Assembly | Spring 2022 | #3

ASSEMBLY

The Art Journal of the School of Fine and Performing Arts at the State University of New York at New Paltz

Welcome to the third issue of Assembly, an online art journal published to celebrate the work and accomplishments of students and alumnx within the School of Fine & Performing Arts. We encourage our readers to view the first two issues, both to appreciate the work of previously featured students and alumnx and also to explore the evolution of Assembly into a student-run journal. As we continue to experiment, the third issue demonstrates the constant progression of Assembly, this time materializing as a class with a cohort of 17 students from a range of disciplines at New Paltz. All aspects of this issue, from the theme, call for submissions, vetting, design, content writing, features, and publications, have been decided by students. Both Assembly’s mission and execution are rooted in community as we gather to assemble the journal as a contribution to our larger community.

The current theme, Be Here Be Present, is purposefully a broad topic geared towards inclusivity. The goal was to allow the theme to be interpreted however applicants, as well as the student staff, saw fit. What does it look like to be present and be here, to show up together, as we finally emerge from sitting in isolation and processing the turmoil of the past two years? How do we emerge as individuals? How do we emerge collectively? The wide body of student work is just a glimpse into multiple interpretations of this narrative, and we now invite you to produce your own.

We as students are thrilled to be a part of this creation and hope that the compilation of breathtaking work and thought-provoking writing touches the audience. This could not have been achieved without hard work from numerous contributors; an extensive list of extraordinary people who have been listed in the colophon of this issue. Assembly is poised to grow with our community, and we hope that you are inspired to take part in coming issues however it is you interpret being here with us.

Mya Bailey | Art History BA

Artwork

Elizabeth Acierno

Eric Afflerbach

Jiyu An 4 Mya Bailey

Sulo Bee 8

Alexander Bennett 12 Mick Bodnar 14 Sophia Soup M. Bon 16 Mike Caputo 18 Erin Dougherty 20

Yuting Du 22 Marielena Ferrer 24 Samantha Fried 26 Kait Gallaugher 28 Rachel Gee 30 Brielle Sarkisian

Greta Hahn

Jackson Hardin

Talula Houston

Seth Jones

Joseph Kattou

Lucifer Kern

Wren Kingsley

Jess Rose Lauro

Anya Lucas

Brianna Ryan

Marissa Lucchese

Carlin McPhee

Mikayla Millard 64

Ciara Molumby

Lara Palombi

Joli Perfit

Teresa Ricci

Sofia Rock

Tracy Saraccino

John Sullivan

Amber Synett 86

Julia Thompson

Emily Tyman 96 Conrad Wickham 98 Hee Joo Yang 106 Alemir Beltre 110

FeaturesWritten

Jennifer Poroye 15

Wren Kingsley 50 Arthur Nelson 56 Marielena Ferrer 100 Brooke Cammann 112

Why Public Art on Campus Matters 10

by Marielena Ferrer

In Conversation with Caitlin Malczon & Emma Reifschneider 32 by Carlin McPhee

In Conversation with James Fossett 58 by Mikaila Ayala Sound Your Truth 70 by Erin Dougherty & Lucifer Kern

In Conversation with Faheem Haider 76 by Mariah Day & Katie Edelen

We Are Here 87 by Mya Bailey

In Conversation with Ibrahim Khazzaka 108 by Reed Humphrey & Ciara Molumby

Seat

I’m always better when I’m around other people. I have no problem being on my own and enjoying personal time, but surrounding myself with friends is what inspires me and motivates me more than anything. It goes beyond my artwork; they inspire me to experience life and we share that connection with each other. It is those moments of enjoying life together that often show up in my work. Whether it be the environment we find ourselves in, the people themselves, or just the energy of the moment, I find that capturing that intimacy creates a beautiful time for reflection of all of the things to be grateful for.

I am drawn to the softness and light flowy quality of fabric. Sheets, curtains, blankets, and pillows make up homes and create comfort. That comfort extends into my friendships and the experiences I have embraced. I recognize the home I have found in others, and I can feel all of that warmth and comfort surrounding me.

Elizabeth Acierno | Painting & Drawing BFA

& Chalk Pastel on Cotton Comforter

Is He…You Know seeks to understand shame and fear that I have in created through the use of projections multiple exposures, and plaster hands, loosely inspired by the of horror movies. The project yet beautiful emotions so them. In digging deep into becoming more confident despite the stigma and hatred to be, projected onto me.

Alien 2021

Digital Photograph

Crystal Face 2022 Digital Photograph Eric Afflerbach | Photography BFA

understand the feelings of in being gay. The images are projections of stock images, plaster molds of my face and the tropes and atmospheres project examines these turbulent as to unpack and process into this darker imagery, I’m confident with being visibly queer, hatred that is, and will continue

Makeout 2022 Digital Photograph

Poking Prodding Seeking 2021 Digital Photograph

Ceramics

Internalized racism dominated my childhood in subtle, sometimes undetectable ways. I did not always understand why my friends' mothers shied away from putting glitter in my mass of curls at slumber parties. I could not find an appropriate explanation as to why I could not go swimming with my friends except for that I spent too many hours on the floor between my mother’s legs as she yanked and prodded the kinks from my head. I failed to fight back tears every time I went to a hair salon, as I wailed and pleaded to have straight blonde hair like my closest friends.

And even now, with full awareness, there are moments of unconscious envy for my companions who effortlessly achieve Eurocentric beauty standards; ones I know I would race to claim if only I could.

Being raised in an Afro-Latino household while existing in a predominantly white area led me to create a series of works that reflect the external and internal fears, dangers, exhausting emotions, and occasional victories that existed in my household from generation to generation.

Miss

Mya Bailey | Art History

Mommy, I Want to Look Like Her 2020 Newspaper, Graphite, Acrylic Paint, Red Thread, Toned Paper

work explores my response fragmented narratives I created a trans non-binary individual. printmaking, I layer, pair, and repeat forms and images that articulate in context with my unique identity. and chance operations, I reflect the printed image and direct my practice to create harmonious equilibrium, a space where I feel

response to lived experiences and created to define my identity as individual. Through metalworking and repeat elements while reworking articulate my sense of social tension identity. Using iterative processes reflect on the relationship between metalwork. Both converge in harmonious tensions and a state of feel balance and belonging.

Why Public Art on Campus Matters

by Marielena Ferrer

The lack of public art on the SUNY New Paltz campus can no longer be ignored.

SUNY New Paltz’s mission statement proclaims that the College is “a faculty and campus community dedicated to the construction of a vibrant intellectual/creative public forum which reflects and celebrates the diversity of our society and encourages and supports active participation in scholarly and artistic activity.” To that end, the College established a Campus Art and Aesthetics Committee in 2009 “to help shape the visual environment of our campus,” as then-President Steven Poskanzer said.

I don’t know what the visual environment of the campus was like before, but it leaves much to be desired today.

Public art at SUNY New Paltz will help the public College live up to its mission statement. It will shape academic and social experience. It will expand intellectual life beyond classrooms, libraries, and labs and into everyday spaces. It will change how everyone here interacts with the campus and with each other. All this will create immeasurable moments for spontaneous conversation, capture our spirit and character, strengthen our sense of place and identity, and create a shared sense of pride and belonging.

University campuses have traditionally been adorned with public art and monuments dedicated to significant individuals or events to create a sense of place and significance. Indeed, the SUNY system’s magnificent, century-old Flemish Gothic-style administrative building in downtown Albany— with its 13-story tower capped with an 8-foot-tall working copper weathervane bearing a replica of Henry Hudson’s “Half Moon” flyboat to commemorate the area’s Dutch ancestry—is an epitomical embodiment of SUNY’s longstanding awareness of the power of correlating public higher education with public art. However, deciding what shall be public art today and where it shall be placed should no longer be the exclusive domain of the powers that be. The global and diverse nature of a university experience in the 21st century demands an inclusive approach to placemaking and place keeping.

Let us not forget the halted installation of the Sojourner Truth statue on campus last fall. The College issued a formal apology and postponed the installation after failing to involve the Black Studies department or any other campus member of African descent and other key campus stakeholders in the statue’s decision making. This issue compelled the Campus Art and Aesthetics Committee to Marielena Ferrer | Sculpture BFA

review its role and responsibilities. In the past, the committee was charged with simply identifying locations and approving methods of installing proposed art pieces. Now the committee would actively encourage a creative, art-filled New Paltz campus, and take an inclusive consultative approach in its decision making.

“The idea now is getting the bylaws, getting the processes and procedures in place, setting up a good foundation to move forward,” Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art Director Anna Conlan told me in late April. She and School of Fine & Performing Arts Dean Jeni Mokren are the committee’s co-chairs. Conlan said they might even propose changing the committee’s name to the Campus Public Art Committee. “A lot needs to be done before we can bring new public art to campus,” Conlan said.

But I can’t wait. Really, I can’t. So while the committee continues its work, I am working to create meaningful, publicly accessible art that enriches our campus community. The creative expression and cultural participation may include permanent visual art pieces or temporary works such as

performances, installations, or events, with the art’s form, function, and meaning produced through a public process.

For instance, I propose a temporary installation of socially-engaged public art in the Sojourner Truth Library Quad. Expanding on October 2021’s “Sound Your Truth” event stemming from the statue debacle, I envision a socially engaged art experience inviting everyone on campus to participate, create, dialogue, and—why not?—dissent. The project would be a visual experience supporting what high-quality public higher education can best embody. It would celebrate the search for knowledge and understanding while promoting a free exchange of ideas and inspiring questions and dialogues.

It might even surprise us as we go about our daily lives on campus. And, while doing all this, it would also inspire our capacity on campus to innovate and produce new knowledge and understandings. What an exciting thing! I invite you to join me on this journey.

You are welcome to join me…

A Cauterized Wound

I have always had a difficult time communicating within the male sphere, often viewing manhood as a negative or violent existence. A Cauterized Wound is a poetic exploration of past violence and trauma surrounding my upbringing as a man, both directed towards me and through me. Within this attempt to reconcile with my own manhood, I utilize visual poetics and abstraction to both explore a past of violence and speak to the act of healing, both by force and compassion. In this way, I hold space for myself by healing through making, and for others by leading the way through with my own learned lessons.

Untitled Self-Portrait 2021 Digital

Alexander Bennett | Photography BFA

When You Come to the End of Yourself by Jennifer Poroye

one day

you will come to the end of yourself you will unravel and fold forward and remember that you cannot be invincible forever one day you will get weary. the day is coming where you will be too tired

to pretend, to perform to carry on as usual one day the excuses you make

will not suffice

they will break under the weight of the truth

And there will be nowhere to hide

One day you will stop running

One day you will need to stop in your tracks

One day autopilot won’t be an option

And it will be necessary to know why you started

One day you will come to the end of yourself and when you do I will be here

Jennifer Poroye | Music & Geology

A close relationship with the world is widely assumed to be communicable to others most effectively through words, but each of our interactions day after day speak so glaringly about what we need, want, and value as individual thinkers. People's connections and perceptions with and of the world are so drastically different from one another, and so unapologetically so. By the necessity of our independent filtering of everything we observe through a lifelong collection of secrets and all else, we end up performing actions that we think are the right thing to do; largely a varying decision for all of us. It’s a rather queer way of going about things, to end up making your own considerate rules of life, and love by its nature. People are full of ideas, and talk is valuable, but talk can be cheap. This work is interested in visually exploring what a connection can look like, and how the feeling brought on by it can be communicated without the language barriers which so often get in our way. Without any barriers, ideally, and although avoidant of language, I hope for people to reflect on their feelings and relationships in whatever way feels most peaceful

and true when this work is observed. It can be difficult to feel free in a linguistic category, and hard to break out of the box that a labeling word can create. To transcend the words we know, whatever language is yours or most comfortable to you, and allow yourself definition by feeling begs the question: “What is the function of this label? What do I like about it? And why?” These questions can be helpful for examining various aspects of life and relationships. Consider the labels you carry (by your choice or someone else's). Think of them in relation to yourself. Think of your relationship with them. Does that relationship serve you? Do you have the space to explore the whole world within it? Do you leave all the space you need for yourself for those around you? Thinking critically does not need to be negative. Seeing our place in contrast (but not comparison) with that of others can help to create an environment where we have open minds and ears that are not only willing but excited to be in touch with the world unfolding around them.

Careful, That’ll Burn… 2021 Oil on Canvas

Reflecting on the origins sex, relationships, and Growing up in a deeply heterosexual resources were slim to none. seedy internet chat rooms, on television and film, found tapes. My work celebrates and longing for its touch.

Mike Caputo | Alumnx

Embrace 2021 Oil on Canvas

origins of my introduction to gay culture, I revisited my past. heterosexual environment, my none. My exposure came from rooms, the secret lust for the men found magazines, and VHS porn celebrates the desire for the male body

The Building Blocks I was Given presents a set of misshapen, chipping, and unsteady plaster-cast blocks to demonstrate the reality of being the child to a drug and/or alcohol addicted parent. Parents suffering from active addiction create a home environment that is uneasy, unstable, and dysfunctional due to the selfdestructive and selfish nature of the disease. Children growing up in these environments enter into a mode of survival to cope with the tense and unpredictable environment; therefore, the most formative years of childhood development are consumed by anxiety and stress. Any healthy mental tools or skills which should have been fine-tuned in early childhood are warped through the parent’s addiction, generating unhealthy living and coping mechanisms at a young age.

The impact is represented through the curving surfaces, irregular forms, and fragility of the plaster blocks. Dyed with Kool-Aid powder, the blocks are colorful and smell sweet, reminiscent of childhood. While the colors and scents are pleasantly nostalgic, the addition of the KoolAid mix, which is made of citric acid, makes the dried plaster brittle and prone to breaking.

Compared to Froebel’s building blocks, infamous for their regularity and ease to build with, these blocks do not fit together well and do not make for swift construction or play. However, the blocks can still be functional to build with, highlighting the need for patience, resilience, and creativity. This speaks to the resilience of children of addicted parents as they grow older. While the tools acquired in childhood may be unstable and unpredictable initially, time provides a chance to make do with what was given and still build a healthy and happy life for oneself.

The Building Blocks I was Given 2020 Plaster, Kool-Aid, Cotton Fabric

Sterling Silver, Elastic Cord, Acrylic

On February 28, 2022, Russian rocket artillery killed 16 children, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the European Union in an emotional appeal the following day. These children—like butterflies, each one different, each one special, each one beautiful—had their lives crushed before they even had a chance to spread their wings. Russian steel stopped time for them. Likewise, the branch of steel in this sculpture keeps its butterflies frozen in time, forever attached to the cold, forged metal. I tamed the coldness of the steel with a flame, which to my surprise revealed the hues of the Ukrainian flag, as if it were an act of resistance. Seeing this, I used the same pale undertones that emerged from the polished metal to hand print the lifeless butterflies. Like the death of the butterfly crushed in Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” (1952), the deaths of these 16 Ukrainian children could be seen, in the grand scheme of war, as “a small thing.”

But they are also deaths “that could upset balances …all down the years across Time.” Perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin thought that killing them, to use Bradbury’s words, “couldn’t be that important! Could it?”`

Marielena Ferrer | Sculpture BFA

2022

and Tissue

They Let You Smoke Indoors Back Then 2021 Oil Paint on

Samantha Fried | Painting & Drawing BFA

A New Pinafore for the First Day 2021 Oil Paint and Wallpaper on Wood Panel

Yarn, RepurposedKait Gallaugher | Alumnx

Orange Spikes is a physical representation of overstimulation explored through over-emphasizing the characteristics of a crocheted blanket. The brightness of the orange yarn immediately demands the viewers’ attention and invites them to explore the magnified sensory experience. The spikes serve to visually communicate the abrasive texture, and stuffing the blanket adds to its visual and physical weight. The crocheted squares and acrylic yarn add an element of familiarity and pay homage to generations of grandmas’ crocheted afghans draped over sofas. When someone is experiencing overstimulation, or any kind of negative sensory experience, it is impossible to pull oneself out of the present moment or even beyond the sensation of the stimulus. Something as seemingly minute as a tag sewn in the collar of a shirt or scratchy old yarn can be overwhelming to a disordered sensory process. This work serves as a small window to understanding these experiences that words can very often fail to communicate.

Rachel Gee | Sculpture BFA

Breathing Apparatus

In Conversation with Caitlin Malczon & Emma Reifschneider by Carlin McPhee

For the third edition of the journal, the Assembly Art Staff is reaching out to disciplines outside of studio art. Caitlin Malczon and Emma Reifschneider are two talented and passionate theatre majors who graduated from the university’s Department of Theatre Arts at the end of the spring semester.

Carlin McPhee: Over the course of your last academic year at New Paltz, what are some theatre projects that you have been most excited about participating in?

Caitlin Malczon: I worked on three productions throughout my last two semesters here at New Paltz, and I was excited for all of them for different reasons. I stage managed both Stop Kiss and Unnatural Acts, and then I assistant directed Songs For A New World, which was my first experience in that position. Both Stop Kiss and Unnatural Acts were extremely meaningful to me for a variety of reasons, given their themes and the people I got to work with, and Songs For A New World was just the greatest learning curve and introduction to a role I am so interested in, and for that I am so grateful.

Emma Reifschneider: I am extremely grateful to have worked on so many meaningful projects throughout my time at New Paltz, especially within the last year. I had the privilege of directing a full production of Diana Son’s Stop Kiss last fall. I fell in love with this piece when I first read the play in my Queer Theatre class my sophomore year. I was incredibly excited to bring this play to life with so many wonderful and talented creatives. It allowed me to expand my ideas of what the future may look like for me.

I recently acted in a student-devised piece titled Pages from a Love Manifesto . It was a joy to work on this production with playwright/director Nico Torrez. This was one of the best rehearsal processes I have been a part of. The creative energy in the room was inspiring and the cast had the luxury of creating and discovering who these characters were together.

CMc: You both worked on the shows Unnatural Acts and Stop Kiss. What was your experience working together as friends and professionals?

CM: Emma and I have a really special relationship in the sense that we will be completely honest with one another, always. We are each other's biggest cheerleaders, but we aren't afraid to be critical of one another. It all comes out of love, and any notes Emma has given me have deeply helped me get over any hurdle I've faced, especially in a creative space. And I have also learned a lot by just watching her do her thing. I've seen her act, I've listened to her reflect as an actor, I've seen her direct, and be an assistant fight choreographer. All of these things have taught us both different things and it's bettered us both, I think.

ER: I am incredibly lucky to have not only a best friend but a lifelong working colleague in Cait Malczon. Cait is incredibly intelligent, talented, dedicated, passionate, and fun. She is exactly the type of person I get excited about working with. We navigated the friend, roommate, and co-worker relationship incredibly well. It was amazing to have Cait in the room where we could discuss the process openly and honestly with one another. We have a shorthand with one another that makes us a great dynamic duo. We deeply respect one another’s thoughts, ideas, and creative styles. Cait is a

brilliant stage manager, creative, and friend, and I would not be where I was today without her.

CMc: What is one of the most important things you have learned while being a theatre major in college?

CM: The biggest thing I've learned is to have grace with yourself. We are our biggest critics and, especially in roles like mine as a stage manager, so much is sitting on your back. It can be overwhelming at times, especially while being a full-time student. It's definitely harder than it seems, but you have to be kind to yourself. Showing up and working your butt off is all you can do. So many things will happen that are out of your control. While that chaos might knock you down some days, you have to bring your all to finding a solution, be okay with saying “I don't know, but let's find someone who does,” and getting back up again and trying the next day.

ER: One of the most important things I have learned as a theatre major is an aphorism a professor constantly reminds me of: “Trust Your Life.” Being a young artist is terrifying. At times it looks like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. However, you are talented, you are creative, and you are so much more than “good enough.” As artists, we are vital in this world. Although it might seem frightening, we must continue to dream, create, and inspire.

CMc: What are your plans after graduation and what advice do you have for present and future students in the theatre department?

CM: After graduation, Emma and I are going to travel through Europe together for three weeks, which I am very excited about. After that, I will be moving to Orlando to work for Disney—I accepted a position through their

college program and will be down there for about six months!

My advice for present and future students is to explore all your interests. College is a time to experiment and grow—if there's something else that is not directly related to your major and requires a bit of a different skill set, find ways to get involved and try your hand at it. I am also interested in film and television, and I was able to work at the Woodstock Film Festival last semester and get on-the-ground filming experience and learn basic editing skills. That all happened because I took a film class during my junior year, which I almost didn't even end up signing up for. These experiences will teach you things that can benefit you in any pocket of life and, I know for me, have fulfilled me more than I can possibly express. It's okay to change your mind and it's okay to try other things.

ER: After graduation, Cait and I will be taking a small break and going to Europe for the summer. I am extremely excited to see a bit of the world, gain perspective, and have some fun! After that, I am hoping to start a career in the theatre arts. I hope to collaboratively produce stories that excite, inspire, and revolutionize the theatre field and community.

Cait and I have also been jokingly tossing around the idea of creating our own theatre company. So maybe one day!

My advice for future students is to try everything! You never know where it may lead you to. Even more importantly, have fun! New Paltz is an incredible place filled with a wonderful community! Enjoy your time,

because one day you will blink and it will be over just like that.

CMc: As two seniors, you have experienced major setbacks caused by the pandemic during the middle of your college career. How did you emerge from these challenges and make the most of your last year at New Paltz?

CM: I think junior year was the most challenging, compared to senior year. The pandemic started at the end of our sophomore years, and it's been a rollercoaster ever since. Junior year we still didn't have live audiences or full productions and most of the art we made was Zoom theatre or staged readings that were live streamed, which was its own wonderfully chaotic experience. But this year audiences returned, as did full rehearsal processes, and full creative cycles. It was a jarring jump back to how things were, even though I don't believe things will ever return to normal. It was just very cathartic to be back in a space creating with people and stories you care about. I think that is what carried us through: the deep desire to just get back to it because we missed it so much. But the burnout was still very real, and it was something new to navigate given the circumstances. During this specific time more than ever we must prioritize our mental health—I think we were able to do that pretty successfully and the reward of seeing these shows open and close made everything worth it.

ER: As anyone can imagine taking acting classes online is immensely difficult. As graduation approaches, I have been reminiscing about what might have been of our college careers if the pandemic did not happen. However, through those setbacks, I have learned to be grateful for what I do have, and what I was able to experience. I came into my senior year incredibly eager to revitalize

the New Paltz theatre community. We were all very excited about being in rehearsal rooms, classrooms, and studios, working again. I will never take live in-person performance for granted again. I have had a wonderful senior year full of love, light, and joy!

CMc: What challenges have you faced within your major, either regarding the pandemic or otherwise?

CM: I think the hardest part has been the sense of community, especially after the start of the pandemic. It's been a time to come together, as shows start happening again, but it's also been isolating. Everyone is trying to keep themselves healthy and safe, while also wanting nothing more than to spend one-on-one time together. For me, staying safe has been a priority, so I limit who I'm with and what I'm doing. It's been great to have this tight-knit circle of people, but I miss getting together with everyone to celebrate our little accomplishments as they happen.

ER: The biggest challenge I must face is saying goodbye. I have learned and grown so much at New Paltz. I am not the person or artist I was when I entered Parker Theatre for my first Performance class four years ago. I have loved my time here and am so grateful for the people I have met and the things I have done. I know there is so much ahead and it is time to move on, but the hardest thing I have to do is say goodbye.

Time Marches On 2022

Chalk Pastel, Hand-Dyed Cheesecloth on Handmade Paper 22" × 20"

Brielle Sarkisian | Printmaking

You Want a Piece of Me?

Colored

Paper, Mosaic/Mirror Tiles

Jackson Hardin |

The two things I am always thinking about are photography and the catastrophe of our changing climate. Through photography, participatory performance, and video, I explore humanity as an existential ecological condition, capturing elusive moments of intimacy and joy. In the ongoing project From the Same Star , the vulnerability of personal experience provides ground for examining the body as a material of tension in the landscape, punctuated by images that evoke a haunting or glitch. I convey the gravity of presence, love, and community, balanced with the specter of pain and loss. Using ecocriticism, naturalist literature, and lived encounters as research, my work forges a visual poem of mourning and metamorphosis. I am interested in a world that breaks down, freeing itself to be observed as it is: raw, exceptional, and uncanny.

The Roots 2021 Inkjet Print

Conclusions 2021 Digital Video

Inside Outside 2021

Silver, Copper, Brass, Thread

Inbetween Spaces 2021 Brass, Copper, Wood, Enamel

My mind is always drawn back and forth, between staying and going. Remaining stagnant in one place for too long leaves me feeling as though the walls are slowly closing in, but the search for someplace new, and the change that goes along with it, leaves me longing for a home I never had. Throughout my life I’ve never lived in one place for too long. From one house to the next, one state to the next, we would move. Now on my own, the thought of a permanent physical home is a concept that only lives in my head. All the Trees Went explores these feelings of nostalgia, conflicting fears of change and staticity, and of outgrowing spaces.

Reach 2021 Scan of a 4x5 B&W

Raised 2021

of a 4x5 B&W

Seth Jones | Photography BFA

Vejigante

Vejigantes are me, and I am them. In Puerto Rican culture exists the Vejigante, a remnant of Spanish colonial torment turned symbol of celebration. Centuries ago my people were confronted with a visage of evil. Ancestors both Indigeonus and African took it for themselves, seeing not a devil but a mighty beast. The creolization of these beliefs and people helped them create a new identity, Puerto Rican. Now I use it to search for my own identity in the diaspora.

When I consider the ideas of masks, the notion that one hides behind them is unsatisfactory to me. Each mask comes from a culturally informed place within me. Each mask is a facet of my connections to my heritage and identity as I navigate a diaspora that I externalize as a personal legitimization of my own experience. By creating contemporary masks in reference to Cemi (Indigenous ancestor/nature entities) and Vejigante, I use them as a means of exploring my connection to a heritage I find myself far removed from, yet still undeniably connected to.

Just as my ancestors joined indigenous, African and Spanish cultures to render their own identity, I follow in their tradition, making masks that emerge from my mind and forming my own unique diasporic identity rather than the one I had felt like I needed to exemplify. Through sculpture I am able to parse out an identity for myself while maintaining a strong connection to my ancestral practices.

Loiza

Joseph Kattou | Sculpture MFA

La Flor 2021

Archival Silver Halide Print

Stop Building Your Crap 2022 Steel, Wool, Sand, Magnet, Tape

Vejigante Loiza 2022 Resin, Supersaturated Paint, Corn Husk

I AM is a reclamation of human divinity. If we are all made in God’s image, doesn’t that make each of us divine, as long as we are human? Beyond humans?

This work was created to sing a joyful tune to a trans body. I used my very first chest binder, and made it an object of worship, a garment to show to the world and be proud of, even when it is intended to be discreet. My trans siblings are going nowhere; we have always been here. I grow weary of the forced discretion of the trans body. My trans siblings and I are cut from the same cloth as God. I drew upon orthodox Christan communities who plastered their objects of worship and important figures in gemstones and jewels to honor them, and make the common folk fearful and awestruck. This garment does not seek to be pleasing to the cisgender eye, or to Christian faiths.

I am not pressured to make beautiful art because the beauty lies in the creation. My art is an extension of my educational expression. Learning about the buildup of political, social, environmental, and economic catastrophes in our global environment fills me with grief. My art wants to express the vibrancy of the issues we face today whether it be related to personal disgust, sexual assault, a collapsing environment, anger and hatred, or the beauty of material objects. I seek opportunities to break out of culturally determined conversations and imagery—it’s just a whole lot more fun that way.

At the moment, my art is erratic and confused; it is bold and unfinished just like the moment we currently find ourselves happening in. My self portraits help me to unravel my stories of the past and create new narratives to operate from. Narratives like, “I am a bold and colorful human being navigating the world,” and, “I have a deep sorrow that helps me connect to the truth of the reality we find ourselves living through today.” My stitch book is a meeting of material objects that reach through time and space to come together in an unfinished collage of yarn from my childhood and century-old garbage found in the woods. My work is influenced by anthropological ethnographic writing, the botanical poeticism of Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Leonard Koren’s writing on Wabi-Sabi.

21 Years: A Self Portrait 2022

Media: Tempera,

Wren Kingsley | Visual Arts and Environmental Anthropology BS

Fresh Hot Pizza, 2022 Charcoal, Ink and Acrylic on Recycled Pizza Bag from Apizza! 20" × 24" × 13"

When Climate Scientists say Jump, You Have a Choice by Wren Kingsley

Just take a look at my life:

I drive to school

I wear rubber boots

I buy coffee

I sleep in a bed with 2 blankets

In a room heated by propane

I eat warm meals…

I hug my family

What does your life look like?

Does it feel normal?

I know mine does

So, when the Climate Scientists said “Jump!”

To tell you the truth I got scared

I think you did too I got so scared I didn’t know what to do Then I forgot to be scared

5 years passed

Then I chose to read

And I kept reading

And reading, and reading

Now I know

when Climate Scientists say “Jump!”

They say it for very good reason

We are on track to raise our global temperatures by 6 degrees. I am not convinced you know what that means

At .8 degrees we have seen

Dramatic ecosystem loss

And the rising of the seas Ocean acidification

Failure of crops Melting of pavement

Flooding and storms at unprecedented rates

We are already outside of the realm

Of anything we know Then why does it feel so normal?

When the Climate scientists say “Jump!” You don’t, so why should I?

I think you might just be scared

That’s okay!

You can be scared and jump anyway

You have good reason to be scared. It’s scary!

Try allowing yourself to be afraid

Be very, very, afraid

Because when you are afraid You might just run You might run so fast

That someone sees you running

They might ask

Why are you running so fast?

Where are you going?

You might say I am running

I am not quite sure where I am going But I run because I am afraid

And that person might respond I am afraid too

And maybe you cry together Then someone else may see you Crying

Why are you crying? They might ask Because the Climate Scientists said “Jump!”

And we are afraid

And that person may say I too am afraid But I think I know how to help Come this way

So they run Together

They run so fast

That people join them

Some know where they are going

Most do not

The truth is

It doesn’t matter where they are going

They are running with the sun on their backs

The wind in their hair

Their loved ones at their side

And that is enough

More than enough

It is delightful So

When climate scientists say “Jump!”

Fucking Jump!

If you are afraid

Be afraid

And jump anyways

No one knows where the future is going

But if we start moving

With intention and velocity

We’ll get far away from the context of today

When the climate scientists say “Jump!”

And you are too afraid to jump

Consider, you might be the problem

When Climate Scientists say Jump, You Have a Choice (cont.)

So just cut it out, Start reading, start feeling

Start crying

Start screaming

Start running Anything!

Because the Climate Scientists are shouting “JUMP!”

It is time to join hands

Start crying

And run like you’ve never run before

And by run I mean read

I suggest you start by reading The Future we Choose

By Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac

Two people who wrote the 2015 Paris Accord It is a short book (I promise)

A great Audiobook! (I can attest)

So, Just read it… then, finally, we’ll all be in the same conversation

Then let’s talk about it, Ask questions,

Look for answers, And most importantly Enjoy the inquiry and take action Together.

Jess

Home Is Where The Heart Is 2020

Riveted Brass, Copper, & Fabric; Steel Wire Pin Stem, 2.5" × 4.5"

Nelson

School Counselor

Midday Sleepies

I napped just so I could dream, lie under covers, feel the breeze, bury my nose in a pillow, and float in the essence you leave.

Mad in a Field of Flowers and Butterflies 2021 Acrylic on Wood,

Anya Lucas | Graphic Design BFA

In Conversation with James Fossett by Mikaila Ayala

The BA/BS program at SUNY New Paltz has changed over the last two years. To understand those changes better, Mikaila Ayala interviewed Associate Professor James Fossett.

BA/BS student—especially being closer to the program—we have to either work in spaces or the classrooms. Having to work in is difficult due to multiple classes being held week, so there is limited time to work in these

JF: Yeah, having a studio is a big motivator to BFA program, but maybe a shared/common is possible.

Mikaila Ayala: It has been noted that the BA/BS program has not received as much attention as the BFA program. Let's talk about that. How has the BA/ BS program evolved to receive more attention?

James Fossett: Yeah, the largest population of students within the art department are currently in the BA/BS program. Changes within the program have been in the works for years in order for it to equal the BFA program.

MA: What are some of those changes that have occurred within the program?

JF: The BA/BS students usually focus on a concentration within their work or diversify their practice; the BFA students are more concentrated, have a personal studio and are more focused around a community. As stated previously, it has been in the works for some time, and has recently been implemented, to create a more rigorous program.

BA/BS students are now required to have a minor in addition to requiring the same amount of studio hours for both the BA/BS and BFA programs. We are also developing a WIP Review course where students are able to receive feedback from faculty mentors. We are thinking of making this course a prerequisite for the BA/BS Capstone course. We

also hope for the WIP Review course to serve as a reminder that their Capstone show is not solely based on your final year at SUNY New Paltz, but your entire student career.

MA: I understand that Art AID Week is something newly introduced. How has this affected the BA/ BS program?

JF: Art AID week was instituted just one year ago. It is a start to changing the program so that it can receive more attention. It was designed to give students more feedback. It happens around registration during the semester–so, crunch time, but we want to be able to give students the help they need during such a critical period. During this week information sessions for specific art departments are held, allowing students to ask questions right away and think about the art community as a whole. We hope for Art AID week to recharge everyone to push through the last weeks of the semester in addition to setting time aside for advising.

MA: In talking with fellow BA/BS students, concerns emerged that we do not receive the same attention or treatment as the BFA students. One of the common frustrations expressed during our conversations was the lack of studio space. As a

MA: Yeah, the students and I were envisioning space when talking about our desires of having to work in.

JF: I am going to write this idea down. Maybe brainstorm this idea together. Some of the to ask are how is this space scheduled, going to maintain it? We have to take into cleaners and support staff that would be needed maintenance. Additionally, there is the issue space—the work you can do depends on space. we should gatekeep the workspace—for example, access to only juniors and seniors.

MA: Yeah, the students and I were thinking that should be for upperclassmen. From my experience, the need to have a studio starting in my junior started taking more advanced classes and I was outliving my locker and classroom space. for thinking this through with me. Do you have comments on that topic?

JF: Yeah. COVID-19 taught us on how to become and adaptive within the Art Department, changes to occur. This was a good lesson going forward, as it is important to remember BS program is a live process, and we have conversations on how to continuously improve it.

to completing our personal in a classroom held during the these spaces. to apply for the shared/common workspace envisioning a shared having a studio Maybe we can big questions scheduled, and who is into account the needed for such issue of finding space. Maybe example, giving that the space experience, I felt junior year as I and noticed that space. Thanks have any other become flexible allowing for to anticipate remember that the BA/ conversations

Brianna Ryan | Biology and Visual Arts BA

Untitled

Marissa Luchesse | Photography BFA

Photo of the Studio Taken by Carlin McPhee

My most recent body of work explores the ebb and flow of abstraction and reality, organic and geometric, silly and serious, and the balance of many other opposing elements and energies. My work also explores pareidolia, the human ability to see patterns and pictures out of randomness. Similar to finding stories and familiar images in a giant game of cloud watching I-spy, my work is a fantasy world beyond our own. My mind is constantly, and sometimes unintentionally, conjuring imaginative connections between abstract and real life. My paintings are like kaleidoscopes, optical instruments that twist, wrap, and contort reality with glowing color, pattern, and whimsy. My process of randomly layering saturated pigments, various mediums, organic lines, and geometric marks creates a disorder in my work. By taping and stenciling over these said colors, lines, and marks, the disorderly space is tamed and forms an organized chaos. My work invites viewers to look within themselves and conjure their own narrative to my paintings with childlike wonder, imagination, and excitement. My work is a pleasurable and stabilizing pause from the fast-moving and wild world that we inhabit.

Carlin McPhee | Painting & Drawing BFA

Photo of the Artist in Action by Kerri Kolensky

Summer

4 Up 4 Down 2021

Image

Mikayla Millard | Photography BFA

Film

Reaching for Simplicity 2021

Ciara Molumby

Lara Palombi |

BS

Sound Your Truth

by Erin Dougherty & Lucifer Kern

Tigerlily

Janna Guadalupe

Moore

Sound Your Truth aimed to center and amplify underrepresented voices in a night of creative sharing and collective expression. Students in the Art Department produced and installed a square platform at the center of the Sojourner Truth quad, referencing the concrete slab poured in front of the library for a controversial statue of Truth that had not yet been installed. From the platform, three rolls of paper were spooled out to different corners of the quad, allowing attendees to draw with charcoal in response to the truths they heard or to share their own. Beside the platform were steel sculptures modeled after sound waves displaying student prints of their truths. Towards the library, attendees could design paper bullhorns to shout their truths loud and proud.

Behind the bullhorn station were booths set up by the Library at the A.J. Williams-Myers African Roots Library in Kingston, where students could learn about the African roots experience, experience history through various forms of human expression, and honor the late Dr. Albert J. Williams-Myers from the Black Studies Department. Dr. A.J. Williams-Myers was a celebrated and beloved community-based leader and expert author on African American history. He taught at SUNY New Paltz for over 30 years and made an undeniable impact on the field of Black Studies.

Another booth featured the facts and history of Sojourner Truth, a legendary Ulster County abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and public speaker. The booth, run by Aleshanee Emmanuel, a member of the Kingston YMCA Farm Project whose initiative seeks to promote anti-racist action and youth empowerment, proudly spoke of their team’s establishment of a local Sojourner Truth holiday on November 26, the date of Truth’s passing.

Sound Your Truth was not just about sharing experiences; it was about releasing frustrations, learning from each other in an unfiltered space, and actively listening to one another with compassion. It could only happen with a mutual exchange of ideas, feelings, emotions, and experience. The fine arts students tasked with designing platforms for speaking and listening worked in collaboration with the Black Studies Department faculty and members of the Eddy to create platforms reflective of the needs and requests of their students.

Attendees had the space to participate in a coordinated and cooperative vocalization to cultivate community and celebrate humanity. There was space and encouragement in the quad for everyone to sing, dance, write, and draw. Some spoke of their frustrations with the government’s lax stance on climate change. Others spoke of personal experiences of discrimination. For some, it was one of the first times they had the chance to be loud and proud of themselves in an institutional space.

The energy of the evening resonated throughout the quad, reawakening it from the months of silence and stillness of hybrid and online learning. The freedom, pride, excitement, and strength of the project can best be felt through video documentation of the event.

Joli Perfit | Sculpture BFA

Please Leave My Escapism Dreams 2022 Oil on Canvas

Teresa Ricci | Painting & Drawing BFA

Scopophobia

On April 27, 2022, we had the pleasure of meeting with Faheem Haider, current executive director of Unison Arts Center, political activist, educator, and an alumnx of the MFA painting program at SUNY New Paltz. Faheem walked us through the grounds of the Unison Arts Center, where our conversation unfolded.

As soon as we started recording, Faheem introduced himself:

FH: I’m the ED, Executive Director, of Unison Art Center. I am an artist and a painter myself, a critic, former educator—although I never stopped being one. [I’m] totally here to support the community, support a sustainable art space. Things are hard around these parts, and we’re under-resourced as many places are. Which means we need to make money. We don’t have rich backers. If you are thinking about social practice, social engagement, we are it. We are not just talking the talk, we are walking the walk, too. No work that happens/gets presented here is capitalized in the sense that we are thinking of showing it to sell it. We are totally here to support and build with the community at SUNY New Paltz and at New Paltz itself. Not just SUNY—the town and village as well. And the village is suffering. Very young people live there, many who graduate from New Paltz. About 74% of the people who live in the village are renters, and there's a housing crisis right now. It’s a community in need of support, I think; of understanding, of care,

In Conversation with Faheem Haider by Mariah Day & Katie Edelen

Self Portrait

and I want to make sure we can be that space, or at least try to. That’s us. We’re trying to serve that community. We are starting a residency in the new space that we have on the other side of town. We are starting a summer camp for kids. We are being ambitious, but with the community in mind.

KE/MD: How did you get involved with Unison Arts?

FH: Actually, I first stepped foot in Unison Arts in 2010-12. I got involved because I’ve been a community-based critic for a long time, [and] a curator. I’ve known about and visited Unison for years, and knowing all this, somebody asked if I wanted to take on the role of ED. The outgoing ED was leaving; people asked if I wanted to put my hat in. I thought about it. I had a job and wasn’t looking to change my life. I was working for Orange County, at the Board of Elections. I was actually not looking for a job in the arts. People asked and I’d think about it, and I thought I could bring something to the table. So I really got involved at Unison, literally, because somebody asked.

KE/MD: How does your previous work in political activism merge with your work at Unison?

FH: I’ve been trying to get more people to join our shared work. Get more Black voices in, get more people involved in social and political and community spaces. It’s all about trying to belong, about trying to figure out how you belong. So my work in activism, politics, is all about trying to make sure that good people with something to say belong. And if they stand up to run for a race, they should have the support that they need. Slowly, in my role as ED, I’ve been trying to make sure that we start showing good work that’s socially engaged and politically aware. Maybe not socially didactic, necessarily. It doesn’t have to be right or wrong. People don’t have to love it, or agree with it. They just have to know that it’s about the world as such. That it’s about our own experiences right now. So in time, when people look back at our program for the year and next year thinking about what we’re going to do, they get a sense that this is a place that really cares that when

people show up, that they feel like they belong. That we actually want to create a space in which our community feels like they deserve to be there, and that we deserve their customs. We are in a relationship with the community to be mutually beneficial, but also of mutual respect. So it’s essentially my work to support activism brought to life within an art space.

KE/MD: What changes have you made while working with Unison, and what types of changes would you like to see or make going forward?

FH: A much more diverse board. I’ve brought artists back on the board. One of my board members is Matthew Friday, another is Eliza Evans. I want to make sure that we hire people of color. I can't be the only person of color across our spaces. Just because Unison hired me doesn’t mean all the problems of diversity have been worked out. You can’t do that. Just because you vote in Barack Obama [as president] doesn’t mean that the world is safe, peace and love reigns, that we’ve somehow got past racism. You’ve got to have the whole thing. Trying to create a better

A Picture of Buster Keaton Batman

work-life balance in the space, trying to create performances, performing arts that address equity issues, bringing in more BIPOC communities. It’s not a radical change, but we have to take these steps. Probably slowly. Those are some of the changes that I've brought about.

KE/MD: How can Unison become more involved in SUNY New Paltz and the Town of New Paltz? Is there anything in particular that you would like to see merged, and what would that look like?

FH: We are trying to get a robust internship program, trying to get students from SUNY New Paltz to work with us. I want to make sure that we can host at least one student show a year. We want to show that we start building programs together. I want New Paltz to start working with me at Unison, and whether that’s New Paltz or SUNY New Paltz, or the Department of Art, all that’s going [to be] different depending on who we work with. And, yes, we need to get some financial support from the department as well. But those three ways: interns, doing shows that you all make, pitch a collaborative show that is just bigger than a collection of work.

KE/MD: How can we make Unison more accessible to students?

FH: We do need money. When we have performances, we need to charge ticket prices, principally because we have to pay the artist. But one of the things we have done is, this past month, we started a $10 ticket fee. If you're a student at SUNY New Paltz, you can come see any performance for $10. And all the visual arts are free. We do want to make it accessible in terms of visual arts, and people are invited to come see the work we're exhibiting any time. We do ask, because of Covid, that people either call or email us. Just let us know you are coming, because we are understaffed, especially because we are a multi-use space in multiple spaces. That said, we want people to see our shows as they’re meant to be seen.

[at Unison]?

FH: Yes, but I’ve never been an exhibiting artist. Which is not to say I've never exhibited my work; I have. It's just that I’ve never wanted to exhibit as a career. So, yes, I make work. I just don’t think about where it’s going to go. Mostly because I don’t have time to.

KE/MD: We checked out your Instagram and saw that you make a lot of portraits. Could you tell us a little about your interest in this type of work, the individuals that inspire these works, your

A Picture of Audre Lorde

KE/MD: Are you a working artist in addition to your work here

style, and your amazing titles?

FH: Some of the titles are very literal. Sometimes it’ll be A Picture of X—and I'm proud that it won’t be anything navel gazing. I made a drawing and titled it A Picture of Audre Lorde, and it was literally a picture of Audre Lorde. I tend not to come up with titles that are needlessly wishy-washy. I think art is about people. Even if it’s about things like nature, it’s still and always about people because there’s no nature without people. It’s all man made, in some important sense. But one of those important senses is that any space that you walk to is already measured by your own feet. Right? You can’t experience a space if you haven’t already colonized it, in some important sense. I think art is about people and their relationships with other beings, and about other power relations. My portraits are essentially about that, but they’re also things I’m trying to think through without going catatonic. They’re very small. They take about five minutes. They’re also not things where I go, “Ah! I don’t know if this is going to work out!” I often show things I hate. There are drawings I have on my Instagram that I hate, but they’re also things I made so I put them up—because why not? And often what happens is the things I hate the most are the things people like the most. So, yeah, I try to get rid of my own biases and, sure, put out things I love, but I also put out things I feel just “eh” about. I think if you just go “eh” more often in your process, you’ll find that things work out. Don’t get so stuck in your head. Sure, it’s very hard to not be stuck in your head when you’re in that position, and I’ve been there. Everyone has in some sense. But any one work isn't that important that you have to martyr yourself to it. I think I posted A Picture of Audre Lorde on her birthday. She was a Black American lesbian poet. There’s no deep reason for the picture. It was her birthday; I posted a drawing for her birthday. My drawings are simply drawings: ink on paper made digital. There’s nothing particularly enlightening about them. If there is, to someone, great. But that's not me saying there must be. If someone finds them enlightening, great. In other words, there is no inspiration, it's just work. It's just me thinking

through drawing. It's just a thing. That’s also why I can’t be an exhibiting artist because once you say that to a gallerist—“It’s just a thing”—people stop listening to you. Though if things worked out, I suppose the gallerist would have to be someone like me, who’s like, “Yeah, I like that. Let’s do it.”

KE/MD: What lasting impact do you want to make as the director of Unison, an alum of SUNY New Paltz, an activist, political scientist, and as an individual?

FH: That's a good one. I’d like people to think that they belong in spaces we build together. I’d like people to think they deserve to be here. That’s going to change depending on what kind of programming we have. But I’d like for people from the community— from New Paltz, SUNY, the village, and town—to show up. 80% of our audience already feels that; that this space is theirs. And that can be a good thing or a bad thing, but what I want is for people who don’t feel like they have anything they can call their own, a space, I’d like those people to feel more comfortable. I’d like to create a space where people feel at home.

You can find more information about Unison at https://www. unisonarts.org/.

Tracy Saraccino | Alumnx

There are beautiful things to discover in everyday life. However, we often forget to stop and look around. My work captures the sweet yet fleeting essence of daily life in the form of jewelry. Like rose-tinted glasses, I encourage others to appreciate life and their environment even if it has fallen into the lull of routine. The buildings we see fleeting by a window, or the objects we interact with daily, all create essential building blocks for every individual’s personal experience. Using decal paper and laser etching, I fire my photographs into enamel and acrylic surfaces. My lens pieces act as tools by making the wearer interact with their environment and explore for an active experience. Each piece represents a moment in time whether the imagery is presented or the wearer must discover it around themself. My work tugs at the strings of nostalgia, the comfort of familiarity, and the deja vu of routine, while encouraging viewers to explore and treasure the small moments in life.

John Sullivan | Metals MFA

Moments of trauma mark pivotal shifts that serve both as a morbid source of inspiration and a debilitation. My work is a means of processing these traumas and coping with dysthymic depression, a chronic form of the illness. I construct empathetic experiences through sensory-based affects that are understood through compassionate engagement. Subverting the traditional function of jewelry, my wearable work conveys the emotional toil of mental illnesses through the visual and physical properties of steel. Due to trauma’s unrepresentable nature, these embodied translations of experience are my way of articulating that which is beyond conventional comprehension.

We Are Here by Mya Bailey

This feature needs to be prefaced with my individual stance. I identify as an Afro-Latin individual and I am fortunate enough to pursue both a career and education in the arts. I create artwork centered around my personal experiences with racism in various internal, familial, public, and systemic contexts. This is the work I feel called to create, so I do. This is the work that feels meaningful to me, and I make it for myself. I acknowledge that I am fortunate enough in my position and passion to pursue a career in fine art, but this feature stands as only one of the many opportunities I have had to craft for myself to verbally and explicitly express my inner thoughts as a person of color in the art world. To be even more specific, it is an opportunity I claimed for myself as one of the only students of color within Assembly. With that being said, I am not the voice of every person of color. My experiences will not be identical to others, nor should they be. The work I create is not the work every person of color is indebted to make. Individuals of color are entitled to the bliss of escapism; they are entitled to the power of self-expression separate from the physical identity they are perceived in every day. People of color must have the freedom to place energy into whichever matters they feel called to, and they do not owe racial activism through every aspect of their being. Before we are people of color, we are people. This is not to dismiss the avenues many of us seek out in our work, myself included. Some feel called upon to create what they feel and what they see, and this inevitably

includes oppression based on physical identity.

It is not an issue of strictly defining what people of color can and cannot produce in terms of art, but simply having a choice for once.

In my eyes, the art world still feels inaccessible on multiple planes. Pursuing a fine art career is still seen as a “risk” and “unstable,” and for individuals of color who have been statistically disproportionately affected by lack of generational wealth, there is little-to-no safety net for many of us. We are told to consider a more reasonable career more so out of fear of a perpetuated cycle of poverty than anything else. This is not to say that any individual within the arts has not had similar turmoil regardless of color. It would be foolish of me to dismiss the undeniable track record of financial instability within the art world that has affected an array of people from all backgrounds.

But this again returns to the historic aspect of being an individual of color and the outlandish yet heavily embedded systems that have forced the majority into poverty, placing us on a metaphorical sliding scale of low-income to houseless. The literal placement of affordable housing for lowincome individuals in environmentally harmful spaces. The mental state of individuals of color that are consumed with fears of being targeted for our reflection—the fear of quite literally being killed without reason—in addition to the other illnesses countless individuals suffer from due to chemical imbalances. To feel as though living every day is suffering in itself, and then voluntarily seek out an additional path of struggle by insisting

Broken Monarchs Marielena Ferrer

on entering the art world is not a simple decision to make, and it is one that for obvious reasons is heavily discouraged to people of color. To put it simply: There are layers to every choice a person of color makes that others are privileged enough to not even consider.

Some of us get into this world. Let’s take a tour of what my art world looks like! You are a straightA student in high school. You have supportive friends, family, and educators who all encourage you to pursue your passion for the arts. You find the funding to enter a fine arts major at an accredited college and work full-time while taking a full course load. Congratulations! You are now beginning what many define as the real world! So where is the reality? Why am I so grossly outnumbered in my classes that I cannot focus on anything besides the fact that I am the only Black body in a packed classroom? Why am I only finally learning about artists of color when completing the 30th credit of my 36-credit Art History major? Why am I directed to the Black Studies department–excuse me? Why am I directed to the severely underfunded and overlooked Black Studies department when I inquire about Black art history courses or question the fact that I have

had a whopping total of one professor of color in my time at New Paltz. I graduate this fall. I digress.

This is not a feature about me just as much as it is not a call-out. It is not to bash any one individual or group on this campus, nor any group within the art world in general. This is a call for attention, advocacy, and support if nothing else. It is an attempt to humanize your classmates of color and inform you that we are here. While some of this content may seem relatable—or perhaps not, depending on who you are—the title of this feature is We Are Here. As I mentioned previously, I am not the sole voice of the individuals of color on campus, nor in the arts, and not even for those just in Assembly. We all coexist. We are all present. We are here.

My personal build-up of experiences and observations now leads me to the focus of this feature which is providing an external platform for others' inner thoughts. I engaged in separate conversations with three individuals enrolled in studio art majors to explore and understand their relationship to fine art. Madison Symone is a December 2021 New Paltz graduate whose expressionistic style of work mainly depicts popular Black musicians she favors. Marielena Ferrer, a current New Paltz senior entering an MFA in sculpture, engages in artwork that aims

to be socially engaging. Her work pertains to the rights of immigrants, women, children, and the intersections of the two. Mikaila Ayala, another current senior at New Paltz in her final semester, seeks to create artwork that is fueled by personal emotion and material experimentation. While the same questions were asked in every conversation, not all garnered the same response. Some led into tangents and others were met with silence, each of which are acceptable and invited reactions, and explain the amount of feedback listed beneath each question from each individual.

How does your work relate to your identity, if at all?

MS: My work is relative to my identity as it reflects the two things that I love the most: music and art. Beyond the subjects of my work, my emotions and passion can be reflected in the choices of color, and even in the movements and brush strokes of the paint.

MF: I identify as human. I am a part of the human race. I understand, institutionally, requiring certain data to ensure you are diverse in the representation of marginalized communities. But I am human. When I came from Venezuela, I became an immigrant. I am perceived as a BIPOC, Latinx, alien, cishet woman. There is a constant identity crisis because of all of the boxes we are forced

into. My work pertains more to the crimes against women and children. That is what touches me deeply. That is more meaningful to me.

MA: When my racial identity is included in my artwork, it usually pertains to my Hispanic lineage. I’m Puerto Rican and Irish, but I recognize that I am mostly White passing. Most people recognize me as Irish before Hispanic so I guess I use my artwork as an outlet for that immediate label.

What do you feel you gain from pursuing art?

MS: By pursuing fine art, I gain a sense of freedom and a way to truly portray an important aspect of who I am inside. I can see the world through my own eyes, depict it on a canvas, and share my perspective and experience with the rest of the world.

MF: A pain in my back. No, no, the biggest thing I get is a platform. I get personal satisfaction, I love to do it, it relaxes me, and it gives me purpose. But the biggest thing is my platform to reach out to a larger audience.

MA: I do not know what I would be doing if I wasn’t doing art. There’s a lot of flexibility in expression through art and I can definitely see myself doing career switches. What if I'm an art therapist, and then a tattoo artist, and hair colorist? There are a

ton of options for me to seek out while still being involved in what I love. Were you challenged at all when deciding to pursue fine art in higher education?

MF: It is challenging in the sense that it is impossible to go to school while working a fulltime job. I cannot have multiple part-time jobs; my mind gets too scattered. I guess mostly the challenge, though, is my personal belief system. Art has always been for the privileged. I have been many things in my life, but I have never been privileged. I was convinced this world was not for me. I always feel like an outsider in art, but now through my education, I feel like I am slowly making my way here. Maybe now I have the belief that I am enough to do this. I made space for myself in the art world.

MA: I couldn’t imagine myself in a career that didn’t involve art. I entered New Paltz with the intention of pursuing a fine art major but quickly realized I wanted this to be my degree entirely. There wasn’t much challenge from my family to enter fine art. My older sister is the first in my family to graduate from college and her degree is in graphic design. My father never even finished high school so the fact that I’m in college at all is great to them. It did feel like a fight to be

Am I A Flower Mikaila Ayala

allowed the distance comfortable a lot to here on advertised everything has come diverse, about it, that wasn’t

How does enhanced MS: When sometimes.

POC, and necessarily concepts does make me feel that might in ways a bit disheartening

MF: I many, story. When color, I

allowed to attend college on campus because of distance and my family not being the most comfortable with it, but being here does mean to me. But it does feel a bit isolating being on campus and pursuing art. The school is advertised as extremely diverse but it feels like everything but that. I don’t know where everyone come from that they can see New Paltz as diverse, but this isn’t diverse. Now that I think it, I haven’t even had a professor of color wasn’t in Black History.

does the uncertainty of the art world feel enhanced when entering as a person of color?

When entering as a POC, it can be intimidating sometimes. The majority of my work features and when entering some parts that do not necessarily reflect these same figures or the concepts that I paint, I do feel different and it make me feel a bit of doubt. It also makes feel as though some spaces will hold people might not understand or connect to my work ways other groups would, and that can also be disheartening at times. have been discriminated against many, many, times. It still feels like it’s not my

When people refer to me as a person of need to think about it twice. Am I supposed

to be that? I struggle to make a living already as an artist. I have a lack of access to resources, and I have been discriminated against, but my experience is not even close to the extremes of those of an African American and I, therefore, feel like I do not deserve the title of a person of color who is discriminated against. It is so painful. It is so unfair. I don't get it.

MA: It’s definitely hard. My family has made it very clear that even though they support me in entering the arts, I need a job. They tell me I need to put myself out there and do more with my art, but how am I supposed to do that? I’m planning to enter art therapy just for more job security, because I know that I’m not in a position of privilege to follow the career path I want because I can’t afford to. It’s hard to find a community for expression in the arts when I see other people doing what I dream of because they have the financial ability to do so, whether they actually care about it or not.

Do you ever feel pressured to alter your art for a specific audience?

MS: Sometimes I used to feel pressured to alter my art to register with a certain type of audience, but I realized that it’s alright to be authentically

who I am with my art and that it would find a way to connect with the right people regardless.

MA: Being in school makes me alter my artwork a lot. I usually feel like I have to cater to my professor, almost all of the time. Sometimes my art doesn’t even feel like my own, especially in my basic classes. I have enjoyed the individual scale of advanced classes; there’s a lot more freedom now to create whatever I would like and gain skill instead of style.

How do you feel you have been held back within the art world?

MS: I don’t feel that I have been held back by others, but I do believe that sometimes my own anxiety can prevent me from participating in or curating a show. There have been opportunities that I let fear get in the way of, and I regret them because I could have formed potential connections that might help me in the future.

MA: I don’t feel like I have had the best access to resources. Going to school has helped me with this by allowing me to network easily, and providing me with a studio. I’ve learned how to photograph and install my artwork. It’s uplifting to an extent, but I can’t afford to do this forever. I don’t want to sit cramped in my basement

making artwork, and I know graduating college will actually impact my artwork negatively due to the cut-off from resources. I need time to work and save money to refocus on art after graduation. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a position in the art world. I don’t feel like I have done anything.

The aforementioned mission of this feature is not to be a call-out, but a call for advocacy. It is an opportunity to reflect on areas lacking in diversity without a person of color having to point it out first. It is lacking in your education, in your careers, in every system you exist within, and in your thoughts. And yet we are the only ones who see it. After hearing our experiences, what will you do to make us seen? Will you acknowledge that we are here, even when we aren’t?

Cam'ron Madison Symone

I Am A Collage of My Grandmothers 2021 Oil on Canvas

Art Education BS

Babcia Sowa Mój Aniot Stróz 2021 Acrylic on Canvas

I am exploring the anxieties that I carry with me, my need to be comforted, and finding a home within myself. I focus on what I reach for to provide myself with a sense of security and cope with memories of my painful experiences. The embrace of a stuffed animal, the shelter of a bedroom, and the love for a pet provide safety from an overwhelming force of anxiety. Slowly, I am teaching myself how to be comfortable with being my own home.

Tyman

Alumnx

When We Are Loved, We Become Real 2021 Acrylic, Molding Paste, Chalk Pastel and Oil Pastel on Canvas

Portrait

Painting

2021

My work is about visualizing reality as naturally as I can. I am most interested in imagery that contorts the world and reimagines it. Whether showing personal emotions or visualizing an individual, I desire to be as honest to myself as possible.

Conrad Wickham | Painting & Drawing BFA

Marielena Ferrer | Sculpture BFA

Avechuchos, Alcahuetas & Prostitutas in Three of Goya’s Caprichos by Marielena Ferrer

Allegory has been an artistic tool throughout history to symbolize deep moral or spiritual meanings. It can also readily convey complex ideas in ways easily comprehensible or striking to the recipients of its messages.

Goya, widely considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, first used Greek and Roman myth narratives and visual formulas to create classical allegories, like other artists of his time. But his allegories evolved from representing social and cultural ideals to symbolizing and highlighting the flawed realities of life as he knew it.

This paper discusses some of Goya’s personal allegories in three of his Caprichos: plates 19, Todos caerán (All Will fall), 20, Ya van desplumados (There They Go Plucked) , and 21, ¡Qual la descañonan! (How They Pluck Her!), passing first through a brief introduction to the series and to its most emblematic etching.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Fuendetodos, Spain, 1746—Bordeaux, France, 1828) first depicted traditional allegories taken from Cesare Ripa’s early 17th century book Iconologia, or Moral Emblems, a definitive text that painters used to give substance to qualities such as virtues, vices, and passions. But, even then, Goya often modified them.1

In his mid-period, Goya criticizes Spanish society and humanity in general in a series of 80 etched satirical prints he calls Los Caprichos (The Caprices). Published in 1799, the work’s personal

nature, informal style, and depiction of contemporary society make Los Caprichos and Goya himself a precursor to the modernist movement almost a century later.

Goya’s drawings in the decade of 1790s evolved from his sketches of Sueños (Dreams) to the impressive etchings and aquatints of the Caprichos. The series’ subject matter and the mastery of its technique create dramatic effects that were unprecedented in Spain at the time.2 In his earliest plates, Goya worked his detailed figures with the etching needle on a field of light aquatint. He soon discovered the potential of aquatint to create “tonal fields of velvety richness” that offered what Tomlinson called “the perfect virtual metaphor for the underside of enlightenment—darkened other worlds, night skies, shadowy prisons, and monastic cellars.”3

As presented to the public in a book, the first Capricho is a selfportrait, in which Goya wears a top hat and looks haughty. The series continues, in no specific subject order, targeting marriage, morality, love, ignorance, the church, superstition, and prostitution. When one views the images in the book in sequence, one can infer associations.4 To better

understand etchings 19, 20, and 21, I would like first to examine 43, whose sketch was originally intended to serve as the cover for the work.5

In the iconic plate 43, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters), a tired, nobly dressed Goya falls asleep amid his drawing tools bedeviled by prowling nighttime creatures. The work reveals the human blots of unreason that Goya wants to declare as a universal lesson.6 “When men do not hear the cry of reason, everything becomes visions,” he writes.7 The plate is the final iteration of a previous drawing, Sueño 1, Ydioma universal. El Autor soñando (Dream 1, Universal Language,

The Author Dreaming). “The artist is dreaming. His only purpose is to banish harmful, vulgar beliefs and to perpetuate in this work of caprices the solid testimony of truth.”8

Capricho 19, Todos caerán (All Will Fall) shows how prostitution exploits men’s lust, even when the men’s doom is clear. Using the bird-catching theme,9 Goya’s lure is a bosomy woman-bird with a fashionable mole on her face standing innocently on a tree branch while a few avechuchos or menbirds—including a distinguished military officer, a shrouded monk and perhaps Goya himself (just behind the lure)—flock to her from all over and engage in birdlike courtship rituals. Down below, previous clients are depicted as plucked chickens. “And to think those about to fall won’t take warning from those already fallen,” Goya writes. “But there is no remedy: All will fall.”10

By including himself among the avechuchos in this Capricho, Goya seems to tell us that he has found himself in these circumstances. As in The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, All Will Fall is a criticism of the habit of unreason, of irrational behaviors: We see the negative consequences of an act, yet we engage in the act anyway. Goya is among those showing a lack of good sense. So are the military officer and monk—whose eminent statures give them authority to judge human action and character. Furthermore, these men of the establishment, instead of working to solve society’s ills, deceitfully take advantage of them. These are two of the many contradictions of the human condition that Goya delighted in and considered intrinsic to the human condition.11

Goya appeared to have a great deal of interest in exchanges between men, prostitutes, and in particular the scheming go-between women

who kept the profession alive. His work shows many images of what is called Celestinesca iconography in Spain, referring to celestinas , or “heavenly” women who were a combination of mercenary matchmakers, go-betweens, prostitution solicitors, and enablers, depending on the financial circumstance. The indestructible alcahueta , or bawd, is a constant presence in Goya’s iconography. 12 Goya’s interest in prostitution comes from various sources. On the one hand, he does not avoid the gaze of the mischievous appearance of these women, even showing their cunning, whereas on the other hand, as we shall see shortly, he depicts violence, even criminal, against prostituted women. His perspective on prostitutes constitutes a change in the history of his graphic representation, since “he is the first to begin to see them as a ‘reflection’ of the society in which they live.”13

Goya appears to enjoy the jocular analogy of a plucked bird in his works with the sex-trade theme. In Spanish, desplumar means more than simply to pluck. In common vernacular it also means to fleece, to swindle, or to defraud. In his plate 20, Ya van desplumados (There They Go Plucked), two prostitutes shoo away plucked chickens with heads of men. The women had already gotten what they wanted from the men. They now wanted them gone to make room for others. “If they have been plucked, get them out: there will be others coming along.”

14

What’s good for the hen is good for the rooster. Goya shows what can happen when the tables get turned. In plate 21, ¡Qual la descañonan! (How They Pluck Her!), a young prostitute appears in legal custody, after being arrested. At least one

of the three men surrounding her appears to be in judicial robes. These men, including perhaps one of her customers, who have sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the law of the land are now fleecing her—violently taking the money she had earned. As one reads in the comment of the National Library in Madrid, Spain, “The superior judges regularly cover up the Notaries and Sheriffs so that they rob and fleece the poor whores.” To which Goya adds, “Hens (pretty lasses) also encounter birds of prey to pluck them and that is why the saying goes: you’ll get as good as you give.”

The books of Los Caprichos sold poorly. Of the close to three hundred copies originally printed by Goya, only twenty-seven were purchased. Why they sold poorly is open to debate. But from then until today, Los Caprichos have been an object of the most varied interpretations, proof of the interest the prints have aroused and continue to arouse in a work that, more than two hundred years later, is still relevant, and in which “we can still see reflected some of the ‘extravagances and mistakes’ of the human race.”

As with the wide-eyed and alert lynx in Goya’s plate 43, which appears “to gaze at a vision outside the composition,”18 the artist himself may have had his eyes set beyond the culture of his time and knew that the avechuchos, alcahuetas and prostitutas would remain societal fixtures for a long time to come.

Goya en el Prado. Madrid: Museo del Prado. Accessed September 20, 2020. https://www.goyaenelprado.es/inicio/.

Levitine, George. “Some Emblematic Sources of Goya.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 22, no. 1/2 (1959): 106-131. doi:10.2307/750562.

Schmidt, Rachel. “Celestinas y Majas en la Obra de Goya, Alenza y Lucas Velázquez.” Celestinesca, 39 (2015): 275-328. http://www. jstor.org/stable/26167861.

Tomlinson, Janis. Goya: A Portrait of the Artist. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. muse.jhu.edu/book/76867.

Wolf, Reva. Goya and the Satirical Print in England and on the Continent, 1730-1850. Boston: Boston College Museum of Art, 1991.

Footnotes

1 George Levitine, “Some Emblematic Sources of Goya,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 22, no. 1/2 (1959): 106-108.

2 Janis Tomlinson, Goya: A Portrait of the Artist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020), 171

3 Tomlinson, Goya, 171.

4 Reva Wolf, Goya and the Satirical Print in England and on the Continent, 1730-1850. (Boston: Boston College Museum of Art, 1991), 33.

5 Goya en el Prado, https://www.goyaenelprado.es/inicio/.

6 Levitine, “Some Emblematic Sources of Goya,” 115-119.

7 Goya en el Prado, https://www.goyaenelprado.es/inicio/.

8 Goya en el Prado, https://www.goyaenelprado.es/inicio/.

9 Levitine, “Some Emblematic Sources of Goya,” 109-110.

10 Goya en el Prado, https://www.goyaenelprado.es/inicio/.

11 Wolf, Goya and the Satirical Print, 3.

12 Rachel Schmidt, “Celestinas y Majas en la Obra de Goya, Alenza y Lucas Velázquez,” Celestinesca, 39 (2015): 277.

13 Schmidt, “Celestinas y Majas,” 276-278.

14 Goya en el Prado, https://www.goyaenelprado.es/inicio/.

15 Goya en el Prado, https://www.goyaenelprado.es/inicio/.

16 Goya en el Prado, https://www.goyaenelprado.es/inicio/.

17 Goya en el Prado, https://www.goyaenelprado.es/inicio/.

18 Levitine, “Some Emblematic Sources of Goya,” 121.

Hee Joo Yang | Ceramics MFA

Metaphor of Punctuation 2021 Stoneware

In Conversation with Ibrahim Khazzaka by Reed Humphrey & Ciara Molumby

can find something to talk about. I think that’s what the world needs more of—conversations.

CM: You mentioned that you had some previous careers before you went in an artistic direction.

Do you feel like those previous careers are also part of this thought of connecting that you have with your work? Like, what kind of impact did that have on how you view creating?

How do you feel like making communities or just being a part of a community is essential to you creating?

IK: Great question. I have this note in my phone— it’s almost kind of funny, like someone's gonna find it when I die and be like, “Oh my god, this guy!”—I wrote once, “Conversations make the world go round.” Conversations, when they happen with people—you know, there is a fluidity or a fire or warmth that makes things, like, looser, and move and shake and flow. And I’m using a lot of clay metaphors, as well. Without conversations, everyone’s different.

Many conversations are very hard conversations that we’re trying to negotiate. I was always attentive to that, because of my need to connect and care for people and be protective. Because people are not having conversations, so what if I am that one person who is fluid around those relationships and can talk to whoever?

I appreciate being fluid as well. I appreciate growing in life. I appreciate challenging the status quo. I think conversations are the best. There’s someone completely different than me, and we

IK: My previous career was in psychology. I studied clinical psychology in Lebanon, where I’m from, and then, I traveled in the Middle East. I went to Dubai and lived there for a while. I worked with kids with autism, in education. Then I came to the states and I saw an opportunity to grow out of my comfort zone. I was kind of burned out from psychology and therapy, so I thought, “It’s time for me to own being an artist.”

What I’m interested in my art, other than telling a story—because I think it’s very important for me to express myself through my art—is to study.

To study how people view art and experience art. Just from my point of view, without supplementing written information. I write artist statements.

You know, it’s just [that] I want people to get to experience the art without the words. I think that’s something that’s super important.

RH: How does your history with psychology relate to how you think of people viewing art, and your art specifically?

IK: I always saw psychology as a tool. Psychology goes into everything, and so, how it applies right

now is in a very methodical way; in experiencing art by myself, or going through a museum and looking at people looking at art, and being in critiques. I always enter my critiques and observe the people and how they’re interacting with it. What I’m interested in is for my art to be honest; like, say it as clearly as possible, and as concisely as possible. And I think in terms of, like, relationships, the best way to navigate relationships is to be clear and not beat around the bush. I think it’s also tied to me living in that culture that’s not my own, speaking a language that’s not my own. And so I do have to make sure that I am expressing myself clearly to be understood clearly.

RH: Did you feel an instant connection to ceramics as material or did it take some time?

IK: Yeah, I think—I think I felt an immediate connection with the clay. It loses water and you add water to it. You recondition it, so it is easy to recycle. To me, it’s the closest to psychology, clay. Like, how we shape throughout our life. Clay has a memory. If you stretch it in a certain direction, it’s going to shrink in that direction. And it’s very elemental. It’s earth. It’s so easy to project our process on it, and then clay, in return, informs me. It made me more patient, and clay made me feel like I belong more. As someone who’s an immigrant, working with land and dirt from their host country, it’s not something I think about all the time, like, “Oh, I’m in America, I’m using clay here,” because I’ve never worked with clay back home. I am affecting the clay. I’m making

something out of the clay, but I’m so open to the process and watching a crack grow or water being evaporated or slumping down. I’m so open to it! I feel like that slumping down is going to make me feel certain emotions, right? Or make me think of, like, maybe my life is something, and I am so identified with the material that it ends up creating my moods or my feelings or my…me. So it’s this feedback loop that I created with the material where I generate the idea, but I’m so open to, like, gravity doing its own thing.

CM: How did the pandemic impact your work?

I guess also, like, do you find yourself kind of thinking about that experience as you’re working?

IK: I think the pandemic made me more introverted. My work changed a lot. During the pandemic I really wanted to see how people are experiencing the pandemic, sort of reverting back to my psychologist self. I was living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and I would go out after hours— because not many people were on the streets— and walk around and observe.

And then in Lebanon, August, 2020—August 4th— we had a big explosion, the Beirut port explosion, and many people died, and [it] really shook me to my core. Like, all of my white hairs in my beard are from that trauma. It’s made me think of vessels, when you think of vessels that cannot contain. Maybe because there are too many emotions and vessels that have tentacles and sensors, because I’m still reaching out to see if people are able to contain anything. I was throwing on the wheel because there was that centeredness. I needed

to feel centered. I needed the wheel to tell me to center myself.

I think many people were forced to think of what’s essential and many people, for example, thought, “What’s essential is to have fun, because life is too short, and there’s so much stress, and nothing is clear.” And for me, I thought, “What’s essential to me is people.”

So I gave people my best in that moment. Why not? It doesn’t cost me anything. It’s actually making me a better person. A person who shows up for people and extends themself.

RH: Has it always kind of come naturally to you, connecting with people? Or do you think—

IK: Oh my god, no! I’m an introvert. I do need my alone time to recharge. Like, I talk to anyone. And I get along with anyone. Getting along with everyone is different. I get along with everyone. But I do need to disappear from people. That’s something I do when I connect with people. But I think it comes from this curiosity.

I think in terms of connection, I do explore connection in my work, by actually not connecting my sculptural elements. I join them together loose, which is the relationship between those elements. I spot the elements first. I spot people’s potential. For example, you know, I spot people’s assets, what they’re good at, or where they are in life. And then I try to connect with them and know that no two people are like each other. So no two friendships I have are like each other.

RH: Our theme, this edition—

IK: Now you’re telling me!

RH: Ha-ha. Well, it is “Being Here, Being Present.” What does that mean to you?

IK: Being here, being present is being compassionate, and the studio is being here, being present. Just taking the time to sit with someone and pay attention to their own pace. It was great, because I get to be on a roll, like, super fast, and doing many things at the same time. While someone else needs to sit down and just drink coffee or tea and think, “Okay, just slow down and sip.” Because that’s what the conversation needs.

You have to cater to your material, otherwise it won’t do anything. I have to condition my clay. So ... my goal, or what you guys are working on, is more in terms of going back to the process. Think about that more. Because contemporary art is very much urgent, like, it has to say stuff like something’s happening in the world. “Oh, my god, I have to process it.”

But what’s reasonable now is to breathe and step away a little. Not disengage, not dissociate, but just enough space for us to breathe and say, “Okay, now I am feeling safe. I’ve caught my breath. Okay, now my vision is clear. Now I can go into my process.”

Alemir Beltre

Being plugged in does not mean gaining something; it means losing something. My piece is based heavily on sci-fi imagery and dystopian technology. My main reference was The Matrix and the devices used in the movies to plug the characters into the matrix. It’s a movie that means many different things, but today it seems to be worth exploring again. With the introduction of the metaverse and the popularization of VR and similar technologies, saying that we could end up existing in the matrix is not a far-fetched statement. Being plugged in and always having a connection to the digital world is something that is both incredible and extremely harmful, and it’s possible that life could be moved to the digital world if the powers that be willed it.

The tubes represent the nonexistent autonomy given to people who are plugged in. There’s a false sense of control, so the tubes being malleable but ultimately plugged represents that lack of control. However, they are cut; this alludes to the idea of freeing oneself or coming into your own as an individual. The lights emanate from the head and are in reference to the power trapped within each and every person that is plugged in, and the attempts by those in control to drain that power and money and what-have-you straight out of our heads.

A Look at Aloїs Riegl’s Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Influence and Its Reach by Brooke Cammann

The field of art conservation is everchanging and never still. New theories and approaches to the conservation practice can wildly shift the result of the work being restored. Up until the 20th century, art conservation was based heavily on a belief in restoring the artifact’s original aesthetic and preserving that piece as it existed in its original time or in creating a stylistic unity with the styles that are present. Conservators aimed to restore the piece to its state when it was constructed.

It was not until Aloïs Riegl published his essay

Der Moderne Denkmalkultus, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin,” that these traditional beliefs of art conservation were challenged. These beliefs were so directly challenged that Riegl caused a change in the practice of conservation as a whole.

An Austrian-born art historian, Aloïs Riegl studied law, philosophy, and history at the University of Vienna before shifting his focus to the study of art history. Riegl later became a prominent figure in the so-called Vienna School of Art History along with other leading art historians of the late 19th century such as Franz Wickhoff, Julius Von Schlosser, and one of his students, Max

Brooke Cammann | Art History BA

Dvořák1. The Vienna School is renowned for its great influence on the theories and approaches of art history beginning in the mid-19th century. Riegl as well as Wickoff developed ideas on the Formalist approach to art history. As opposed to Wickoff, Riegl took this approach further and ignored the individual associated with the works to focus purely on the data or observable details2 . Riegl’s ideas were often progressive and broke from traditional canons or accepted approaches to art history, including in his essay, “The Modern Cult of Monuments.”

Riegl’s Formalist approaches concern the development of art over time. Specifically, he challenges the structure of artistic periods with highs and lows in favor of a transitional development of art that continues to change, but not for better or worse. 3 This idea of the chronological development of art seems to be the lens that Riegl looks through while concerning himself with the values of a monument. Riegl mentions an example of this development in the ruins of a castle, stating that there must be a “distinction between our perception of the localized historical memories it contains and our

more general awareness of the passage of time, … and the visible traces of its age.”4 In his essay, he analyzes the different values that are held by the viewers of monuments and discuss how these values evolve over time.

Riegl’s educational background led to his work in the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in the late 19th century, where he later became a curator of textiles in 1887.5 These positions would have provided Riegl with firsthand experience in the upkeep and state of many artifacts and monuments in the museum’s collection. It was not until 1902 that a clear shift in Riegl’s interest, in conservation, is apparent. At this point, he became the editor of Austria’s leading conservation journal, the Hauptorgan für Denkmalpflege.6

Now Riegl’s earlier education and study of law became very important in his work. In 1903, the same year “The Modern Cult of Monuments” was published, he has appointed the position of Chief Conservator of Monuments in Austrian Crown Lands.7 Riegl held this position for two years before his death in 1905, but his work as Chief Conservator and publication of his essay

have had clear influences on monuments and their conservation. The ideas of Riegl’s essay capture his prior educational and professional experiences and blends them, which resulted in his enormous influence on art conservation and, therefore, art history.

The collective works of Aloïs Riegl have done a great deal to develop the Formalist approach to art, establish a lens of the transitional periods of art, and, in “The Modern Cult of Monuments,” define the values for conservation efforts. Riegl’s essay details six different values that we may attribute to a visual monument, but he points out that these values have developed over time. These values are: commemorative, historical, artistic, use, newness, and, most importantly, age. Each individual value, as they have developed, does not replace its predecessors but rather encompasses them to reinforce each successive value. This idea relates to Riegl’s view of a progressive art history, with a progression of these values in a history without periods of highs and lows.

Riegl’s essay outlines these values in terms of when each one was deemed, by the viewer or era, most important to preserve. The development and acknowledgment of these values began in the Renaissance, when there were the earliest signs of intentional conservation, up to Riegl’s contemporary 20th century.8 According to Riegl, the most important value, because it has the largest scope of application, is age value, and so then it is the value that should be considered first and with the greatest respect. Riegl defines the age value, as “which trigger[s] in the beholder

a sense of the life cycle … evoked by mere sensory perception.”9 Age value then cannot be understood by a set of rules or objective principles, and instead relies on the viewer’s perception of the monument; something that changes with the Kunstwollen, or the “will to art” of a specific time, Kunstwollen being a key concept of Riegl’s understanding of art history.

The concept of Kunstwollen is another important contribution made by Riegl to how we think about art. In earlier writings of his, Riegl argued that the development of art was the result of Kunstwollen.

According to Riegl, the Kunstwollen is responsible for “both the production and reception of art … [which are] subject to historical development.”10

The most important contribution here is that the perception of art is what identifies the values of a monument. Overall, the Kunstwollen is an extremely influential contribution to the study of a developmental art history, directly connected to Riegl’s break away from the classical thinking of art having oscillating periods of highs and lows.

The main takeaway or call to action from Riegl’s essay on conservation is the push for conservation as opposed to restoration. This emphasis on conservation leads to the importance of authenticity, or more specifically,

material authenticity. Material authenticity deals with conserving a monument with respect to its historical value so that the additions and/ or conservation efforts don’t “detract from the monument’s integrity.” 11 The idea of material authenticity was originally brought to light by John Ruskin, an influential British writer of the

19th century. In one of Ruskin’s writings, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1855), he concerns himself specifically with buildings, and the conservation of architecture but also with the pitfalls associated with the practice. Ruskin writes about how damaging restoration with the goal of stylistic unity can be, and these ideas are then expanded upon in Riegl’s essay.

A group influenced by Ruskin, the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), was founded in 1877 in the United Kingdom. The Society’s Manifesto presented an argument for conservation instead of restoration while encouraging the upkeep of older buildings. 12 The Manifesto was translated into four other European languages, and it reflects many of the ideas written about in Ruskin’s book. In Ruskin’s chapter entitled the “Lamp of Memory,” he details the issues of restoration and describes them as the ultimate destruction of monuments.13 Ruskin’s book deals specifically with architecture, but Riegl seems to have borrowed these ideas to apply them to a larger group of monuments. Riegl shares the belief that “preservation should not aim at stasis” or the representation of a single time, but rather it should aim to preserve the monument’s development. 14 In some cases, according to Riegl, there are concessions for restoration, but they should still be in line with the values of the monument. These special cases are conditional upon Riegl’s system of values, whereas Ruskin finds no reason to allow for such destruction.

The SPAB was not the first committee charged with protecting monuments, and throughout the

19th century, European countries began seriously contemplating the protection of monuments. France, Prussia, and Spain began establishing commissions tasked with safeguarding and protecting monuments.15 These establishments of monument commissions around Europe were important for Riegl’s later work as a part of the Austrian Monument Commissions. The difference here between the privately funded conservation work by SPAB to Riegl’s government work is a meaningful distinction. In his proposal, Riegl wanted the Austrian government to gain ownership of the privately-owned monuments if they possessed exceptional artistic, historical, or age value as a way to regulate conservation practices.16

Privately-funded projects had fewer rules on how conservation could be carried out. During his lifetime these acquisitions of private monuments do not occur, but Riegl’s student Max Dvořák comes close to replicating this idea with an inventory of Austrian monuments. 17 Riegl’s influence on Dvořák’s work will be discussed in more detail later in this study. Regardless, it is important to recognize, for the essay’s later influence, that these state commissions were all concerned with Western monuments and cultural heritage. The values that Riegl defines in the essay often do not apply to countries outside of the European sphere of policymaking.

Riegl’s experience in studying law is significant when it is considered in conjunction with his appointment as the Chief Conservator of

Monuments because it places “The Modern Cult of Monuments” in its context of law and policy. Riegl’s viewpoint is relevantly informed because of his earlier study of the law. His essay was written as the introduction to a preservation law, and so its purpose was to introduce and explain the ideas represented in the proposed law.18 Riegl’s own rhetoric and professional view aim to convince the reader that the proposed law is necessary. His view is a bit biased, especially considering that the basis of some of Riegl’s arguments relies on the reading of subjective meanings of monuments.

Age value relies heavily on the perception of subjective judgment on the worth of a monument. In Riegl’s essay, he argues that the different values he defines are products of their Kunstwollen and they develop over time. Age value is an important value of the 20th century because it is the greatest level of perception of a monument. This level of perception to understand age value is deeper than simply the historical or art value because it looks at the emotional response to a monument, and it cannot be understood by surface-level observation. Age value then also greatly expands the definition of monuments because “the category of monuments of age value embraces every artifact without regard to its original significance and purpose.”19 However, the application of age value lies in our perception of the monument and whether the traces of the past are felt by the viewer.20 The concept of age value, then, is exceptionally subjective and can vary according to the viewer of the monument.

The attempt here is to rationally explain inherently irrational, emotional responses. The intent of Riegl defining the different values was logical in the essay’s context, to introduce and explain, but as pointed out later by Michele Lamprakos, in application these values are a bit more complex. Part of Riegl’s approach, which depends on his system of values, seems to contrast the objective formalist-like approach with the subjectivity of these values. Age value is unable to be truly standardized for monuments to be compared to each other or analyzed and his arguments allow for a lot of leeway in their real-world interpretation and application.

Riegl’s arguments sound rational, presented with a scientific-like analysis. However, his arguments cannot be without bias, especially since his argument is to expose the subjective meanings of monuments. Riegl takes time to comment on issues of ethics concerning conservation, meanwhile tipping his hand and exposing his obvious bias. When explaining the plan to destroy a Baroque choir in a church, in favor of a Gothic one, to match the Gothic nave created eight years prior, Riegl defines this action as an “unpardonable violation.”21

Once again Riegl points out his distaste for stylistic unity, although this time he expands it in the perspective of the Kunstwollen and the developing perception of the viewer. Eight years before this restoration was favored but because of Kunstwollen, changing values that emerged during conservation changed how

this church would have been viewed and treated today. Part of Riegl’s abhorrence toward the replacement of the Baroque choir may have to do with his admiration for Baroque art.22 In his essay, Riegl fails to recognize his own bias, but he remains confident in the scientific-like system of values as a codified set of rules.

One of Riegl’s students from the Vienna School of Art History, Max Dvořák, went on to continue Riegl’s work, as already noted. Following Riegl’s death, Dvořák became an associate professor at The Vienna School and took over Riegl’s position in the Austrian Central Commission for the Preservation of Artistic and Historical Monuments. 23 Dvořák borrowed and shared some beliefs with Riegl including, viewing art as existing within an ongoing development over time without periods of highs and lows. Regarding conservation, Dvořák’s work included a set of publications with the purpose of cataloguing the monuments of Austria-Hungary.24 This inventory of monuments would help regulate the actions of conservation in Austria or at least inform the historical significance of future conservation. This was an idea similar to Riegl’s that called for the acquisition by the state of privately-owned monuments, but Dvořák’s solution works to regulate the monuments without putting too much responsibility for upkeep onto the state. In Dvořák’s work, he supported many of the innovative concepts in Riegl’s essay and helped allow for the immediate and later influence of Riegl’s ideas over conservation policies and actions.25

Riegl’s essay on conservation has heavily impacted not only how we think about conservation, but the actual legislation and charters that set rules on how conservation is carried out. The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) met in Venice for the 2nd International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments in 1964.26 This event led to the creation of the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, also known as The Venice Charter. This charter borrows concepts from Riegl’s influential essay, including the concept of authenticity. In the charter’s first paragraph it describes, without definition of the term, that “It is our duty to hand [monuments] on in the full richness of their authenticity.”27 In the charter’s Restoration section, Article 9 mentions the term “authentic” used in conjunction with the idea of material authenticity, a concept first brought up by Ruskin but then expanded on by Riegl in his essay.28

The Venice Charter also makes reference to Riegl’s concept of age value. Article 11 of the Charter states that “The valid contributions of all periods to the building of a monument must be respected since the unity of style is not the aim of a restoration.”29 The idea here lies in viewing art as a developmental chronology and respecting these changes over time in line with its historical value and age value. This Article also repeats Riegl’s idea of preservation over restoration with stress on studying the history of the monument.

Riegl’s influential essay has clearly impacted the policy surrounding conservation, but it has also directly changed how conservators practice and think about their work. In 1979 Kristian Bjerknes, a Norwegian architect, won the Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievements in the Preservation of Historic Monuments in Europe and practiced conservation with Riegl’s values at the forefront of his work.30 Bjerknes worked on the conservation of the Urnes stave church on Sognefjorden in the west of Norway, an important project that led to it being listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.31 Stave churches have decreased in number throughout Norway from an already small fifty to twenty-seven over the course of the 19th century.32 This project was completed with respect to the values outlined by Riegl’s essay while simultaneously adding to the church’s overall age value as a change in the church’s development. Bjerknes maintains the idea that age value is very important and “respecting it, is the best way to avoid mistakes in conservation and restoration.”33 This example is indicative of how Riegl’s theories and writings still affect how we understand the practice of conservation.

A more recent reception of Riegl’s essay, from 2014, finds it to contradict the legislation he promotes as the purpose of the essay. The author of this publication, Michele Lamprakos, focuses on the essay in its context of the law as well as Riegl’s application of his defined values for conservation projects. Lamprakos looks at the law that Riegl proposes to compare his practical and theoretical applications. In doing

so, she finds contradictions in his work. Riegl’s proposed law calls for an arbitrary sixty-year requirement to define something like a protected monument according to its age value.34 This arbitrary age then would rule out the need for any trained professionals to assess the values of a monument.35 His definition of age value in the essay, however, is more subjective than this quantitative age limit and its application would require someone with the knowledge of an art historian, like Riegl. Lamprakos points out this contradiction, writing that “his law eliminated the role of subjective judgment-legislating the protection of structures solely on the basis of age.” 36 The arguments against Riegl in Lamprakos’ study do not completely disparage Riegl’s essay but provide necessary commentary on the application of some of his theories and resulting legislation.

Riegl’s values can serve as a basis to understand how we assess a monument when conserving it, but the decisions made during the conservation process are ultimately subject to change. There is no one way to determine the conservation process because of the existence of conflicting values and the changing perceptions of monuments,

as Riegl explains. The theories and definitions outlined by Riegl may, however, provide us with a guideline to practice conservation. In the end, Riegl points to the fact that the practice of conservation is ultimately subjective in nature. Different conservators will have contrasting views on their practice but in the Western sphere of conservation, these values allow us to ask questions about monuments and dig deeper into their history.

Alois Riegl’s essay, “The Modern Cult of Monuments” has had an enormous influence on the field of art conservation. His purpose of publishing the essay is significant in the context of Riegl’s life and experiences, and it is not surprising that it reflects his extensive background. I think this essay will continue to be a part of the discussion surrounding conservation ethics for many more years to come. With his essay, Riegl has placed himself in the development of art history that he writes so much about. His ideas have not only impacted the way we think about conservation but how we place values onto monuments and what those designations mean as a consequence.

Ahmer, Carolyn. “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ as a Theory Underpinning Practical Conservation and Restoration Work.” Journal of Architectural Conservation 26, no. 2 (March 2020): 150–165.

Glendinning, Miles. “The Conservation Movement: A Cult of the Modern Age.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 13 (2003): 359–376.

Harrer, Alexandra. “The Legacy of Alois Riegl: Material Authenticity of the Monument in the Digital Age.” Built Heritage 1 (June 2017): 29-40.

ICOMOS. “International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (The Venice Charter 1964).” IInd International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments (1964).

Kemp, Wolfgang. Introduction to Aloïs Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, translated by Evelyn M. Kain and David Britt, 1-57. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999.

Lamprakos, Michele. “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ and The Problem of Value.” Change Over Time 4, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 418–435. Rampley, Matthew. “Max Dvořák: Art History and the Crisis of Modernity.” Art History 26, no. 2 (2003): 214–237.

Riegl, Aloïs. “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin,” translated by Kurt W. Forster and Diane Ghirardo. Oppositions: A Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture 25 (1982): 21-51.

Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. London: Smith, Elder, and CO., 1855.

Footnotes

1 Wolfgang Kemp, Introduction to Aloïs Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, translated by Evelyn M. Kain and David Britt (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999), 2. 2 Kemp, Introduction to Aloïs Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, 2. 3

Alexandra Harrer, “The Legacy of Alois Riegl: Material Authenticity of the Monument in the Digital Age,” Built Heritage 1 (June 2017): 30. 4

Aloïs Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin,” translated by Kurt W. Forster and Diane Ghirardo, Oppositions: A Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture 25 (1982): 23.

Harrer, “The Legacy of Alois Riegl,” 30. 6 Kemp, Introduction to Aloïs Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, 5 7 Kemp, Introduction to Aloïs Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland, 5 8 Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments,” 26-27. 9 Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments,” 24

Michele Lamprakos, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ and The Problem of Value,” Change Over Time 4, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 420.

Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments,” 46.

12

Carolyn Ahmer, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ as a Theory Underpinning Practical Conservation and Restoration Work,” Journal of Architectural Conservation 26, no. 2 (March 2020): 154.

13

14

15

John Ruskin The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London: Smith, Elder, and CO., 1855), 179.

Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 32.

Miles Glendinning, “The Conservation Movement: A Cult of the Modern Age,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 13 (2003): 362.

16

17

Lamprakos, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ and The Problem of Value,” 425.

Matthew Rampley, “Max Dvořák: Art History and the Crisis of Modernity,” Art History 26, no. 2 (2003): 217.18

Lamprakos, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ and The Problem of Value,” 420.19 Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments,” 24.20 Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments,” 3221 Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments,” 4622

Rampley, “Mav Dvořák,” 218.

Rampley, “Max Dvořák,” 217.24 Rampley, “Max Dvořák,” 217.

Rampley, “Max Dvořák,” 217.

ICOMOS, “International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (The Venice Charter 1964),” IInd International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments (1964).

ICOMOS, “International Charter for the Conservation.”

Harrer, “The Legacy of Alois Riegl,” 36.

ICOMOS, “International Charter for the Conservation.”

Ahmer, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ as a Theory,” 151.

Ahmer, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ as a Theory,” 151.

Ahmer, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ as a Theory,” 155.

Ahmer, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ as a Theory,” 161-162.

Lamprakos, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ and The Problem of Value,” 426.

Lamprakos, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ and The Problem of Value,” 426.36

Lamprakos, “Riegl’s ‘Modern Cult of Monuments’ and The Problem of Value,” 431.

COLOPHON

The third issue of Assembly was produced in Spring 2022 and published using Issuu. This journal is set in Roboto, a type that has a dual nature. It has a mechanical skeleton and the forms are largely geometric. At the same time, the font features friendly and open curves. While some grotesks distort their letterforms to force a rigid rhythm, Roboto doesn’t compromise, allowing letters to be settled into their natural width. This makes for a more natural reading rhythm more commonly found in humanist and serif types (definition taken from Google fonts).

The Assembly team would like to thank Fine & Performing Arts Dean Jeni Morken and Department of Art Chair Thomas Albrecht for their crucial support. We are immensely appreciative of Lindsay Lennon for proofreading this issue. Thank you to all the students and alumnx for submitting to the journal, sharing their inspirational work.

A tremendous thanks to everyone on the Assembly art journal staff who worked hard on the production of this issue: Mikaila Ayala, Mya Bailey, Aja Brandt, Nicholas Brown, Mariah Day, Erin Dougherty, Katherine Edelen, Maria Elena Ferrer-Harrington, Reed Humphrey, Lucifer Kern, Jonah Koen, Paul Lopez, Carlin McPhee, Ciara Molumby, Shelby Nine, Teresa Pellegrini, and Giselle Quinones.

“The damn thing’s called assembly”

—Michael Asbill

Cover Imagery by Alexander Bennett | Photography BFA Hand of Grace 2021 35mm Black and White Film