Program

3 Days | 32 Presentations

by Artists, Scholars, Administrators, Researchers, Students 

The Studio for Sustainability and Social Action (S3A) inaugural symposium and exhibition is organized around five themes: 
Care – Water – Food – Shelter – Cost.
The virtual programming provides opportunities for the exploration of different formats—including virtual workshops, performances, artist lectures, and other modalities of experiential learning and remote participation. Centered on sustainability and social action, the exhibition and symposium will create convergences and collaborations that further intersect with the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals. 

6:00pm – 7:00pm

Exhibition Opening & Reception
Rebecca Strzelec, Helen O’Leary, Yvonne Love, Rudy Shepherd & Nichole van Beek

Please join us for an Earth Day celebration with the opening of the S³A inaugural exhibition and symposium. Steve Carpenter, the Dean of the College of A&A, and Simone Osthoff, S³A director, will welcome everyone and launch the exhibition catalogue in conversation with the five Penn State Artists showcased: Rebecca Strzelec, Helen O’Leary, Yvonne Love, Rudy Shepherd, and Nichole van Beek. We look forward to seeing you at the opening. Cheers!  

7:00pm – 8:00pm

Rudy Shepherd & Brian Alfred 

This conversation between two artists will be focused on the work of Rudy Shepherd as it relates to the theme of Care. Rudy Shepherd’s work explores the nature of evil through the mediums of painting, drawing and sculpture. This exploration involves investigations into the lives of criminals and victims of crime. He explores the complexity of these stories and the grey areas between innocence and guilt in a series of paintings and drawings of both the criminals and the victims, making no visual distinctions between the two. Going along with these portraits is a series of sculptures called the Black Rock Negative Energy Absorbers. They are a group of sculptures meant to remove negative energy from people allowing them to respond to life with the more positive aspects of their personality.

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9:30am-10:45am

Brandon Ballengée

Brandon Ballengée (American, born 1974) is a visual artist, biologist and environmental educator based in Louisiana. Ballengée creates transdisciplinary artworks inspired from his ecological field and laboratory research. Since 1996, a central investigation focus has been the occurrence of developmental deformities and population declines among amphibians. In this presentation, Brandon Ballengée will discuss how these and other works relate to the theme of Care.

11:00am-12pm

A Walk to Seminar Forest and Thoreau’s Cabin
Rebecca Strzelec & Sandra Petrulionis

A year of COVID-19 social distancing, constant constraint, and isolation have caused many to return to nature. This presentation seeks to share one example of that return. Visual Artist Professor Rebecca Strzelec will be guided by one of the foremost Thoreau Scholars, Dr. Sandra Petrulionis, as they hike to Penn State Altoona’s Seminar Forest and Thoreau Cabin replica. Their dialog will result in an edited audio and video piece. The audio portion is intended to serve as a private docent tour for future visitors to guide their way. This recorded tour will teach visitors about the land and Thoreau, while simultaneously sharing unique perspectives both scholarly and artistic.

1:00pm-2:00pm

Experimental Art and Activism
Brent Green, Sadia Saba & Seamus Heady

Artist Brent Green, activist Sadia Saba and filmmaker Seamus Heady discuss using experimental film and art for creating effective activism.

2:15pm-3:30pm

Seeds of Influence 
Future Farmers

“Describable”, “Homogenous” and “stable” are words used by the EU to describe certified seeds. “Unstable, heterogeneous, indescribable” is the the descriptive terrain of “uncertified” “ancient” “peasant” or “farmers” seeds. These are the seeds that have not been patented, lay dormant in seed banks or are kept among the hands of the many who annually save, share and propagate their own seeds. This talk will focus on the seminal work of small- scale grain farmers who are actively planting genetic material (seeds) procured from seed banks to restore their viability and allow them to adapt to changing climate, soil conditions and even the desires of those who are eating them. This work connects to the rebuilding of hyper-regional, grain-based economies that rely on wind, water, and radical trust.

3:45pm-4:45pm

DIY Museum
Helen O’Leary, Emily Burns & Jonathan Eburne

This presentation is a conversation with Helen O’ Leary, Emily Burns, and Jonathan Eburne about re-negotiating tradition, craft, museums, galleries, autonomy and of course, painting.

5:00pm-6:15pm

Learning to be better lovers: An ocean walk
Katie Holten

What is the language we need to live right now? How can we learn to be better lovers of the world? Together, let’s go for a walk at low tide along the edge of the Pacific ocean, at the very location where Earth day was birthed 51 years ago. We might be joined by dolphins, pelicans, curlews, seals, snowy egrets, and others. We must learn to be better lovers by embracing our non-human neighbors. What can we learn by walking slowly back in time along the ocean’s edge? At low tide we can time travel back 65 million years. Together apart, let’s crack open our human-centered language and invite in the non-human. Our species must open ourselves to meeting species other than our own, and listening to them. What is our common story? Can we create a common language of love? And at what cost if we don’t?

9:30am-10:45am

Roberto Lugo

Roberto Lugo is an American artist, ceramicist, social activist, spoken word poet, and educator. Lugo uses porcelain as his medium of choice, illuminating its aristocratic surface with imagery of poverty, inequality, and social and racial injustice. Lugo’s works are multicultural mash-ups, traditional European and Asian porcelain forms and techniques reimagined with a 21st-century street sensibility. During this presentation, Roberto Lugo will discuss his work and creative process as it relates to the theme of Shelter.

11:00am-12pm

Living with Worlds As They End
Patricia Watts, Yvonne Love, Darlene Farris-Labar, Gabrielle Russomagno, Deanna Day, Nancy Campbell & Britt Dahlberg

This panel explores a collaborative experiment in bringing together international interdisciplinary voices around the climate crisis. What happens when an anthropologist, writer/historian, photographer, poet, sculptor, and installation artist use a journalistic passing of folios to engage a slow-paced conversation over a year? What happened at the end of that year when they came together in a virtual workshop format to have dialogue and make a final response together? What was each person’s process? How did the work relate to each other? How did the intention change when the pandemic interrupted their lives, the weather became more extreme, and racism raged? Join us for a conversation moderated by ecoartspace founder Patricia Watts.

1:00pm-2:15pm

Stacy Levy

Interested in watersheds, tides, growth and erosion, Stacy Levy make projects that show how nature functions in an urban setting. As a sculptor making large-scale public installations in rivers, streets, parking lots, airports and nature centers, Levy frequently work as part of a collaborative team seamlessly merging sculpture into the architecture, the topography, and the storm water requirements of the site. For this presentation, Stacy Levy will discuss how her work intersects with the theme of Water.

2:30pm-3:30pm

Arrested Welcome: Hospitality in Contemporary Art
Irina Aristarkhova & Jorge Lucero

This exciting panel expands the book talk format and explores fresh dimensions of CARE. Dr. Irina Aristarkhova is Professor of the Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and artist Jorge Lucero is Associate Professor and Chair of Art Education in the School of Art & Design, University of Illinois, Chicago. Before having a 20-minute conversation about Dr. Aristarkhova’s 2020 book, Arrested Welcome: Hospitality in Contemporary Art, she and Lucero will give complimentary presentations on their research on a diverse range of contemporary art practices. 

3:45pm-4:50pm

Michael Mann

Dr. Michael E. Mann is Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, with joint appointments in the Department of Geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (EESI). He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC). Dr. Mann was a Lead Author on the Observed Climate Variability and Change chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report in 2001 and was organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Science in 2003. In this presentation, Michael Mann will discuss issues of sustainability as they relate to Climate Change.  

5:00pm-5:30pm

Closing Remarks
B. Stephen Carpenter II & Simone Osthoff