12:30–2 PM
Panel: Artists on the Erie Canal
This discussion features the New York State Canal Corporation’s residency program artists Judit German-Heins, Alon Koppel, and Clara Riedlinger alongside Angelyn Chandler from the New York State Canal Corporation and Natalie Stetson from the Erie Canal Museum who co-sponsor the Erie Canal Artists-in-Residence program. Since 2023, participating artists have explored the Canal’s layered terrains—including its ecosystems and communities, as well as the traces of labor, belief, and transformation that continue to influence its course. Working in photography, the artists have reinterpreted the Canal as both a physical and symbolic site. This conversation reflects on how artistic inquiry can deepen our understanding of place and inspire new perspectives on the future of the Canal corridor.
2–4 PM
Workshop: Bodies of Water / Bodies in Water with artist Sarah Cameron Sunde
Sarah Cameron Sunde invites participants to gather at the edge of the Erie Canal to explore their relationship with water, place, and time through embodied experience. This workshop unfolds slowly and spaciously, encouraging participants to attune to the natural rhythms of the Canal and to one another. Together, the artist and participants will practice listening and responding to water as both collaborator and witness through movement, writing, and shared reflection. This workshop is limited to 30 participants and no prior experience is required.
Participant Biographies
Sarah Cameron Sunde is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of performance, video, conceptual, and public art. She investigates scale and duration in relation to embodiment, ecological crisis, and deep time. Her work is presented nationally and internationally, and most notably includes 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea—a series of nine site-specific participatory performances and durational video works. She is the instigator/co-founder of Works on Water, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Cultural Leader with the World Economic Forum.
Angelyn Chandler is an architect and artist with significant experience in park and urban planning within the public sector. She is currently the Vice President of Planning at the New York State Canal Corporation, where she oversees capital projects and cultural and recreational programming aimed at guiding the Canal system into its third century.
Judit German-Heins is a Hungarian-American photographer. She creates handmade images using historical photographic processes to draw parallels between contemporary issues in women’s rights, immigration, politics, and history. German-Heins has exhibited domestically and internationally, and she was the recipient of the Denis Roussel Award.
Alon Koppel returned to photography, his main passion and focus of creativity, following a career in design. Koppel’s work runs the gamut from a re-photography project of the Erie Canal waterways to long exposure photographs of ships and trains. His projects reflect on movement, commerce, and history.
Clara Riedlinger is a filmmaker and photographer based in Rochester, New York. Her work focuses primarily on American folklife and cultural interactions with landscape and memory, including recently finished works on the music of the Boreas River area of the Adirondack Forest, and the religious history of the Erie Canal corridor. Since 2023, Riedlinger has served as the staff documentarian for the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins and she currently teaches in the School of Film and Animation at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Natalie Stetson has been the Executive Director of the Erie Canal Museum in downtown Syracuse, New York since 2016. Stetson holds an MA in Museum Studies from Syracuse University. She has spent much of her career thinking about and finding ways to engage new audiences at history museums and connect museums to their community. Although not originally from Central New York, she now calls it home and is energized by the revitalization of communities like Syracuse.
