Stony Brook is home to a variety of renowned art galleries that provide unique spaces and opportunities for cultural and artistic exchanges and collaborations. Art Crawls connect the university’s galleries through a series of free guided tours led by expert curators. On April 4, Stony Brook held its Spring 2025 Art Crawl, highlighting five diverse installations across campus.
The first stop was the Charles B. Wang Center, where attendees viewed Cycles of Clay: The Ceramic Narratives of Sunkoo Yuh.
“Cycles of Clay” explores Yuh’s profound creativity as he navigates the intersections of cultural heritage and contemporary expression. Yuh’s ceramic sculptures combine bold colors, evocative imagery, and intricate figures layered vertically to evoke histories and community connection. Themes of Buddhist cycles, Confucian ideals and sociopolitical commentary permeate his works.
“These art crawls are important because they provide an opportunity for students and the surrounding communities to visit new spaces here on campus that they might not visit,” said Eric Murphy, Asian Art and Culture program coordinator at the Wang Center. “They provide a unique experience to experience art and expression with different emphasis or area of focus as well. The Wang Center is dedicated to being the foremost world-class center of Asian and Asian American arts and culture, and we try to do this by providing world class art exhibitions like Cycles of Clay.”
Cycles of Clay will be on view in the Charles B. Wang Center Skylight Gallery until May 24.
At the Zuccaire Gallery, three graduating Master of Fine Arts students talked about their work on view in an exhibition titled TRACES: MFA Thesis Exhibition 2025. Through large-scale video, painting, sculpture and photography, student artists Ria Rajan, Hagar Masoud and Diana Salomon explored ideas of memory, self and family.
Diana Salomon discussed her journey of retrieving lost family photographs from storage in Arkansas, which led to a series of self-portraits and triptychs exploring her relationships with her parents and siblings. She reflected on the emotional impact of seeing herself and her children in the photos, and the newfound resemblances among her and her sisters.
“This is a great feeling for me, finding a new connection with my mom,” she said. “Each photo was sort of like a ‘conversation,’ and looking at them was very intuitive.”
Salomon described a similar healing reaction in her sister, who said her work gave her a little bit of closure.
On the second floor of the Melville Library, the Stony Brook University Photography Club presented a curated selection of members’ work, capturing Stony Brook students’ unique perspectives and creative expression.
“At SBU, the amount of spaces for students to exhibit their artwork has dwindled considerably, so as the event coordinator for the Photography Club and as an art student, I wanted to give our members an opportunity to show off their work,” said senior media and art history major Nicholas Castellano. “Last semester the Melville Library let our members exhibit photos on the second floor of the North Reading Room and it was very successful, so we decided to do it again for the Art Crawl. It’s a great way for people to explore the arts on campus.”
One floor below, the First Year MFA Group showed their work in the Melville Library’s Lawrence Alloway Memorial Gallery.
Madeline Yacovone presented work exploring the story of Adam and Eve, focusing on the power dynamics between man, woman and the serpent. Her pieces included charcoal, mixed media and ink, each addressing different aspects of the biblical narrative.
“My work focuses on different aspects of the biblical narrative,” she said. “I wanted to encourage people to look back and form their own opinion on a story that, unfortunately, is still being used as an excuse for misogyny.”
The final stop was the Simons Center Gallery, where attendees viewed an exhibition titled “Flows of Reflectivity.”
Flows of Reflectivity unites artistic and scientific perspectives to examine glacier change and the dynamics of reflectivity through photography and video. Merging art and science, the exhibit deepens our understanding of the natural world, utilizing photography as both a medium for artistic exploration and a tool for scientific observation. A central theme of the exhibition is albedo — the measure of incident light reflected by a surface, and a key factor in Earth’s energy budget, playing a crucial role in everything from glacier fluctuations to long-term climate trends.
“The campus-wide Art Crawl is a wonderful opportunity for students, faculty, staff and community members to hear from curators and artists at various campus art galleries,” said Karen Levitov, director and curator, Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, Staller Center for the Arts.
“The arts invite us to experience the world differently, to think beyond what we know, to question what we value, and to imagine new ways of being,” added Linda O’Keeffe, professor and chair of the Department of Art. “Events like the Art Crawl open up space for curiosity, for encountering ideas and experiences that surprise us, move us, or challenge how we see the world around us.”
— Robert Emproto
Kudos to the SBU Photography Club!
It’s wonderful to see students so engaged in their degree pursuits and artistic passions.