Luxiere - Oklahoma Lifestyle & Real Estate // Edition 50

SUPER MID SIZE JETS

VERY LIGHT JETS

SUPER LIGHT JETS

50

From Paris to Tulsa

Lots of 24-year-olds dream of performing and seeing the world; most don’t move from France to Oklahoma to make it happen. But Aubin le Marchand believes in his big dreams, and his talent, charisma and love for the stage have helped make him Tulsa Ballet’s new principal dancer.

STORY BY ALICIA CHESSER

36 Adventures in Viticulture

Though her resume was so perfect it seemed fake, Madi Franklin’s life— leaps of faith and all—has proven a perfect lead-up to lead the way in improving Oklahoma wine.

STORY BY GREG HORTON

42 A Growth Mindset for OK Film

Twisters to Killers of the Flower Moon to “Reservation Dogs,” filming in Oklahoma is experiencing a boom, and creators like Dylan Brodie know that’s no accident.

STORY BY ALEXANDRA BOHANNON

56

Tailgating, 'La Traviata' & Stunning Beauty

The vistas and vocals are both magnificent at the resplendent Santa Fe Opera—and this artistic getaway is also a surprisingly great spot for a pre-show picnic.

STORY BY CHRISTINE EDDINGTON

66

By.Everyone for Everyone

With the recent relocation of fashion retailer By.Everyone into Tulsa, owner Elyjah Monks is excited about offering an imaginative, engaging, welcoming space.

STORY BY ANDREA SCHULTZ

74 The Power of Perspective

Sharing different voices is critical to storytelling, which is why Oklahoma producer Julianna Brannum is so pleased about recent growth in Native film representation.

STORY BY GREG HORTON

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50 FROM THE PUBLISHER

We know Oklahomans are creative and collaborative. It’s one of our coolest traits. People who move here mention it; people who leave here miss it. It’s that unique, tenacious brand of “why not?” combined with our natural inclination to help each other shine that really sets Oklahoma apart. Each edition of Luxiere is a celebration and an homage to all the good that happens here.

You’ll love our story about the spice girls—Whitney, Rosemary and Margaret, that is—who are from Oklahoma, but didn’t meet until they were all living in NYC, and whose start-up company Cinny is bringing the sweet health benefits of cinnamon to coffee shops one tiny packet at a time. It’s a great idea, and it’s taking off, thanks in part to boosts from their Sooner State community.

Doers and dreamers alike thrive in Oklahoma. Perhaps especially notable right now are the people who’ve dreamt up Oklahoma’s burgeoning film and television industry, and those who are helping it thrive. Just ask 2024 deadCenter Film Festival Icon Award winner Dylan Brodie. Whether or not you know his name, you’ve likely seen his work. He’s been a champion of Oklahoma’s film industry for more than a decade (he took the requisite sabbatical to hone his craft in Los Angeles but didn’t want to get lost in the noise), working as a producer on projects like Fancy Dance, Killers of the Flower Moon and “Reservation Dogs,” and he’s just getting started.

Makeup artist Sharon Tabb, who works in Oklahoma and California, was also part of Fancy Dance and “Reservation Dogs” from behind the scenes. For both projects, Tabb’s assignment was to achieve real-looking, "no-makeup" makeup, which is harder than it looks. Oscar-nominated actress Lily Gladstone was cast in both projects, and Tabb said she can’t wait for the day when she can work with the actress a third time so she can glam her up, instead of adding dark circles under her eyes.

Julianna Brannum, a documentarian from Norman, citizen of the Comanche Nation and direct descendent of Quanah Parker, was a producer on the 2023 Ken Burns documentary series “The American Buffalo,” a stratospheric

job opportunity for any filmmaker. How her career reached such heights is a series of fortunate events—coupled with her incredible talent and hard work.

Oklahoma’s new Viticulture and Enology Coordinator Madison “Madi” Franklin is no stranger to leaps of faith, either, as you’ll learn in the motorcycle-filled action-packed opening paragraph of writer Greg Horton’s story. She’s determined to help our state’s fledgling wine industry flourish, and she’s got the chops to do it.

Around Tulsa, you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see a ballet dancer with a French accent casually chatting over a coffee shop counter. But if you frequent Shades of Brown in Brookside, you just might. Aubin Le Marchand, originally from Paris, is Tulsa Ballet’s new principal dancer, and he’s taking T-town by storm. Writer Alicia Chesser caught up with him and shares his extraordinary story—and exuberant personality. Another great Tulsa story in this edition introduces readers to a new boutique in town: By.Everyone just moved its wares to a perfect spot in the Kendall Whittier neighborhood.

Exciting, bold, beautiful things—large and small—are happening every single day in our creative, quirky, friendly state. We hope you’ll enjoy learning about them as much as we have.

Until next time,

STACY D. JOHNSON Publisher, Owner

OUR CONTRIBUTORS

Each issue of Luxiere represents the combined efforts of an accomplished team of creative Oklahomans. We are pleased to share their work with you, and grateful for the time and talent each has contributed to bringing this publication into being.

STACY

D.

JOHNSON Owner/Publisher/Editor in Chief

DESIGN nvsble.studio

ON THE COVER Tulsa Ballet dancer Aubin Le Marchand Photograph by Tony Li

LUXIERE MAGAZINE CORPORATE OFFICE

2123 N Classen Blvd Oklahoma City, OK 73106 www.luxiere.co Luxiere

The Art of Truth

Sharon Tabb’s makeup magic on ‘Reservation Dogs’ and beyond

BY ALEXANDRA BOHANNON

Alfred Hitchcock once explained that making a film is about telling a story—a dramatic and human story, not a banal one. As he said, “What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?”

What often divides “cinema” from “content” is the ability of the director, actors and crew to skillfully tell a grounded human story without leaning into the maudlin.

Crafting such nuanced storytelling is always a team effort, with the director, cinematographer, set designers, makeup artists and others all playing crucial roles in maintaining that delicate balance—and Oklahoma film and makeup artist Sharon Tabb is happy to contribute to that finished work.

“Everything that I have done, and that I do for those projects, is very collaborative. When I’m on a film or television project, you read the script, you break it down to the best of your knowledge of what you think it should be,” Tabb says. “Then you talk to the director, and you see what their vision is.”

Makeup Artist Sharon Tabb

Tabb has been working in the beauty industry since she was 19, cutting her teeth working at a Chanel counter in Riverside, California. She stood out from her colleagues by focusing on one thing in her consultations: the truth.

“It was funny because when you go to those cosmetic counters they try to sell you on these 10-step programs,” Tabb recalls. “And I would just tell people straight up, ‘I think you just need this and this, and go and do the other stuff later and come back,’ and then I do their makeup. Then they were sold.”

Tabb’s desire to find the truth through makeup is an approach that has continued through her various career touchpoints: her first makeup production job on an anti-smoking PSA at age 21; politically minded fashion editorials over hot-button topics like sustainability and gun violence in schools; and even a stint in reality TV. Whether she was working out of Los Angeles or Oklahoma, Tabb soon built a resume of film credits serving as makeup and hair department head.

Considering her approach to the truth in her work, it makes sense that Tabb got the call to work on “Reservation Dogs.” As she put it, show co-creator Sterlin Harjo wanted “realness” for his talent, so it was Tabb’s challenge to find the balance of realism (characters not wearing noticeable makeup) and non-realism (covering skin imperfections and controlling for shine). Some viewers may think that the characters in “Rez Dogs” (as Tabb calls it affectionately) aren’t wearing any makeup, meaning Tabb did her job well.

“They’ve got to look like these are kids on the reservation. They would not be made up or looking like soap opera people,” says Tabb. “So no matter what we did to blot them, to powder them, they looked kind of lived-in.”

This also included addressing challenges likely unique to shooting this show for three seasons. As it was shot out of order and over months of weather and seasonal changes, the Indigenous actors would have significant skin tone shifts that made editing continuity difficult. Tabb recalled some key moments of stress in the early days of shooting when actor Lane Factor was getting a tanline in the shape of a PPE mask on his face.

“I go look on the monitor, and I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ It had happened just in a few hours, but he looked pale around his mouth because he’d been wearing a mask,” says Tabb.

So, to keep the continuity of the actors’ skin tones, Tabb developed a specific technique of deepening their skin tone with liquid bronzer at the beginning of the production period, and then applying less product over time as the Oklahoma sun would tan them—that way their skin looked even throughout the entire shoot.

Tabb carried this technique and others to her time as hair and makeup department head on 2023’s Fancy Dance, written and directed by Erica Tremblay, a production with mostly Indigenous talent. Tabb developed the hair and makeup looks of all the actors in the film, including Academy Award nominee Lily Gladstone (who also appeared in “Reservation Dogs”).

“Her character on ‘Reservation Dogs,’ she was a prisoner, so she’s clearly not going to have makeup on, so we did ‘no makeup’ makeup,” says Tabb. “It was a very similar character for Fancy Dance, because again, we’re dealing with an economic situation where they’re very poor.”

Sharon Tabb with D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai on the set of “Reservation Dogs.”

“I feel like any hair and makeup we do, helps set the tone.”

SHARON TABB

Tabb does have a dream of working with Gladstone again one day—but putting her in glam makeup: “Please, one day, can I not let her have dark circles?” she says with a laugh.

Tabb’s concern for the actors’ wellbeing goes beyond just a concern for their appearance (although that’s important to her in her role), and into caring for them as people after a long day of shooting. As most sets have 12-hour days minimum, Tabb helps the actors feel and look their best by offering spa-like amenities.

“Not only do I take their makeup off, but we do these mini-facials, so we make it like a relaxing spa. Everybody gets a hot towel, people get a little facial massage,” says Tabb. “If you think about it this way, too: by prepping their skin for tomorrow, you’re helping save more time.”

Many actors are unaccustomed to this treatment. Tabb recalled that one of her A-List actresses was expecting a speed station of makeup wipes people can grab and go. Instead, Tabb’s meticulous approach to makeup pre- and post-application emphasizes how seriously she takes her craft.

“I feel like any hair and makeup we do, helps set the tone,” says Tabb. “Because these actors, they’re very serious. I mean, this is their livelihood. It’s fun, but we’re here to tell a story.” •

To keep up with Sharon’s work, follow her on Instagram @sharontabb or on Facebook at Sharon Tabb - Makeup Artist & Hair

Isabel Deroy-Olson and Lily Gladstone in Fancy Dance (2023)

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Woman of Influence

Dr. Kelli Mosteller

BY CHRISTINE EDDINGTON

As Dr. Kelli Mosteller, incoming executive director and CEO of Oklahoma City’s First Americans Museum (FAM), chats with Luxiere from her office at Harvard University, it’s clear that Mosteller—whose job was once “auntie for the eagles at the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Eagle Aviary”—is precisely the right person to meet this moment in FAM’s existence. She was also the perfect person to step into the position she’s now leaving, executive director of the Harvard University Native American Program, a post she’s held since 2022. Before that, she was the exact right person to serve her tribe, Citizen Potawatomi Nation, as executive director of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center in Shawnee.

How can this woman step so seamlessly into such a unique series of leadership roles? It helps that she’s a historian by education and by nature. “I knew, from when I was 10 or 12 years old, that I was going make a career in history in some capacity,” she says. “My grandmother was very much the historian of the family. She actually helped found the Citizen Potawatomi Historical Society, which is our tribe’s history program, back in the seventies.” When she was executive director of the Citizen Potawatomie Nation Heritage Center, Mosteller and her team were sorting through some old documents and found her grandmother and greatgrandfather’s Citizen Potawatomie Nation Historical Society membership cards (they were members number two and seven).

Mosteller earned her undergraduate degree at Oklahoma State University and holds a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Texas at Austin, with a focus on Indigenous studies. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including being named one of Oklahoma’s “50 Women Making a Difference” by The Journal Record.

She tends to think of herself as an auntie; an affectionate, respectful term used in some Indigenous communities for a matriarch who takes care of people, makes sure traditions are carried forward and teaches and supports the next generation. As

she describes her work, it seems like she’s right about that. Her superpowers are taking care of people and tradition and making sure anyone—and anything—entrusted into her care is treated with respect.

Her Harvard position is a great example. It involves providing wrap-around support for about 160 of the 335 self-identified Native American students at the venerable, imposing Ivy. Any guesses as to how she describes her role? “I always say my number one job here is to be like an auntie. I am Auntie Kelli. My first job is to make sure my kids feel like they have support, and somewhere to land. A safe place where they’re going to be taken care of. And every other thing I do beyond that is in service of making sure that those kids feel like this is a good place for them, where they can do their best academic work.” She continues, “We wrap students in a big blanket of holistic care from the moment they think they want to apply, up until we literally wrap them in a blanket when they graduate. We give them a blanket at their graduation ceremony.”

Mosteller’s museum and public history experience and her background with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and Tribal Historic Preservation were additional areas of expertise Harvard needed, and the sooner the better. “The same summer that I was hired, they released the ‘Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery’ report, in which the university looks at its own history of enslaving not only people of African descent, but also the Indigenous people of New England.”

Part of that, she said, meant dealing with the collections of things like hundreds of Native American children’s hair samples in Harvard’s Peabody Museum. A report issued in 2022 revealed that Harvard holds in its collections the remains of thousands of Native American people. “I’ve been put on every committee you can think of having to do with NAGPRA, human remains or other objects in collections that are really problematic and have a lot of ethical questions around them. I’m doing a lot of educating of the people within Harvard about how Native communities view

Dr.

some of the collections, how they view the stewardship of these collections and what consultation truly looks like,” Mosteller says. She is hopeful that efforts by Harvard and other institutions to return important and sometimes sacred objects to tribes will gain momentum.

During her 12 years at the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Center, she built the museum from the ground up—twice. “The first one was planned. My first few months on the job, we tore it down to the ground and started a rebuild,” she says. The organization had secured grant money for the project, and had an idea for the narrative and how the galleries should be presented. “That was a controlled build, where you know exactly what you want your gallery to look like.”

She pauses. “The other was when we had the flood. Everything was ripped out and we brought in saws in the middle of the night, and disaster mitigation and insurance companies. That was sort of the worst-case scenario. It was almost two and a half years of just disaster mitigation and water damage control, and not quite knowing how the insurance situation would work out, and building without having a real idea of what would be possible or what the final budget would be.”

Those experiences taught her that, in the end, “What you need is a space and a narrative and galleries that are really able to be impactful for all the audiences that you’re trying to speak to.” She also learned not to place things directly on the floor unless they were on casters, and to take a more modular approach. “Each gallery was sort of thought of independently, so that if something needed to change, you don’t have this domino effect of ‘The electricity on this side of the wall doesn’t work now, because you changed something over here.’ We were able to sort of rethink the space as a little bit more of your traditional, chronological narrative, but also what themes we wanted to pull throughout.”

The team focused on leadership, material items like clothing, survival and culture. “What did leadership look like in each of the eras of our tribal community clothing? Because that’s part of that material culture …We also thought about survival in each stage. What does the survival of not only our people, but our culture and language look like? So we knew we had this big plan for a chronological narrative, but we also could pull these consistent themes throughout, and that really worked out well for us.”

As Mosteller re-enters the world of museums, she plans to wade in slowly, making sure she takes care of the people involved. “The best thing you can do is to come in, get to know people as people, get to know people in their roles, what their goals are for their own positions, what their goals are for the institution,” she says. “I need to understand how our relationship is going to work with OKANA”—the dazzling new resort soon to be FAM’s nextdoor neighbor—“and really orient myself to what’s already being planned, what is possible in the next six months … I think if you come in with too many concrete ideas about exactly what want to do, maybe it won’t work, and you’re trying to force a square peg into a round hole.”

A lifelong academician (and auntie), taking a well-researched, thoughtful, human-centered academic approach. Sounds like she’s the perfect person for this moment in FAM’s history. •

Mosteller stands in Harvard Yard, on the site of the Indian College that was built in 1655 to house the first cohort of Native students at Harvard College. Each year, Mosteller’s staff and students get together and make signs to recognize that piece of Harvard history and commemorate Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

THE LUXIERE LIST

FIRST AMERICANS MUSEUM

First Americans Museum (FAM) is located in Oklahoma City, along the Oklahoma River, on land inhabited by Indigenous people long before the United States was established, including the Apache, Caddo, Tonkawa and Wichita. Others have a historical relationship with the region, including the Comanche, Kiowa, Osage and Quapaw. The land FAM stands on was once assigned to the Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole.

The museum, open since 2021, has hosted more than 400,000 visitors. The breathtakingly beautiful 175,000-square-foot museum allows visitors to experience the collective histories of 39 unique First American Nations in Oklahoma today.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS:

FAM’s signature exhibit, OKLA HOMMA , shares their stories through works of art, interactive media and film, exploring tribal stories from ancestral origins to present day. OKLA HOMMA represents more than a decade of careful consultation with each of the 39 tribes, Knowledge Givers and scholars. Developed by an all-Native curatorial team, the exhibition shares tribes’ diverse lifeways and experiences rather than presenting a singular, authoritative narrative.

WINIKO: Life of an Object, Selections from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian returns objects from the 39 tribes to Oklahoma for the first time in a century, and is an examination of the things we create — how they reflect values, possess spiritual significance and carry tribes’ ways into the future. Winiko is the Caddo word for everything on earth, in the universe and beyond, and reflects the Native belief that cultural materials hold the spiritual essence of their makers and those who used or wore them.

LUXIERE’s Woman of Influence is presented by First National Bank of Oklahoma

One Place, Many Nations: Acknowledging the 39, the newest exhibit, will be on display through May 2025, and is full of hands-on activities, interactive experiences and rotating objects that share cultural experiences. This exhibit is free to see in the Community Gallery.

Vessels that Carried Us: Kiowa Cradleboards. Cradleboards are a symbol of resilience and care, generally made during a pivotal moment in women’s lives. Traditionally, the geometric designs would be symmetric on both sides of the cradleboard and have similar designs and motifs, but they may not be the same main color. Different adornments placed on the cradleboard are more than decoration and serve a purpose towards the child’s development. Kiowa cradleboards are considered prized possessions because of the intricate beadwork and how much effort goes into each one that is made.

21st Century Mound Builders is an outdoor experience available at no charge during FAM’s operating hours. The design of the museum’s campus translates ancestral mounds into steel, glass and landscape architecture. The FAM Mound rises to a height of 90 feet and serves as a cosmological clock. The cyclical movement of the sun can be tracked along the Mound Path throughout the year. The FAM Mound honors Mound Builder cultures that thrived across North America from about 3500 BCE to 1751 CE. Many of the tribal nations in Oklahoma today are descended from these cultures. For some communities, mounds remain prominent in ceremonial life.

Chef Loretta’s Garden is open during the museum’s operating hours at no charge during good weather. In collaboration with Shape Your Future, FAM Consulting Chef Loretta Barrett Oden (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) has cultivated a vibrant teaching garden that features edible plants indigenous to the Americas, such as corn, tomatoes and peppers.

Learn more at famok.org

ALLAN HOUSER

Experience the legacy of Allan Houser, a world renowned contemporary Native American artist from Oklahoma, at First Americans Museum. Houser's work, recognized by the United Nations, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institution, earned him the prestigious National Medal of Arts in 1992. His innovative and influential sculptures are now available for purchase in our FAMstore. Don't miss this unique opportunity to own a piece of art history.

Winning Life’s Balancing Act

Dr. Steve Aguilar on knowing your priorities, finding fulfillment and learning to say no

BY SHANNA R. TEEL, Ph.D

Workplaces can no longer ignore that talented people and leaders need support and resources to manage their emotional, mental and physical health at work. The time has arrived to create new cultural and organizational norms and systems that support healthy life and leadership behaviors. Sustainable success and high performance are inevitable when organizations have healthy, thriving and fulfilled talent and leadership.

I founded LeaderHealth® as a mindset and methodology for creating healthy, multi-dimensional leaders and organizations; the program offers science-backed and experience-led products and services to equip leaders to lead and live with more equilibrium, fulfillment and vitality, thereby creating inclusive, thriving, successful modern workplaces.

I recently spoke with Dr. Steve Aguilar at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego—a former UCSD faculty member who has been an emergency medicine physician and a resuscitation expert for over 25 years—on finding that elusive sense of balance in life and knowing when to step back. You can watch the full interview on the LeaderHealth® YouTube channel at youtube.com/@leaderhealth.

What keeps you motivated and passionate about your work, especially given the challenges of emergency medicine?

There have been times when you do the work that I’ve asked myself that same question: “Why am I doing this, is this worth it?” I come back to the same answer each time—for me, it’s the mystery. It’s the mystery of what’s gonna come next. In emergency medicine you never know what’s coming, and it is fulfilling and rewarding to be kept on my toes.

What does balance mean to you?

“Balance” has changed for me over the past 25 years. Initially it was “work hard, play hard, do it all,” and a belief that I can do it all. Now, balance means so much more. I start with, “What are my priorities?” I look at it as a cup that I fill with my priorities each day, knowing my limits, and knowing what fulfills me. I have two boys, so I prioritize them over everything else. I’ve also had to learn to say no. The ability to say no provides that balance. When I have to say no, it helps me keep my priorities in view—my children, my health, myself, my family and friends. Balance is focusing on all

the things that give me fulfillment and then mixing it in with the work that needs to be done.

Have you experienced hitting an invisible wall? What was it and how did you get over that wall?

Yes, I have, and it was recent. I’ve been pretty successful at juggling a lot of things at once—and I believed that was how it was supposed to be. After a recent performance review, which went well, I was asked to do more (again). At first I agreed, but as I walked out the door, I stopped in my tracks and I was very disappointed in myself. I asked myself, “What am I doing?” I should have spoken up and just said no. I had to be honest with myself; I had to admit that it was not working anymore. I felt like I was missing out on other important things. I felt like I was losing ground, and not being present when I did show up. I wasn’t as present as I would like to be, and I was suffering at work too. I realized I had to make some heavy decisions, which included stepping down from some highly visible positions. I have no regrets. I needed to be honest with myself about what I needed to do, and then I handled it in a professional manner, without burning any bridges.

What other strategies or resources did you use to get over your tough decision to step back?

I have a very strong support system at home, and great friends. That wall that I hit was much harder than the decision I made. The losses I faced were loss of status, and some financial impact too. But I’ve come to realize that things that give me fulfillment are the things that money can’t buy. I had to ask myself, “How much is enough? How much do I really need?” I do not need more. I have

enough. I’m very fortunate to have what I have, but I do not need more. What am I striving for? I wasn’t getting the fulfillment that I needed. Once I explained that to my support system, I found that the support was overwhelming. Then it became one of the easiest things I’ve ever done.

What does LeaderHealth® mean to you?

LeaderHealth® is about doing the emotional and mental work. Doing the emotional work allows me to be more emotionally attuned and present, and lead by example. Being a good leader means I have to be healthy. I have to be there for people that need me, so taking good care of my sleep health, physical health, going to therapy, having good nutrition habits like avoiding processed foods and moderating all the bad stuff. I then take all of this and use it in the workplace. Being emotionally healthy helps me not be afraid to be vulnerable and put things out there with my team and co-workers.

Do you think this kind of healthy leadership in organizations is achievable?

Absolutely, I think it is. I see a lot of hope with our future leaders. The younger generations are much more open to the things that we’re discussing here; where this is going will be first nature for them. That’s how I’m trying to raise my boys. Of course, we are going to have some dinosaurs out there, but those times are short. I do think that workplaces are changing in good ways, and that more people are open to these types of changes.

If you had to pick one word to summarize your purpose for being and doing the work you do, what is it?

Love.

What’s one leadership skill required now and in the future?

Emotional IQ.

What’s your superpower?

Being quick on my feet.

What is one lesson you are passing on to your children and new leaders so that they can be great leaders?

Have the ability to admit when you’re wrong.

How will you take the LeaderHealth® principles out into the world and be an ambassador?

The one that applies the most is emotional health. When I have moments where I sit down with coworkers or residents, ask for their feedback and be okay hearing their perspectives and emotions, it makes us all closer. It makes me love being where I am. I look forward to being with them. I hope that as I work with younger doctors, I set a positive culture. I want them to take care of themselves, and push others to take care of themselves too. •

Dr. Steve Aguilar

Successful leaders, teams and companies understand that personal and organizational growth requires a clear vision, a solid plan to execute and the courage to be strong and healthy. Dr. Shanna Teel — an industrial psychologist and leadership wellness expert with over 25 years of results — equips growth-minded professionals and leaders with the tools they need to reach equilibrium and build workplace cultures that are designed to bolster wellbeing.

Dr. Shanna Teel

Strength & Stability

Our Executive Leadership Team has over 100 years of combined banking experience. We will continue to follow the tried and true banking principles that have served us well.

Mel Martin President & CEO

Shawn Null EVP & Director, Commercial Banking

Pat Rooney Executive Chairman

Made from Scratch

Linda Kukuk’s natural creativity

BY VALENTINA GUTIÉRREZ

Wildlife, especially birds, Native portraits, flowers in bloom, the depths of space … Oklahoma City artist Linda Kukuk has spent a lifetime portraying a broad variety of subjects, generally with detailed precision via the method known as scratchwork. And if you don’t know it, she’s more than willing to do demonstrations. Our conversation with her ranged from Shepherd Mall to South Africa, including a special showcase at The Howell Gallery and why she avoids outdoor exhibitions in Oklahoma.

Can you share how you first discovered your passion for art and what drew you specifically to scratchboard art?

I can never remember a time when I didn’t like to paint and draw. As a small child, it was my favorite pastime; a small box of Crayola crayons and a Prang watercolor set were my favorite toys. We didn’t have a lot of extra money for art supplies, so I made do with what was available. I remember there used to be grocery store ads in the newspaper that were full-page, with the back of the page blank—I always looked forward to having that big piece of paper to create something on.

In 1968, I was in a show at Shepherd Mall. I was basically painting in acrylic and doing some pen and ink drawings at the time. There was an artist with some scratchwork pieces in the show. I thought it looked like something I would enjoy trying, so I asked her about the materials and process, and she was kind enough to tell me about it. From then on, for many years, I did mostly scratchwork. At that time, the scratchboard was a thin cardboard coated with clay and India ink. It was only in black and white.

WOODPECKER” Scratchboard

Can you tell us about a specific place or travel experience that had a significant influence on your artistic style or choice of subjects?

My husband and I had a joint-venture aircraft business with partners in South Africa from 1967 to 1986. During those years, we traveled to South Africa quite a bit. We always made time to go spend time in the Kruger Game Preserve. It was a great place to observe and photograph animals and people—they became subjects for my scratchworks and paintings.

How does your Choctaw ancestry influence the themes and subjects of your paintings?

My Native American heritage comes from my mother’s side of the family, and she is also where my artistic talent comes from (along with a wonderful gift from God, of course). I have a small sketch pad of my mother’s, and she was quite talented. I guess choosing Native American themed subjects is a natural choice for me. Our birds and wildlife are probably my favorite subjects, followed closely by portraits of Native Americans. I also really enjoy doing portraits of people’s pets.

You’ve received numerous awards and recognitions throughout your career. Is there a particular accolade or exhibition that holds a special place in your heart, and why?

Being named Red Earth Honored One in 2022 was a big thrill for me. I have a favorite exhibit which took place at Howell Gallery in 2011. That was about the time I started seeing the beautiful photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and after I saw the first photograph, I knew I had to do some art based on those photos. I ultimately created 20 watercolor on Aquabord [clay-covered boards made by Ampersand Art, of which Kukuk is an avowed fan] paintings adding bits of micro glitter, etc. I used a high-gloss polymer resin coating on them. Howell Gallery was kind enough to hold a solo exhibition of the paintings for me. It was my first solo show, and so fun.

Being involved in various art shows and festivals, how do you prepare for these events, and what do you enjoy most about participating in them?

Since I am constantly creating art, I could probably get a call today and set up for a show tomorrow, just so long as it isn’t an outdoor show. Those are scary in Oklahoma! I used to do the Festival of the Arts in downtown OKC—nothing like leaving all your art and running for cover when there is a tornado siren. I try to avoid outdoor shows now. I enjoy meeting all the people who come through the show. I always sit and work on a small scratchwork piece during the shows. A lot of people do not even know what scratchwork is, so that is an opportunity for me to educate them on the medium. Another thing I enjoy is getting to interact and catch up with other artists from year to year.

You’re known for your ability to teach and inspire other artists. What motivates you to share your techniques, and what do you find most rewarding about teaching scratchboard and watercolor techniques?

Since I am totally self-taught, I don’t really know if I qualify to teach anyone, but I am very happy to show other people how to do scratchboard art. Anytime I’ve been asked to do a demo of my work, I love doing it. It is very rewarding to have a child watching me do scratchwork at a show and having them come up to me the following year to let me know they have been working on scratchwork themselves.

Can you tell us more about your project with Disney Publishing, illustrating a children’s book on Chief Wilma Mankiller’s life? What has this experience been like for you?

Disney contacted me, through my website, in 2016. I thought it must be a scam—I called my husband in and had him look at the email. My husband said, “There is a phone number of the editor, give her a call.” It wasn’t a scam. Doreen Rappaport, the author of the book, insisted that they find a Native American artist to illustrate it. I told them I was not an illustrator, but they talked me into doing it. They were great to work with and it was a very interesting project. I learned a great deal. The book came out in 2019 and has done quite well.

In addition to your artistic endeavors, you have a wide range of interests, including photography, travel and gardening. How do these hobbies influence your creativity and artistic process?

Of course, photography is a “no brainer.” I use lots of my photographs as subjects for my art. For example, we have lots of bird feeders in our yard, so I photograph the birds to use for art subjects. If you plant lots of flowers, then you have automatic subjects with the flowers and the butterflies and bees they attract. African and North American wildlife, people’s pets, horses, cows, sheep—you name it, I will take photographs and put them in a file. I have a file on my computer with the title “Art Subjects.” Under that file are a myriad of subtitles. When I come up with an idea and need a photo reference, that is where I start. •

BEAUTY 14” x 11” scratchwork on clayboard by LINDA KUKUK

Adventures in Viticulture

Madi Franklin’s winding road to winemaking

BY GREG HORTON

Somewhere in the undeveloped lands between downtown Hanoi and the Noi Bai airport, Madison “Madi” Franklin crossed her arms, tucked her head and deliberately fell backward off the moving motorcycle—she thought she was experiencing an abduction attempt. It was the second of three rides on motorbikes, during two of which she was a passenger, that a biographer would certainly use in media res style to start chapters in the narrative of her life.

Franklin is currently the Viticulture and Enology Coordinator at the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, but before being the person responsible for helping grape growers and winemakers do the best job possible in our state, she spent time working and learning in Vietnam, Greece and Italy.

The first of her motorbike rides occurred shortly after the 22-year-old Oklahoma State grad arrived in Hanoi to teach English. Rather than stay cooped up in her hotel with the brothel on the fourth floor, she did what she’d been doing since her childhood in El Paso, Texas: She went exploring.

“It was about 110 degrees that day,” she says. “The hotel had no glass in the windows, and I was going to be there for six days. I found an expat group on Facebook, and had a guy bring me a small motorcycle. He asked if I knew how to ride it.”

There were three rules for riding a motorcycle in Hanoi, the man told her. She wrote them in a journal she kept later, but that day she committed them to memory: 1. Don’t look in the side mirrors— everything that matters is in front of you; 2. Keep two fingers on the brake; 3. Don’t stop honking.

“He said I’d be better off removing the side mirrors, so I did,” Franklin says. Other than nearly smashing into a mango stand at speed, the first ride was uneventful once she got the hang of it.

What the rides do narratively is provide insight into Franklin’s interior life, a place dominated by metaphors that she concretizes into ways to be in the world.

“I’m a big metaphor person,” she says. “I was sitting on the twin bed in the Hanoi hotel room when I realized I needed to turn off the switch in my head that controls fear, anxiety and worry. That’s how I got on the motorcycle.”

Not everyone has that switch, or the ability to deactivate it. It’s possible it’s formed in childhood, and for Franklin that is most likely. Her mother, now retired, worked as a DEA agent in El Paso when Franklin was a child, and it’s worth noting that El Paso isn’t one of the safest cities for DEA agents.

“My mother kept me in the loop because she worked undercover, and a lot of her work was with the cartels,” Franklin says. “I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone what she did, so she told me to tell them she was a florist or janitor. She impressed on me the seriousness of what she did.”

So when the attempted abduction happened — the second motorbike ride — she simply fell off the motorcycle, gathered herself and ran to find another ride to the airport, where she was meeting her family who’d come for a visit. She’s matter-offact as she relates the story today, even providing a Charades-style demonstration during the narrative. That ability to compartmentalize made it easier for the then 23-year-old to decide she wasn’t ready to return to the U.S. when she left Vietnam. Franklin was over the noise and busyness of Hanoi, but she thought returning to America would be more of the same.

Instead, she went to Athens, and then the island of Lipsi—the third ride was on a rural road on that small Greek island, holding onto a man she’d just met, as she held his cellphone aloft to light the way back to the organic farm she’d agreed to work on after leaving Vietnam.

The organic farm and winery provided the kind of peace and quiet she needed, but it also introduced her to the world of wine from the perspective of those who produce it. She would return to the U.S. briefly before leaving for Italy to pursue her master’s with a specialization in vinification and oenology in Piacenza. The program covered grape growing, chemistry, the wine industry as a whole, vineyard management, tastings, flaws, pest control, etc., and lasted 18 months. The last five months she spent working as an extern at the Ruffino winery in Tuscany, where she spent a great deal of time cleaning tanks and learning Italian.

“I was sitting on the twin bed in the Hanoi hotel room when I realized I needed to turn off the switch in my head that controls fear, anxiety and worry. That’s how I got on the motorcycle.”

MADI FRANKLIN

“I cried twice a day at first, but eventually I got to where I could speak it conversationally,” Franklin says. That was after one memorable day on which a thunderstorm that reminded her of home led to her yelling “Tonno!” at her coworkers, the Italian word for tuna, as opposed to “tuono,” thunder. “I was so embarrassed I didn’t speak for a week,” she says.

After graduating in November 2022, she came back to Oklahoma, where she applied for the current gig. “My resume was so perfect for the job, they thought I faked it at first,” Franklin says. “Now I get to help support and develop the Oklahoma wine industry from grape to glass.”

Franklin said she feels lucky to have a unique skillset that can help people and help Oklahoma. The job includes helping Oklahoma farmers figure out which grapes grow best in Oklahoma’s various soils and climates. A reliance on popular grapes like Cabernet and Chardonnay has helped hold back the state’s growth as a winemaking state—not her words, just an observation about the quality of wine we’ve been producing—and she’s working to improve the profile of Oklahoma-friendly grapes like Chambourcin and Vignoles, both of which produce delicious wines, and both of which have won multiple contests around the state.

Beginning this fall, she’ll be teaching International Wine and Culture at Oklahoma State University, so she’ll return to her alma mater to teach nascent hospitality professionals the lessons she’s learned, along with her real-world knowledge and application. It’s a very promising development for our state’s wine and hospitality industries. •

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A Growth Mindset for OK Film

2024 deadCenter icon Dylan Brodie bets big on Okie film crews

BY ALEXANDRA BOHANNON

As the Oklahoma-shot legacy-sequel summer blockbuster Twisters continues to blow through theaters nationwide, the Sooner State as a film location is, once again, in the film zeitgeist. Proud Okies are flocking to the theaters in droves, and maybe—if keen-eyed viewers haven’t kept a pulse on the Oklahoma film sector—the state’s success could almost seem to be happening overnight.

Film producer Dylan Brodie, one of the recipients of the 2024 deadCenter Film Festival Film Icon Award, knows what it took to get here. Hailing from Ramona, Oklahoma—a town with a population of a little over 500 at the last census—Brodie has kept his passion for filmmaking close to his Oklahoma roots, having championed our state as a great place to shoot and crew up for over a decade.

Sterlin Harjo and Dylan Brodie

“This is a vital need to sing from the rooftops: that this is an economy. This is jobs. This is a future for people. It’s not just a hobby, it’s not just something they’re doing for fun,” says Brodie. “And that I would love that to be supported, like so many other industries are supported within Oklahoma, and that’s one of my biggest missions right now.”

It’s Brodie’s goal to help build a film industry that’s sustainable, investing in the Oklahoma communities that foster upcoming talent in our state.

REINVESTMENT BEYOND THE REBATE

Leading the charge to get more films and productions in the state is the Oklahoma Film and Music Office (OF+MO), the entity responsible for managing and allocating Oklahoma’s $30 million film rebate. The echos of the rebate and OF+MO’s investment in the local crew base can be seen in an increasing number of higher-budget and higher-profile productions coming to shoot in Oklahoma: Killers of the Flower Moon certainly comes to mind, alongside Academy Awardwinning indie films like Minari (both of which Brodie worked on).

But what Brodie and frequent collaborator Sterlin Harjo, co-creator of the Peabody Award-winning Hulu series “Reservation Dogs” (shot entirely on location in Oklahoma, primarily the Okmulgee and Tulsa area), have come to realize is the power of investing in not just the local crew base where productions are being held, but also in the communities serving as locations.

For example, Brodie leveraged the season two crew of “Reservation Dogs” into immediately shooting writer/director Erica Tremblay’s feature debut Fancy Dance, starring Academy Award nominee Lily Gladstone (now streaming on Apple TV+).

“Fancy Dance was this realization of the dream that Sterlin and I had kind of looked forward to years before. We were able to crew up Fancy Dance with about 65-70% of ‘Rez Dogs’ [crew] we’ve been training up, so the system was working,” says Brodie. “It was amazing to do that.”

PAYING IT FORWARD

It doesn’t take the clarity of shooting in 4K to see why Brodie has an extensive passion for investing in the next generation of Oklahoma filmmakers and film crew. It was a career change and a mentorship that paved the way for his very own film career.

While Brodie’s dream as a young adult was always to make movies, the limitations of Oklahoma’s film sector at the time he was entering the workforce just made it unfeasible for him to actualize this passion. After choosing a career in computer science and working in the tech industry for years, he realized it was time to make a change.

In 2008, when Brodie was contemplating this shift, the film rebate cap was at $5 million, just a fraction of what it is today. Despite this, Brodie could see that these investment efforts were working and that opportunity now existed where previously there had been none.

“I could see what was happening. There was a pulse, finally, in the film industry in Oklahoma. It was still a microcosm of what it is today,” Brodie says. “But I knew that if I didn’t try to make a change, I had to live a life of regret.”

Brodie’s trust fall into Oklahoma movie-making paid off. After unpaid work as an editor on a short documentary about a dunk tank clown at the Tulsa Fair (where he met Harjo, who was serving on the film’s camera team), he continued to build the resume that eventually landed him a mentor and a stint in L.A.—a pilgrimage almost all employees in the film sector make at some point in their careers. But after gigging in L.A. for a time, it took a visit back home to see family to recognize that maybe there was a different path for him.

“I had this reckoning inside,” Brodie remembers. “I was like, ‘Can I go back to L.A. unknowing what my future will be while I be a Set PA for years, which would have maybe, potentially, no upward mobility? Or do I try to grow something here with the people I love in Oklahoma?’”

The choice then became crystal clear.

Fast forward a few years, and now Brodie’s fingerprints are all over the Oklahoma film scene.

He just finished a stint on the set of Harjo’s next TV series “The Sensitive Kind” since “Reservation Dogs” wrapped in 2023. Shot in Tulsa and surrounding areas, this pilot stars Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Killer Mike and Tim Blake Nelson, and is currently being pitched to Hulu before a full series order is made.

One of the ways his influence is clear is seen in the attitude he carries from set to set in small communities across Oklahoma, many the same size as his hometown of Ramona.

“We’re still going back to these communities, and we try to leave it better than we found it. Because it’s not just this one project you’re filming; it’s every project after that, and for the other people that are going to be filming in the future as well,” Brodie says. “It’s good stewardship.” •

To keep up with Dylan Brodie and explore his work, you can follow him on Instagram at @dylan_brodie.

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From Paris to Tulsa

The extraordinary life of Tulsa Ballet’s Aubin Le Marchand

BY ALICIA CHESSER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TONY LI

HAIR & MAKEUP BY SHAWNA BURROUGHS

When he walks into Shades of Brown, the coffee shop in his Brookside neighborhood, the baristas greet him by name. He used to play in a metal band. His parents were professional magicians. He’s taking singing lessons and wants to learn to act. He’s looking at getting a Harley.

He’s also the newest principal dancer at Tulsa Ballet.

Around here, you don’t necessarily expect to see a ballet dancer with a French accent casually chatting over a coffee shop counter. But Aubin Le Marchand, originally from Paris, is no stranger to getting right into the mix of things, wherever he is.

The 24-year-old arrived in Tulsa last summer just after the Father’s Day storm. On stage and in person, you might say he brings his own kind of weather system with him. With a crown of dark curls, wide brown eyes and a rakish smile, Le Marchand is tall for a dancer—or maybe it’s just the size of his personality that makes him seem a bit larger than life.

You’ll see that in action if you make your way to a Tulsa Ballet performance this season (visit tulsaballet.org for a schedule and tickets). Le Marchand’s dancing is dramatic, athletic, finely detailed and bursting with energy, honed in the centuries-old tradition of the Paris Opera Ballet school and full of the voracious passion of a young man at the start of his career. Starting next month, he’ll take the stage for his second season here after dazzling audiences last year as a soloist in works like Romeo & Juliet, Don Quixote and Celestial Bodies.

“I have a big dream,” he says. “I have big dreams in general.” When Tulsa Ballet’s Marcello Angelini offered him a job after an audition in London, following two years dancing in Croatia, Le Marchand seized the opportunity to move to the U.S. “He asked me, ‘What do you want?’ I said, ‘I want to be a star.’ Maybe you know the French basketball player Tony Parker? He said, if you expose your dream to someone and the person doesn’t laugh at you, it’s not big enough.”

No matter the size of the dream, bringing on a new leading dancer is serious business at Tulsa Ballet. But Le Marchand fits the bill. “Aubin is tall, handsome, a great partner and a versatile dancer,” Angelini says. “He has been a great acquisition for the company.”

A LIFE ON STAGE

Le Marchand got his first taste of the stage around age 6, joining his father in magic acts (even, at one point, riding a unicycle) and putting on house shows of his own. He started ballet and trumpet lessons when he was 7, and entered the prestigious Paris Opera Ballet school two years later. For several years in his teens, after an injury, he started to shift away from dancing (“I was growing my hair and playing guitar in the hallways; a soft troublemaker”), eventually quitting the school altogether.

But it wasn’t long before he returned to training, realizing that while he could play music at any age, dancing at the highest level has a far shorter shelf life. Post-graduation and barely out of his teens, with theaters closed due to the pandemic, he linked up with a dancer in the north of France whose parents had a dance school. They spent the next year training together and organizing outdoor terrace performances that included dance, paintings and sculpture— plus the magic he’d learned as a kid—and earning money by literally passing a hat at those shows before finding the job in Croatia.

“You can’t ask people to be like everybody and expect extraordinary.”

AUBIN LE MARCHAND

The range of ballets Le Marchand performed there prepared him well for the mix of classical and contemporary works he’s encountering in Tulsa. “The repertoire is great [here]. The level of the company is very high. It’s very unexpected for a town like Tulsa,” he says. One quibble? “I wish we danced more. When we’re a dancer, we tend to forget the final destination: It’s the stage. That’s our business, not the ballet studio. I’m a bit extreme in my way of seeing things, but when we finish one production, until I reach the next one, I forget the feeling of being on stage. You have to renew it.”

Le Marchand’s eyes light up whenever he talks about any kind of performing, especially when it involves a mix of disciplines, something unexpected, or an example of radical commitment—such as French singer Jacques Brel getting on a plane to sing in one city and then flying to another for a second show on the same day. “This inspires me. This motivates me,” he says. “This way, I find life beautiful.”

He’s finding the beauty in Tulsa at restaurants like Oren, Doc’s and Mondo’s (“for a French person, you have high expectations for food”) as well as places like Philbrook. He and his girlfriend have stopped in Oklahoma City, Dallas and Paris, Texas, during her visits to the States, and they even made their way to Durant for a rodeo—although “she came with white sandals. We didn’t get the dress code,” he says.

“Many people say there’s nothing going on here, but if you know where to go, or if you want to, you can find it’s really nice,” he continues. “The hospitality here is not like in big cities, I think. It’s not like this in Paris.” And he’s found his perfect weekend spot for hanging out with beers and cigars: “I wonder how much money I left in one season just at Churchill’s.”

This coming season, Le Marchand is especially excited to work with choreographer Kenneth Tindall on a new Alice in Wonderland, and to grab as many opportunities as he can to nourish his multifaceted creative life, bringing that richness back to his dancing. He’s as hungry for experiences on the ground as he is on the stage, and his enthusiastic presence in the everyday life of Tulsa makes him an unconventional ambassador for his art—one who’s equally comfortable dancing at the bar (where he’s not shy about letting local music-lovers know when the next Tulsa Ballet performance is) and at the barre.

“Do you know ‘Inspector Derrick’?” he asks. “It was a German TV series, very bad. It was always on after lunch, for old people to nap. One famous French actor said, ‘If we remove all the crazy people, I am afraid we will end up with only “Inspector Derrick.”’ You can’t ask people to be like everybody and expect extraordinary.” •

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Tailgating, ‘La Traviata’ & Stunning Beauty

The experience of the Santa Fe Opera

BY CHRISTINE EDDINGTON

Oklahomans (including this writer) love zipping over to Santa Fe. Leave first thing in the morning and you’ll be at the Shed, margarita in hand, by happy hour. That’s reason enough. It’s quick—a handful of good podcasts and, bada bing, there you are. In summer months, when Oklahoma heat is doing its best to melt your entire house and set fire to your sanity, serene Santa Fe beckons with its low-key chic and groovy high-desert vibe. Meander the Plaza, head for the hills for a pretty hike and soak your cares away at Ten Thousand Waves. For those who love it, lovely, lyrical Santa Fe is nearly impossible to resist.

But there’s another siren song in Santa Fe you should know about: this one a silken aria gliding on a zephyr, emanating from Santa Fe Opera’s magnificent home set high on top of a mesa seven miles outside of town. To its west is a stunning view of the Jemez Mountains, to its east are the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. And there, perched between them, is the majestic 155-acre compound containing the theatre and “Opera Ranch” first imagined by founder John O. Crosby in the 1950s. Well before Crosby got hold of it, the land had been used as a pinto bean plantation, pig farm and mink farm. When he first laid eyes on it, it had become a guest ranch that was already hosting its share of musical types, including conductors Efrem Kurtz, Fritz Reiner, Joseph Rosenstock, Herbert von Karajan and others.

The property is divided between the top of the mesa and the lower acreage called The Ranch. Up top, the striking, state-of-theart, open-air, 2,126-seat Crosby Theatre is a living sculpture, with its two sweeping roofs joined by a clerestory; nearby Stieren Orchestra Hall is a three-story building used for rehearsals, costume storage, special events and pre-performance lectures. A 10-acre portion of The Ranch to the northeast houses offices, a swimming pool, a cantina and a spattering of rehearsal halls tucked into the craggy hillside.

TIME magazine called the complex “one of the handsomest operatic settings in the Western Hemisphere.” To The New Yorker, it is a “miracle in the desert.” More recently, The Washington Post dubbed it a “shining white cloud in the red hills.” And the Philadelphia Inquirer has lauded it as “one of the most beloved venues in the country.”

Crosby, a conductor from Bronxville, New York, attended New Mexico’s Los Alamos Boys School as a young teen due to his asthma and later studied at Yale and Columbia, where his love of opera took flight. When he retired in 2000, he talked with The New York Times about his clear, early vision for Santa Fe Opera:

“I was a youngster in New York,” he said, “one of this pool, if you will, of youngsters interested in music who did things like opera workshops. I played the violin in orchestras, I got to know singers and I knew instrumentalists. And we were talking about finding something to do in the summer in a nice place.”

Santa Fe occurred to him as a possibility, he said, because the city was known for being hospitable to the arts—particularly sculptors, authors and painters—yet it had virtually no musical life. With $200,000, provided by his father, he bought a ranch, seven miles north of Santa Fe in the Sangre de Cristo mountains. He built a 480-seat wooden theater on the grounds, hired a company of about 65, including singers, orchestra players and crew, and opened the company’s first season with a performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on July 3, 1957, a few days short of his 31st birthday.

The man is often described as soft-spoken, but his sense of drama was outsized. Take this fearless move, for example: In his first season, Crosby invited Igor Stravinsky to Santa Fe to lead the production of The Rake’s Progress, instantly creating a sensation and putting Santa Fe Opera on the map. During his tenure, he also embraced new and rarely performed works, presenting the American—or world—premieres of nearly 50 of them.

Crosby also understood that he had to embrace the uniqueness of his location. Another excerpt from the The New York Times: “I felt that it would not make sense to try to run a museum of opera in a small mountain town like Santa Fe. You can have all the Bohèmes and Carmens you want in New York, all winter, with brilliant international casts, and you don’t have to come here to see them. But if you have an interest in some unusual things then you will come along.” Of course, crowd-pleasing classics like La Traviata are also regular parts of the season but, even today, so are new works.

The 2024 season saw the world premiere of The Righteous, set in the 1980s American Southwest. Written by composer Gregory Spears and former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winning librettist (opera lyricist) Tracy K. Smith, The Righteous is a timely exploration of the intersection between political power and genuine faith. Says Spears: “The opera tells the story of David, a preacher and leader of a growing church who finds himself caught up in the confluence of religion and politics in the 1980s, alongside contemporary events including the rise of feminism, the war on drugs, conflict in the Middle East and the AIDS epidemic. Throughout the narrative, we see how the feeling of being called to serve God can be so easily influenced by human frailty and desire.”

For the Rev. Susan Esco Chandler, Santa Fe Opera trustee and arguably one of its biggest fans, her love of the art form began in an unlikely place: Oklahoma City, her hometown. “The Texaco company sponsored the Metropolitan Opera broadcast that used to be on Sunday afternoons for years,” she says, “and in Oklahoma, that was about the only way you could participate in opera—other than when I was a young girl, a traveling troupe actually came through Oklahoma City and performed La Boheme down at the old Municipal Auditorium. And I was fascinated. Here was a woman singing in bed and dying. I thought, ‘What? What is this story?’”

She realized that her fledgling love of opera could actually take wing without flying all the way to New York City. “I was able to get back into true opera because you could drive from Oklahoma City to Santa Fe, so some friends and I made the drive and went out. This was when the opera still didn’t have a roof on it. You sat on benches in the open, and you had your seat assigned, but you found it on a bench. If it rained, you had big plastic trash bags. You’d pull one up, then you’d pull one over, so you could sit there in the rain and watch the opera. It was quite an adventure back in those days,” Chandler says.

She’s been on the board for a decade; she’s also on the board of the Arizona Opera, and she and her husband are supporters of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The pair met and married 23 years ago when she was living in New York City and he was in Boston. “For one of our first dates, I said, ‘Oh, they’re doing Don Giovanni, why don’t you come and be my guest?’” And he did. “Then, about six months later, he said, ‘Guess what? The Boston Lyric Opera is doing Don Giovanni. We’ve got to see it again.’ And we decided, after you’ve seen Don Giovanni twice in one year, you should get married. That’s all there is to it.”

Chandler estimates that she sees 20 or more opera performances a year. The performances themselves are only part of the draw. “There’s no wrong reason to come to the theater to see a live production and hear the voices singing right there in front of you with the orchestra and all of this … community. And you feel the energy of other people who are experiencing the same thing you are, yet everybody is hearing it a little differently, or in their heart, they’re feeling it a little differently,” Chandler says.

And she fervently hopes that if you have never seen an opera, that you’ll give it a go. Why? “I think there’s no more beautiful instrument than the human voice.” •

THE LUXIERE LIST

TAILGATING LIKE A MAESTRO

CONSIDER HIRING TRANSPORTATION.

Chandler recommends this for first-timers. Services like New Mexico Black Car Limousine and Taxi Service are a great option. They’ll drop you at one of the many picnic tables if you’ve brought supper; many services also offer tailgate menus and will do all the work for you. They’ll also get you back to town after the performance. While leaving the venue isn’t exactly difficult, it can certainly be a little chaotic and slow-moving.

WATCH THE WEATHER

Oklahomans know to be weather aware, and it’s just as important on opera night. “You get your weather app, get it up, set up for Santa Fe and just follow it like a Bible,” Chandler says. Be sure to bring along an extra layer, a fleece or a wrap, because the high desert cools down fast in the evening.

GO EARLY

Leisurely should be the aspirational pace of the meal. If you’ve driven yourself, you’ll marvel at how well-directed the traffic is. Once ensconced between your white lines, set up your seating and start with drinks and apps. Meander through your main, and saunter through dessert.

BOX IT

Tailgating at the opera is a BIG deal in Santa Fe, and plenty of places offer terrific boxed meals. Kaune’s Neighborhood Market (kaunes.com, pronounced “Connie’s”) is a gourmet grocer and café with a really lovely to-go boxed meal menu, filled with easyto-eat treats like dolmas, custom chopped salads, legendary egg salad and an excellent wine selection to peruse when you pick up. Santa Fe Opera also offers boxed charcuterie, samplers and dinners—but you’ve got to order them two days ahead.

ANYTHING GOES

Wander through the parking lot and you’ll see tuxes, white tablecloths, crystal flutes and freshly-polished silver candelabra. We’ve even spotted a group with hired service staff! You’ll also see folks with card tables and camping chairs in pickup truck beds, dining on pizza and brews. It’s literally all good.

BUT A THEME IS GREAT, TOO

Our recent theme: “Cold Champagne supper.” We realized it with a super-decadent cheese board, chilled roasted salmon, gazpacho, salads, quiche and roasted asparagus. Dessert was easy—macrons! Themes based on the performances are another great idea.

ANYTHING GOES, CLOTHING EDITION

There is no dress code, and that’s part of the joy. You’ll see folks in formalwear, definitely, alongside people in jeans, casual dresses and Tevas. You’ll also see sartorial Santa Fe at its finest, that offhand blend of sun-faded natural fiber dresses and tunics, bold jewelry and luxe hippie footwear. It’s a wonderful mishmash.

Luxiere writer Christine Eddington and her husband Greg tailgate before taking in La Traviata at the Santa Fe Opera

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Costume worn by Betty Hutton as Pearl White in the Paramount Pictures production of 'The Perils of Pauline', 1947. Designed by Edith Head. Collection of Motion Picture Costume Design: Larry McQueen

By.Everyone for Everyone

A retail environment built for belonging

BY ANDREA SCHULTZ PHOTOGRAPHY BY TAYLOR VILLARREAL

Fashion retailer By.Everyone recently relocated to Tulsa from Oklahoma City, creating a new wave of excitement for its local creative community.

Owner Elyjah Monks reflects on this transition: “It’s been unbelievably emotional closing [the store] in OKC, but overwhelmingly joyous and exciting to be in Tulsa.” Moving to Tulsa has made Monks realize that the timing is right for him to transform the store into the kind of retail concept he’s always envisioned. “Having a fresh start here and having people that are excited about it who didn’t have access to it before— that’s what makes this something that people are ready to be a part of.”

Being a multi-brand retail store, By.Everyone aims to highlight the people and legacies behind the products it carries. “I think that’s why we have such a great relationship with our designers; it is because we tell their stories,” says Monks. The emphasis on storytelling and building relationships in the fashion industry has helped provide clarity for the direction of the store’s future in Tulsa. “I figured out that if I’m going to be educating every single person on every single brand and designer that we carry, then it better be somebody that I actually love and that I have a real connection to.”

This love for the brands and the people involved is the inspiration behind the curation of the store’s selection. Having this assortment of high quality apparel, home goods and accessories sets it apart from many other retail stores in Oklahoma.

And the caliber of brands accessible to the Tulsa market now through By.Everyone is just beginning to ascend. Sourced primarily at Paris Fashion Week, By.Everyone has been able to build lasting connections while making Oklahoma’s presence known to the industry at large. Monks says, “If we can get people to understand that ‘Hey, these guys do it the best, and they are our homies. Not only are you supporting us, but you are also supporting our friends and it is this nice cohesive thing’—that is the way I want to introduce a brand into this space. Our goal is now is to create more brand awareness for By.Everyone out here.”

“I think that’s why we have such a great relationship with our designers; it is because we tell their stories.”

ELYJAH MONKS

From products to the physical space itself, Monks has been a driving creative force since he began selling his own clothing designs in a small space near the Nichols Hills area in 2017. Expanding to an upstairs studio and then to a larger storefront in the Plaza District in 2018, he learned to build physical components of each store he’s been in—including everything from the suspension racks to the new archway and built-in shelves seen inside the new Tulsa store located in the Kendall Whittier neighborhood. “I had gained so much knowledge about what a space should feel like and what it should look like,” he says. “I wanted something that felt really organic, which is why all of the things in the new space are built with soft edges. It is also why everything is circular and why everything is finished with crown molding. There are no hard angles. I wanted everything to feel soft so people could flow throughout it.”

The meaning behind the name “By.Everyone” is credited partly to this origin story. Monks’ retail evolution went from Path Gallery to Silent Studios and lastly “By.Elyjah,” and was one day turned on its head when a former team member joked that the brands carried in the store were not made by him anymore, but were made by everyone. The name stuck, and the store’s Instagram handle changed that same day.

Although, being a tastemaker tends to cause an overflow of creativity beyond just a brand name. By.Everyone branded products are quickly becoming a mainstay and will soon be expanding. “People walk into the store and ask, ‘Oh, do you make all this yourself?’ If the answer was yes, I’d be a very busy, talented man.” Monks laughs. “Although it’s what makes me really want to tap into that side of it again where I can say that no, I didn’t make all of this, but I made some of it. All of the other things in here are made by my friends, because a lot of the designers in here have become friends over the years.”

Currently, many people are looking to discover in-person experiences that encourage community and creativity. “We are in this digital age of immediacy and getting something now on the internet, and that is all good and well, but the whole reason I do this is so people can come here and feel something,” Monks says. “Whenever I wanted to build this space, I wanted people to feel how I feel whenever I’m in an environment that feels good to me. Somewhere that is imaginative and like a museum.

“I really just want people to feel like they can come here and hang out. If they find something they like, that’s amazing—they can take a bit of it home with them.” •

By.Everyone’s new location is found at 2201 E. Admiral Blvd., Suite B, in Tulsa. Shop online at by-everyone.com and follow @by.everyone_ on Instagram.

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The Power of Perspective

Julianna Brannum on growing opportunities for Native filmmakers

BY GREG HORTON

Julianna Brannum is mostly known as a producer of films about Native Americans, their stories and cultures—but not so secretly, she has another passion that occupies much of her creative headspace.

“I love true crime,” the Norman native and citizen of the Comanche Nation says. “Errol Morris is my favorite filmmaker ever. His film freed a person from prison. That’s what I want to do, impact the world.”

The film in question is The Thin Blue Line, a 1988 documentary about the trial and false conviction of Randall Dale Anderson, who was sentenced to death in Texas for the murder of a police officer. His conviction was subsequently overturned, largely on the strength of information—including a confession from the actual murderer—provided by Morris in the film.

Brannum graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1996 with a journalism degree focused on film and television. “The program was more geared toward news and sports,” she says. “They didn’t have a proper documentary program.” Her Comanche family was from Lawton, but the family relocated to Norman, and she grew up in a home with parents who loved music. She inherited her father’s record player and his love for Woody Allen movies.

“I had dialogue from his movies memorized by the time I was 9,” Brannum says. “I don’t remember a lot of documentaries, though. The few that were around then were impossible to find in Oklahoma.”

When she was a senior at OU, Tim Blake Nelson came to Norman to film Eye of God, a critically praised independent film based on his stage play. Brannum landed a gig as a production assistant, and then worked her way up to wardrobe.

“I liked the process, and I discovered that I love indie film,” she says. “I moved to Los Angeles after graduation and got a job with a production company. Bradley Beesley was at OU when I was—he made Okie Noodling —and I learned many things from him.”

In 2006, she produced The Creek Runs Red, a documentary for Independent Lens about the Superfund site in Picher, Oklahoma. Along the way she had learned to make a reel to generate funding, apply for funding, write grants and all the behind-the-scenes work a producer deals with, especially in independent film.

“Some producers also direct, and I did on The Creek Runs Red, but typically I think it’s a bad idea for one person to do everything,” she says. “In general, producers work with creatives to develop stories and characters, build relationships in and out of the industry, write grants, generate funding and develop relationships with communities to get films made. The larger the budget, the larger the crew and the less a producer is tasked to do directly.”

In 2009, Brannum got what she calls her “big break.” PBS invited her to be part of creating “We Shall Remain,” a 5-part documentary series about Native American history in the U.S.

“The series was PBS’s attempt to be more inclusive, but it was only thanks to Stanley Nelson’s insistence that I get a producing credit that PBS gave me one,” she says. “There were big directors and producers on that project, so PBS wasn’t going to give it to a new, relatively unknown Native woman. But Nelson insisted, and he won.”

Nelson is a Black filmmaker known for his documentaries on Black history as well as his work for “Frontline.” He is a well-respected documentary filmmaker, and understood the importance of a Native woman getting the producing credit.

“Representation is changing now,” Brannum says, “and there has been a drastic shift in opportunities for women of color, but when I started, there were zero. I had a good friend who was trying to be a screenwriter when I was trying to produce, and she knew no female screenwriters. Writing, producing and directing was a club of older white men for the most part, but we’ve seen a shift: Black Lives Matter, MeToo, the Keystone XL pipeline—that’s all part of this zeitgeist.”

Brannum said young, Native filmmakers now have access to programs, workshops and funding that didn’t exist when she was in her 20s, 30s and 40s, and rather than be bitter, she’s happy for them. “The more Native talent out there, the more attention we garner for ourselves,” she says. “It’s gone from settling for crumbs to people calling me.”

“Representation is changing now and there has been a drastic shift in opportunities for women of color, but when I started, there were zero.”

JULIANNA BRANNUM

That includes opportunities to work with Ken Burns on “The American Buffalo,” a 2023 documentary series for PBS. The team reached out to Brannum because she’s a direct descendant of Quanah Parker.

“They initially offered to bring me on as a consultant, but I told them I wanted to come on board as a producer. Ken and I hit it off, and I was impressed with the amount and quality of research he’d done, and I was able to offer a different perspective. He also had stories I’d never heard.”

It’s that sharing of perspectives that is so critical to storytelling: understanding the scope and complexity of an issue, and creating a milieu in which people develop empathy, compassion and energy to change the world.

“Stanley Nelson knew nothing about what it was like to live as a Native woman, but he lobbied for me because his angle was Civil Rights,” Brannum says. “He wanted me on board because he told me he was clueless about Native history—the Bureau of Indian Affairs, blood quantum, toxic history, boarding schools—but he knew about generational trauma, and he understood that there are differences in trauma and how it affects different people.”

Brannum said she’s lived a good part of her career being the filmmaker organizations reach out to if they want to tell a Native story, but she wants opportunities beyond that.

“I love true crime, but there was never an opportunity before, and people are becoming more aware of these issues,” she says. “They’re really seeing the true value of nuanced filmmaking, and how different voices can contribute different perspectives to the story. We’re finally realizing that these diverse ‘lenses’ provide unique insights.” •

OPPOSITE:

Julianna Brannum with “The American Buffalo” documentarian Ken Burns.

ABOVE FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:

Sara Hill, Christina Justice, Lily Gladstone and Julianna Brannum attend the Circle Cinema Film Festival.

Photo courtesy of the Cherokee Nation.

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Spice Story

Fresh startup Cinny offers single-serve healthier sugar alternative

BY MICHAEL KINNEY

Hot yoga may seem like a strange start for a story about cinnamon.

But the intense, body-dehydrating classes are exactly where one of the more distinctive and sought-after products to hit the market recently got its inception.

It was after one of these intense hip-hop hot yoga workouts at Y7 Studio in New York City that the trio of Whitney Richardson, Margaret Burns and Rosemary Carter went to get lattes at local shop Sadelle’s in early 2022.

However, instead of sitting back under the sun to talk about their lives, the pressures of their careers or the grueling hot yoga class, their conversation took a different turn: When they each asked for cinnamon for their drinks, they were rebuffed. The shop didn’t carry the spice.

“It’s kind of like the trendy thing here in New York: You get a cinnamon latte, and our waiter never brought us any cinnamon,” Richardson explains. “He only brought us sugar packets, and we thought, ‘We need to have cinnamon packets.’”

The three friends could have just gone to another coffee shop until they found what they were looking for. NYC is littered with them. Instead, they did what any rational business-minded millennials would do. They started their own company, Cinny, with the intention of not just finding a home in every coffee shop in New York for cinnamon, but having it replace sugar altogether.

“I think that a goal of ours is definitely to be in more coffee shops and hotels so people do have more access,” Carter says. “It’s one thing to have cinnamon, it’s just another benefit to people to have the healthier option always.”

“That’s something I would like to see, is just more people focused on cutting sugar from their diet and opting for something that’s going to reduce inflammation, boost metabolism, regulate your blood glucose,” Richardson adds. “Because ultimately that’s how you have better longevity and decrease your risk of disease and diabetes.”

Those may seem like grandiose ambitions for a startup that is less than three years old. But that is the faith the three Oklahoma natives have in Cinny, which is single-service packets of 100% premium, ethically sourced Indonesian cinnamon.

“Our brand is rooted in a dedication to wellness,” says Burns, who hails from Tulsa. “The intention of making the little cinnamon packets was to have something to sweeten your snacks, coffee, something on the go, with no added calories or chemicals. It’s a convenient and mindful sweetness. We sell them to hotels, coffee shops, directly to consumers on Amazon. We’re trying to get in some of the smaller grocery stores around town, like the pop-up groceries in New York, and in Austin as well.”

According to Richardson, who grew up in Moore, the trio specifically chose Indonesian cinnamon because it provided a sweeter taste than other varieties.

“The Chinese cinnamon has a really sharp spiciness to it, as does the Vietnamese,” says Richardson. “But the Indonesian cinnamon naturally has a really soft but strong sweetness. So it matches the sugar taste a little bit and it gives you that sweetness. It also has the same good quality and health benefits as other cinnamon.”

Each of the founders has put a heavy emphasis on just how good cinnamon is for personal health. Despite its long history, it’s more known as a cooking ingredient for pastries rather than something that can increase quality of life.

“I feel like along this journey there’s a lot of eye-opening moments of learning about all the different studies that have been done on what sugar can do for your blood glucose levels and what cinnamon can do in comparison,” Richardson says. “It’s something I want to open everybody’s eyes to.”

Cinny is a unicorn on the Amazon marketplace—it is currently the only company offering single-serve cinnamon packets at either bulk or wholesale pricing. The fact it took their core group to come up with a concept that works is not lost on them. Even though they didn’t meet each other until after moving to the Big Apple in 2015, Burns, Carter and Richardson said their backgrounds and similar passions made them the ideal crew to take on such a grand venture together.

“We each have a very unique skill set,” Richardson explains. “Margaret comes from an accounting and finance background. She is a big-time consultant at Deloitte and she helps us run numbers and do forecasting and financial modeling. I have a legal background. I’m an attorney at a hedge fund (Sculptor Capital Management), so I have a unique perspective on creating, forming our business entity and filing anything that we need. Rosemary works at Sony Music Group doing marketing and artist partnerships. And it is kind of just a synergy of diverse skillsets among the three of us. And we all share the same passion toward wellness. And we all really love cinnamon.”

In creating Cinny, instead of using companies in New York, the group came back to their Oklahoma roots to get the company off the ground. Cinny partnered with the likes of Tulsa’s Nicolle Pollacia at cōllē studio to design the company logo and packaging, and Jacob Mann and Cash Wheeler from Seaworthy Strategy in Oklahoma City.

Along with a mention on TikTok by Clara Pierce to her 1 million followers, the most important help may have been the feedback that came from the Oklahoma community when the founders brought the Cinny product back to their hometowns for the first time.

“We go to all the different coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, et cetera. And the people there, since they’re so nice, I think that they’ve been able to give us direct feedback as well as get us into some of the local places,” says Burns. “There’s a gym in Tulsa, for example, that said, ‘We’ll put this in our coffee bar if you want to leave some for us to try.’ They’re a lot more open and supportive, I would say, and wanting to help somebody that’s from Oklahoma who’s trying to start their own business. Sometimes in Austin or New York City, we’re strangers to them. There is a community feeling behind it. But I think Oklahoma also has been very supportive once we’ve been ready to launch.”

The trio no longer take the same hot yoga classes together and grab lattes afterward. Carter now lives in Austin and most of their communication is done over Zoom, phone calls or emails.

“Cinnamon lattes are the trend here in New York. Our waiter never brought us any cinnamon; he only brought us sugar packets. It was then we thought, ‘We need to have cinnamon packets.’”

WHITNEY RICHARDSON

Burns, Carter and Richardson still have the same aspirations of growing Cinny to the point that they can leave their current fulltime jobs one day and focus on the company they created. However, it wasn’t until they sat down for a conversation in early 2024 that the trio actually settled whether Cinny was going to be more than a fun side gig.

“I think we all knew we wanted to be all in, but we were wanting to make sure that the other two wanted it,” Burns says. “Because as we’ve said multiple times, we all bring a different set of skills to the Cinny team and, ‘If we’re going to do this, us three need to do it together and we’re going to be all in.’ We all got excited and agreed and we were like, ‘Let’s do this.’”

Burns admitted that if someone had told her while growing up that creating something as ambitious as Cinny was in her future, she doesn’t know if she would have believed them.

“I would say that coming from Oklahoma, I wouldn’t have felt like it was possible,” Burns says. “I come from a very traditional background where my parents were accountants, which is why I got an accounting degree and then I got an accounting job, and I didn’t really think that you could do things outside the box. But I probably tell my younger self, ‘You can build whatever you want to build. You just try. We don’t have to be in a big place to do big things.’” •

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:

Cinny founders Whitney Richardson, Rosemary Carter and Margaret Burns

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Prism owner

Aimee Hunter

Pop-Up Pioneer Plants Roots in Tulsa

Prism Cafe’s locally sourced food and community, in a restaurant reimagined

BY MEGAN SHEPHERD PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN “FIVISH” CASS

In 2008, a writer from Flavorwire Magazine called Aimee Hunter, owner and executive chef of Prism Cafe at 217 W. Latimer St. in Tulsa, “a pioneer of the pop-up scene.” It’s an identity she’s taken to heart, and for good reason.

Hunter understands that pop-up dinners are about possibility. Throwing a good one requires a reverence for the temporary, and reimagining what something is into what it could be. It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to transform a space, and a willingness to be transported and surprised. It’s what allows us to see a warehouse’s pull-down grate as a portal to another world, or to find an oasis garden party waiting in the corner of a back alley, table set and rose flowing. For Hunter, these are scenes from pop-ups past.

“I love a pop-up,” she admits. “A restaurant tells you what it is, or what the experience should be. A pop-up tells you what something could be.”

Hunter spent years working in commercial kitchens, loving the work but hating the industry. As stories like Kitchen Confidential have popularized, the territory came with challenges: low wages, often being the only woman in the kitchen, harassment, getting pigeonholed in some male chef’s take on “women’s work.”

“I once had a chef tell me, ‘You can only handle lettuce or sugar,’” Hunter recalls, shaking her head. “I thought to myself, ‘Fine; I’ll just create my own ladder.’”

That ladder led Hunter—a Texas native and Tulsa transplant by way of the Tulsa Remote program—to Oklahoma. Opening Prism came soon thereafter when a neighbor put out a call for a new tenant in a commercial catering kitchen in North Tulsa’s Heights neighborhood, just a stone’s throw away from the bountiful Heights Garden.

At its core, Prism serves elegant, locally sourced cafe food—and “whatever’s fresh” is always the first ingredient. As a firm believer in the power of organic, nutrient-dense food to heal and nourish, Hunter leans heavily on the bounty of Oklahoma-grown micro-greens, herbs, fruits and vegetables harvested from the neighborhood gardens and fields for her menus. Thanks in large part to gardener Chris Arnold and purveyors like Avery Farms, Microlicious, Prairie Creek Farms and the OK Mushroom Guys, mortadella sandwiches, lobster rolls and homemade soups are standard at lunchtime, and dishes like braised beef and potatoes, linguini vongole, banh mi burgers and pistachio cheesecake bring a special, homemade flair to supper.

Hunter said Prism toes the line between “modern grandma comfort food and … fun!” Indeed, fun is always on the menu, which is handwritten daily on butcher paper and taped to the wall, adorned with sketched flowers and flourishes. It’s one of many touches, like the tiny vases of flowers on each table and the hand-me-down blue church pew snagged from neighbors at Origin Coffee, that make the brightly lit but otherwise spare space feel homey.

Each day’s menu considers whatever technique Prism’s staff has recently been perfecting (say, braising or searing), whatever’s fresh at the market and whatever the weather calls for. Hunter reads the day and writes her menu inline, knowing that a rainy Sunday in June calls for moules frites, but that a sunny afternoon in the same month demands a fresh, herbaceous corn salad with pillows of local burrata—a bright, cool dish made to stave off the sweltering summer heat. In this way, the restaurant is aware of itself and its context. And although in some ways Prism feels plucked off the streets of Green Point, Brooklyn, or Venice, California, its palate and personality are decidedly for Tulsans, by Tulsans.

Perhaps this is what makes it so beloved: Prism is fast becoming the lunchtime headquarters of Tulsa’s creative scene, equal parts offthe-beaten path gem and “who’s who” haunt. “It’s very ‘If you know, you know,’” explains early adopter and local comedian Evan Hughes, whose patronage has won him his own sandwich on the menu, The Evan. “I once walked in and saw Sterlin Harjo, John Fullbright and Josh Fadem all there on the same day, separately. It’s almost like a local show or event, but with food. I go in almost every day.

“It’s easy to root for Prism because it started in such a different way,” he continues. “Lots of things start with a lot of money and resources, but Aimee’s story is nothing like that. It really grew out of the neighborhood. She’s gotta be impressed by how the community has responded.”

“I think I’ve always had just the right amount of a plan. No more, but no less. Halfway through the meal, I might still be figuring it all out.”

AIMEE HUNTER

Approaching two years later, it’s still setting crowded tables, still experimenting with the temporary, still modeling radical inclusivity. At its core, the Prism experience is about openness —to surprise, to a shift, to change. While some eateries thrive with a standard menu and approach, Hunter’s formula has proven to be less structured than that.

“I think I’ve always had just the right amount of a plan,” she explains. “No more, but no less. Halfway through the meal, I might still be figuring it all out.”

Since opening, Prism has extended its hours, added team members and nightly happy hour and dinner service—but Hunter plans to retire both in the coming weeks. She’s ready to pivot back to her sweet spot: the pop-up dinner.

“I don’t enjoy consuming someone else’s ego on a plate,” Hunter says. “So I think pop-ups, and providing an experience where there actually might not be perfection, or this target of extreme professionalism, feel more aligned to who we are and what we’re doing.”

Moving forward, Prism will focus on curated pop-up dinners, collaborative events and cooking classes, including a hands-on crash course in “legendary techniques” and a pop-up series featuring the seasonal harvest of the week.

“I feel like Prism is a culinary community space, full of potential to adapt to the needs of the community through the concept of culinary creation,” she says.

Shedding the structure of a regular restaurant feels like an attempt to see Prism as a space that facilitates connection through food, as opposed to one that merely delivers it. “Culinary creation” might mean a cafe one day, the venue for dinner and a show the next, a space for cooking classes on another. “The truth is,” she points out, “I’ve always just felt more comfortable in the DIY scene.”

Whatever iteration or era Prism finds itself in next, it’s guaranteed to be homegrown, imperfect, maybe a bit temporary, full of magic.

“What can I say?” Hunter asks. “I’m a Pop-up Pioneer. Time to get back to my roots.” •

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FEATURES

Architectural Masterpieces Each home is uniquely crafted with innovative designs and premium finishes.

Serene Water Features Enjoy the tranquility of our private pond, fountain, and waterfall, creating a serene ambiance.

Scenic Walking Trails Stroll through beautifully landscaped green spaces and walking trails, perfect for relaxation and outdoor activities.

Secure Living Benefit from the peace of mind provided by our gated community, ensuring a safe and private environment.

Elevate your lifestyle at Wilshire Point Residences, where modern elegance and sophistication meet natural beauty.

Schedule a tour today and experience urban living redefined.

NW 72nd & N Classen Blvd East of Nichols Hills WilshirePoint.com

2823