SUNY Ulster’s campus, much like the Hudson Valley itself, has served as a hub for both a historic and booming art scene. SUNY Ulster’s interactive timeline provides an intimate look at the lives of the artists that have visited SUNY Ulster’s campus since 1994.
Explore Our Interactive Timeline Here: https://www.sunyulster.edu/artstimeline.html
With assistance from The Ulster Community College Foundation, INC., SUNY Ulster has been able to provide students and local residents exposure to different cultural and artistic expressions through programs like Words & Music, Herbert H. & Sofia P. Reuner Library Writers Series, Ellen Robbins Poetry Forum, Visiting Artist Series, and the Larry Berk Artist-In-Residence Series.
A Spotlight Of Artists Who Have Visited Us Through The Decades:
An American poet. Olds has been the recipient of many awards including the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980.
1999- Mary Frank (Visual Artist)
Born in London, England in 1933, Mary Frank moved to the United States with her family in 1940. Frank works across mediums as a sculptor, painter, photographer, and gifted ceramic artist.
2004- Gail Godwin ( Keynote Speaker Author and Visting Artist)
Gail Godwin is a novelist and short story writer born in 1937 in Alabama. Gail attended St. Genevieve’s of the Pines, a Catholic school for girls, through the ninth grade. Her time in Catholic school inspired her novel, ‘Unfinished Desires’.
American painter, Will Cotton was born in 1965 in Massachusetts. In 1987 he earned his B.F.A. from the Cooper Union School of Art in NYC. His work primarily features landscapes composed of sweets, often inhabited by human subjects. In 2010, he notably served as the artistic director for Katy Perry’s music video “California Gurls,” and has painted several portraits of the singer.
Diane Ackerman is the author of two dozen highly-acclaimed works of poetry and nonfiction, including New York Times bestsellers turned blockbuster film ‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ which starred Jessica Chastain and Daniel Brühl in 2017.
Okey Ndibe is the author of the novels “Never Look An American In The Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles”, “Colonial Ghosts”, and the making of a Nigerian American, “Foreign Gods, Inc.”, and “Arrows of Rain”, and co-editor (with Zimbabwean writer Chenjerai Hove) of “Writers Writing on Conflicts and Wars in Africa”.
Machell’s stone sculpture, “Quarries,” is currently on display at the Unison Arts Center for the “What’s Next?” outdoor sculpture garden. “What’s Next?” features sculptures and events by thirty-five artists living in the Northeast who represent an emerging art movement known as Eco Materialism. This outdoor exhibition has several connections to SUNY Ulster; it is the initiative of Michael Asbill, a former SUNY Ulster adjunct, and three of the students working on the project are Ulster Fine Arts alums! For more information on the showing, visit 
