowing me to actually do so, and I’m excited to get to know my students and to learn from them.”

At Bennington during Spring 2024, Tolentino is teaching Hearing Voices: A Master Class in Literary Journalism. Bottom

6 Mary-Louise Parker’s New Role

In Fall 2023, actor Mary-Louise Parker joined the Bennington College community to teach two sessions of the seven-week course The Drama-Free Workshop. The course concentrated on confidence building for actors and performers and urged students to look outside traditional sources of validation and to explore the (sometimes fraught) relationship between criticism and creativity.

“Teaching at Bennington was among the most gratifying experiences I’ve had, and I can’t wait to return,” said Parker.

A member of the legendary Circle Rep Theater Company, Parker is a five-time Tony award nominee, winning the award twice, for Proof and The Sound Inside, and is the recipient of multiple Obie, Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, and Outer Critics Circle awards and nominations. Parker has performed extensively in film and television and has won numerous awards and nominations, including the Emmy for Angels in America and the Golden Globe for both Weeds and Angels in America.

7 Tejada Wins Design Prize

Ramon Tejada MFA ’03 was selected as a winner of the 2024 Vilcek Prize in Design from the Vilcek Foundation (vilcek.org). The Vilcek Prize in Design, which includes a $100,000 cash prize, is bestowed on an immigrant design professional whose work has had a profound impact on design practice and pedagogy in the United States.

9 Bennington Writing Seminars Celebrates 30 Years at AWP2024

As a designer, “I can make things that make space for telling stories,” Tejada said in his Vilcek Foundation interview. “A lot of the stories that I’m interested in telling are coming from BIPOC people, people who have immigrated into this country.”

Tejada is an associate professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. He is also involved with the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) in New York City, which expands scholarship, public engagement, and the international visibility of art from Latin America.

8 Prison Education Initiative Accredited to Add a Bachelor’s Degree

Bennington College’s Prison Education Initiative (PEI), which serves the Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximumsecurity men’s prison in Comstock, NY, will be offering incarcerated people the opportunity to pursue a bachelor’s degree. The New York State Department of Corrections is expected to approve the expansion of the PEI in time for students to enroll in Fall 2024.

The classes offered at Great Meadow—including everything from Aesthetics to Epidemiology—are identical in scope and rigor to those offered at the College’s Vermont campus. There are about ten classes offered each term. PEI Director Annabel Davis-Goff expects eight students in the inaugural class of bachelor’s degree students at Great Meadow.

Bennington Writing Seminars held a reception at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) 2024 in Kansas City to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Faculty, alumni, students, and friends gathered in the Atrium of Crossroads Hotel Kansas City on Friday, February 9.

10 Sharing Mugs: Ceramics Class Builds Community

During most ceramics classes, the pieces students make are theirs to do with what they like. They keep them or give them to family and friends. Students in Anina Major’s Kilns and Firing Techniques in Fall 2023 had other plans. Each crafted four mugs that they donated to Roz’s, Bennington College’s low-waste cafe, at the start of the spring term.

“I am excited to see people drink out of the mugs our class made,” said Julia Henck ’24, who studies art history, anthropology, and

“It is cool to know that there will be cups in Roz’s that have a story that people will be able to find out.”

Read the full story at bennington.edu

For more Bennington news, including profiles of recent alumni Ahmad Yassir ’20, Florence Gill ’22, Ryan Chigogo ’23, and others, visit bennington.edu

ceramics.

Provost Maurice Hall presents a diploma to the recipient of an associate’s degree during graduation at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in February 2023

Top: (L-R) Executive Director of the Bennington Writing Seminars Mark Wunderlich and poetry faculty member Randall Mann

Photo courtesy of Vilcek Foundation

A Crystal Ball

PREDICTING PATIENTS’ HEALTHCARE USE

How students used math and data science to advance health care over Field Work Term.

By Ashley Brenon Jowett

When it comes to working with math and data science, realworld problems have a special allure. “Problems in class are for practice,” said Uyen Huynh ’24, an international student from Vietnam. “The questions are leading us in a certain way that the teacher wants us to go.”

By contrast, working on real-world problems, said Mehedi H. Sizar ’26 from Bangladesh, “It’s like you put all your knowledge in the same bucket, and you have to choose what to use and when.”

Both students were eager to participate in a Field Work Term project with math faculty member Katie Montovan and the local healthcare system, Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC), over the summer of 2023.

THE BACKSTORY

Montovan connected with James Trimarchi, PhD, the hospital’s director of planning, through the Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA) years earlier.

“I was taking a Preparation for Industrial Careers math course as a part of the Math Association of America program,” said Montovan. “The program supports faculty in partnering with private industry and government organizations.”

SVMC is an interesting partner with a national reputation for innovation. They pursue projects towards what’s known in health care as “The Triple Aim,” ones that (1) improve the experience of care while also (2) improving the health of populations and (3) reducing the per capita costs of health care. One opportunity Trimarchi saw involved making better use

James Trimarchi, PhD, SVMC’s director of planning; Mehedi H. Sizar ’26; Uyen Huynh ’24; and Katie Montovan, math faculty member.

of information. “We have a ton of data,” said Trimarchi. “But we don’t use it.” His initial thought was to see what insights hospital data contained and how it might be used to meet the Triple Aim.

Montovan brought the hospital’s project to her class. Four students worked on crunching the data over the course of a term and uncovering potentially useful relationships in the information. “They were asking questions like, ‘What can we do with the data? What data do we need?’” said Montovan. The work of those first four students provided the sense that the data held insights worth further effort.

REFINING THE QUESTION

The hospital engaged Sinha Binte Babul ’25 to continue the work over the 2022 Field Work Term. Her challenge was to incorporate more data and reconfigure data organized to reflect visits at the population level to show the experiences of individuals.

“The problem is that all of the previous modeling, everything that has ever been done, is at the population level,” Trimarchi said. “And you can’t do meaningful interventions at the population level; you have to do them at the individual level.”

That requires changing the data dramatically, from a spreadsheet that shows the information related to a single visit on each row to one that shows information about an individual patient, who may have had dozens of visits, on each row. “Just that simple problem requires a whole lot of thinking,” said Montovan.

Katie Montovan

Once this data preprocessing was complete, Babul conducted basic statistical correlations and machine learning algorithms to define patterns and determine what is predictive. “We use 80 percent of the data to train the model and give us an output,” Babul explained. “We use the rest of the data and different metrics to check how well the model learned and whether we can trust it to provide the information we need.”

prevent the need for the next visit. Trimarchi explained it like this: “People come to our ExpressCare clinic when they have a medical problem. Some of those people will get treated and need no further care for their issue. Others will end up back at ExpressCare for the same problem only a month later,” Trimarchi said. “If we can predict which patients are likely to return, we can initiate targeted interventions in advance and meet their needs better.”

Possible interventions include ensuring patients receive more intense instruction about how to manage their condition, assigning the patient to a nurse case manager, or connecting them with socioeconomic support. Without added guidance, they are likely to end up back at ExpressCare or, worse, the Emergency Department. Intervening for the patients who need it meets the Triple Aim; it is healthier and more enjoyable for the patient, and it improves health at the population level while saving valuable healthcare resources.

FINDING A PREDICTIVE MODEL

That’s when Huynh and Sizar joined the project. Their goal was to create a data model that could help ExpressCare staff determine whether a patient would be well served with the currently recommended plan of care or whether they could use extra support to prevent a return visit. There were a lot of questions. “Is this dataset even predictable?” asked Sizar, speaking of his and Huynh’s thinking as they started on the project. “If it is, how could we use it actually to predict visits, and what should we use as our predictor variables?”

“This is why it is so important to foster a multidisciplinary manner of thinking in the way Bennington does. Useful information is often just outside the boundaries of any given discipline.”

They tried a number of analyses before landing on one that would help them accomplish their goal. Finally, they came up with the idea of using a survival analysis. The method is most commonly applied in ecological and biological research and in research meant to determine how well a medical treatment works. “It is a unique approach,” said Trimarchi. “It comes out of completely different fields, and we are trying to figure out how to use it in this context.”

While Babul’s work got the group closer to finding a practical application for the data, they could tell they were on the edge of something bigger. “None of the analyses captured the key elements. There was a big part missing,” Montovan said.

They could see the potential that they may be able to use the data to predict future use of the hospital’s ExpressCare clinic. If they could use machine learning to predict the patient’s next visit, the group reasoned, they may be able to

“This is why it is so important to foster a multidisciplinary manner of thinking in the way Bennington does,” said Montovan. “Useful information is often just outside the boundaries of any given discipline.”

Huynh explained how they began using the method by dividing patients’ history with the practice into two pieces: pre-period data and post, as Babul described. They created a formula that directed the computer to use the pre-period data

Actual Obstacles

Working with a real-world organization presents challenges students would never face when approaching a typical class-based problem. For the hospital project, students learned about data security and working with highly protected health information.

“One hundred percent of the data was—had to be—100 percent secure 100 percent of the time,” said Trimarchi.

Students received intense training and developed processes necessary to keep data secure. They worked exclusively on highly secure hospital computers, which have limited access to outside websites.

“They are having to figure out how to work behind a firewall, which is a real-world obstacle that they may not have understood going in,” said Montovan.

The computers do not have the same data modeling programs students are familiar with. So they learned the programs the hospital had available, like Microsoft Excel. “This is the benefit of working with industry partners,” said Montovan. “These kinds of questions come up. They are good learning experiences, and you don’t get them in any other way.”

If you are an industry professional interested in providing an opportunity for students to use their skills and ingenuity to advance a project at your company over Field Work Term, please contact employerrelations@bennington.edu.

to determine the next visit. “It wasn’t predictive. There was bias,” said Huynh. “Let’s say a patient only came once in the pre-period and visited six times in the next period. The model could not account for that.”

The students had to switch their approach, which required them to transform the dataset again. Rather than divide all patients’ visit history based on one arbitrary date, they had to create an individual index date for each patient. “We chose a random date for each patient but one that ensured the patient had at least one visit after it,” said Huynh.

“That part was challenging,” said Sizar. “But we knew where we were heading, so that was also interesting, particularly because this project has the potential for high impact in health care.” Huynh and Sizar’s second try worked, especially for patients with a high number of visits. Huynh noted that the model did not work well for patients with a low number of visits. “It was predicting the next visit after 1,000 days, which is not useful,” she said.

For the high-visit subset, the model answers the question “What is this patient’s likelihood of visiting ExpressCare again in the next 100 days?” with statistically significant accuracy. “That the analysis showed that you can be predictive for folks with lots of visits is, in and of itself, useful,” said Trimarchi. “Even if the model isn’t great at predicting everybody, the fact that it is good at some is a step forward.” He continued, “These students are pushing the envelope of what you can do in healthcare modeling at the individual level.”

CONTINUING THE WORK

At the end of the summer, Huynh and Sizar documented their process for students or others who pick up the project in the future. They also documented both their process and their results in a way people unfamiliar with math and data science can understand.

Refining the model further and creating software that would help healthcare staff use it could change healthcare operations and individual health in dramatic ways. Trimarchi envisions a world where heart attacks are prevented or the debilitating effects of diabetes are avoided. “It could save lives, improve quality of life, and save millions of healthcare dollars,” he said. “That’s the type of ‘pie in the sky’ impact this could have, and we are only at the beginning of it.”

“For our students to be able to work with this real data is fantastic because of the kinds of problems they have to figure out,” said Montovan. “How do we approach the question? How do we present the results? Those are things that are hard to get at if you don’t have a real problem in front of you, but are still important for them to learn.” She continued, “Once you turn students loose on these problems, it’s amazing. As they bump around, they find what works. And that’s how research works anyway. When they go to graduate school or move on to other projects, this is going to be a great skill they already have.”

Skepticism and Hope

VIEWS FROM THE UNITED NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Bennington College sent four students, three faculty members, and Provost Maurice Hall to the Conference of Parties (COP28), part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), in November 2023. They attended different parts of the conference and met up over dinner to compare notes.

“We got to sit down and debrief and talk about what we had seen and what our thoughts were,” said Ade Byron ’24 in an interview shortly after their return from COP. “Some of it was hard to see, so it was nice to be able to talk with other people.” Rodrigo Diaz Ramirez ’25, who studies global politics and economics, summarized: “At COP28, you were able to find everything: hope, disappointment, frustration…it is a mix of everything.” Both Byron and Ramirez are recipients of the Peter Drucker Award Scholarship.

THE CITY

The conflicted feelings attendees shared about the event were well represented in the city itself. “I feel like we learned just as much by being in Dubai as we learned by being at COP,”

By Ashley Brenon Jowett

said Byron. “It’s shiny and big and not at all sustainable. It’s a dystopian world.”

John Hultgren, a faculty member who teaches Environmental Politics, was disheartened with reports that the UAE’s bid to host the conference was part of self-interested efforts to increase, rather than decrease, fossil fuel extraction and use. “The whole thing was surreal… just the hypocrisy. You’re in this crazy Expo City, a city built for the purpose of holding these massive events. There are these signs everywhere about sustainability and inclusivity. But we were in an authoritarian country funded by and operated through fossil fuels, massive exploitation of labor, and repression of political dissent.”

THE BLUE ZONE

Faculty members David Bond and Hultgren, who have followed climate negotiations closely for more than a decade, were able to observe talks in the Blue Zone, where global leaders undertook the actual work of reaching agreements. Both went into the talks as cynics. The conference, they note, has made little progress in its 28-year existence. In

Rodrigo Diaz Ramirez ’25, Peace Kalomba ’25, Mia Jay-Pachirat ’25, and Ade Byron ’24

John Hultgren

“We were sitting in these rooms and getting, quite literally, a front-row seat to these negotiations. We were able to go up and talk to world leaders afterward.”

fact, “more fossil fuels have been burnt between the beginning of COP in 1992 and today than in all previous human history,” said Bond, a cultural anthropologist focused on the environment, the associate director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Action (CAPA), and author of Negative Ecologies from University of California Press.

Neither Hultgren nor Bond hold the United States blameless. “The biggest producer of fossil fuels in the world right now? U.S.A.,” said Bond. “John Kerry arrived to fingerwave at ‘oil producing nations,’ but nothing he [demanded of others] had anything to do with how the U.S. is organizing itself.”

To Bond, the talks are hugely consequential, just not in the way one most often speaks of consequential things. “COP negotiations are consequential for how they slow down, how they prevent, how they delay,” said Bond. “Talking has become the thing that most nation states are committed to doing. Serious talk, in a perverse way, has become a replacement for overdue action.”

Despite their frustration, Bond and Hultgren were grateful for the opportunity they were given to attend talks alongside world leaders. “I was shocked at the access we had. We were sitting at the negotiating table with delegates from nation-states arguing and debating right in front of us,” said Bond. “You could track different alignments and different skews and how things were playing out.” Hultgren had seen videos of the talks and even reenacted climate negotiations with students in his classes. “It is different to be there and to see it,” Hultgren said. “We were sitting in these rooms and getting, quite literally, a front-row seat to these negotiations. We were able to go up and talk to world leaders afterward.”

THE GREEN ZONE

If the Blue Zone was a solid block of power and inactivity, the Green Zone was its opposite: a place where people with far less influence showed off the work they are doing on the ground. This is where four Bennington students spent their time. They protested, attended workshops and speeches, and explored the booths presented by technology firms attempting projects to alleviate climate pressures. “You were learning from different entrepreneurs from all around the world, and all of them were using electrical power and sustainable systems,” Ramirez said.

“Each country had a hub where they would talk about sustainability and agriculture and movements that are happening in their countries,” said Byron. “There was a technology hub, an innovation hub, a youth hub…. It was all different organizations that are working toward the same goal, and we got to meet with the people who are doing that work hands on.”

Ramirez enjoyed meeting college students from around the world, including those from University of Chicago, Harvard, Georgetown University, and Binghamton University, to name a few. “College students are a big factor in this, even though not everyone is focused on the political environment,” he said. “Climate change is affecting us all, and it needs action from everyone.”

Despite the excitement and participation, Byron noted the cause for skepticism. Just as students needed to think critically about the UAE’s bid to host and the United States’ stated-but-unfulfilled intentions to draw down fossil fuel extraction, students were aware of self-interested parties in the Green Zone, as well. “We went to a few talks about how people are making money from climate change and how they are marketing some of these technologies that may or may not be contributing to the solution,” Byron said.

Ramirez was disappointed by what he heard about the negotiations in the Blue Zone and expected countries to contribute more money to the fund for climate change, but he was ultimately encouraged by the conference as a whole. He thinks it makes sense that fossil fuel producers would be involved in the event. “When I first heard that there were so many fossil fuel business people, I thought, ‘what are they doing here?’” said Ramirez. “But at the end, they need to be a part of the negotiations, because they are part of the world. In these sorts of things, you need to include people.” He continued, “I feel like it was probably the most important event about climate change that the United Nations was able to host until now. At least I feel the world can’t deny science anymore. So that gives me a lot of hope.”

WHERE POWER AND ACTION MEET

Byron finds hope in the work of people like Susan Sgorbati, faculty member and director of the Center for the Advancement of Public Action, who attended COP as a presenter. As an expert in complex systems, conflict resolution, and emergent improvisation, Sgorbati became a part of a project to improve access to clean water across boundaries at a meeting at Dawson Center for Peace in Montreal in 2018.

“Droughts, floods, and melting glaciers and sea ice brought on by climate change are causing saltwater intrusion and threatening access to clean water in some of the most densely populated regions of the world,” said Sgorbati. “Health, agricultural livelihoods, and biodiversity are all at stake, which is why we are taking urgent action to cooperate in new ways.”

The Transboundary Water In-Cooperation Network (TWIN), of which Sgorbati was a founding member, along

with the University of Vermont Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security, has partnered with the African Centre for Climate Actions and Rural Development Initiative (ACCARD), DeltasUNite, and leaders from Egypt, Great Britain, Nigeria, Pakistan, Vietnam, and other organizations from the United States to create a new conference, analogous to COP itself, that will address water access and quality in the river deltas. It’s called the United Nations Convention on Conserving River Deltas (UNCCRD).

“TWIN is already doing important work to make opensource research technology available to organizations in seven deltas worldwide, including those of the Amazon, Congo, Jordan, Mekong, Niger, Nile, and St. Lawrence rivers,” said Sgorbati. “Getting a UN conference would bring much needed attention and resources to this critical issue.”

The next step in the process is building commitments from governments and communities. The organizers hope the convention is eligible for a UN vote within the next two years. “This is a big deal,” said Sgorbati. “A conference like this has the potential to disseminate critical water and environmental conservation information to the places that need it most and potentially prevent millions more climate refugees.”

THE TAKEAWAYS

Hultgren was grateful to attend for the background the experience brings to his research and how it informs examples he will present in class, but he and Bond are no less skeptical of the process than they were at the outset. “If any change is going to happen that is adequate to the scale of the crisis we are in,” said Bond, “it is going to have to come from somewhere that is not COP.” Hultgren proposed, “The real change that we need requires new mass movements and intense pressure from below on a scale that we don’t yet see.”

That pressure will likely come from students. While both Byron’s and Ramirez’s areas of study intersected with climate action, they see the connections more clearly than ever. “This climate phenomenon is affecting everyone, and it demands everyone to take action,” said Ramirez. “That is one of the things that COP28 changed: my perspective. It is the last opportunity for everyone to do something. If I had to describe in one word how COP28 left me, it is ‘inspired.’”

“COP made me realize everything is affected by climate change,” Byron said. “It made me realize how much climate action can be a part of my studies and how different social justice, mediation, and conflict resolution practices within communities—especially indigenous communities that are affected at disproportionate rates—can contribute to the climate change movement. It’s made me more involved.”

Remirez said, “I think activism is into me now. I am thinking now about possible tutorials or small group conversations to see what kind of action we could take.”

Climate in the Curriculum

This term faculty members from all many disciplines are teaching about climate change from different perspectives. They provide valuable insights students can use to develop their understanding and take action. Here is a selection of courses students are taking now.

Anthropological Linguistics and Biocultural Knowledge

Leah Papas

Beyond Plastic Pollution

Judith Enck

Cartographies of Force: Bugs and Media

Maia Nichols

Climate Change, Ecology, and Seasons

Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie

Climate Change and the Global Economy

Lopamudra Banerjee

Climate Science and Policy

John Hultgren and Tim Schroeder

Introduction to Sustainable Agriculture

Kelie Bowman

Women and Human Mobility

Andy Galindo

Environmental Politics faculty John Hultgren; Joaquin Paredes-Aranda ’25, a part of the official delegation from Chile; and Director for the Advancement of Public Action Susan Sgorbati

By Blake Jones, biology faculty member | Illustrated by Alexander Vidal

The mountains surrounding campus get a lot of attention. But one of the most captivating aspects of the Bennington College landscape is its birds. Bennington’s 440-acre campus is a carefully managed refuge for an array of species. Discovering more about our diverse avian neighbors is certain to spark a renewed sense of wonder in this magical place.

Pileated Woodpecker Dryocopus pileatus

The Pileated Woodpecker, the largest woodpecker in North America, creates large, rectangular holes in trees while searching for insects and plays a vital role in forest ecology. They are more often heard than seen. Listen for their powerful drumming and high-pitched laugh.

Red-tailed Hawk Buteo jamaicensis

These birds of prey are versatile hunters and adapt to various environments across North America. They are often seen scanning for prey high above the open fields on campus or perched on tree tops at the forest edge.

Blue Jay Cyanocitta cristata

These corvids are easily recognizable by their blue plumage and loud, jarring calls often heard in the wooded areas around campus. Known for their intelligence, they use tools and can mimic the calls of other species, including hawks.

Eastern Bluebird Sialia sialis

The stunning Eastern Bluebird is a cavity nester and relies on the nest boxes found throughout the Bennington College campus. This small thrush can be found perched on low branches in woodlands, fields, and gardens.

Black-capped Chickadee

Poecile atricapillus

These small, inquisitive birds are known for lively, complex calls. They spend much of their time storing food for the winter, and their ability to remember thousands of hiding places is a testament to their impressive spatial memory.

Red-winged Blackbird

Agelaius phoeniceus

These mid-sized passerines are named for the male’s striking red epaulets, which are used to communicate during courtship and territorial defense. The area around the pond at Bennington College hosts more than fifty nests each spring.

Bobolink

Dolichonyx oryzivorus

Bobolinks’ migration to South America and back is farther (12,000 miles!) than almost any other North American songbird. In the spring, they nest in the campus’s grasslands, a critical resource for this rapidly declining species. Listen for the males’ bubbly, flute-like song, and watch for their aerial courtship displays on the path from the pond to Jennings.

Wild Turkey

Meleagris gallopavo

Near extinction in the early 20th century, the Wild Turkey has made a remarkable recovery. These large, ground-dwelling birds consume everything from nuts and berries to small reptiles. Find them in fields near the forest edge.

Green Heron Butorides virescens

The green heron is a small, stealthy bird found near water bodies across North and Central America. They are one of the few bird species known to use tools and often drop bait on the surface of the water to lure fish. While elusive, they can be found hunting at the Bennington College pond from early spring to late summer.

Canada Goose

Branta canadensis

The Canada Goose is famous for its V-shaped migration formations and distinctive honking. Dedicated parents, they graze the mowed lawns around Dickinson and VAPA each spring and chase students who venture too close to their fuzzy, precocial young.

VAPA Nearing Fifty

THE INFLUENCES

Sixty years ago, in 1964, Bennington College took up in earnest a long-simmering plan to build a new visual and performing arts center. From that thoughtful effort, Bennington’s Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) Center emerged. In his article “VAPA: A Genealogy,” Donald Sherefkin noted the building’s founding thinkers and ideas. We feature them here alongside current and historical images of the beloved building in use. The building was dedicated in 1976.

Words by Donald Sherefkin, architecture faculty member

Photography by Gregory Cherin, Bob Handelman, and Luise Stauss

The Architect:

Robertson Ward, Jr.

Robertson Ward, Jr. attended the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, where he studied with Walter Gropius, who in 1919, founded the Bauhaus in Germany, a school that sought to unite art and technology. After Harvard, Ward traveled to Chicago to study with Konrad Wachsmann at Illinois Institute of Technology’s Department, where Wachsmann and Gropius had collaborated on “The Packaged House,” a system for prefabricated building.

“So let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen, free of the divisive class pretensions that endeavored to raise a prideful barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us strive for, conceive and create the new building of the future that will unite every discipline, architecture and sculpture and painting, and which will one day rise heavenwards from the million hands of craftsmen as a clear symbol of a new belief to come.”

Walter Gropius from Bauhaus Manifesto and Program, 1919.

The Faculty: A Barn But No Silos

In 1964, the Art Policy Committee wrote: “Several images come to mind to express the spatial character that is desired: we have talked about hangars, factories, lofts, and barns. All describe a neutral, open, unfettered, well-lighted space that has free access from the out-of-doors, a flexible working space that will allow large-scale painting and sculpture to be done in comfort, a rugged heavy-duty space with usable walls. Ceiling and floors that will accommodate the mess and confusion of work in progress.”

The late faculty member Jules Olitski insisted that, however the spaces were to be distributed, students should be required to walk through adjacent studios to get from one place to another. There should be no “silos” among the arts.

Ward’s initial design for the Gallery’s display walls envisioned hanging panels suspended from the roof beams. As a result of a conversation with faculty member Pat Adams, who taught painting at Bennington from 1964-93, he adopted the movable L-shaped walls. Adams had been using a similar configuration for her students’ studio spaces as they transitioned from working at an easel to using the walls and floors.

Japanese Architecture

Ward learned Japanese architecture’s key characteristics—the relationship between inside and outside, the simplicity of elements, the use of a module or ken, the flexibility of the sliding wall panels, and the relationship between the building and landscape. All of the exterior openings of VAPA, with the exception of the entrance doors, are sliding wood panels—a reference to both the barn door and the Japanese shoji screen.

Social Sciences Research

In 1967 and 1968, Ward collaborated with Dr. Robert Gutman, Professor of Sociology at the Rutgers Urban Studies Center to “explore ways in which the behavioral sciences [could] contribute to the design of more useful and satisfying buildings.” The insights gleaned from this study—which involved in-depth interviews with Bennington students, faculty, and staff—informed conversations about VAPA’s design.

Trustee Betty Brown

Trustee Betty Brown, in a letter dated 1965, wrote, “Why not think in terms of a continuous whole, something that would be neither one big building nor forty small ones, but both—something supple and wandering—partly indoors and partly outdoors, a weaving of rooms and courts and walks—jumping a space here to form an island, flinging out a wing there, two stories somewhere and one story somewhere else... all this not exactly one building, not exactly many, not exactly a building at all, simply a stream of energy rising and falling with areas of concentration and areas of expansion.…”

Pedagogy

Ward’s design left the structural and mechanical systems visible, a decision he intended to be pedagogical. All of the columns and beams are exposed, and where a drywall partition meets a column or a beam, there is a very deliberate “reveal” or gap between the wall plane and the structural member.

Just as previous generations of students and faculty shaped VAPA, VAPA has shaped the artists and performers who have used it. Please share your experience of VAPA at magazine@bennington.edu

Bennington alumni have made huge impacts on the music world, from Chris Barron ’90 of the Spin Doctors and Amelia Meath ’10 of Sylvan Esso and Mountain Man to Dana Foote ’18 and Teddy O’Mara ’18 of Sir Chloe and Alex Bleeker ’08 of Real Estate. Some have even created popular record labels, like Christopher P. Lombardi ’90 and his Matador Records. The history of music at Bennington is a rich one, and it continues to nurture musicians at all levels.

Two Bennington alumni journalists connected with a few musicians from Bennington to learn how they have made themselves and are making their world.

PARADOX WELCOME

By Mollie Hawkins MFA ’23

Counterintuitive advice. Unexpected introductions. Hidden talents. The music careers of Bennington people often come about in unlikely ways. The musicians seem to find their way to music on their way to becoming their most authentic selves. Some have gone on to make music their life’s work—or simply their life’s joy—while carrying the interdisciplinary approach they honed at Bennington with them.

“I feel like everything that has happened in my adult life has been a result of going to Bennington; I had that modeled for me there, as the way to be a human.”

Alexandra Sauser-Monnig ’09

THE BUSINESS OF COLLABORATION

When alumni Amelia Meath ’10, Molly Erin Sarlé ’12, and Alexandra Sauser-Monnig ’09 were students, they formed the folk trio Mountain Man. The band released two albums, toured with Feist and The Decemberists, and branched out to work on their own projects. Amelia Meath (also a part of the electronic pop duo Sylvan Esso) has spent her time since Bennington collaborating, performing, and being nominated for Grammys with her musical partner Nick Sanborn. But she didn’t study music at Bennington; instead, she learned how to embrace the flexibility needed to be a musician.

“I think the thing about having a job in a creative field is like seventeen different jobs,” said Meath. “My flexibility and ability to move seamlessly from talking about the textures of fabrics for costumes and into what I want a video graphic for our festival sets to look like is easy—I learned that vocabulary at Bennington.”

Meath collaborates with Sauser-Monnig and Sarlé frequently. “Molly and Alexandra now live closeby in North Carolina, and we essentially function like family members; they’re my best friends,” she said. “I see them every week. It’s really fun. And now, because I have a record label and a studio, we make music a lot together.” Meath also creates all her costumes with fellow alum, Emily Woods Hogue ’10.

SPACE TO EXPERIMENT

Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, also known as Daughter of Swords, has similar memories of music at Bennington. Though her Plan focused on literature and visual art, she enjoyed playing music in her house and eventually with her Mountain Man bandmates. The campus gave her the chance to experiment. “Bennington gives you the tools you need to explore things that are of interest to you,” she said. “And it encourages you to take weird chances and try things.”

Sauser-Monnig and Meath also discovered their love of yodeling together, which led them to create The A’s. They released their first album, Fruit, in 2022 and toured with Wilco in 2023. Now back in the studio collaborating with Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso, Sauser-Monnig is excited about her forthcoming Daughter of Swords album. Molly Sarlé, fellow Mountain Man, released a solo album, Karaoke Angel, in 2019—the same year that Mountain Man performed at the 2019 commencement.

The trio has been prolific beyond Mountain Man’s 2018 sophomore album, Magic Ship. But it was Bennington where they met and formed lifelong bonds. “I think that the way everyone has to design their own Plan at Bennington, and figure out what their path is—you have to take the initiative,” said Sauser-Monnig, “I think that’s

Mountain Man

Check out the Bennington College Spotify for songs from these and other artists.

like an invaluable skill set that has kind of shaped how I function as an adult and move through the world. I feel like everything that has happened in my adult life has been a result of going to Bennington; I had that modeled for me there, as the way to be a human.”

MUSIC AS A SPIRITUAL JOY

While some musicians find their voice at Bennington, some discover it later—in the midst of unrelated careers. Trustee and alum Tracy Katsky Boomer ’91 is a veteran Hollywood development executive and producer, but her other side is a punk-rocker for the Drama Dolls.

Though she learned to play the piano as a child, her heart belonged to the bass guitar. “I spent my 20s and 30s really going as hard as I possibly could in a non-musical direction,” said Katsky Boomer. “And creating a different career in a different industry was enormously satisfying. And then, when I was about 40, my neighbor was a guitar player; he wanted someone to jam with. So he handed me a bass.”

songs and had all fallen deeply in love as a trio with each other,” said Katsky Boomer.

At Bennington, Katsky Boomer took a class from longtime faculty member Gunnar Schonbeck. Schonbeck was known for creating elaborate instruments from various objects—and encouraged everyone, at any level or ability, to play. “He had figured out how to make sound and music out of air, strings, shells, and even fibers in the rug,” said Katsy Boomer. “It was amazing.” She was encouraged to perform music for the simple joy of it. “Music is a gift to me. And there’s never a point in your life that you can’t start,” she said. “It’s not something that you can truly put away. If it’s in you, it will always be in you. And it always welcomes you back home.”

LESSONS FROM THE MANTIS SHRIMP

Katsky Boomer joined a few bands in Los Angeles before finding her place in Drama Dolls, a high-energy punk band that is like “if Metallica had a crazy weekend with Hole.” Within three hours of working on music together, “we had written four

Music faculty member and internationally celebrated vocalist Virginia Warnken Kelsey is no stranger to the call and response of Bennington College. After wrapping up her first teaching term, she won her second Grammy Award as part of Roomful of Teeth, a vocal ensemble whose mission is “to explore all of the far reaches of humanity and what it is to be human via the voice,” said Kelsey. The approach she takes with her work, and her teaching style, is scientific

Drama Dolls

and anthropological—and has a lot in common with the mantis shrimp, powerful creatures whose eyes contain more color receptors than humans and can see colors we can’t even begin to comprehend.

“Roomful of Teeth uses a much wider spectrum of color than a typical vocal ensemble. We use our voices in really experimental and less traditional ways than you might see in a choir or a cappella ensemble.” Mantis shrimp can also break through aquarium glass and boil the water around their bodies—which isn’t that much different, if you think about it, than the bold Bennington approach to learning.

“At Bennington College, in any discipline, you’re never coming at it from the typical way,” said Kelsey. “You’re always breaking it open and turning it inside out and putting a whole bunch of other stuff in it and then creating something new out of your discipline.”

Kelsey is actively shaping the field her students are interested in. Roomful of Teeth is currently recording their next projects, an opera celebrating the life of the last Queen of Hawai’i, Lili‘u, and a Ken Burns documentary about Leonardo da Vinci.

Kelsey spent many years as a touring musician but feels she found her home—and community—at Bennington. “It’s all about community,” she said.

“People are there to create community through music

with you. That’s always how we should lead ourselves into any situation; get out in the community, no matter what it is that you want to do—do it! And reach out to local arts organizations, school organizations, volunteer, and always be generous and kind.”

KEEP PERFORMING. AND SOMETIMES… DO IT BAD

When asked to give advice to aspiring musicians, the themes of kindness, practice, and humility emerge. “Accept that fear and discomfort are a part of the process,” said Sauser-Monnig. “And if you’re feeling those feelings, it’s not so easy, but just try to lean into doing things that scare you.”

Meath said to play, and keep playing. “Keep going where the traction is,” she said. “Keep talking about it. Go to parties and to various events and talk about what you do—keep performing.”

Kelsey encourages her students to nurture their talents by facing those fears head on. “I do a thing sometimes where, if I’m working with singers on the acting or dramatic side, I tell them to do it ‘bad,’” said Kelsey. “And by doing it ‘bad,’ it’s just like overdoing it, making it garish and hideous. And actually, through that, a lot of discovery is made.”

Roomful of Teeth by Anja Schütz

CONNECTED FOR LIFE

COLLABORATING BEYOND BENNINGTON

By Walter Greene ’23

In Brooklyn’s Prospect Lefferts Gardens, a collective of Bennington alumni are choosing world-building over trend-chasing—a compelling and convincingly essential antidote to a music industry demanding more and more individual salesmanship from artists. It’s an approach to production that, to the initiated, is unmistakably Bennington.

Bennington prepares you to curate the environment you need to create your best work, even if a significant part of that production occurs outside your material reality. Work grows in the creative allowances of an open curriculum, the play between tight-knit collaborators and mentors, and the opportunities between a determined artist’s initial circumstance and a final project. Bennington pushes you to recognize the possibilities between what’s

desired and what’s available, urging the inspired to not only produce, but consistently validate the space their art needs to exist, develop, and then grow connections outside itself.

When those connections reach a critical mass, the work demands a material infrastructure. That’s precisely what ambitious Bennington alumni bands Aggie Miller, Surgeon General, A.M Rodio, and egg routine, among others, have found in New York City.

Left to right: Jaren Gallo ’25, Harry Zucker ’23, Garrett Crusan ’23, and Laila Smith ’25

Over the last year, this collective of recent Bennington graduates has been taking the means of musical production into their hands by securing a recording and production studio with a dedicated rehearsal and performance venue just blocks away. In terms of physical proximity and creative intimacy, the parallels between Bennington and this evolving scene in Brooklyn are unmistakable. Garrett Crusan ’23 of Surgeon General and Annabel Hoffman ’22, songwriting and performing under the name Aggie Miller, clarified in a late-winter interview.

WG: What are the differences between the songwriting environment at Bennington and here, in your studio?

MILLER: It doesn’t really feel that different than being in DCB [Deane Carriage Barn], which I think is the point of Bennington. You do this [music] there, and you’re totally prepared to do it outside, because there aren’t teachers guiding you at every step and telling you how to do something. Us being left alone in DCB., being trusted to get four credits out of this project—working up a set, a real band set— that translates into having your own studio.

CRUSAN: I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking ‘Wow, Bennington’s just kind of here.’ And we’re all doing the same thing; we’re trading parts and roles and listening to each other’s stuff before it’s released. It’s weird and awesome. It feels really, really special.

Senem Pirler, music faculty member at Bennington, offers a valuable perspective on how Bennington’s structure translates to the real world:

PIRLER: The idea is to help [students] be ready as creative individuals with critical thinking and improvisation skills in the world. They are overseen by faculty who are artist-practitioners in their fields. It’s a co-creation and co-learning process in which students discuss their ideas with their mentors throughout the process and are given methods, space, agency, and deadlines to materialize these ideas. At Bennington, we use academic structures to mimic the processes and what’s in place in the real world.

While walking between the collective’s recording space and the performance venue just down the street, Asa Marder ’22 of A.M Rodio described the energy surrounding this evolving space: WG: The energy between all of you creatively is clearly too much to bottle up within whatever system was already at play. It’s at once so inconceivable but so obviously the only possible solution. It’s like you guys had to make Bennington here.

and I’m going to get it out of Bennington.’ Which is what you need to do in the real world. You need to be like, ‘I’m doing what I need to be doing right now, and here I go, now I’m going to do it. I’m not doing it for my boss. I’m not doing it for anyone else.’

Aggie Miller, Surgeon General, and A.M Rodio work for themselves and yet stand out in their capacity to hold audiences in their space. As disparate as the bands are in their rhythm, sound, and energy, they’re unified in their lyrical sensibilities and their incredible capacity to take audiences in. They bring listeners into worlds that, while born out of necessity, hold more than enough space to welcome their eager audience—evident in the sold-out Aggie Miller album release show earlier this winter, as well as each band’s shows across Brooklyn, Manhattan, and on the road that consistently bring out new fans and Bennington alumni from across the years

From (in the words of Crusan) Surgeon General’s “nervous, chaotic, indie, punk-ish, rock-ish” sound to the “gentle intricacy of soft-indie and the raw groove of grunge” found in Aggie Miller (Notion), there’s a thorough authenticity to each band’s concept and production that discredits industry demands for trend-chasing as the best way to win over audiences.

“I really want to put on shows that have a definite concept to them. . . . That’s the most exciting part for me: playing a show and having some kind of set design and some kind of arc to it,” said Crusan.

Miller added, “I think that’s a Bennington thing. . . . You keep your head down, you write the songs, you bring them to the band, and they’re good. But that’s not enough, which is what Bennington taught me. My final project at Bennington was a philosophy paper, it was interviews, and it was an archival photo book. It was all the angles that you can look at this one thing, and they’re all equally important. I think that totally applies to the music scene [outside of Bennington] and will make a musician successful. . . . It’s worldbuilding.”

Their musical worlds exist unto themselves, yet inside, are revealed for what they are: so obvious, so essential. That creative vitality naturally extends into the real world. Harry Zucker ’23 who plays with Aggie Miller, Surgeon General, and egg routine speaks to this: “Keeping our music community going post-Bennington was not a choice—it was the only option. When you get to work with such remarkable songwriters and players, you don’t just give that up; these connections are for life.”

MARDER: Bennington’s a funny place that way. It definitely sets you up to be in unstructured environments and make things happen. That’s what Bennington is: No set path, justify yourself every two months. You’re going to have to develop a sense of fortitude. . . . I think they do it on purpose, so that eventually you just say, ‘You know what? I’m doing this for me. I know what I want,

We want to hear from you! Share your music story at magazine@bennington.edu.

Lives in Art in the City of New York

There has always been a strong connection between Bennington and New York City, especially among visual artists.

Many faculty members have New York studios. Several students work and study with faculty member Liz White, alumni, and others in the city each spring as a part of Museum Fellows Term. Students who found or deepened their love and practice of art at Bennington often find their niches in New York’s vibrant arts scene.

We asked a few alumni from across the decades to talk about the intersection between their time at Bennington, their current work, and being at home in the city of New York. What they have in common is a fearlessness in their approach to the unknown. Many keep their Bennington connections strong, serve others, and take on multiple interesting projects at a time.

By Ashley Brenon Jowett

TAKING RISKS

Laura Skoler ’57 Founding Trustee of the New Museum

Laura Skoler was accepted to another prominent northeastern college. “I think I would have been a different woman if I went there. It was a little square. At Bennington, you can think what you want, and you can say what you want, and you can have a debate about it, but you won’t be criticized.”

She studied psychology but also took courses in Italian, biology, wood cutting, and printmaking. “It was fascinating. Where else could I do that? At Bennington, you have a broader range. You could do things there that you couldn’t do at a ‘normal’ college.” She wrote her thesis on femininity and natural childbirth, a subject that was taboo in the wider world at the time. “Bennington was interesting. I found it opened my eyes to many things that I never would have thought of before—art, for instance.”

Later in her adulthood, Skoler took a weekendlong seminar on art with the Young Presidents’ Organization, of which her husband was a member. “It

was fabulous,” she said. It inspired her to take a course at the New School in New York, which led her to galleries, and eventually to the New Museum. “It was tiny. There were only five people on the staff,” she recalls.

She met the founder Marcia Tucker and asked her if she could volunteer. “I’ll do anything to learn about art,” Skoler remembers saying.

Like Bennington, the New Museum was not square. It was known for taking risks and showing challenging art. “Marcia was totally cutting edge. You felt it. You saw it. And the greatest part was, you got to meet the artists. That’s what intrigued me; it was a living art,” Skoler said. “I started in 1979, and I have been with them ever since.”

Skoler is a founding trustee at the New Museum and also on the board of directors of the Daniel & Florence Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation in Paris. “Art has brought life to my life, and I think I have brought a little life to art.”

DEVELOPING ONE’S OWN PATH

Maren Hassinger ’69 Sculptor

Prominent sculptor Maren Hassinger’s father was an architect. She credits his constant consideration of three-dimensional space for having directed her towards becoming a sculptor.

“I had taken art classes in high school, and they were always electives. Then I came to Bennington, and art classes were the core of my education. The seriousness with which art was taken made a huge difference. I wouldn’t be an artist had it not been for the kind of education and supervision that I got from my teachers [at Bennington].”

After graduating, she applied for an MFA in sculpture at UCLA, but she was not admitted. Instead, she entered the fiber structure program there. That shift in her intended future introduced her to the material that would become her signature: wire rope.

“It was invented to hold up suspension bridges, so it’s strong yet very pliable, and it comes in all kinds of sizes. And so I started using that material in my

weaving class, and I started doing the kind of things I would have done if I was in a traditional sculpture class—bending it with heat, for instance.”

When Hassinger got out of graduate school and started showing her work to hiring institutions or to galleries to try to get shows, her work appeared to be entirely original.

“Not getting into the sculpture program was an accident that has made me. Had I been a traditional sculptor, I would have been involved in this history that was already full. Instead, I was part of a type of art that had no history at all. I didn’t have any competitors.”

She added, “Everybody at Bennington was allowed to develop along their own path. What I think is good about that is that it gives you the strength to continue experimentation. That’s the way I’ve found the materials I want to work with, and it has made my career what it is.”

Skoler, left, with New Museum Founder Marcia Tucker at the opening reception for “Andres Serrano: Works 1983-1993” at the New Museum in 1995 | Photo courtesy of the New Museum

CHALLENGING PARADIGMS

Daniel Cameron ’79 Curator and Art Writer

Daniel Cameron transferred to Bennington after three terms at Syracuse University and reveled in being able to study across art, theater, art history, English, and philosophy. “I had not had a happy time at university. But when I got to Bennington, it just seemed to click. I ended up writing a thesis that was kind of half philosophy, half art history.”

He worked with a New York gallery during Field Work Term and was offered a job there immediately following graduation. “So, I had a soft landing because it was a full-time job that led to many connections. I was publishing regularly and curating regularly within three years after leaving Bennington, and I’ve been a curator and an art writer—a critic or an art theorist or an art historian—ever since.”

Experimentation has been a central theme. “I’m interested in trying out new things and challenging paradigms. I had an eleven-year association with the New Museum as the curator at a time when the New Museum was different from a lot of the other arts institutions in the city.” Since then, he has organized many international exhibitions at “an ambitious scale for more than 30 years.”

“As a curator, the thing I’ve always most wanted is to have somebody come in an exhibition that I’ve done as one person and come out after the exhibition is over looking at the world in a somewhat different way.” Cameron did a retrospective of the Argentine artist Leandro Erlich at the Pérez Art Museum Miami last year. Impact, an exhibition of ten contemporary artists, is up at the Sarasota Art Museum through July 7. His passion project is a not-for-profit exhibition space called La Capilla Azul on the Chilean island of Chiloé.

When he encounters other Bennington alumni, whether he met them at Bennington or whether they discovered their Bennington connection through conversation, he finds the people around them listening with interest “because few people had as interesting a college education as we did.”

Dan Cameron on a panel “Art, Uncertainty, and Change” featuring Bennington alumni at the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in 2017

Photo by Wilson Santiago

BECOMING HER OWN VOICE

Eileen Travell ’88 Senior Photographer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Eileen Travell came to Bennington to study painting. In her first term, her father died unexpectedly. She took a term off, went to work for a photographer, and fell in love with the darkroom process: “the ability to capture one’s energy on film, the meditation of the darkroom, and the interplay between light and shadow.”

“Painting was always my escape from the world. It was abstract and ethereal and otherworldly. Photography was more grounded in reality. It became my way back in. It grounded me,” she said. “The darkroom was a place to heal and connect with my emotional sensibility.”

While at Bennington, she interned in the photo studio at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was hired upon graduation. “I take pictures of artwork for catalogues. I also shoot portraits of artists and staff members. Because I’ve been at The Met so long, I like to photograph objects that are challenging, like silver and glass.”

Recently, she documented ceramics made by Black potters of Edgefield, South Carolina, for an exhibit and book titled Hear Me Now. “It was the first time some of these pots have been photographed at a high level and given the attention they need visually and photographically,” Travell said.

BREAKING WITH FORMALISM

Lauren Seiden ’03 Artist

At Bennington, she connected with faculty member Neil Rappaport, who was a portrait photographer. She is looking for interns to help organize the archive and a Vermont organization to house it. “It will go somewhere where people can look at it and touch it and learn from it,” she said. “Because Neil was all about teaching.”

In addition to Rappaport, Travell appreciates her Bennington faculty mentors, including Pat Adams, Sidney Tillim, and Stanley Rosen. “They gave me their belief in me, their respect. It was something that I never had as a maker before. And, when I went there, I felt at home. You don’t have to explain yourself at Bennington. The work speaks for itself. It’s a magical place.”

Travell’s photographs are in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, as well as many private collections, and have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, Sunday London Times, Washington Post Magazine, Town & Country, Stern, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Dance Ink, and other publications. Travell is married to Andrew Kromelow ’90 and has two adult daughters, Cleopatra and Agatha Rose.

Lauren Seiden studied painting at Bennington and particularly enjoyed the tutorials she took with graduate students during her senior year, which introduced her to conceptual art and installation. She spent all her Field Work Terms working at New York City galleries.

“Art at Bennington was experimental. And perhaps not having certain fundamentals allowed me to find my own voice without restrictions of what ‘should be,’” she said. “You chose this school, because it offered freedom to break with formalism. Bennington is designed to discover and define new ways of thinking and creating.”

Her work now reveals the impulse to challenge norms and a devotion to the simplest and most natural materials: the pencil. “My sculptural practice deals with the manipulation and elevation of quotidian materials (pencil) into sculptural form. By obscuring the definability of material or object, I am able to upend the hierarchy of art materials, diversifying the

“After Lynda (II)” used cotton mops, hand drawn graphite pencil, mixed media, and chains

male-dominated canon of sculpture and its associated discussions on form and materials. This is pencil-as-sculpture and drawing-as-three-dimensional-form,” she said. “By meticulously applying graphite pencil to unexpected surfaces, I am bringing ‘drawing’ itself into the foreground and redefining its terms. This process is not purely an aesthetic decision; I am making a statement on the concept of labor, about what kind of labor is valued and seen, and what is invisible.”

A recent piece made from mops used in artists’ studios is a tribute to the unseen work of artmaking. “I am not a painter, so when I began drawing and using the pencil as a way to develop my own language, I was able to meet my peers in an exchange of ideas and to converse as to how we challenge those concepts through our chosen materials and media,” Seiden said.

Her work resonates with museums and galleries. She had a solo show, Something Must Break, at Gallery Nosco in Brussels last year. In addition, she was in a three-person show in New York this past November and will be in an upcoming group exhibition, Wrongs & RIGHTS, curated by Laura Dvorkin and Maynard Monrow, at Brandeis University in September 2024.

Seiden advises, “Be unafraid. Don’t worry about failing. Learn by doing. Embrace your freedom. You’re strongest when you’re authentic to your voice.”

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

Fatima Zaidi ’16 Development Director for The Kitchen

For her first Field Work Term, Fatima Zaidi interned at a fashion magazine. “I thought when I was in high school that fashion was something that would be a path for me,” said Zaidi. “I often make the joke that the internship was like the movie Devil Wears Prada, except that I didn’t have a boyfriend making me grilled cheese sandwiches, nor did I get to go to Paris. It was all of the bad stuff and none of the good stuff.”

When she returned to Bennington, she decided to switch focus to the visual arts, French, psychology, and the social sciences. “I took an anthropology class called Displaying Culture, which was a deep dive into the museum field,” said Zaidi. It resonated with an internship she had done before college at a museum in Pakistan, where she is from. “There, a lot of topics are taboo, but seeing them being directly addressed in art was and still is a big point of motivation for me. I got to see how audiences get to have a discourse with the work that’s on display and the performances that are up in a way that they’re not able to otherwise.”

Now, Zaidi is the Director of Development at The Kitchen, which was founded by artists as an experimental collective in 1971. She is working on growing membership and support for the organization’s programs and gearing up for the annual spring benefit in May.

Outside of The Kitchen, Zaidi is on the board of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC, pronounced “saucy”). They are planning an anniversary celebration and hosting writers, musicians, and comedians.

“We’re trying to expand on what creativity means, including culinary arts, comedy, acting, and even entrepreneurship. We want to encompass the full scope of what it means to be creative, so we have been trying to push the boundaries there.”

She also maintains an active painting practice. She was in two exhibitions last year and hopes for another this summer or fall. She keeps in touch with several of her Bennington College friends who studied visual arts and other disciplines. “Being connected to alums is so important, because almost everyone you need is in the room with you. We all grow together and learn together.”

Fatima Zaidi ’16 in front of a Richard Serra sculpture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in October 2023

FINDING ENDLESS CONNECTIONS

River Valadez ’20 Ceramicist and Glassblower

River Valadez refers to his time at Bennington as “completely idyllic.” He continued, “I loved that I could be around this beautiful landscape and think for myself. I was, in a good way, forced to focus on what was in my own head.”

During Bennington’s Museum Fellows Term, Valadez worked for ceramic artist Peter Lane. He continued working for Lane while finishing his degree online during the pandemic and still works there now. “We make giant ceramic installations for private homes and businesses around the world,” he said. “We recently did one for the Four Seasons Hotel in London that’s more than 30 feet tall.”

Lane provides a studio space for Valadez to make ceramic furniture for interior designers. His furniture was featured in Vanity Fair magazine in 2022. But his latest obsession is glass blowing. In the evenings and on weekends, Valadez blows glass and teaches glass blowing with a torch at Urban Glass in Brooklyn and, sometimes, The Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. He has his own studio, where he makes

wine glasses for interior designers.

He keeps in touch with his Museum Term cohort and enjoys discovering that new acquaintances also attended Bennington. “The connections are endless.” The common theme among Bennington people, Valadez says, is a willingness to help others.

“I continually think about how I can help people with their missions, help people to learn, help people stay on track.... That way of thinking was given to me at Bennington.” He continued, “At Bennington, there was a structured way; you had a committee of people helping you on your path that you designed. But in an unstructured way, there’s still a culture of people wanting to see you get to where you want to go or go there with you.”

“There have been a few times that I have interacted with Bennington alums from other decades, and I have always felt a moment of understanding; even though we are different, we are all thinking similarly. And every time I have talked to people from earlier decades, they have always asked, ‘how can I help?’”

Share your story with us! We want to know how you used the principles you learned at Bennington to create a creative career. Email magazine@bennington.edu.

Photo courtesy of Urban Glass

Rodeo # 2

By Jason Sebastian Russo

Contestant : What is to begin ?

Alex Trebek : The only true way to end anything is this simple act. |

In March 2020, I was scheduled to tour down the West Coast with Pete International Airport. My late-career “members of” band was celebrating a successful year of shows at a festival in Joshua Tree National Park. We were on a bill stacked with old friends and former bandmates1 at Pappy and Harriets, the legendary venue/cowboy movie set that acts as a kind of Camino De Santiago for musicians and crews, and I contemplated my reunion with the desert with all the devotion of a native New Yorker in late winter.

Instead, I was locked in my one-bedroom railroad, quarantined away from my family and marriage, and there were refrigerator trucks full of corpses down the street.

One month and three days after I was born, the American songwriter known professionally as Graham Parsons OD’d in room eight of the Joshua Tree Hotel. The room is rarely vacant, according to legend, and I imagined it full of desert light from my lonely Brooklyn apartment, where my golf clap joined a mysterious dusk-time chorus I finally learned was for front-line health workers. I sat around bleaching cans of food while my carefully built marketing business and touring worldwide ground to a halt, sans information or political daylight to navigate by.

I started to make a living tweeting and Instagramming when Tee Pee Records, my longest-running client to date, failed to market my band’s records. I elbowed my way in and eventually developed my “boutique marketing service” operating from tour bus bunks, hotel “Business Centers,” sidewalks, weddings, and baptisms. I’d hit send on a post promoting a client’s show, walked on stage to perform

my own, and checked notifications when I got off.

What came to pass didn’t feel like it was happening in the manner of algorithms: bored at work, I invented @retsoor and began to tweet errant nonsense. I found the poets and comedians that would eventually be called “Weird Twitter” and reveled in the still free-feeling web anonymity: I was not a musician, I was just my thoughts. My very essence. As a result, some of my best Twitter friends became my friends in real life, and I was solicited by literary journals and “alt-lit” types that published my “poetry” and what I’m lately calling ekphrastic satire.

I was ranked fourth worst academically at Our Lady of Lourdes High School in Poughkeepsie, NY. I hadn’t enjoyed a positive relationship with my educators or fellow students. An extremely hazy community college experience ended badly, so I hit the road until my bleachy pandemic fingers googled “higher ed,” decades later.

I settled on SUNY in the fall of 2020 and won a spot on the impressively acronymed PRODiG Scholars Program, designed to help underrepresented folks become professors. I looked into the school itself during my research assistantship. The improbably named Ernest Boyer founded Empire fifty years ago on radical hippie notions and personalized degree plans.2 Many of his revelations, I learned from his excellent Scholarship Reconsidered, were heavily influenced by the seminal Pedagogy of the Oppressed and led to a cascade of my own:

One: I got a 4.0 in everything I took at SUNY Empire and graduated summa cum laude in 2022, at which point they hired me as an adjunct course designer.

1. The Dandy Warhols and Mercury Rev, respectively, in an infinite regress of nested band members growing more dimly obscure with each recursive iteration.

2. I had to get my degree passed by a board of stern professors. The SUNYs are harsh; they know they’re the underdogs and compensate with actual rigor.

All of this was in stark contrast to my early educational experiences, staffed by priests and nuns. In my case, it took advances in information and network technology as well as psychological/ medical treatment options previously unavailable to reveal I was a writer in love with scholarship.

Two: Art is service. It might feel like it has no value if you come from a pragmatic, second-generation background, but it affects the vital functions of our species. If I can reach some poor jamoke in Poughkeepsie, she might flourish and do the same. Simultaneously, I now have a reason to live. The heaviest phase of this revelation occurred when I pictured the reach of art-as-service taught to other artists-to-be. My mom was right all along. God is good.

Three: I was a beneficiary of the Education Opportunity Program during my undergraduate degree. We met on huge, cohort-wide Zooms, with our families and pets, at work, in Dunkin Donuts uniforms, wearing freedom mics, and with newborns. My mom got her degree at SUNY Empire. These good people held my hand during my first real college experience, and the State of New York paid for my entire bachelor’s degree. The

system works. The system works. I intend to bring as much value as possible to my community. They still trot me out at conferences, I hope, because of my snappy pitch: The State of New York invested in me, and as a result, I’ll soon be able to pay higher taxes. Thank you 3

Thanks to anonymity and character limits, I befriended poets Melissa Broder and Aaron Belz and authors like Bud Smith—whose living room workshops are the stuff of Jersey legend. My now successful, extremely online pals wrote letters of recommendation on my behalf and got me into even higher education situations. I eventually settled on poet J. Mae Barizo ’13’s alma mater in Vermont.

I now see the academy as a twinkling cluster of lights across a dark field. They tremble like apps waiting to be deleted, and long-running literature, music, and art departments wink out of existence with them. Even as tech opens the world, as it allows people like me to have access, the terrifying thought experiment of machine learning causes the intuitive among us to tremble. There is such a thing as an upward spiral; I’m convinced, I hope, and I pray it’s a matter of perspective.

Epilogue: Beginner’s mind is back and dumber than ever. I’ve been making music with a local singer, my marriage is releasing a cover record soon, and most of my clients are back on the road. I scored my first collection of poetry as I would a film, using broken robot narrators. I’m not quite done with my fictitious memoir about a guy who lived my life, but I’m getting close. Album to follow.

Jason Sebastian Russo is an MFA student in fiction and poetry at the Bennington Writing Seminars and the program’s twelfth Residential Teaching Fellow. His work appears in The Southwest Review, Hobart, Forever Magazine, and others. As a musician, he has toured and recorded with Mercury Rev, Hopewell, and Pete International Airport, among others and has composed for film, commercials, and even a nature documentary for the University of Alaska Planetarium.

3. I’m also a cartoon mouse at this point, so I doff a floppy hat.

Debt Liberation Laboratory

Submitted by Lauren Brady , student from ’14–’16 ; Alison (Mock) Dennis ’94 ; Oona Kilcommons ’16 ; Erika Lygren ’16 ; Marshall McGraw ’18 ; Jordan McIntosh-Hougham ’16 ; Liam McRae ’17 ; and Emily (Cleo) Zars ’17

If the founders of Bennington were alive now and confronted with the present educational landscape, what radical solutions would they design? In 2016, a cohort of Bennington students co-designed a group tutorial in collaboration with CAPA and Crossett Library staff to explore this question. What surfaced was a desire to address the wicked problem of college debt, imagining a future in which all living Bennington alumni were college debtfree. Eight years later, this work continues.

In 2018, a collective of ten founding alumni and former students, some with college debt and some without, formed the Debt Liberation Laboratory (DLL) as a social experiment in collective debt reduction. Step one: pay down and relieve our own college debt. Step two: share what we learn and create a nonprofit model that other friends and alumni can use. In 2020, the Debt Liberation Laboratory received

not-for-profit organization status.

“When we were starting the project, we talked a lot about taboo,” reflects Erika Lygren ’16. “We tend not to talk about our student loans, especially in terms of real figures. Students and alumni experience shame about having it. Folks who graduate without debt can feel guilt about their privilege. Thinking about our collective debt as a shared problem, instead of as a private burden, is liberating.”

We started with just under $100,000 of combined undergraduate student debt in 2018, and as of winter 2024, we have paid off 70 percent of this original debt burden. Three of us who started the project with debt are now undergraduate college debt-free.

The process hasn’t been linear, Cleo Zars ’17 reports. “At one point, we were down to just one student loan and $17,791.37 in debt. When a founding member who left the group asked to rejoin, we welcomed them and their debt balance back. When another friend who chose not to join when we were first starting up expressed interest years later, there was consensus to include them even though it meant our collective debt balance grew.”

Today, the Debt Liberation Laboratory is down to three members with outstanding loans and a balance of $55,288.81. All of us pay ten dollars a month in dues, which are evenly distributed to our outstanding loans. Those of us who can also make additional contributions to accelerate our collective debt repayment. Those with debt also make standard loan payments. Others who believe in what we are doing make gifts. There is no magic trick to it. When our current balance is paid off, the project won’t stop. We will shift our focus to using the model we are innovating to reduce the debt of others.

“Achieving the milestone of nonprofit tax status was key to being able to legally accept tax-deductible donations,” observes Lauren Brady, who attended Bennington from 2014 to 2016. “As a 501(c)(10), we are supported by the same nonprofit laws that apply

to social benefit societies and orders like the Elks Lodge. I love that we are taking an existing model like the lodge system that might seem antiquated and applying it in a radical and altruistic way. I feel connected in real time to the aspects of my Bennington experience that I most cherish, working with friends outside the classroom to solve problems and support each other.”

“From its inception, we’ve embedded structures into the DLL that build on the strength of our social bonds. I have no doubt that many of these friendships might have faded with time if it weren’t for the practice of meeting monthly and talking openly about our debt,” Jordan McIntosh-Hougham ’16 notes. “Time and time again, I witness how both our individual and collective pursuits are strengthened by the support of this social fabric and the goal of debt liberation. I know I’m not alone in feeling like my fellow lodge members have become a kind of second family. It gets me curious about what it would look like if the entire living Bennington alumni base was college debt-free. What new work might get created? What new collaborations might form?”

“The original 2016 tutorial was part Crossett archive-based research and part new model innovation,” recalls Marshall McGraw ’18. “In Barbara Jones’ introduction to Bennington College: In the Beginning by Thomas P. Brockway we found inspiration in this quote, ‘We were clear enough only about several negatives: no courses, no requirements, no lectures, no grades, no exams, no predetermined curriculum.’ Today, ‘no debt’ is an apt addition to this list.”

The Debt Liberation Laboratory meets monthly and publishes a newsletter to share their progress. Those interested in learning more about accelerating this project can reach them at info@debtliblab.org

Photo by Luise Stauss

The Renaissance Groundskeeper

NATE CORNWELL HELPS KEEP CAMPUS

BEAUTIFUL FROM ALL ANGLES

By Charlie Nadler

Groundskeeper Nathan “Nate” Cornwell’s first day on campus was Halloween 2011, which is fitting for a man who wears so many hats here at Bennington.

“I grew up in Shaftsbury,” he said. One of his earliest Bennington memories was from when he was about seven years old. “They used to host the circus here on campus,” he recalled. “And there was an old fifties Cadillac parked in the Ohio lot!”

Upon graduating Mount Anthony High (class of ’98), Cornwell headed to Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania where he earned a BA in History. “I took a lot of European history, Soviet history, and several classes on South Africa and the American Civil Rights movement,” he shared.

Cornwell experienced a “Plan Process” of his own. “When I went to college I was looking at computer science,” he explained. When he found he didn’t care for all the math, he considered a business degree. But the tests revolved around memorization and were not challenging. Meanwhile, history was all reading, writing, and open-ended test questions, which resonated better. “I didn’t think a lot about what I would do when I graduated,” he said. “My parents said get a degree in anything! Degrees are important and will help with work.”

It was during this formative Elizabethtown period when Cornwell solidified his love for the outdoors and its related professions. “The whole four years I was in the grounds department,” he said. “It was my work-study position, and I

still keep in touch with a lot of my old coworkers.”

After graduating, Cornwell worked several outdoorsy jobs and landed at Bennington College when his parents saw the role posted and knew it was just what he wanted. “I liked the variety of working outside. I was excited!”

“What inspires me is having a place that I care a lot about,” said Cornwell, “that I take pride in and a sense of ownership of and working with coworkers as a team, being a part of a community of people who share this love of the College, the grounds, the buildings, and the institution.”

Cornwell is one of three groundskeepers who cover all 440 acres. They each have their respective areas, and Cornwell’s includes the main drive, VAPA, and the Orchard. The last holds a special place, as he’s worked hard to replant many apple trees. “I know all those trees fairly well,” he said. “I have that area mapped out.”

“Sometimes people take for granted what a nice campus we have,” said Cornwell. “The biodiversity. The hiking trails. The space. The solitude. There’s so much here that people can utilize to do their own thing.”

Even the campus detritus is uniquely Bennington. “Nothing cracks me up more than when I find litter, and it’s an all-natural candy bar!” he laughs. “The wrapper is made with recycled material. Everyone else worked hard to be environmentally sustainable. And then someone gets it, probably feels good about buying it, but then doesn’t even throw it out!”

When asked about something about Bennington College that people might not know, Cornwell said, “There can be a disconnect between students and staff. Not a lot of students know what knowledge staff members have. They could learn a lot by talking to people who work here.”

Cornwell’s tastes, for instance, lean toward the classical arts. “There’s a lot more in the Bennington area than people realize,” he exclaimed. “Within an hour’s drive you’ve got MASS MoCA, the Bennington Museum, the Southern Vermont Arts Center, Vermont Arts Exchange, Williams College Art Museum, and The Clark with one of the world’s greatest public collections of Winslow Homer.”

Last time Cornwell was at MASS MoCA, he showed friends around the Gunner Schoenbeck music room. Schoenbeck was a former faculty member who made idiosyncratic instruments designed to be played by people of all abilities. Cornwell helped find and transport some of the instruments. “It was a fun trip down memory lane, and Bennington was everywhere that day. In the gift shop I ran into students whom I knew, and we ended up chitchatting,” he said.

Cornwell is heartened by the many alumni who stay in this area after commencement, referencing numerous alum owned businesses like the Blue Benn Diner (owned by John Getchell ’86). “The College has spilled into the community more than people realize,” he said.

Outside of the liberal arts, Cornwell enjoys riding his motorcycle, snowmobiling, and hiking. One of his favorite area trails is The White Rocks. “It’s a beautiful view, and you can see the campus clearly,” he shared. “I can’t imagine seeing that mountain from here and not wondering what it’s like from up there! That’s a good one for college students.”

Cornwell has seen many “cool things” during his tenure and is a huge fan of students and their work. “I enjoy going to the senior shows and attending Carriage Barn concerts,” he said. “There’s a student I worked with at the [Purple Carrot] farm who got to conduct a song he’d worked on. He invited me, and it was so cool to go and see him conducting the orchestra!”

Cornwell has helped out at the farm a lot. A rewarding experience was when he showed a student how to work a three-point hitch. After Bennington, she worked on a farm on an island off the coast of Maine. “They asked, ‘Do you know how to hitch up and work a plow? Do you know how to disk it?’” said Cornwell. “When she came back to visit she said to me, ‘That stuff I learned from you is what I’m doing most and is the most career oriented.’ It made me feel really good and happy.”

Cornwell has also been a guest collaborator for several faculty members including Caitlin McDonough MacKenzie, Tatiana Abatemarco, and Yoko Inoue. “I love when I get to work with students, share things, talk with them, and show them things,” he said.

“One of the things I like about working at a College is the diversity,” said Cornwell. “It presents an opportunity to talk to people from around the world who have different

“One of the things I really like working at a College is the diversity. An opportunity to talk to people from around the world. Who have different beliefs. If you didn’t work here you might not get exposed to certain things.”

beliefs. If you didn’t work here, you might not get exposed to certain things. I also like having the inside track. If there’s a concert or art show in Usdan, I can go to it. I can go to the library. I can interact with people. Those are the intangibles of being an employee here.”

Cornwell was not the first in his family to explore Bennington College. “My father [Robert Cornwell] was an experimental nuclear physicist at Princeton,” he said. “He was hired as faculty at Middlebury. Then someone from Princeton told him about an opening here, and he taught for seven years.” In Bennington fashion, Cornwell’s father was a lifelong learner whose career took interesting turns. After Bennington, he taught math at Mount Anthony, then became an accountant.

Prior to Cornwell’s arrival, his sister Martha worked in the Barn for about three years in what is now Institutional Advancement. He has also had two relatives study here; his brother David Cornwell ’05 received his masters in teaching, and his sister-in-law Cheryl Cornwell ’04 received her bachelor’s.

Being at Bennington College truly feels like destiny for Cornwell. “My mom was a nun in the Roman Catholic church,” he said. “She taught at a Catholic school, then wanted a family; so she never took her final vows. She left the convent and was teaching at Hoosick Falls Elementary when she met my dad.”

“If my dad had never gotten the Bennington job, he might’ve stayed at Middlebury or gone elsewhere,” said Cornwell. “I would’ve never been alive if this College didn’t bring him here.”

DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT DURING THE APRIL SCHOLARSHIP CHALLENGE

From April 1-30, Margaret Rood Lenzner ’67 is matching the first $100,000 towards student scholarships dollar for dollar.

MEET THE CHALLENGE. DONATE TODAY.

98% of Bennington students receive some form of financial aid. You can empower Bennington students to explore, create, and experiment, unbounded by financial constraints.

Make your gift by April 30 at bennington.edu/give

Class Notes

1960–1969

Artist Ruth Mordecai ’60 had two shows this fall: Ruth Mordecai New Work 2023 at the Matthew Swift Gallery in Gloucester, MA, October 28-December 4, 2023, and Ruth Mordecai: Early Work 1970-2000, a fundraiser for the Goetemann Artist Residency, at the Rocky Neck Art Colony Cultural Center in Gloucester, MA, November 2-December 10, 2023. A profile about her was featured in Art New England’s November/December 2023 issue. Ruth Mordecai, Kiss 5, 2022; acrylic, oil, and graphite on paper

Peggy Adler ’63 appeared on the December 17, 2023, edition of the Circus Historical Society’s Circus History Live to discuss Emil Pallenberg and his bicycle-riding, roller skating Wonder Bears about which she wrote the book Pallenberg Wonder Bears: From the Beginning, published by BearManor Media in 2022. Adler also published Trilogy: Three True Stories of Scoundrels and Schemers in December 2023.

1970–1979

Margaret Berg ’71 was highlighted about Colorado College’s Dance Workshop, which she helped found, in an article in the campus newspaper The Catalyst

Bennington Historical Society presented “A Battle of Bennington for the 250th,” a historical presentation

with Phil Holland ’71, at the Bennington Museum in December. Holland is the author of A Guide to the Battle of Bennington and the Bennington Monument and Robert Frost in Bennington County, as well as articles and reviews for the Walloomsack Review. He directed an audio project for the Bennington Battlefield last year and has written monologues for the recently performed historical dramas Voices from the Grave and Voices of the Fallen.

Goldie Morgentaler ’71 was the keynote speaker at an international literary conference held in Lodz, Poland. The talk celebrated the literary works of her mother, the Yiddish novelist Chava Rosenfarb.

Lynn Coburn Shapiro ’71 also spoke at the conference. Her talk was devoted to analyzing the work of Rosenfarb and other Jewish women writers of the 20th century. The city of Lodz officially marked the centennial of Rosenfarb’s birth by declaring 2023 to be The Year of Chava Rosenfarb. They also named a city street after her. Morgentaler is the translator of Rosenfarb’s novels into English, most notably The Tree of Life: a Trilogy of Life in the Lodz Ghetto. In June, she published a collection of her mother’s short stories translated in English called In the Land of the Postscript. It is available from Amazon and White Goat Press.

Backchannel, a collaboration between choreographer/dancer David Appel ’72 and composer/ sound artist John Morton, ran at Target Margin Theater in Brooklyn in November 2023. Excerpts of Backchannel and his most recent solo show, The Stories This Time, are available for viewing on his website, youtinydancer.com.

Randie Denker ’72 wrote, “At a time when many of my peers are retiring, I find myself with no desire to join them. I am still practicing environmental protection law and serving on numerous local and state boards and committees. I am on the Legal Advisory Board for Sierra Club, and I am also a Fulbright Visiting Scholar. I serve as president of my neighborhood association, and I am on the executive Board of the Alliance

of Tallahassee Neighborhoods. I am still working with the Big Bend Voter Registration Project to register minority voters. My partner Dr. Steve Leitman and I co-founded Waters Without Borders, which is dedicated to finding peaceful solutions to international and regional water allocation problems. In our spare time, we travel around the world. This past summer, we spent two months in Africa, and I learned to speak Swahili. We are still living in Tallahassee, FL, in an all-solar house, and we grow most of our own fruits and vegetables.”

Leslie Parke MFA ’74 invites alumni to read her January 2024 Studio Notes at leslieparke.com/studionotes/ jan2024. There she relates the necessity of creating small works on paper next to the woodstove during the bitter cold of an early 1980s winter.

Susanna Reich ’75 published the picture book Pass the Baby with Neal Porter Books. The book was named one of the Best Multicultural Children’s Books of 2023 by the Center for the Study of Multicultural Children’s Books. Photo by

New Jersey artist Susan Hoenig ’76’s solo exhibition paintings and forest compositions On Lenape Land was on display October-December 2023 at Tulpehaking Nature Center in Hamilton, NJ.

Laurie Weinstein ’76 wrote, “While I retired from my position at Western Connecticut State University, recently I took on a new teaching gig. I will be a Visiting Professor of Anthropology at the University of Ottawa, Canada. I’m also working on my writing, books and articles, and managing my menagerie of pets.”

1980–1989

The work of the late John Anderson ’81 was celebrated during Landscape & Desire: Homage to John Anderson at Vashon Center for the Arts throughout the month of January.

Jeff Taylor ’84 completed a U.S. tour with Van Morrison. Taylor played baritone, tenor, and soprano saxophones; clarinet; flute; and guitars and sang background vocals at fourteen concerts across six different cities. He will join the tour again in 2024.

Barnabas Rose, who attended Bennington from 1985 through 1987,

shared the following note: “After living with my ailing father for the past two months and reading his class notes from Trinity College (Class of ’58), I thought I might update my college. In August 2023, I took a family leave of absence from being a mate at a Trader Joe’s in New Hampshire to move in with my 86-year-old father, who is suffering from congestive heart failure, in Sewanee, TN. I was reading letters I wrote to my father throughout the years and found some from my Bennington time. It was great to reminisce about friends and places. If anyone would like to be in touch with me, I am at brosewolf@icloud.com.”

An exhibition, Capturing Time: A Neil Rappaport Retrospective, is planned for Stone Valley Arts at Fox Hill in Poultney, VT, June 15-August 18. Rappaport was a former faculty member in photography. The show will include items archived by Eileen Travell ’88 and is curated by Chuck Helfer and Krista Rupe.

1990–1999

Siemens-award-winning vocal ensemble Ekmeles premiered Todd Tarantino ’97’s latest composition, “Incipit Lamentatio,” on March 23, 2024, in New York. This past August, his “My Father’s Land” for

Laurel Golio

Jeff Taylor ’84 (third from right) on tour with Van Morrison

choir, strings, and organ debuted at the Ostrava Days Festival in the Czech Republic.

Taliesin Thomas ’98 contributed that the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY, presented the Critical Forum Artist Exhibition 2024 from January 8–February 24, 2024. It featured artworks by nearly fifty local artists including Bennington College alumni Matt Chinian ’84, Ali Herrmann ’98, Anna Noelle Rockwell ’94, and Leslie Greist Yolen ’78

Carleen Zimbalatti MFA ’98’s work appeared in a group show, Warp & Weft, at The Phoenix in Waterbury, VT, in January.

Musician, ex-record producer, and acclaimed author Don Silver MFA ’99’s second novel, Scorched (Holloway Press), is slated for release May 7, 2024.

2000–2009

Jason Myers ’02 wrote, “This year I published my debut collection of poetry, Maker of Heaven &, with praise from Jericho Brown, Li-Young Lee, and Carrie Fountain. EcoTheo Collective, the arts nonprofit I run, received a grant from the Poetry Foundation and an Amazon Literary Partnership. My second book, A Place for the Genuine: On Nature, Poetry, and Vocation, will be published in 2025 by Eerdmans.”

Heather Dewey-Hagborg ’03 is a Chicago-based transdisciplinary artist who has shown internationally at venues including the World Economic Forum, Shenzhen Urbanism and

Architecture Biennale, the New Museum, and MoMA PS1. Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera was on display at Fridman Gallery in New York City in fall 2023.

Jesica Nadeau ’03 was honored with the Maine Elementary Arts Educator of the Year Award. She works at Boothbay Region Elementary School.

Andrew Reiner MFA ’03 published an op-ed, “The trouble with boys isn’t boys,” on the cover of Boston Globe’s Ideas section.

Will Ransom ’04 has been named as the winner of Clemmons Family Farm’s UnderWater, UnderGround artist-in-residence program. He was also the featured speaker at the Strand Center for the Art’s February Salon Series: Salons at the Strand.

Effy Redman ’04’s debut memoir Saving Face, “a queer coming-of-age narrative exploring disability identity,” will be published in March 2024.

Wythe Marschall ’06’s gamedesign company, the Stillfleet Studio, launched Blister Critters, its second full tabletop roleplaying game, on February 6, 2024, on Kickstarter.

Lena Valencia ’08 shared that her debut book, Mystery Lights, a collection of stories about women and girls navigating terrors both familiar and fantastic, will be published by Tin House Books in August 2024.

Daniel Wilcox ’08 wrote, “[I am] currently living in Mill Valley, CA, with my wife Francesca Aborn and newborn baby girl, Ottavia. [I] got my MBA in 2023 from the University of Virginia, Darden, while heading up operations at Dutch, a venture-backed

veterinary telemedicine start-up based in Oakland. [I am] still very close with many of the ’08 Green Room crew. I’d like to take a moment to remember my dear friend Tigre (Jami) Marshall-Lively ’08, who left us in 2022.”

2010–2019

Willa Carroll MFA ’11 published her new poetry collection, Demolition Suite, with Split Rock Press.

Karina Cochran ’11’s play

The Laborious Dance was recently published through Next Stage Press.

A new essay by Julia Lichtblau MFA ’11, “Autumn Leaves,” about singing to her mother and studying music late in life, appears in the spring 2024 issue of The American Scholar Also the first chapter of her novel, The Glass House, was longlisted for the 2023 Disquiet Prize.

ArtDaily.com reported that J. Mae Barizo MFA ’13 is among this year’s Baryshnikov Arts Spring Residency Artists. Baryshnikov Arts residencies provide space and support to artists for creative investigation in all performing arts disciplines: dance, music, theater, multimedia, performance art, or any combination thereof.

Catherine Weingarten ’13 wrote, “I recently got engaged and am also working on helping to produce my play I’m So Hot at the Tank Theater in New York City this August.”

Rowena Leong Singer MFA ’16 was selected as a Showcase Artist for Literary Arts at APAture, an annual

festival that focuses on emerging Asian Pacific American artists. Her novel excerpt, All Manner of Beasts, addresses the showcase theme of “Seeking Home,” which considers “the ideas of land, place, migration, and the legacies of imperialism and displacement, reflecting the ways in which we conceive of home and the impermanence therein.”

Xander Holt ’19 started in Bennington College’s Student Life, Wellness, and Recreation department as the Assistant Director of Student Engagement. The role puts him in charge of the Meyer Recreation Barn, intramurals, and student clubs and organizations.

Erika Nichols-Frazer MFA ’19 wrote, “I’ve had two books published in the past year. Feed Me: A Story of Food Love and Mental Illness (Memoir, Casper Press, Dec. 2022), which tells the story of learning to cope with an eating disorder, bipolar disorder, and alcoholism in the family through the healing power of food and bringing people together over shared meals. It’s about learning to nourish one’s self, body and mind. Staring Too Closely: Poems (Main Street Rag, 2023) includes poems about healing from trauma, both personal and collective. They explore reproductive rights, war, and so much more.”

2020–2023

Suleika Jaouad MFA ’20 spoke with her husband, musician Jon Batiste, during “The Beat Goes On: Healing from Cancer through Music” as a part of Princeton University Concerts’ “Healing with Music” series. American Symphony, a 2023 American

biographical documentary film, explores a year in the life of musician Batiste, including his music career and Jaouad’s struggle with leukemia. The documentary premiered at the 50th Telluride Film Festival in August 2023 and was released by Netflix in November. The film received a Best Original Song nomination at the 96th Academy Awards.

Olivia Saporito ’20 became the new technical instructor in Sculpture and Visual Art at Bennington College. Saporito supports the sculpture and visual arts curriculum, as well as Usdan Gallery, and will be teaching a two credit course each term.

Molia Dumbleton MFA ’21 has won the 2023 Granum Foundation Prize for her short story collection, tentatively titled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Lindsay Ryan MFA ’21 published an essay, “How Do I Make Sense of My Mother’s Decision to Die?” in The Atlantic.

Outpost The Residency, in collaboration with Vermont Humanities and its donors, announced Nico Amador MFA ’22 as the first-ever Outpost Vermont Fellow. The fellowship was established to provide continuous support to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) writers in Vermont.

Ashley D. Escobar ’22’s debut poetry collection Glib is forthcoming in 2025 with Changes Press. It was the winner of the Changes Book Prize judged by Eileen Myles. In addition, Escobar’s poems appeared in the February issue of the Brooklyn Rail.

Jen Christensen MFA ’23 ranked #1 on the Muck Rack list of “Top 10 Most Popular Investigative Journalists.”

Robin Reif MFA ’23 was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her piece, “Someone,” published in The Missouri Review. Another essay, “To The Woman Whose Body I Washed,” was named a Notable Essay for the Best American Essays 2023 collection. This essay originally appeared in OffAssignment.

Before all the World, the second novel by Moriel Rothman-Zecher MFA ’23, was released in paperback from Picador USA in October 2023.

Please submit your professional and personal updates to classnotes@bennington.edu

Faculty & Staff Notes

Literature faculty member Benjamin Anastas was published in the Believer’s 2023 Music Issue. Anastas’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Oxford American, Harper’s Magazine, and The Paris Review

Music faculty member Nick Brooke’s Ten Transcendental Etudes d3H, which melds sampling, sound design, and physical theater, premiered at MASS MoCA on March 1, 2024. It will appear at New York City’s HERE performing arts center April 4-7.

Faculty member, dramaturg, theater historian, and author Maya Cantu appeared on the Broadway Nation podcast to discuss her new book Greasepaint Puritan: Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes.

Faculty member Michael Dumanis’s collection Creature was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. Faculty member Camille Guthrie interviewed Dumanis for Adroit Journal about the book.

As part of LAByrinth Theater Company’s 31st season, faculty member Dina Janis directed The Complicated, a dark comedy about an eccentric, cultural-melting-pot of a family struggling to survive in New York in the 1980s. The show ran February 20–March 3, 2024, at 59 East 59th Street Theaters. Janis also launched Vermont Public Theater, where she is founder and artistic director, with three concert readings

of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory. “We raised several thousand dollars for Vermont Flood Relief in partnership with the Vermont Community Foundation. This first tour we did throughout the state was in partnership with Vermont Arts Exchange and was performed at Little City Cider in Bennington,” said Janis.

Poetry faculty member Randall Mann published Deal: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press), a selection of poems from his previous five collections plus new poems. According to Christopher Spaide, writing for The Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books, the collection “chronicles how Mann progressed from this early work to his most distinctive poems—a paradoxical process, equal parts unbuttoning and self-restraint.”

Bennington Writing Seminars faculty member Sabrina Orah Mark has won the National Jewish Book Award in Autobiography from the Jewish Book Council for her book Happily

On March 19, Graywolf Press published The Tree Doctor, the second novel by nonfiction BWS faculty member Marie Mutsuki Mockett MFA ’19.

Faculty member Mariam Rahmani’s novel Liquid came under contract with Algonquin this summer. It is slated for release in March 2025. In addition, Rahmani has a new translation under contract this winter with Liveright. She is now working on The Literary Biography of Forugh Farrokhzad by

Farzaneh Milani to bring a wider audience to the Iranian feminist poet who changed the course of Persian letters.

Nonfiction faculty member Hugh Ryan MFA ’09 sold his third book, Becoming History, a memoir in essays, to Bold Type.

Visiting assistant faculty member of Spanish Lena Retamoso Urbano’s new book, Luz de escombros, her third book of poetry in Spanish, was published in 2023 with Valparaíso Ediciones. Urbano attended NeMLA’s 55th Annual Convention as a co-chair of the creative panel. She presented a short film co-directed with the independent film director, Mario Castro Cobos.

Oceana Wilson, Dean of the Crossett Library at Bennington College and current President of the Vermont Library Association, appeared on Vermont Public’s Vermont Edition program about books to read in honor of Black History Month and joined a panel discussion on intellectual freedom sponsored by the Bennington Branch of the American Association of University Women.

Poet, critic, and educator Mark Wunderlich, executive director of the Bennington Writing Seminars, presented a lecture and discussion about the work of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke at Amherst College on February 29, 2024.

In Memoriam

Priscilla J. Alexander ’60

Caroline Wolferth Amidon ’53

John Anderson ’81

Marilyn Miller Bowie ’47

Dixie Brooke | Former Staff

Frederick Buechner P ’83 | Former Faculty

Patricia Burrows ’68

Susan Ullman Chapro ’58

Augustin M. Citrin ’20

Martha Irvin Cole ’51

Carol King Daly ’64

Matthew Dillon ’95

Diana Tucker Edwards ’56

Damaris Wiman Ford ’49

Linda George Greenwald MFA ’86 P ’85

Ann Thoron Hale ’50

Harriet Swift Holdsworth ’46

Katharine “Trina” Margeson Ingram ’61 P ’88

Pamela Ann Johnson MFA ’93

Norman Lear | Friend of the College

Nancy Smith Pellicia Lovejoy ’48

Sara C. Matthiessen ’76

Ann Landis McLaughlin ’51

Franziska Kempner Morris ’45

Mary Palmer | Current Staff

Emily Caner Parkman ’49

Carolyn Landon Porter ’45

Dimitra Sundeen Reber ’61 P ’96

Juliet Armer Roseberry ’51

Jean Ganz Sloss ’48

Louise Wachman Spiegel ’46

Robert Sugarman | Former Faculty

Elizabeth Stockstrom Van Dyke ’44

Nancy Sturman Stutz ’46

Marianne Wolfe Waldman ’74

Patricia Hale Whitcomb ’52

Join us this spring for the following events: Bennington College One College Drive Bennington, VT 05201-6003

Milford Graves: A Mind-Body Deal

1:00–5:00 pm Tuesday–Saturday through April 27 Usdan Gallery

Deane Carriage Barn Music Series: Chase Elodia’s Perennials

8:00–10:00 pm Tuesday, April 30 Deane Carriage Barn Pit

Poetry at Bennington: Reading by Khadijah Queen 7:00–8:00 pm Wednesday, May 8 Tishman Lecture Hall

The 2024 Ben Belitt Colloquium on Literary Arts and Culture: The Poetry of Reginald Shepherd ’88 7:00–8:30 pm Wednesday, May 15 Tishman Lecture Hall

Live stream available via bennington.edu/event-calendar

Senior Show in Visual Arts

1:00–5:00 pm Tuesday–Saturday, May 21–June 1 Usdan Gallery

Commencement Live Stream

10:00 am Saturday, June 1 bennington.edu/commencement