Creative Expressions: Alumni Artists and Arts Educators

Thursday, July 23, 2020 - 5-6pm

The SUNY Empire community has a rich and varied artist community. Join us each week to meet our faculty, staff, student, and alumni artists to learn a little about their creative expressions, their process, and them. Our artists hold a Q&A session following their presentations/performances. Creative Expressions happen every Thursday at 5pm in Zoom at this link.

Featured on Thursday, July 23rd are presentations by alumni Patricia Cazorla (Class of 2017) and Naomi Campbell (Class of 2019).

Patricia is an installation artist whose work consists of figurative drawings and paintings, including portraits of women at all stages in life. Working in acrylics and watercolors, she finds oil paint the most fascinating medium to use.  She is also an adjunct assistant professor at the Bronx Community College, CUNY, teaching Art Survey and Typography Design. (https://patcazorla.wixsite.com/patricia-cazorla-art)

Naomi is an interdisciplinary artist whose work combines art and science in a wide spectrum of studio and new media art. Known for her work that questions the identity of the individual through the malleable forms of space, she explores the universal ideas of loss, meaning and memory. She also at the Art Students League in NYC.  (https://www.naomicampbellartprojects.com/). 

Note: If you missed our previous sessions or cannot make it this week, all of the sessions are recorded. Check them out at this link, or check out previous sessions and plans for future sessions on the Creative Expressions website

Weekly Host: Lisa D’Adamo-Weinstein

Presenters' Full Bios:

Patricia Cazorla is an experienced Venezuelan/American visual artist. Over the course of her long career, she has worked with performance, video, sound, installation, traditional forms of painting, digital painting, drawing, and printmaking, with a recent focus in public art. She is as an adjunct assistant professor at Bronx Community College (CUNY.)

Cazorla has participated in national and international museum exhibitions, including: the Hammond Museum and Stroll Garden, North Salem, NY; El Museo del Barrio’s 4th Biennial / The (S) Files, New York; El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan; El Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas. Her work has been reviewed in ArtDaily, Time Out New York, El Diario La Prensa, NY Arts Magazine, Arte Al Dia, El Nacional, El Universal, CNN Mexico, New York Daily News (special issue), and Art Nexus.

In 2010, Cazorla began an extensive collaboration with artist Nancy Saleme. From concept to execution, they work synergistically to create pieces focused on socio-political issues. The duo has been awarded exhibitions, commissions, residencies, and grants inside and outside of the U.S. have been granted awards and grants from important institutions such as the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, The Puffin Foundation, UNIQLO/NYC Parks, El Museo del Barrio. They have been commission public art pieces by the Garment District Alliance and the Department of Transportation of NYC and the John Michael Kohler Art Center.

Recently, they have been awarded the NYC Health + Hospitals Arts in Medicine Community Mural Project for the Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. Their public art piece Once You Hear Me, You Won’t Forget Me, became part of the art collection of NYC H+H Arts in Medicine and now are wall installations for Gouverneur, North Central Bronx, and Morrisania Hospitals. Also, they were commissioned two public art interventions by Pierro Outdoors/Valley Street Windows in South Orange, NJ, and by 4Corners Public Art Initiatives in Downtown Newark, NJ.

Cazorla holds a BA in Visual Arts, SUNY/Empire State College. She earned a Drawing and Painting Certificate at The Art Students League of New York; and an Interactive Media Certificate at Pratt Institute.

Naomi Campbell, born in Montréal, Canada, has been an instructor of the contemporary figure in watercolor at The Art Students League over 12 years. She comes from a working background in both art and science.

“Starting with nature’s sculpted forms, she introduces new definitions of the organic and the synthetic through fragmented objects and hybridized systems that follow the concepts and connotations of natural systems. An interdisciplinary artist, she has also pioneered new directions in three-dimensional stained glass and watercolor. Acting as a potent, visually arresting mnemonics, Campbell’s installations and sculptures harness the physics of light, space, time and perception to reveal the insidious effects of human interference in natural processes.”-Jonathan Goodman, Sculpture magazine

With an interdisciplinary practice of multiple media of over 30 years, Ms. Campbell’s work has won many accolades including several gold medals of honor. She is featured in 24 book publications and has exhibited in almost 200 exhibitions. Her work is in national and international public, corporate and private collections. Her permanent public commissions include MTA Art & Design Bronx Zoo subway station, City of Geochang, S. Korea, City of Irving, TX and SWIFT Pan-Americas, NY. She also designed the LIA London International Awards, New York, London, and the ASPCA Humane Award both used in perpetuity.

Ms. Campbell lives and works in Brooklyn.