Ellen M. Blalock, 2021-22
I am an artist with a mission. I believe my job is to be a conduit to listen and tell the stories of people that need to be heard and represented; the ones whose lives and experiences have been marginalized. I am particularly interested in the African American experience in the Unites States. Through my art, I have dealt with issues around African American teen fathers, slavery, female identity and power, LGBTQ families, deaf children, mental illness and trauma, and the ancestors. My job is to listen, to record, to make available the voices and stories of what is missing.
About the Project: ...While Black
. . .While Black is a site base installation using photographs, quilts and words that uses the bird as a metaphor to confirm, to remember and to honor stories and truths of the African diaspora with focus on the African American experience. This project is designed in stages to build the imagery of representation, the bird as metaphor, to embody past, present and future to portray Black bodies. Student and community participation resulted in the construction of a community quilt, and personal stories have been incorporated into dialogues. The ultimate goal of this project is to encourage empathy, openness and build a safe place for students and community to talk about racism and trauma.
Cris Eli Blak, 2022-23
CRIS ELI BLAK is an emerging proud Black playwright whose work has been performed and produced around the world, from Off-Broadway; across the country regionally; on university stages; as well as in London, Australia, Ireland, and Canada.
He is the winner of the first Black Broadway Men Playwriting Initiative and currently the Artist-in-Residence at The State University of New York - Oswego, the recipient of the Emerging Playwrights Fellowship with The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre Company, and a 2023 FORGE Fellow with FORGE-NYC.
He has been a resident playwright with Fosters Theatrical Artists Residency, Paterson Performing Arts Development Council, Quick Silver Theatre Company, Yonder Window Theatre Company, and La Lengua Teatro en Español/AlterTheater Ensemble, and was an inaugural-year fellow with the Black Theatre Coalition.
He has developed work with Rattlestick Theatre, Company One, The Road Theatre, and American Stage; and is currently developing work with The Negro Ensemble Company, Pipeline Theatre Company, Et Alia Theater, the Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival, and The Pikeville City Commission. His work has been published by Smith & Kraus, Inc., YOUTHPlays, Applause Books, New World Theatre, Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble, and in the Black Theatre Review.
About the Project: A Last Day at Dave's
When the threat of the end of the world unexpectedly hits, a collection of complex individuals, all with a story to tell and a past to heal from, come together inside of a coffee shop-bookstore hybrid, expressing their souls and waiting to see if it will really be their last day.
This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by CNY Arts.
Albert Abonado, 2024-25
Albert Abonado is a poet and essayist. He is the author of the poetry collection JAW (Sundress Publications 2020) and Field Guide for Accidents (Beacon 2024), selected by Mahogany Browne for the National Poetry Series. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has appeared in the Bennington Review, Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, and others. Abonado is the Editor-in-Chief of the Bare Hill Review and was the Fall 2024 Artist-in-Residence at SUNY Oswego. He lives and teaches in Rochester, NY.
About the Project: Roll Call: The Stories of Our Names
Albert's Artist-in-Residence project thinks deeply about our relationship with names. Our names have cultural, political, and familial implications. They are complicated symbols in our lives. Throughout the semester, Albert explored these concepts through community poetry workshops, an open call for members of our community to submit information about their names that he responded to through original poems, and a culminating day filled with art, conversations, and readings that explored the different dimensions of names and naming.
Dahlia Bloomstone, 2025-26
Dahlia (Colón; matronymic maiden name) Bloomstone is a Puerto Rican/American artist and Hunter College MFA graduate with a BFA from Bard College. Dahlia has developed a body of work rooted in video, which has evolved to encompass animation, video games, sculpture, code, dance, film, sound, and performance. However, her focus for the past two years has been on video games. Her practice explores domesticity, joy, respectability politics, social value, and mutual aid. With humor, vulnerability, and political urgency, she surveys the technologies and ecologies around the social value and social implications of sexual commerce and investigates the paradigm shifts in these economies.
She has exhibited with Hauser & Wirth, Beverly's, Rhizome, and Mass Gallery, among others. Dahlia has received prestigious grants and fellowships, including the SPCUNY Actionist grant from the Mellon Foundation and a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture fellowship. She is a co-founder of New Uncanny Gallery in New York. Recently, her work has been presented at Blade Study Gallery, Electronic Arts Intermix, and CultureHub, as well as the culminating Whitney Museum Independent Study Program show at Westbeth Gallery in May 2025. Dahlia’s work is also affiliated with the White Columns Gallery artist registry.
Dahlia is a Professor of Contemporary Art at Ramapo College and a participant in the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP).
About the Project: Unless the Outcome is Income
While on campus, Dahlia created a playable Roblox game and an animation, both of which were on view in the Hewitt Hall Whitebox Gallery. The game engaged with Roblox’s new content guidelines, framed around ideas and language surrounding work, survival, and capital: “taking your work home with you,” or “becoming your work,” using different visual signifiers like damask patterns or a domestic gamer chair. The animation engaged with similar themes, telling a story through digestible, colorful, cuteness aesthetics that think through the interpersonal vs. systemic and structural issues erotic workers face.