Jean Parish Scholarship: 2025-26
Project Space Gallery
On view: August 26 - September 20, 2025
Reception: Thursday, September 4, 4-6 p.m.
A group exhibition by the student recipients of the 2025-2026 Jean Parish Memorial Scholarship featuring work by Symon Andriyevsky, Sydney Creason, Sean Eaves, Abigail Fish, Jessie Reed, Mordue Reinhardt, Alexis Rockefeller, and Zoe Zappala. It includes multidisciplinary artwork such as photography, painting, sculpture, book arts, and digital art. A selection of work will also be on view alongside work by Hartwick College upperclassmen at CANO (Community Arts Network of Oneonta) from October 4-25, 2025, for the Hartwick X SUNY Oneonta Student Show 2025.
Poster design by Connor Mead.
Carving Out a Life | Mary Michael Shelley
Martin-Mullen Gallery
On view: August 26 - October 11, 2025
Reception: Thursday, September 25, 5-7 p.m.
Mary Michael Shelley is a self-taught artist based in Ithaca, NY, who has been making acrylic painted bas-relief wood carvings since the mid-1970s. Her meditative scenes, including barns, farmers, and barnyard animals, harken to her childhood on a dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania. Her perceptive diner scenes with depleted yet friendly waitresses and familiar regulars reference her first job as a waitress but are more symbolic of the food for the soul that her art is and depicts. She also carves out scenes of family vacations, pets, and hobbies like sailing. Her time as a social worker, which began in the 1990s, can be found in the empathetic and subtle expressions on the figures’ faces, both human and animal. Despite the personal references that fill her work, Shelley’s art has the significant capacity to reflect moments and feelings that are universal. The scenes she depicts are everyday, sometimes bordering on the mundane, but they are attentive to the fresh and necessary details that make life real in the truest sense of the word. These are the moments that make life worth living: coming together with your various communities, be they family, friends, pets, or coworkers, enjoying a beautiful day with a wide-open sky and perfect clouds. It’s in these moments that we carve out a life, and weather life’s storms. By documenting happy times, Shelley cements them forever in a picture, like a good luck protective amulet, a diary of good times.
Image Credit: Mary Michael Shelley, Leaders of the Flock, Mischief on the Wind, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.
ARCHETYPAL SYMBIOSIS | JAMES R. MCILROY
Open Space Gallery
On view: April 5 – December, 14, 2025
Reception: Thursday, April 24, 5-7 p.m.
Generously supported through a paint donation by Golden Artist Colors, Inc., and by the SUNY Oneonta Alumni Association.
Archetypal Symbiosis is a site-specific mural created by James R. McIlroy (SUNY Oneonta, ‘08) that spans the thirty-two-foot-long Open Space Gallery. It features a series of three stylized animals: a large, predatory cat, a heron, and a frog. These three animals reference the symbiosis of natural ecosystems where predators and prey fulfill important balancing roles, enabling the environment that allows for each other's survival. The bold lines, bright colors, and fluid filigree create a visually beguiling display that will be on public view on campus for nearly a year. McIlroy is a local artist who has created murals in Oneonta, Binghamton, Cortland, and Saratoga Springs, and who owns and is the lead artist at Wolfhound Studio, a tattoo studio on Oneonta’s Main Street.
Poster design by Michael Conte.
Contact
Gallery Director: Sarah Simpson
Email: Sarah.Simpson@oneonta.edu
Tel: 607-436-2445
Administrative Assistant: Katie Webster
Email: kaitlin.webster@oneonta.edu
Tel: 607-436-3456
General Info
Admission: Free
Mailing Address:
Galleries at SUNY Oneonta
106 Fine Arts
SUNY Oneonta
108 Ravine Parkway
Oneonta, NY 13820
Gallery Floor Plans:
Martin - Mullen Gallery
Project Space Gallery
Open Space Gallery
Gallery Hours
11 a.m.-4 p.m.
Tuesday to Saturday
Closed between exhibitions and open by appointment only during university recesses.
Parking: Visitor parking permit required. Visit the University Police Department to obtain a permit.
