SUNY New Paltz is excited to share with you the details of our 2025 COMPOSIUM, a three-day symposium taking place Sept. 18-20. Join us for an extraordinary series of events that bring together artists, makers, and thinkers exploring the deep connections between materials, process, community, and the environment. This immersive week at SUNY New Paltz activates the campus and surrounding landscape through workshops, talks, and hands-on experiences focused on sustainable practices in the arts.
sTo Len's keynote presentation on Sept. 19 and Venetia Dale's artist lecture on Sept. 20 will both be livestreamed. Sign up to attend online.
Ongoing
Radical Jewelry Makeover works with jewelers of all levels to educate people about mining and material sourcing issues involved in jewelry making. Metal students at SUNY New Paltz transform donations into radically fresh and responsible jewelry.
Thursday, Sept. 18
Artist Lisa Orr will lead the construction of an ultra-efficient, zero-smoke wood kiln from simple materials.
Join artist Matthew Friday of the research collective SPURSE for a foraging walk and ethnobotanical tour of SUNY New Paltz’s campus.
Friday, Sept. 19
This event is only open to SUNY New Paltz art students.
Photography students will stage and create formal portraits in collaboration with students wearing upcycled jewelry created with the Metals program, which will be exhibited on campus.
After building an ultra-efficient, zero-smoke wood kiln from simple materials, artist Lisa Orr will lead a firing in the kiln, filled with work made from locally foraged Millbrook Preserve clay and fueled by locally foraged wood. Lisa will discuss the carbon cost of this firing compared to those from other materials and kiln types, and the related entanglements between materials, process, and outcomes.
Artist and activist sTo Len will give a talk on his interdisciplinary work that embodies an in-the-field process that deconstructs the job of an artist with a holistic and community-minded approach.
Artist Lisa Orr will lead the unloading and evaluation of the firing.
Artist Venetia Dale will present a survey of her pewter and fiber sculptural works made from isolating fragments from her life and others in order to speak to the emotional landscape and interconnection of mothering, interpersonal relationships, and community.
Join Natalie Stopka for an exploration of beautiful and sustainable colors made entirely from foraged ingredients—both naturally occurring and cast off by humans. Together, we’ll learn to concoct indelible iron gall ink and create pigmented pastels from brick dust and drywall scraps.
Activating SUNY New Paltz’s new EcoArtLab, Processing Collapse (Michael Asbill and Ripley Butterfield) will present a charcoal retort and explain how it is used to carbonize wood scrap. Fresh charcoal made from fallen ash trees will be ground into biochar and inoculated for future use in the EcoArtLab gardens. Both lump and powdered charcoal will be used to draw a collaborative temporary mural that illustrates a magnified view of biochar.
Come celebrate the closing of our Composium with a public meal of foraged food cooked over charcoal made from the remains of fallen ash trees!
