ARTSwego 2024-25 Annual Report

2024-2025

ARTSWEGO

ANNUAL REPORT

Letter from the Director Dear Patrons, As we close out yet another ARTSwego season, we look back on a fantastic year full of collaborations, student involvement and highquality performances. From the incredible grammy-award nominated American Patchwork Quartet, to the fantastical Squonk Opera, to the story of an incredible local figure in The Spirit of Harriet Tubman, to a semester-long collaboration between students in Art and Design and artist Lorne Covington to create Immersive Elements, the season was jam-packed with cultural engagements for the campus and local community. We couldn’t have done any of this without your support and we look forward to welcoming you back in our 2025-2026 season.

ARTSwego’s Mission The mission of ARTSwego is to serve as a catalyst for high quality arts programs that enhance the cultural environment of SUNY Oswego and augment academic offerings. We seek to introduce students to arts forms and performances different from those offered by the mass market.

ARTSwego also serves as a bridge between the campus and community. We support the development of collaborative and interdisciplinary programs that foster patterns of life-long learning and promote cultural understanding.

2

ARTSwego Leadership E m il y

Lowell Emily Junker

Lowell Hutcheson

Director of Arts Programming

Assistant Director of Arts Programming

Ma

di s o n

Tom

3

Tom Contino

Madison Rice

ARTSwego Intern, Fall 2024

ARTSwego Intern, Spring 2025

ARTSwego Performing Arts Series American Patchwork Quartet

Sept. 26, 2024, 7pm • Waterman Theatre

American Patchwork Quartet, led by multi-Grammy award-winning guitarist/vocalist Clay Ross, binds timeless American folk songs with jazz sophistication, country twang, West African hypnotics, and East Asian ornamentation. APQ’s sound is a masterful confluence of tradition and innovation, transcending culture, politics, and ideology.

Squonk Opera, Brouhaha

Oct. 3, 2024 • 2pm & 5pm, Oct. 4, 2024 • 1pm & 6pm Marano Campus Lawn

Brouhaha is an immersive outdoor spectacle bursting with rollicking music, dazzling imagery, and the thrill of audience participation. At the center of this riotous romp is the Squonkcordion, an enormous musical instrument powered by behemoth bellows topped with towering tuba bells. At the peak of the performance, Squonk invites the audience to play this foghorn organ, welcoming them to experience the joy of a brass band and the fireworks of community.

The Spirit of Harriet Tubman

March 12, 2025, 7pm • Waterman Theatre

On a barren stage with only a trunk of costumes, Leslie McCurdy thrills her audience with her passionate portrayal of The Spirit of Harriet Tubman. McCurdy invokes the ‘spirit’ of Harriet Tubman as she portrays the life of the famous Underground Railroad conductor, from her early childhood to her elder years, recreating stories familiar and some rarely told, using words said to have been Harriet Tubman’s own.

Immersive Elements

Presented by NOIRFLUX’s Electric Heliotrope Theatre April 21 - May 4, 2025 • Marano 133

Step into the world of NOIRFLUX’s Electric Heliotrope Theater, where renowned artist Lorne Covington collaborates with talented SUNY Oswego students to bring to life a new student-developed immersive interactive experience. This captivating installation invites the audience to engage with art in a new way, blending creativity and technology for an unforgettable journey.

4

Ke-nekt’ Chamber Music Series Oliver Lo, Tenor

Sept. 18, 2024, 7pm • Sheldon Hall Ballroom Barfée sings this phrase in “Spelling Bee”: “Should I come in second?” Instead of presenting the famous primo uomo aria, Tenor Oliver Lo explores repertoire sung by secondary characters (Comprimario).

Suzi Analogue, Producer, Songwriter, and Composer Oct. 16, 2024, 7pm • Sheldon Hall Ballroom

Suzi Analogue is energetically pioneering the new wave of women producers in electronic music & beyond. Suzi is a prolific producer, songwriter, composer, member of The Recording Academy/Grammys and creator of Never Normal Records.

Endless Field, Guitarist Jesse Lewis and Bassist Ike Sturm Dec. 4, , 2024, 7pm • Sheldon Hall Ballroom

Drawing on inspiration from nature, the guitar and bass duo brings original songs with intricate finger-style lines, improvisation, and ambient textures to outdoor spaces. Encouraging audiences to explore their own frontiers, Endless Field “both captures the beauty of America’s wild landscapes and serves as a call to help keep them healthy.” (JazzTimes)

Finger Lakes Trio: Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time Feb. 26, 2024, 7pm • Sheldon Hall Ballroom

In a prisoner-of-war camp during the early days of World War II, French composer Olivier Messiaen created his chamber music masterpiece Quartet for the End of Time, rising above his horrendous surroundings to make beautiful music.

5

Artist-in-Residence The Artist-in-Residence Program at SUNY Oswego brings an artist to campus for one academic year to produce a body of work, teach in the area of their specialty, and to conduct research. The resident artist is given the opportunity to pursue research and realize a specific project while drawing on the College’s resources, including its facilities, faculty and student body, practice and performance space, libraries and collections. A central focus of this residency program is on artistic work that engages with issues of diversity, intersectionality, inclusion, and belonging, including but not limited to the experiences and lived realities of marginalized or minoritized communities or individuals.

Farmers Market

Roll Call:

The Stories of our Names

Namedrop Poetry Project

Albert Abonado Albert Abonado is a poet and essayist. He is the author of the poetry collection JAW (Sundress Publications 2020) and Field Guide for Accidents (Beacon 2024), selected by Mahogany Browne for the National Poetry Series. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has appeared in the Bennington Review, Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, and others. Abonado is the Editor-in-Chief of the Bare Hill Review and was the Fall 2024 Artist-in-Residence at SUNY Oswego. He lives and teaches in Rochester, NY.

About the Project

Albert’s Artist-in-Residence project thinks deeply about our relationship with names. Our names have cultural, political, and familial implications. They are complicated symbols in our lives. Throughout the semester, Albert explored these concepts through community poetry workshops, an open call for members of our community to submit information about their names that he responded to through original poems, and a culminating day filled with art, conversations, and readings that explored the different dimensions of names and naming.

6

Campus Funded Projects With funding from the Student Art Fee, ARTSwego administered over $94,000 to 18 different campus arts projects for the 2024- 25 Academic Year. In addition to the ARTSwego Performing Arts Series and the Ke-nekt’ Chamber Music series, these projects consisted of 7 masterclasses and workshops, 35 public lectures and demonstrations, 4 public exhibitions and receptions, and 2 public performances.

Total attendance to funded programs was 5,683, with an additional 2,764 people attending funded exhibitions equaling a total overall attendance of 8,447 at funded programs.

18 Total Campus Funded Projects

ARTSwego Funded Projects Living Writers Series English and Creative Writing Department Not Bad Hombres English and Creative Writing & Latino and Latin American Studies Departments Independence: The True Story of Dr. Mary Walker Theatre Department

8,447 Total Attendance

Figuratively Speaking Tyler Art Gallery The Burning of My Coldspring Home Native American Studies Department Justice and Inalienable Rights Tyler Art Gallery Festival of Fire Art and Design & Technology Department Oswego Outdoor Sculpture Initiative Art and Design Department

Making It! Visiting Artist Series Art and Design Department Training Sessions with Tectonic Theatre Project Theatre Department Tree of Life Student Art Project Community Service & Civic Engagement Department Nicole Matarese: Screenwriter, Actor, Marketer English and Creative Writing Department Acting Rich: Financial Workshop for Aspiring Artists with Sheila Williams Theatre Department Cultural Education Inside and Outside of the Classroom: Gwahuntiyosta Tina Thomas from the Hill Onondaga Eel Clan Curriculum and Instruction Department Director Film Screening and Q&A of “Veritas” Modern Languages and Literatures Department Director Film Screening and Q&A of “Habanastation: Childhood and Inequality in Contemporary Cuba” Modern Languages and Literatures Department

7

22 Class Visits with Artists

Arts Programming Committee Oversight Committee Rameen Mohammadi Laura Kelly Betsy Oberst Mark Slayton Judith Wyman Collette Ben Entner

Kristin Croyle Holli Stone Anneke McEvoy Andjela Dapa Pamela Cantine

Program Committee Jacob Dodd Juliet Giglio Jerry Jaworski Kelly Perkins Maggie Rivera Ritu Radhakrishnan Mike Raicht Thomas Brown

Chris McEvoy Tim Nekritz Krystal Kennel Megan Mazzoccone Whalmany Ounkham Renqian Yang Madeline Knaack

8

Patrons of the Arts Major Supporters

Sustainer

Andromeda Foundation CiTi Center for Instruction, Technology & Innovation CNY Arts Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation New York State Council on the Arts Richard S. Shineman Foundation School of Communication, Media and the Arts Stewart’s Shops Student Arts Activities Fund

Pamela Caraccioli Mark and Lisa Dufore Betsy and Jerry Oberst Tania Ramalho Redd and Sue Swindells Scott and Deborah Furlong Frank Byrne and Mary McCune Julie Pretzat and Benjamin Merchant

Supporter

Joyce Cook Mark Cole Joan Dain Aaron Forrest Robert Hurlbutt Ronald Kilbourn Heike Koenig Tom and Mary Loe Billy Reilly and Mindy Ostrow Meg Schneider Chena Tucker

$1,000 or more

$100 or more Winfield Ihlow and Marcia Burrell Jill Chmelko Ellie Filburn Edward Gosek Avery Head Christy and Michael Huynh Jerome Jaworski Kristen and Trevor Jorgensen Donald Levine Anne Ludington Mercedes Niess Michael and Edie Nupuf Ranjit Dighe and Anne Pagano Magdalena Rivera Marta Santiago Marilynn Smiley Betsy McTiernan and Hal Sussman Donald and Mary Vanouse Leigh Wilson

9

$250 or more

Friend

$50 or more

ARTSwego @ARTSwego @ARTSwego

250 Hewitt Hall www.oswego.edu/artswego