Join us Wednesday, March 19, at 6 pm, for a Dunkerley Dialogue with Queer Ecology Hanky Project organizers V Adams and Mary Tremonte, whose works are on view in the exhibition a field of bloom and hum, in conversation with Skidmore College’s Ruben Castillo, Assistant Professor of Studio Art, and Emily Le Sage, Assistant Professor of Biology.

The following evening, join Tremonte (DJ Mary Mack) for a celebration and DJ set on Thursday, March 20, at 8 pm.

These events are part of the 2025 Alfred Z. Solomon Residency, in conjunction with the exhibition a field of bloom and hum. Adams and Tremonte will be visiting with classes throughout their time at Skidmore and creating new work with students.

This event is free and open to the public. The program will include ASL interpretation.

Dunkerley Dialogues pair Skidmore professors with artists in a conversation format, which is often a catalyst for new connections and understandings across disciplines, and can spark new ideas for all participants. Dunkerley Dialogues are made possible by a generous gift from Michele Dunkerley ’80.

About the Speakers

V Adams is a New Orleans-based artist working at the intersection of print, zine, and installation to envision queer/trans futures and possibilities. Adams helped found the New Orleans Community Printshop and organized community-focused printmaking programming there for seven years. Adams was a curator and contributing artist to the Slow Holler Tarot Deck, a collection of tarot cards by southern/queer artists. They have shown their work at galleries across the US including the Carrack Modern Art Gallery, Durham, North Carolina; the Brewhouse Gallery, Pittsburgh; and the Aquarium Gallery, New Orleans. They have had residencies at institutions such as Women’s Studio Workshop in New York; Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina; and La Ceiba Gráfica in Veracruz, Mexico. They co-organize and co-curate the Queer Ecology Hanky Project and are working toward their MFA at University of New Orleans.

Mary Tremonte is an artist, educator, and DJ based in Pittsburgh, with a piece of her heart in Toronto. A member of Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, she works with printmaking in the expanded field, including printstallation, interactive silk-screen printing in public space, and wearable artist multiples such as queer scout badges. As DJ Mary Mack she strives to make safe(r) spaces on dance floors for embodying a body politic with pleasure. With Justseeds and independently, Tremonte has exhibited, presented lectures and workshops, and performed throughout the US and internationally. Formerly the youth programs coordinator at The Andy Warhol Museum, she values art education as a means of empowerment and social change.

Ruben Castillo is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Skidmore, investigating themes of intimacy, queerness, archival history, and the body. His most recent imagery draws from photographs and documents, seeing the ordinary as a site for transformative potentials and connections. Castillo’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues in New York, Missouri, Minnesota, Texas, Colorado, Kentucky, California, South Korea, and China. His work can be found at institutions such as the Mexic-Arte Museum (TX), Mulvane Art Museum (KS), National Museum of Mexican Art (IL), Zuckerman Museum of Art (GA), and The Turner Print Museum (CA), among others. In 2023, he received the Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Art Award and was a finalist for the 21C Kansas City Artadia Award in 2022. Castillo, born in Dallas, received his MFA in Visual Art from the University of Kansas and a BFA in Printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute.

Emily Le Sage is an integrative organismal biologist and an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at Skidmore. She is interested in how organisms respond to global change, and how those responses shape infection and disease dynamics. Current student collaborative projects include estimating disease outbreaks in local amphibian populations impacted by road runoff, and the effects of stress hormones on immune defenses. She is a member of a National Science Foundation-funded Biology Integration Institute called RIBBiTR (Resilience Institute Bridging Biological Research and Training) which aims to discover how some frog populations are rebounding from near extinction caused by a global epidemic. Le Sage received her BS in Environmental Biology/Zoology at Michigan State University, her PhD in Zoology at Washington State University, and trained as a postdoctoral researcher at Vanderbilt University and Temple University.

About Solomon Residencies

The Alfred Z. Solomon Residency Fund was established by a bequest to Skidmore College in 2005. It supports short and long-term residencies at the Tang Teaching Museum in collaboration with Art History and Art departments to bring notable scholars, artists, and critics to classrooms, studios, and the museum. The residencies address a wide range of issues in the visual arts and feature a variety of opportunities for both formal and informal interaction.