Art + Design Department to Host Presentation and Panel on Waterways, River Fugues

East Stroudsburg University’s department of art + design will present a program, River Fugues; Catalyst for Action, designed to offer valuable insights into the powerful interaction between art and the development of environmentally protective attitudes and actions toward water on Wednesday, February 27 at 7 p.m. in the Cecilia S. Cohen Recital Hall of the university’s Fine and Performing Arts Center, Normal and Marguerite streets, East Stroudsburg.

Artist Margaret Cogswell’s current installation in the Madelon Powers Gallery, River Fugues/Moving the Water will serve as a take-off point for this program. Art will be considered in its broadest sense – covering a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts/artworks intended to be appreciated for not only for their beauty and emotional power, but also for their capacity to explain complex ideas in understandable ways.

Cogswell will give a presentation on her River Fugues themed work – art installations using video, sound and sculpture to call attention to various communities’ relationships with their water sources across the United States and in China. Her current exhibit includes a video and recorded narratives with Monroe County water activists.

Prefacing her talk Brian Hodge, director of ESU bands, will be performing selected preludes and fugues from J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Klavier

Pat Kennedy Ph.D., professor emeritus of communication, a lawyer with a lifelong commitment to protecting clean water, will moderate a panel featuring local professionals with different water-related experiences and specialties focusing on how art has long been recognized as a catalyst for social change.

Members of the panel will include: Bob Heil, executive director of the Brodhead Watershed Association;  James Hunt, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at ESU and director of ESU’s Marine Science program; Abigail Jones, staff attorney for PennFuture, northeast PA region, an environmental advocacy non-profit organization; Emily Rinaldi, outreach campaign manager for PennFuture, northeast PA region; and Jennifer Shukaitis, Monroe County environmental advocate, an officer of the Brodhead Watershed Association

Panelists will provide anecdotal examples of ways that themes explored in Cogswell’s work – such as displacement of populations in order to create/divert/build/change water resources; access (or lack of) to clean water; and local and “ ubiquitous” water rights/use (including concerns with the extraction industries) – impact their lives and work.

The discussion will explore not only the powerful roles that water has played in peoples’ lives, but also ways that art has influenced their lives and work, and how they select forms from a variety of artistic fields in their efforts to reach and persuade different audiences to move towards environmental stewardship.

In conjunction with the presentation, ESU’s Madelon Powers Gallery is featuring a site-specific, multi-media installation by Cogswell, River Fugues/Moving the Waters, through March 8.  Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday.

Both the presentation and exhibit are supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Both are open to the public at no cost.

For more information on the presentation or exhibit, contact the Fine and Performing Arts Center at esuarts@esu.edu or call 570-422-3483.

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