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.
ARTSwego Leadership
Lowell Hutcheson Director of Arts Programming
Emily Junker
Assistant Director of Arts Programming
ARTSwego Intern, Fall 2024
ARTSwego Intern, Spring 2025
Tom Contino
Madison Rice
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.
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.
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
Albert Abonado
About the Project
Namedrop Poetry Project
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.
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.
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
Figuratively Speaking
Tyler Art Gallery
8,447 Total Attendance
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
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
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
Patrons of the Arts
Major Supporters
$1,000 or more
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
Supporter
$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
Sustainer
$250 or more
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
Friend
$50 or more
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
