Visual Artist Series
The Visual Artist Series is collaboratively organized and hosted by faculty and students. Funded by the Student Association through the Campus Arts Council, the series typically brings seven to nine artists to our campus every year. These artists give public lectures, workshops, demos and critiques. Artists from all media are represented in the series. They come from all over the U.S. and Canada and, from time-to-time, other countries.
Fall 2025
Catherine Haskins, Kara Jefts, Bright Kontor Osei, September 3, 2025
On Wednesday, September 3, 2025, the Visual Artist Series will present Collecting Contemporary Art — A Conversation with Catherine Haskins, Kara Jefts, and
Bright Kontor Osei. This session will be moderated by Michaela Rife, assistant professor of art history,
SUNY Plattsburgh. The talk will focus on how collectors find art to buy, how museums
store their art collections and how artist market themselves. This event will kick
off another year of the Student Association’s Art Acquisition Board. We hope you will
join us for a discussion about collecting and purchasing contemporary art, including
SUNY Plattsburgh’s long history of student collecting.
Catherine Ross Haskins is the co-director of The Mill, a newly renovated 11,000 square foot historic flour mill on Main Street in Westport, N.Y. In 2024 Haskins opened Process Art Space as The Mill’s curated exhibition program comprising five unique galleries of varying sizes and site-specific commissioned installations. Forging a new paradigm for the art world, Process Art Space features long term exhibitions of its commissioned artworks in addition to works on loan from the Haskins’s personal collection, as well as works on consignment or loan from artists and their primary galleries.
Catherine received her B.A. from Dartmouth College in studio art, attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2002 and was a recipient of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Space Program in 2005. From 1998 to 2015 her video work was presented continuously in exhibitions and festivals internationally. Venues included PS1 Museum and Reina Sofia Museum, with solo exhibitions at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and New Britain Museum.
Kara Jefts is the manager of collections and academic engagement at the Plattsburgh State Art Museum. She holds an M.A. in art history, theory, and criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.A. in art history from Union College. Jefts has 20 years of experience in collections and curatorial roles at academic institutions, including Skidmore College, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the College of Saint Rose, and Union College.
Bright Kontor Osei, born in 1993 in Sunyani, Ghana, is a contemporary artist residing and working in the U.S. Osei is a trained artist, educator, and art administrator with a strong background in art history. He earned his Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from Ohio University’s School of Art + Design. In 2018, he received his Bachelor of Arts in Art Education from the University of Education, Winneba, Ghana.
Osei’s work centers on celebrating the rich narratives embedded in the daily lives of street people. He produces vibrant mixed-media, figurative, and text-based paintings, alongside documentary videos and photography, which ignite discussions around societal marginalization, identity, place, and labor, with a particular emphasis on the socio-cultural landscape of Ghana.
His dedicated efforts earned him the prestigious Student Enhancement Award (Research Grant) in 2023, a recognition bestowed upon scholars at Ohio University doing exceptional research. He has taught at Ohio University, and his work is in notable private and public collections, such as the College of Business at Ohio University and the Kennedy Museum of Art.
This presentation will be held on Wednesday, September 3, in the Alumni Conference Room (ACC), at 6 p.m.
Nathan Meltz, September 17, 2025
Nathan Meltz uses printmaking, animation, sculpture, and performance to comment on
the infiltration of technology into every facet of life, from politics and food, to
family and war. His solo exhibitions include the gallery at Atelier Presse Papier,
Trois-Rivières, Canada, the Shircliff Gallery at Vincennes University, Indiana, Southern
Illinois University’s Vergette Gallery, GRIDSPACE (NYC), the University of Florida
Jacksonville’s Andrew Brest Gallery, and more. His prints have exhibited internationally,
including at the 2024 Taiwan International Print Biennial, the 16th International
Printmaking Triennial Graphica Creativa Triennial, Jyväskylä Art Museum, Finland,
and the 8th edition of the Graphic Art Biennial of Szeklerland, Romania. His animations
have screened internationally at both film festivals like the Hallucinea Film Festival,
Paris, France, and in museums like the Museum of Modern Art, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
Meltz is a senior lecturer in the Department of the Arts at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and is the founder and curator of the Screenprint Biennial, which recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary exhibition at the Janet Turner Museum of Printmaking in California.
Mr. Meltz will give a presentation on Wednesday, September 17, 2025, in the Alumni Conference Room (ACC) at 6 p.m.
Jessica Hische, October 1, 2025
Jessica Hische is a lettering artist, illustrator, author, and self-described “avid
internetter” working in Oakland, California. After graduating with a degree in graphic
and interactive design from Tyler School of Art (Temple University) in 2006, she worked
for Headcase Design in Philadelphia before taking a position as senior designer at
Louise Fili Ltd. In 2009, after two and a half years, Jessica left to further her
freelance career and embark on several fun personal projects. Jessica began Daily
Drop Cap, a project in which every day she created a new illustrative letter, working
through the alphabet a total of twelve times. The popularity of Daily Drop Cap really
kickstarted her career as a letterer, and has inspired many other designers to start
daily lettering projects. Daily Drop Cap concluded in 2011, but you can find the letters
in all sorts of places, from postcard sets to iPhone cases.
Jessica has become as well known for her side projects as she has for her client work. Jessica’s clients includes Wes Anderson, The United States Postal Service, Tiffany & Co., The New York Times, Penguin Books, Target, Starbucks, American Express, and Wired Magazine. She has also released several commercial typefaces which are available in her store. Jessica has been named a Print Magazine New Visual Artist (20 under 30), one of Forbes 30 under 30 in Art and Design, an ADC Young Gun, a “Person to Watch” by GD USA, and an Adweek “Creative 100”. She’s been personally profiled in many magazines including Eye Magazine (UK), Communication Arts, Grafik Magazine (UK), and Novum Magazine (Germany). She is the author of two best-selling children’s books and “In Progress”, in which she details her creative process.
Ms. Hische will give a presentation on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, at 6 p.m. via Zoom.
Cameron Davis, October 21, 2025
Cameron Davis, M.F.A. Painting, University of Vermont senior lecturer emerita, retired
in May 2023 after 34 years with the Department of Art & Art History, where she was
also an environmental program affiliate and Environmental Humanities Fellow. Davis
taught painting, drawing, perspectives on making, and various courses on art, ecology
and community. Davis locates her studio practice, through subject and process, within
the framework of perceiving ecologically. Most recently, Davis created the video set
design with Animator William Tipper for the Emergent Universe Oratorio by Sam Guarnaccia
performed by Albany ProMusica at Skidmore College, July 18, where she also co-authored
the 2022 rewrite of the Libretto. Davis exhibits nationally and internationally. www.camerondavisstudio.com
Ms. Davis will give a presentation on Tuesday, October 21, in the Alumni Conference Room (ACC), at 6 p.m.
Shawndel Fraser, November 3, 2025
Shawndel Fraser, environmental psychologist and interdisciplinary artist, will give
a presentation entitled “Hands that Nurture: Exploring Perceptions of Masculine Devotion”
on November 3, 2025, as part of Black Solidarity Day. Ms. Fraser’s work bridges art,
community, place-based engagement and social and personal transformation. With a foundation
in psychology and the social and ecological sciences, she integrates qualitative and
ethnographic research methods with ecofeminist and artistic practices in nature-based
settings.
Shawndel’s presentation will discuss her ongoing sculptural and photographic project “Hands that Nurture” which explores the hands of tradesmen — farmers, blacksmiths, boatbuilders, carpenters, healers and more — as vessels of strength, tenderness and responsibility. In a culture that demands hardness and stoicism, their hands reveal a socially permitted language of care. Some of these very trades were once crucial in supporting the violent institution of slavery. As a Black woman and abolitionist witness, I turn my eye to today’s (w)hite male practitioners with that longer history in mind. By sculpting and witnessing their hands, the project asks what new lineages of craft and possibilities for masculine care might emerge — and how devotion, discipline, and skill, cultivated beyond domination, can be turned toward struggles for justice and the defense of the oppressed, in the very spirit that abolitionists like John Brown once embodied. During this session Shawndel N. Fraser will present her work and have a demonstration of her sculptural process.
Ms. Fraser will give a presentation on Monday, November 3, 2025, Black Solidarity Day, in Myers 106, at 1 p.m.
Spring 2026
Dr. Karen Blough, February 17, 2026
Dr. Karen Blough, professor emerita, taught art history at SUNY Plattsburgh between
1999–2022. She specializes in early medieval manuscript illumination and female patronage
in the Middle Ages and regularly presents her work at several professional conferences
nationally and internationally. Dr. Blough has also served as a peer reviewer for
various journals and publishers for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Dr. Blough will present her research titled, “Imagining Jewish Persecution and Celebrating the Hebrew Community: The Evidence of the First Darmstadt Haggadah.” The First Darmstadt Haggadah was written and sumptuously illuminated in Ulm (Germany) around 1430 with two additional miniatures added in Trent (Italy) in the autumn of 1475. The manuscript’s illustration cycle includes numerous human and animal motifs that are characteristic of 15th-century south German haggadah illumination. However, three of its four full-page miniatures are unique in this context, while the fourth represents a familiar theme, but on an unprecedented scale. Two of the full-page illustrations were painted around 1430 and depict men and women interacting with books. Several of the motifs in these miniatures recall contemporary Christian visual tropes, cleverly subverting them to express the superiority of Judaism over Christianity. The third full-page illustration depicts a stag and rabbit hunt, a traditional metaphor for persecution that appears in many Ashkenazi manuscripts. On the facing folio, fountain of youth iconography is manipulated so as to depict the virtuous contemporary Jewish family. Both of these images were introduced into the volume in 1475. I will demonstrate how all four of these miniatures reflect Jewish persecution in late medieval Europe, relating specifically as they do to the personal experiences of the manuscript’s scribe, Israel ben Meir, in Germany and his grandson, Israel ben Meir Jaffe, several decades later in Italy.
Dr. Blough will give a presentation on Tuesday, February 17, at 6 p.m. via Zoom.
Mary Mattingly, March 3, 2026
Mary Mattingly is an artist who builds sculptural ecosystems to explore how we live
with water, food, and each other. She grew up in an agricultural town near Springfield,
Massachusetts, where drinking water was contaminated by chemicals, an early experience
that shaped her commitment to clean water as a basic right. Since 2001, she’s lived
in New York City, creating public artworks that imagine ways of living with water
and ecological awareness.
Her projects like Swale, a floating food forest, and Waterpod, a barge-based living system, turn civic infrastructure into shared, experimental space. Mattingly’s work invites people to gather, reflect, and rethink how we relate to the environment and each other. It has been exhibited around the world and featured in major publications, but always starts with the same question: how can art help us build more connected, resilient futures?
Ms. Mattingly will give a presentation on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, in the Cardinal Lounge (ACC) at 6 p.m.
Marzena Abrahamik, March 26, 2026
Marzena Abrahamik, photographer, who was born in Poland and raised in Greece, finds
visual inspiration in personal histories, attachments to unachievable and necessary
for survival fantasies, to further investigate communal formations and transformations,
with particular attention paid to policy, gender, and labor.
“I work through photographic series where images are anchored in historical events. Formal interests in lighting, color, and gesture, connect individual images into bodies of work. My approach to structuring and conceptualizing my work has been defined by my immigration history. My cultural heritage informs me as an artist and educator, and my biography is a motivating resource that provides insight and empathy to otherwise abstracted issues. I received a M.F.A. in photography from Yale University, and a B.A. in political science from Loyola University.”
Ms. Abrahamik will give a presentation on Thursday, March 26, 2026, at 6 p.m via Zoom.
Nicole Cherubini, Rescheduled for Spring 2027
Nicole Cherubini is an American visual artist and sculptor who works primarily with
ceramics. She lives and works in New York. Subverting form, Cherubini builds dysfunctional
vessels/objects that cannot contain; she debases their traditional purpose and recasts
them as new forms. The exterior of her sculptures is where Cherubini rejects compliant
beauty and pushes to the edges of “too much.” Taking up space, clashing, and tipping
into the uncouth is political vocabulary for Cherubini. Even her pedestals are multi-patterned
and dripping with glaze. Appropriating and transgressing class signifiers of ornamentation,
from fake chains to high fashion, are acts of defection. The resulting mashups are
a convivium gone wild.
Unfortunately Ms. Cherubini's presentation scheduled for Thursday, April 23, 2026, had to be cancelled. This presentation will take place on a date to be announced during the spring 2027 semester. We apologize for any inconvenience.