For, Art Exhibition with Sayward Schoonmaker

Oct 20, 2025 12:00pm-Dec 5, 2025 5:00pm

KOA Art Gallery, Blaisdell Hall

Opening Reception: October 20, 2025, Noon
Free

For comprises multimedia sculpture, video, and text that explores the collective and varied experiences of celebration, grieving, and the weather. Sayward Schoonmaker’s work draws on a wide range of conceptual and practical forms—from Fluxus to fabric arts to field guides—to construct a material archive and working poetics of human emotion and interconnection.  

Sayward Schoonmaker is an artist, writer, and arts administrator. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Adds Donna Gallery, the Hyde Collection, and the Brattleboro Museum. She has attended residencies at the Tides Institute, Monson Arts, Arteles Creative Center, and Vermont Studio Center. She earned her BS in Studio Art from Skidmore College, an MFA in the department of Fiber and Materials Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MLIS from Syracuse University.

Sayward’s art practice aims to change, enrich, and redefine how we build beliefs, feel connected to people and places, and understand loving. The work often takes form as video, participatory performance, and objects. Sayward’s writing practices spans poetry, text-based art, and academic research in library and information science. She is the author of one poetry chapbook, 3259 (Dancing Girl Press) and co-author of award-winning research on diversity and bias in library information systems. Sayward is currently the artistic director of Stone Quarry Art Park, an outdoor contemporary art space located in central New York State.