Sara Alonge

Sara Alonge is an interdisciplinary artist, lifelong musician and multi-instrumentalist, who lives and works in Upstate NY, and teaches Photography and Related Media in the Art & Art History Department. Sara is also the technician and building manager of the Fine Arts building, ensuring the functionality and safety of the facilities in Painting & Drawing, Photography, and Etching & Printmaking departments, and assists in Sculpture as needed, such as with the metal foundry pours in the Boor Sculpture building.

 Sara holds a Master of Fine Arts and a BA in Studio Art from the University at Albany, alongside having attended Hudson Valley Community College for her undergraduate studies in Painting & Drawing. Outside of SUNY, she was also a vocal instructor and music performance director in Albany.

 Sara’s work engages with her life’s ceaseless repetition of displacement, absence, and instability, having moved nineteen times by thirty years old. Her focus on impermanence has prompted an interest in the imprint of items that no longer remain: an elegiac description of our interactions and rituals of care for the places we live, and the transition between inhabitants with the marks that we leave behind.

Juliana Haliti is a mixed media artist and educator living in Saratoga, NY. They make work reflecting upon the blind faith of their childhood—their unknowing participation in racist and unethical capitalist systems—drawing on an overwhelming sense of culpability and guilt, as well as what caused them to challenge these systems and their relationship to these things today. They worked as an Adjunct Professor in Studio Arts at the University at Albany, in Albany, NY.  Their work has been exhibited locally and nationally including, The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, NY, H Galleries in Ventura, CA, Tomato Mouse in Brooklyn, NY, DAB Art Co. in Los Angeles, CA, Saratoga Arts in Saratoga, NY, The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY, and The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY.  They received their BFA from the College of Saint Rose, their MA in Studio Art from the University at Albany, and their MFA from the University at Albany.  They were a 2022-2023 NYSCA panelist for Saratoga, Fulton, and Montgomery counties, and are currently serving as a 2023-2024 NYSCA panelist. Haliti is also a 2023 Capital Walls muralist.

Star Herrera is an interdisciplinary artist primarily working in installation and photography with an emphasis on experimentation. Exploring the boundaries between interior and exterior spaces—public and private, inside the body and out—she creates hazy depictions of the failings in our attempts to gain clarity, acceptance, forgiveness, and a sense of wonder. She received her MFA from the University at Albany in 2023 and has earned grants and awards such as The Roanne Kulakoff award and the Situation Prize for Community, Cause and Advocacy. With experience in galleries and museums, she has also taught photography and related media at UAlbany. She currently works as an Archivist for Jenny Holzer Studio.

For More: http://www.starherrera.com/

Jeanna Mead is a visual artist and educator working in sculpture, installation, performance, and video. Creating distorted reflections of her own patriarchal world, she thinks of her work as satirical self portraits—digging into everything from her conservative upbringing, to her liberal adult life, and all of the hypocrisy in between. Her work has been shown in a variety of galleries from New York, to Chicago, to Italy. Jeanna received her MFA from the University at Albany in 2022, and now teaches sculpture classes there. She received the Departmental Commendation Award, and the Steve Street Award for her artistic commitment to social justice issues. She currently resides in upstate New York, where the debris of her practice tends to spill into her kitchen, much to the chagrin of her sons, and delight of her pets.

For More: https://www.jeannamead.com/

Dani Ruf (b. 1996, Delmar, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist, working in a mixture of craft, sculpture, painting, and photography. She takes inspiration from memory, fantasy, and nature and her work exhibits recreated memories based in both nostalgia and trauma. Most recently, these ideas have been presented in miniature forms, displayed within cardboard boxes that are reminiscent of elementary dioramas. Isolated areas are then captured in photos that may appear to be taken in the real world at first glance, but upon further investigation, crafty imperfections begin to surface. She started her education at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York where she earned her A.S. degree in Fine Arts in 2016 and was awarded with Academic Honors and Academic Excellence in Studio Art. She then went on to earn her B.A. degree from SUNY University at Albany in 2019 where she also earned the Roanne Kulakoff award.  She continued her education at the University at Albany and recently received her M.F.A. degree in May 2022. Dani currently resides and works in Upstate New York.

For More: https://dani-ruf-studio.com/