The campus community is invited to a gallery reception for the exhibition on Wednesday, May 15 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Students made several trips to New York City museums whose missions are the display of Native American material culture. They developed their knowledge of the museum exhibition methodologies behind this fascinating and sometimes problematic category of objects.

They also took part in the cataloguing of a collection of artifacts from an archaeological dig known as the Slackwater Site, in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County, on loan from the State Museum of Pennsylvania. The exhibit on display here represents a number of topics developed through the students’ research projects that reflect ideas and concerns investigated during the semester.

One group looked at the process of archaeological excavation. This group examined how a site is investigated, beginning with the initial research phase, obtaining of permits, primary survey, through the actual digging process, artifact recovery and analysis and record keeping.

Bridging this topic with that of Eastern Woodland Culture was another group of students that worked on how the materials from an excavation are reassembled in the process of reconstruction. Reconstructing a site is essential for interpreting the excavated remains and gleaning information from them about the culture or civilization that originally inhabited the site. Students collected important artifacts from three specific houses to display in the Spotlight Gallery, illustrating how the reconstruction process facilitates understanding of particular dwellings’ functions in their original context.

The most common artifact type found at Slackwater was ceramics. However, chipped stone, beads, pipes and organic materials were also excavated. Students interested in these particular artifact types have illustrated how an understanding of the manufacture, use and symbolic meaning of these objects help to advance our understanding of the culture that created them.

Another group of students then developed research projects on how the Slackwater site fits into the larger Shenks Ferry archaeological horizon, and ultimately the even broader group of cultural developments in Eastern Woodland Native American civilization.

The exhibition of Native American material culture is sometimes problematic, as the students have learned from museum trips and class readings. Objects are frequently purchased, looted or, in some cases, even excavated through unethical channels, only to appear in museums. Although not all objects of Native American origin are acquired through unethical channels, the display of such objects is sometimes problematic. Issues of cultural patrimony, museum display theory and national laws relating to the exhibition of Native American culture are thus an important part of the class’s research agenda as well. Particularly engaging is the involvement of contemporary artists with Native American heritage.

“Traditionally, one thinks of a door as a restraint or a barrier,” Zukas wrote on his website about the inspiration for the new exhibition. “I have been thinking of [the door] as a gateway, portal, vestibule or threshold we must physically and emotionally pass through in order to better comprehend ourselves. My goal is to visualize transformative ideas so that one changes after passing through or consuming them.”

A former Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana, Zukas has been an artist and educator for more than a dozen years, traveling to and studying regions associated with the African Diaspora, from its origins in West Africa to final destinations in the Americas like Haiti. It was from the House of Slaves museum on Goree Island, just off the coast of Senegal, with its famous “Door of No Return” through which slaves left Africa for the Americas, that Zukas drew his initial inspiration for the works in his new Wagner College Gallery exhibition.

“My esteemed adviser and father-in-law, the celebrated sculptor Patrick Vilaire, told me to follow up this metaphor and start producing ideas on physical doors,” Zukas wrote. “I began dumpster diving in and around all five boroughs for discarded doors and turned trash into treasure.”

The “Doors of Perception” exhibition consists of Zukas’s paintings on doors, which he describes as “New African” paintings showing the importance of the struggle of the masses of displaced people of color for freedom and dignity.

Zukas currently teaches in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn at a “second chance” high school. More information and examples of his work can be found on his website.

The Wagner College Gallery is located in the Union building on the campus of Wagner College, 631 Howard Ave., in the Grymes Hill neighborhood of Staten Island. CLICK HERE for a campus map. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with extended hours on Thursday until 7 p.m. The gallery is closed on Sunday and Monday, except for specially scheduled events. For more information, call the Wagner College Art Department at 718-390-3192, or email gallery director Bill Murphy at bmurphy@wagner.edu.

When dancers and visual artists interact, it’s all about form.

Typically, dancers are lean and perfectly toned. Flexible, disciplined and accustomed to admiration — it’s no wonder painters and draftsman, sculptors and photographers love them.

Artist and educator Griselda Healy has taken the romance a step further.

When she began drawing dancers four years ago, she moved into their world. She took class, she watched classes. She attended performances (Degas, by contrast, did not study ballet alongside the little ballerinas he so famously painted).

As Healy explains it: “The subject is complex. I needed to understand the movement physically.”

Apparently, it’s easier to grasp muscle structure, choreography and movement when you can feel it, when you are sore.

The artist has developed a long-term connection to dancers affiliated with choreographer Laurie De Vito who is headquartered in the Dance New Amsterdam Gallery in lower Manhattan.

She’s produced quite a bit of work: Sketches, seven-feet wide “scroll drawings” and a series of 13 large-scale (82-by-38-inch panel) paintings. Some of it, “Figure in Motion,” will be shown next month, Oct. 2 to 27, in the Wagner College Gallery (the artist is on the school’s art faculty).

“The dancers have come from all parts of the world to dance in New York City,” Healy says. “They meet weekly to rehearse at DNA Dance Studios downtown on Chambers Street near the courts and City Hall. The context of these panel paintings make reference to the monumental architecture, bridges, parks, river, sea and sky in this part of the city.”

She’s thinking of the installation as “one work, one continuous flow of dancers moving across a created space. It can stand on its own just as De Vito’s choreography can.”

Still, Healy has incorporated dance into her opening reception Oct. 13 from 4 to 6 p.m. Mika Yanagihara will perform “Struggle,” choreographed by De Vito, in the exhibition space “as living sculpture,” surrounded by renderings of dancers, caught in the act.

A Long Island native, Healy studied at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. In 1997, Healy joined the Visual Arts Studio Program at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island where, she says, her serious work began. She recently relocated to Manhattan, and she maintains a studio in Brooklyn affiliated with the New York Artists and Residency Studios Foundation.

“Figure in Motion” is Healy’s second solo exhibition in the Wagner College Gallery. Her earlier show, “Portrait and Figure Paintings,” was on display in early 2009.

The Wagner College Gallery is located in the Union building on the campus at One Campus Rd., Grymes Hill; 718-390-3192. Gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free.

When dancers and visual artists interact, it’s all about form.

Typically, dancers are lean and perfectly toned. Flexible, disciplined and accustomed to admiration — it’s no wonder painters and draftsman, sculptors and photographers love them.

Artist and educator Griselda Healy has taken the romance a step further.

When she began drawing dancers four years ago, she moved into their world. She took class, she watched classes. She attended performances (Degas, by contrast, did not study ballet alongside the little ballerinas he so famously painted).

As Healy explains it: “The subject is complex. I needed to understand the movement physically.”

Apparently, it’s easier to grasp muscle structure, choreography and movement when you can feel it, when you are sore.

The artist has developed a long-term connection to dancers affiliated with choreographer Laurie De Vito who is headquartered in the Dance New Amsterdam Gallery in lower Manhattan.

She’s produced quite a bit of work: Sketches, seven-feet wide “scroll drawings” and a series of 13 large-scale (82-by-38-inch panel) paintings. Some of it, “Figure in Motion,” will be shown next month, Oct. 2 to 27, in the Wagner College Gallery (the artist is on the school’s art faculty).

“The dancers have come from all parts of the world to dance in New York City,” Healy says. “They meet weekly to rehearse at DNA Dance Studios downtown on Chambers Street near the courts and City Hall. The context of these panel paintings make reference to the monumental architecture, bridges, parks, river, sea and sky in this part of the city.”

She’s thinking of the installation as “one work, one continuous flow of dancers moving across a created space. It can stand on its own just as De Vito’s choreography can.”

Still, Healy has incorporated dance into her opening reception Oct. 13 from 4 to 6 p.m. Mika Yanagihara will perform “Struggle,” choreographed by De Vito, in the exhibition space “as living sculpture,” surrounded by renderings of dancers, caught in the act.

A Long Island native, Healy studied at the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts, the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League. In 1997, Healy joined the Visual Arts Studio Program at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island where, she says, her serious work began. She recently relocated to Manhattan, and she maintains a studio in Brooklyn affiliated with the New York Artists and Residency Studios Foundation.

“Figure in Motion” is Healy’s second solo exhibition in the Wagner College Gallery. Her earlier show, “Portrait and Figure Paintings,” was on display in early 2009.

The Wagner College Gallery is located in the Union building on the campus at One Campus Rd., Grymes Hill; 718-390-3192. Gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free.