1) Emerging Artist Residency: Art Department - Residency of Shea Hembry

Lead Faculty:  Stephanie Dinkins, Department of Art

Multi-media artist Shea Hembry will be in residence for three months (exact dates TBA) at the South Campus MFA studios at Stony Brook.  While working in one of the studios, Hembry will interact with graduate students in the MFA program and meet (by appointment) with undergraduate students in studio art.  Additionally, he will participate in Monthly Salon Style Meals with members of the SBU community, participate in small group Dialogs/Studio Visits, a public lecture for the SBU community, and, if possible, a public exhibition of Hembry’s art.   

Shea Hembrey (b.1974) grew up on a dirt road in rural Hickory Grove, Arkansas in a family of farmers, factory workers, hunters, trappers, musicians, and cock-fighters. He makes art by concentrating on a singular, defined conceptual project where the ideas direct what methods and media he uses. Research is key to all of his creative endeavors while he remains a prolific maker of things.  Though always focused on developing skills on his own, he has a varied formal art education. His nine years of studying art at university include a year spent studying Maori art in New Zealand and an MFA from Cornell University. Dembry’s work is has been widely reviewed, including repeated coverage by the New York Times. 

2) Established Artist Residency: Music Department – Performance and Residency of Roomful of Teeth 

Lead Faculty:  Eduardo Leandro, Matthew Barnson, Stephen D. Smith, Judy Lochhead, Department of Music

Roomful of Teeth, a vibrant vocal octet, will perform Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia (for orchestra and vocal octet) with the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra on October 29, 2016.  In the days prior to the performance, Roomful of Teeth will be on campus for a residency of approximately 4 days.  In addition to rehearsing with the SBSO, conducted by Eduardo Leandro, the members of the octet will workshop pieces written for the ensemble by SBU graduate (and possibly undergraduate) composers, a project overseen by Matthew Barnson.  Additionally, they will give public presentations for on topics such as entrepreneurship or contemporary music performance practices, presentations overseen by Profs Smith and Lochhead.  Taken together, the events will involve large numbers of undergraduate and graduate music students in the programs of performance, composition, and History/Theory/Ethnomusicology, as well as members of the larger Stony Brook community.                                                                    

Roomful of Teeth is a vibrant and prominent performance group of eight vocalists, focusing especially on music of the 21st century. One of the vocalists in the group, Caroline Shaw, won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Partita for Eight Voices, a work she wrote specifically for the ensemble.  The album on which Partita is recorded subsequently won the 2013 Grammy award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. In recent years, Roomful of Teeth has performed nation ally and internationally, with an extensive performance schedule that takes them from Istanbul and Ankara to Los Angeles, New York, Austin, and Boston. Major contemporary composers continue to write new works specifically for their voices, and their performance activities have had a vitalizing effect in the world of classical music.