Biennial Symposium
& Exhibition

April 22-24, 2021

Register Now

The S3A Symposium & Exhibition is going on now. Use the links below to join a room.
Registered attendees will receive the password via email.

Main Room (webinar):

Download Schedule

Where do we go, as the world around us changes dramatically, and resources for the arts diminish? What kind of arts and culture sustain us through social isolation while bolstering the future we want to live in? 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. 

Brandon Ballengée

Brandon Ballengée (American, born 1974) is a visual artist, biologist and environmental educator based in Louisiana.

See Keynote Speakers

Future Farmers

A human-powered wooden horse was used as a nucleus for discussion, programming and video documentation about issues and possibilities related to rural regeneration.

See Keynote Speakers

Katie Holten

Pushing the boundaries of ecological art.

See Keynote Speakers

Roberto Lugo

Lugo uses porcelain as his medium of choice, illuminating its aristocratic surface with imagery of poverty, inequality, and social and racial injustice. 

See Keynote Speakers

Stacy Levy

My projects are designed to allow a site within the built environment to tell its ecological story to the people that inhabit it. 

See Keynote Speakers

Michael Mann

His research involves the use of theoretical models
and observational data to better understand Earth’s climate system.

See Keynote Speakers

Featured Penn State Artists

Rudy Shepherd

Thursday April 22
7:00pm-9:00pm EST

Rebecca Strzelec

Friday April 23
11:00am – 12:00pm EST

Helen O’Leary

Friday April 23
3:45pm-4:45pm EST

Nichole Van Beek

Saturday Apr 24
2:30pm-3:30pm EST
Register for the
Aviary Workshop (Only 15 spots)

Yvonne Love

Saturday Apr 24
11:00am – 12:00pm EST

The panel presentations by each of our five featured Penn State artists expand the themes of the symposium through a range of informal conversations with invited guests. They include a walk into a forest; a drawing workshop in an aviary; a year-long collaborative reflection on the pandemic, climate change, and race riots; the effort of bear witness to violent crimes; and a comprehensive discussion on re-negotiating tradition, craft, museums, galleries, autonomy and of course, painting. 

Agenda

MAIN ROOM

3:00pm-7:00pm
Registration Open

6:00pm-7:00pm
Exhibition Opening & Reception
Rebecca Strzelec, Helen O’Leary,
Yvonne Love, Rudy Shepherd
& Nichole van Beek

7:00pm-9:00pm
Rudy Shepherd & Brian Alfred

Main Room

9:00am-9:30am
Welcome

9:30am-10:45am
Brandon Ballengée

11:00am-12pm
A Walk to Seminar Forest and Thoreau’s Cabin
Rebecca Strzelec & Sandra Petrulionis

1:00pm-2:00pm
Experimental Art and Activism
Brent Green, Sadia Saba & Seamus Heady

2:15pm-3:30pm
Seeds of Influence
Future Farmers

3:45pm-4:45pm
DIY Museum
Helen O’Leary,
Emily Burns &
Jonathan Eburne

5:00pm-6:15pm
Learning to be better lovers: An ocean walk
Katie Holten 

Care

11:00am-12pm
Looking Local: Rewards of and Resistance to Making Art Where We Are
Steven Rubin & Julia Kasdorf

1:00pm-2:00pm
Empathy as Practice: Understanding Space, Place, and People Through Photography
Erica Quinn

3:45pm-4:45pm
Sustainability in the Digital Arts and Design (DART) Studios
Carlos Rosas, Neil Simasek, Melanie Devon, Caroline Giordano, Aaron Garcia & Sarah McRury

 

 Water

1:00pm-1:40pm
Re-Sku
Eli Andrews
Re-Sku

 

Food

11:00am-12pm
Student Farm
Kim Flick & Leslie Pillen

1:00pm-2:00pm
The Nomadic Bread Belt
Christina Dietz

Shelter

1:00pm-2:00pm
Land We Care About: Ethical, Artful Disruption to Settler Colonial Territorial Project
Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis, Alexandra Russell, Izzy Healey, Rosemary Aviste & Luke Meeken

Cost

11:00am-12pm
Silver Stories: A Tale of regenerative Eco-Solutions
Micaela Amateau-Amato

1:00pm-2:00pm
The History of Trash Lab
Steve Maher

3:45pm-4:45pm
The Reckoning
Emily Steinberg

 

Main Room

9:30am-10:45am
Roberto Lugo

11:00am-12:00pm
Living with Worlds As They End
Patricia Watts, Yvonne Love, Darlene Farris-Labar, et. al. 

1:00pm-2:15pm
Stacy Levy

2:30pm-3:30pm
Arrested Welcome: Hospitality in Contemporary Art
Irina Aristarkhova & Jorge Lucero

3:45pm-4:50pm
Michael Mann

5:00pm-5:30pm
Closing Remarks
B. Stephen Carpenter II
& Simone Osthoff

Care

11:00am-12:00pm
Disability Studies as Critical Practices of Care in Artmaking, Teaching    & Research
Alexandra Allen, Tim Smith & Amanda Newman-Godfrey

2:30pm-3:30pm
Participatory Visual Analysis of Viral Imaginations
Karen Keifer-Boyd, Michele Mekel & Lauren Stetz

Water

11:00am-12:00pm
Resonant Ecologies
Environmental Photographers Collective

2:30pm-3:30pm
Sunrise Movement
Canceled

Food

11:00am-12:00pm
Matriark Foods
Anna Hammond & Liz Quackenbush

2:30pm-3:30pm
PlantVillage
David Hughes

Shelter

11:00am-12:00pm
Higher Education in the time of COVID-19
Vagner Mendonça-Whitehead, Corey Griffin & Margo DelliCarpini

2:30pm-3:30pm
Aviary Workshop
Nichole van Beek

Cost

11:00am-12:00pm
DIY Dye Cart & The Sustainable Studio
Kim Flick & Helen O’Leary

2:30pm-3:30pm
The Giving Tree: The Gift of Sticks & Figures
Alex Russell & Zena Tredinnicky-Kirby