Arts Everywhere Initiative Beautifies Campus with Stony Brook Student Art

The Arts Everywhere Initiative (AEI) at Stony Brook University was launched by the College of Arts and Sciences in Spring 2025 to facilitate the widespread display of student art across the campus and ensure that the arts continue to remain vibrant, supported and celebrated.

Two new Arts Everywhere exhibits were unveiled on May 5. In the morning, Arts Everywhere: Fiction that Inspires Us was unveiled in the Poetry Center in the Humanities Building. Later in the afternoon, Arts Everywhere: The Bonds We Make was introduced in the new Revelation Gallery on the first floor of the Chemistry building. The events highlighted the deep connections between arts, humanities and sciences.

"Our goal is not to just put art up and let it sit, but to keep it moving, changing, fresh, and on the pulse of what's happening here," said Jason Paradis, inaugural faculty fellow and professor of practice in the Department of Art. "That will happen through curatorial ideas and the artists that are part of it."

Arts Everywhere: Fiction that Inspires Us was hosted by AEI and the Department of English. The exhibition marked the debut of a new art space called The Passage, and features works submitted by students from a variety of programs across Stony Brook. The display was curated by Abby Mars '26, English Honors; Eleni Tsevis '26, Studio Art and Art History; Kamala Covert '26, English Honors; and Madeline Yacovone '27, Studio Art MFA candidate.

Arts Everywhere: The Bonds We Make was hosted by AEI and the Department of Chemistry. The exhibition celebrated the debut of the Revelation Gallery, which, like The Passage, features works submitted by students from a variety of SBU programs. The exhibit was curated by Yacovone and fellow Studio Art MFA candidates Danielle Henneborn and Benjamin Truong.

David Wrobel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said 2025 graduate Rebekah Zhao, a double major in Environmental Design, Policy and Planning, and Studio Art and member of the CAS Dean's student leadership and advisory council had suggested last year that 'It would be lovely if we had more places to display student art on campus. Could you help make that happen?'

"With the help of Jason Paradis and his wonderful group of student curators, and with partners like Stanislaus Wong [Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Chemistry], we found the spaces to beautify," Wrobel said, praising the opportunity to improve spaces that were built more than 50 years ago.

"There are many spaces we can beautify, and this is an initiative that can go on for a long, long time," he said. "We began with a single exhibit in the Chemistry building and now we're opening up two more exhibits in that building as well as other areas. Arts Everywhere really is living up to its name."

"This has been a wonderful occasion to highlight the tangible connections between the arts, humanities and sciences," said Wong. "I feel this type of event bridges what the English novelist and physical chemist C.P. Snow described as the two cultures of literary intellectuals on one hand, and scientists on the other. The mutual act of comprehension between the arts and sciences are two equally valid and valuable sides of the same coin, two equally meaningful and compelling representations and approaches to communicate and channel elements of the breadth and the depth of the human condition and the human experience within the context of a universe subject to the laws of science."

Anna Corso-Rosas, an MFA candidate and instructor of record in the Department of Art, will serve as the inaugural artist featured in the new installation space in the Chemistry building, presenting Seabed, Tree Floor.

"I had the opportunity to create a site-responsive and site-specific work like Seabed, Tree Floor while working within my own methods, themes and ideas which are closely related to chemistry, biology and the sciences," said Corso-Rosas. "This was an ambitious space to tackle but it was so rewarding and interesting to work in. It opened opportunities for conversation between the Departments of Art and Chemistry, literally during the install and opening, and figuratively in the materiality and imagery of the work."

Corso-Rosas described collaborating with the Arts Everywhere initiative as "equally exciting and rewarding."

"The goal of the Arts Everywhere initiative is to bring more art, wonder and possibility to our campus buildings and beyond," she said. "In Seabed, Tree Floor, I hope to give everyone who enters the Chemistry building a moment to ponder the connections between their studies, work, and themselves to the natural world around us."

"One of the exciting things that has happened was that a lot of the submissions not only came from students in Department of Art programs, we received them from students majoring in everything from globalization studies and international relations, to biology, to business management," said Paradis. "It proves that we have many students doing creative work even if they're not in the studio art department."

Paradis said his goal is to move Arts Everywhere beyond visual arts and into more mediums.

"I want it to move into performative arts, cinema, video and into all facets of the arts at our university," said Paradis. "This campus architecture is brutalist in many ways, but that's perfect for what we're trying to do because we can find these really interesting, hidden nooks and spaces that we can conceptualize. Art has to make you think about something. I'm hoping that that's what's going to happen with these spaces."

- Robert Emproto