Dinẻ (Navajo) poet Luci Tapahonso will visit the College of Saint Elizabeth, 2 Convent Road, Morristown, N.J., on April 14, for a free public poetry reading in the Octagon Theater in Mahoney Library at 7 p.m. This event is part of a humanities program focusing on Native American culture this spring. After her evening program, Tapahonso will be available for book signings and her book will be on sale. The art gallery will be open before and after the poetry reading. The accompanying art exhibition Traditional Traces in Native American Art, on display in the Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery in Annunciation Center, is free and open to the public, through May 24.Luci Tapahonso, Ph.D., is a professor of American Indian Studies and English at the University of Arizona, Tucson. She is the author of five books of poetry including Blue Horses Rush In, which won the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association’s 1998 Award for Poetry. Tapahonso’s appearance is part of the CSE Poets and Writers Fund program and is supported by the campus’s Lectures and Concerts Committee. Her book Radiant Curve is being read by CSE students in several English classes, including the Native American Literature seminar for senior English majors, taught by Dr. Margaret Roman. At 3:30 p.m. on April 14 in the Octagon Theater, Dr. Roman will conduct a conversation with the poet as part of a master class.
Dr. Roman has firsthand knowledge of Native American cultures. She has taught literature and writing to high school students on the Navajo reservation in Arizona and has brought her love of their literature back to the CSE campus with the creation of this course.
“It is important for the students to know the indigenous literature of this country,” said Dr. Roman. “Native American cultures are vibrant and alive with a great volume of literature that is grounded in their oral tradition. The students find it compelling. It broadens them and gives them an appreciation of Native American culture.”
The art exhibition features the paintings, sculptures, prints and mixed media pieces of four, Native American women artists: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Corales, New Mexico; Lynne Allen, Boston, Massachusetts; Anna Hoover, Grapeview, Washington; and Melissa Staiger, Brooklyn, New York. The gallery is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, from 1 to 7 p.m.; Friday, Saturday, and Monday, from 1 to 5 p.m.; and is closed Sundays.
“The work of these artists poignantly reveals how ancestral histories, politics, passions, and subject matters continue to reverberate through a variety of formats, patterns and media in their contemporary art,” said Dr. Virginia Fabbri Butera, director of the CSE Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery and associate professor of art history. In conjunction with coordinating Traditional Traces in Native American Art exhibition, Dr. Butera is teaching a course at the College entitled Art of Early Cultures with a focus on the history of Native American art.
About the Artists
Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Nation, Montana, is an internationally renowned painter, printmaker, and artist. She uses a wide variety of media, including painting, printmaking, and richly textured mixed media pieces. Smith’s work is held in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, both in Washington; the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York City. Her art has been reviewed in the New York Times, ArtNews, Art in America, and many other notable publications.
Lynne Allen, professor of art and director of the School of Visual Arts at Boston University, has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. On her mother’s side, she is descended from members of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Allen’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art Library, and the New York Public Library, all in New York. In Washington, her work has been shown in the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the Library of Congress. She has exhibited in the Springfield Art Museum in Missouri and the Minneapolis Museum of Art. Internationally, Allen’s work has been displayed in the Vesteros Kunst Museum in Sweden and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Anna Hoover, an Aleut artist, and daughter of carver John Hoover, has worked in many media including photography and sculpture. The Aleuts are the indigenous people of Alaska. Hoover was a recent recipient of a National Native Creative Development grant. She is currently a graduate student working on a double degree in art history and communications in the University of Washington's Native Voices program. She has exhibited recently at the Daybreak Star Indian Art Gallery in Seattle, Washington, and The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington. Her piece, Skin of the Earth, using sewn photographic landscape images, is on special loan to the College of Saint Elizabeth. This work is part of a touring exhibition, Dry Ice: Alaska Native Artists and the Landscape, curated by Julie Decker, Ph.D., director of the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, Alaska. Dry Ice has been exhibited at the Arts Council of Princeton, New Jersey, Alaska House in New York, and this summer will be on display in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Melissa Staiger is of Cherokee descent and has her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, and her Master in Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where she resides. She has been actively exhibiting and curating in various galleries including Nurture Art, AIR Gallery, Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, Denise Bibro Gallery, and The Halls, all located in New York.
Sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, Convent Station, New Jersey, the College of Saint Elizabeth enrolls more than 2,100 full- and part-time students in more than 25 undergraduate, 10 graduate and one doctoral degree programs. For information on other activities or programs, visit the College of Saint Elizabeth web site at www.cse.edu.
