SUNY Oneonta Art Conference 2020 Program

Opening Remarks 2:00 pm – 2:15 pm Elizabeth Dunn, Ph.D.

Dr. Elizabeth E. Dunn is Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and a Professor of History at SUNY Oneonta. She has always appreciated the arts as part of our overall educational experience and includes all sorts of art as components of teaching about the past. Having taught and worked in higher education at five different universities, she is very impressed with the quality and energy that characterizes the arts on this campus. Dean Dunn finds it a pleasure to be part of a learning-centered community where aesthetic sensibilities, creativity, curiosity, inclusivity, and the pursuit of larger truths shape academic life.

Weaving Worlds: Report from France 2019 SUNY Oneonta

2:15 pm – 2:30 pm

In May 2019, Dr. Pearlie Rose S. Baluyut, Denise Leinonen of the Office of International Education, and nine SUNY Oneonta students traveled to France. For the ARTH 222 (Impressionism) course delivered through the Faculty-Led Program, each student produced a documentary video to report on their two-week travel abroad experience that took them to Paris, Auvers-sur-Oise, Giverny, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Cannes, Antibes, and Nice. Art students Kelsey Negron and Haemyung Ko share the epic and episodic of their French sojourn.

Thomas Cole: Patriot of the Land Chloe Dennis

2:30 pm – 2:45 pm

Chloe Dennis is a recent graduate of SUNY Oneonta and holds a B.A. in English. She plans to pursue an M.A. in Library and Information Science and History in a dual program. Her paper Thomas Cole: Patriot of the Land was written for ARTH 217 (History of American Art) under Dr. Baluyut in Fall 2019.

Dennis examines how American Romantic painter Thomas Cole performed the American identity as an immigrant through the genre of landscape painting and the relationship between God-Artist-Nature.

Khatibi’s Graffiti: The Gestural Aesthetics of Writing On

2:45 pm – 3:00 pm

David Fieni, Ph.D.

Dr. David Fieni is Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at SUNY Oneonta, teaching French language and literature for the past seven years. Prior, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College and Cornell University. He is the author of Decadent Orientalisms: The Decay of Colonial Modernity (2020) and the translator of Empire of Language: Toward a Critique of Postcolonial Expression by Laurent Dubreuil (2013). Fieni has published numerous articles and has co-edited one special journal issue on the Moroccan author Abdelkebir Khatibi and another on “The Global Checkpoint.” He is finishing a second book, Nomad Grammatology: Writing, Mobility, and Sovereignty, from which this paper is drawn. Khatibi’s Graffiti: The Gestural Aesthetics of Writing On explores the relationship between contemporary Arab art, calligraphy, and graffiti, focusing on critical work by two Moroccans: writer Abdelkebir Khatibi and gardener and part-time graffiti writer Abdellah Grillo.

James Turrell, Into the Light Ashley Lynch

3:00 pm – 3:15 pm

A senior at SUNY Oneonta pursuing a B.S. in Digital & Studio Art and Mass Communications, Ashley Lynch has been awarded The Lloyd Terrence Kennedy Scholarship based on her portfolio.

Her paper, James Turrell, Into the Light, was written for ARTH 219 (Contemporary Art Since 1945) under Dr. Baluyut in Spring 2019, a course about the major movements in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s with emphasis on the interrelationships of artist, critic, and public. Lynch examines James Turrell’s universal impact on the relationship between reality and the physical existence of light as manifested in sensory form.

The Gilded Cage: Industrial America and the Exploitation of the Proletariats

3:15 pm – 3:30 pm

Alexa Silver

Alexa Silver is a senior pursuing a B.S. in Digital & Studio Art at SUNY Oneonta. She has been accepted to the M.A. program in Art Therapy at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and will begin in Fall 2020. Her paper The Gilded Cage: Industrial America and the Exploitation of the Proletariats was written for ARTH 217 (History of American Art) under Dr. Baluyut in Fall 2019. Charting the beginning of the industrialization, Silver’s paper examines the unfair working conditions in 19th-century factories painted by John Ferguson Weir.

Bibles to Tattoos: Blackletter Typography Katherine Spitzhoff

3:30 pm – 3:45 pm

Prof. Katherine Spitzhoff is Assistant Professor of Graphic Design in the Art Department at SUNY Oneonta, teaching graphic design, typography, and computer art for the past 15 years. Prior, she worked in the graphic design field in New York City for many years in areas such as museum exhibition graphics, information design, packaging, and branding. Her paper entitled Bibles to Tattoos: Blackletter Typography explores the contrasting cultural identities attached to blackletter typography from its medieval manuscript origins and use in Gutenberg Bible to serving as a visual manifestation of Nazi Germany, and onward to heavy metal rock albums, gang tattoos, and bleeding edge street fashion with a few hymn books and beer labels along the way.

Shopping Isn’t for All: A Rift Between Classes Julie Weber

3:45 pm – 4:00 pm

Julie Weber is currently a junior pursuing a B.S. in Digital & Studio Art with a minor in Mass Communications at SUNY Oneonta. She has been included in the Provost List in Fall 2019 and has maintained a status on the Dean’s List since the beginning of her undergraduate career. She hopes to graduate in Fall 2020 and travel to New York City to continue her passion for graphic and web design. Her paper entitled Shopping Isn’t for All: A Rift Between Classes was written for ARTH 216 (History of 19th Century European Painting) under Dr. Baluyut in Spring 2019. It explores how department stores and the technologies of display, as well as the emerging modern ideals, supported class inequalities among women at the end of the 19th century.

The Female Façade: Degas’ Portrayal of Parisian Women

4:00 pm – 4:15 pm

Kelsey Negron

Kelsey Negron is a junior at SUNY Oneonta pursuing two B.S. degrees in Digital & Studio Art and Communication Studies. She is a recipient of the 2019-2020 Jean Parish Memorial Scholarship, and her work was featured in the 2019 Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition. In addition, she is also an inducted member of two honor societies: Lambda Pi Eta (the National Communication Honor Society) and Omicron Delta Kappa (the National Leadership Honor Society). Negron’s presentation is based on a paper she wrote for ARTH 222 (Impressionism) under Dr. Baluyut’s Faculty-Led Program in France in May 2019, which examines how Impressionist artist Edgar Degas portrayed women and their struggles in 19th-century Paris.

William Michael Harnett: Masculinity and American Consumerism

4:15 pm – 4:30 pm

Alexis Ochi

A student in the B.S. in Studio & Digital Art, Alexis Ochi plans on pursuing journalism photography as a career. Her art was featured in the 2019 Annual Student Juried Art Exhibit. Her paper entitled William Michael Hartnett: Masculinity and American Consumerism, which was written for ARTH 217 (History of American Art) under Dr. Baluyut in Fall 2019, discusses how still-life artist William Hartnett was able to comment on the changing socio-economic climate of post-industrialization America through his works New York Daily News and After the Hunt.

Q & A Session

4:30 pm – 4:45 pm

Closing Remarks

4:45 pm – 5:00 pm

Pearlie Rose S. Baluyut, Ph.D.

Yolanda Sharpe

Prof. Yolanda Sharpe obtained her B.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking and B.A. in Art History from Michigan State University and M.F.A. from Wayne State University, respectively. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited in various galleries and museums at home and abroad. Her encaustic paintings, some of which captures Detroit’s beauty, decay, and re-ruralization, is a study of relationships between the physicality of paint, wood constructions, and color structures of space.

Representing a massive and substantial permanence that is both solid and diaphanous, each painting appears to crumble on the surface within long passages of time. Sharpe’s current work aspires to combine the urban and rural areas of upstate New York. A U.S. Fulbright Scholar in 2010-2011, she taught and exhibited in Russia’s Siberian city, Krasnoyarsk. Sharpe is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and serves as Professor and Chair of the Art Department at SUNY Oneonta.

Copies of papers may be requested directly from individual presenters.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Organized by Pearlie Rose S. Baluyut Graphic Design by Kelsey Negron Special thanks to: SUNY Oneonta Art Department SUNY Oneonta Gallery Advisory Committee SUNY Oneonta Information Technology Services SUNY Oneonta Martin-Mullen Art Gallery SUNY Oneonta The School of Liberal Arts SUNY Oneonta Theater Department The Foundation at Oneonta, Minnie Martin and James Mullen Gallery Endowment Fund