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inside COVER P. 25 With a surge of interest in fiber arts, a string of galleries is showcasing artists who share a similar through-line in their work.

By Ben Luschen Cover photo by Mark Hancock

NEWS OU theater donor accused of misconduct

4 Education

law enforcement opposition to SQ788

6 Marijuana

9 Election June 26 ballot info 10 State Juneteenth

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NEWS Actor and associate producer Darryl Cox on the set of Pax Masculina. After his on-set experiences, Cox warned actresses about working with producer John Scamehorn. | Photo Nathan Poppe / provided

site, Scamehorn specialized in formulating soaps, toothpaste and detergents and “has published nearly 200 archival papers or book chapters, edited five books, and coauthored 18 US patents.”

An Oklahoma Gazette email inquiring about his current status with the firm was not immediately returned.

e d u c at i o n

Severed ties?

No Pax

The University of Oklahoma says it acted quickly against John Scamehorn, but many of his accusers disagree. By Ben Luschen

John Scamehorn dreamed of a world where “insolent women causing trouble are given their just reward.” Now a group of outspoken women might lead him to his own comeuppance.

In the first weekend of June, several Facebook and social media posts popped up with allegations of sexual harassment against Scamehorn, an emeritus professor at University of Oklahoma (OU) who was both a frequent donor to the school’s Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts and financier of many independent film projects within the Oklahoma film community.

The allegations against 64-year-old Scamehorn are wide-ranging. In an open letter signed by 30 female accusers — some OU students and some not — specific allegations include “sexual advances, strong and inappropriate innuendo … stories rife with sexual content, [being] stalked and even coerced into taking embarrassing and compromising photos.”

One of the main concerns accusers have shared is the allegation from one former student who claimed on social media to have found a large archive of photos of OU students, local actresses and their relatives collected by Scamehorn. Many of the alleged photos are said to be cropped and doctored in a way that it appears the subject is being strangled or hung in a noose.

Scamehorn was frequently seen at OU theater events with a camera. Many of his accusers thought the behavior was odd but were often reminded by program administrators that his donations were vital to the acting department.

The social media posts against Scamehorn were partially fueled by the #MeToo movement against sexual ha4

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rassment by people in entertainment and positions of power. They also seem to have been prompted as a response to an article by Scamehorn on the openly misogynistic “men’s rights” forum Return of Kings. Titled “What the Western World Would Look Like If Women Were Never Granted The Right To Vote,” the article is Scamehorn’s attempt to sell the site’s users on Pax Masculina, a dystopian short film he produced, financed and filmed in Oklahoma.

“Tired of every new film having a militant feminist theme?” Scamehorn writes in a description of the film.

“Want to see a universe on video in which men create a paradise on earth with their wise rule, and insolent women causing trouble are given their just reward? My short film (18 minutes) is called Pax Masculina (Latin for “peace of men”) and is an alternate history science-fiction movie.”

The Return to Kings post has since been deleted. Scamehorn’s IMDb (Internet Movie Database) page lists at least 14 film projects he has produced since 2013, including locally popular fulllength features The Posthuman Project (2014) and The Harvesters (2016).

Scamehorn is an emeritus professor at OU, but not of the arts. He has a background in chemical engineering and was formerly Asahi Glass Chair and George Lynn Cross Research Professor for the School of Chemistry.

Scamehorn was also listed as a vice president and principal of Surfactant Associates, Inc. According to a bio that has since been removed from the firm’s A screenshot of John Scamehorn’s profile on University of Oklahoma’s website. The page was taken down the week of June 7. | Image ou.edu

Accounts from several of Scamehorn’s accusers say in February 2016, OU acting and theater students were called into a closed-door meeting and told by Helmerich School of Drama director Tom Orr to stay away from certain school donors.

No one was specifically named, but shortly after the meeting, the fine arts college cut all ties with Scamehorn. The move came after a monthlong school investigation in which several students made sexual harassment complaints against Scamehorn.

In a June 7 statement responding to accusers’ open letter, OU said it acted swiftly in addressing the 2016 complaints against Scamehorn. But others are skeptical of the school’s role.

“We believe the school has massive culpability,” said Christopher Cooke, a Texas-based lawyer who represents a former OU student interested in filing civil cases against Scamehorn and the university.

Cooke said his client filed a complaint with OU’s Title IX office prior to the Feb. 2016 closed-door meeting, but no action was taken.

“We have been told that that file no longer exists,” Cooke said.

According to OU’s statement, the university barred Scamehorn from future paid or unpaid work with the university. His donor status was terminated, and his contributions were returned. The university also shared their information with law enforcement and other community organizations.

“In short,” the statement reads, “the

university’s actions were immediate and intended to further our number one goal, the welfare and safety of our students.”

But Scamehorn’s ties to the college were not totally severed. He still held emeritus director status on the school’s Institute for Applied Surfactant Research.

Scamehorn was scheduled to speak at an on-campus conference the institute was hosting as recently as June 4, although his appearance was later canceled. He also has an active university email account from which, on June 5, he emailed the following statement to Oklahoma Gazette: “I am aware of the rumors and allegations made against me online and in local media reports. In the strongest terms possible, I deny any wrongdoing.”

Scamehorn did not respond to followup questions from Oklahoma Gazette.

OU is currently in the process of reviewing Scamehorn’s emeritus faculty status.

Cooke said there is no timeline for when any civil suit might be filed.

“It’s very early in the process,” he said, “but from what I’ve seen so far, what’s happened here is abhorrent.”

‘Nothing’ done

Some of Scamehorn’s accusers have told Gazette that they are fearful of speaking directly against Scamehorn in fear of retaliation. But some are willing to speak. Former OU student Gabrielle Reyes, who is no longer based in Oklahoma, feels confident because she believes she is on the side of truth.

“It’s 2018,” she said. “If you did something stupid two years ago and you’re continuing to do that, you’re fucked, not me.”

Reyes posted a video on her Facebook account describing her time at OU, her interactions with Scamehorn and the university’s conduct. One thing she notes in the video is that Scamehorn attended nearly every theater event with his camera and was highly involved in the program. She recalls knowing of other acting school donors, but none of them were as closely tied to the program as Scamehorn. continued on page 5

A gallows is constructed on the set of John Scamehorn’s Pax Masculina inside Guthrie’s Scottish Rite Temple. | Photo Nathan Poppe / provided

e d u c at i o n

continued from page 4

“[He was] always funding everything we were taking part in,” Reyes said. “He was on every school trip and at every opening night.”

Reyes said she did not have any significant one-on-one interactions with Scamehorn. Her main concern has always been how the program, and particularly its director Orr, seemed reluctant to address student complaints. After Scamehorn’s ties to the program were severed, Reyes remembers Orr frequently griped about not having the finances for any of their activities.

“Tom Orr has been a sickness since I got there,” she said. “He has been before me, and he has continued.”

Reyes said Scamehorn was a known “creep” in the program and complaints against him before 2016 were often ignored. She believes Orr and the acting school chose not to act on any complaints because of the money Scamehorn was contributing to the program.

“That’s one of the issues,” she said.

“Many people had spoken up — women and men — but nothing had been done.”

Known ‘fetish’

When actor Darryl Cox agreed to participate in Pax Masculina, he and seemingly everyone else on the film believed it was aUNI_18-RP-114_OKC_Mile_Gazette.pdf dystopian, steampunk tale of

women overcoming an oppressive society ruled by men. The intention, it turned out, was something much different.

Cox said on the set, Scamehorn constantly complained that female actresses’ costumes were not skimpy enough.

He also seemed to take pleasure from the film’s many scripted hanging scenes and graphic violence.

“He showed all the indications of being someone who apparently had a hanging fetish,” Cox said. “In fact, that was stronger than his misogynistic viewpoint. Whenever he was confronted on the misogyny or on the hanging fetish, he would always back off, he would always deny it, he would always say, ‘No, no, no; that’s not what I intend.’”

Cox and many others were aware that Scamehorn was “off,” but thought they had him under control and that his proclivities could be contained.

“We were wrong,” he said. “We never should have thought we could do that.

He had the money, and once the film was finished shooting, he ran off anybody who didn’t agree with him and hired people who didn’t know anything about him.”

After principal photography on the film wrapped,11:44 Cox AM said Scamehorn hired 1 had 5/30/18

outsiders to re-edit the footage in the way he wanted.

The short later screened in at least one film festival. As of Gazette’s deadline, it can still be viewed on Vimeo.

After his experiences with Pax Masculina, Cox said he would warn actresses not to get involved with Scamehorn.

“I’m not setting myself up as a hero here because I participated with him and that’s a mistake I made,” he said. “I have to bear the consequences of that.”

Cox said many women who have

spoken with him about Scamehorn in the past have said they felt like their complaints were being ignored. Cox believes Scamehorn was calculating and realized he had some safety because his female accusers would not be taken seriously.

“The real tragedy of this is that he was right, and that is horrendous,” Cox said. “We can’t buy into a misogynist’s worldview, and we kind of did.”

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Gray areas

State law enforcement groups are skeptical of State Question 788. By Ben Luschen

Editor’s note: This article is part of a series examining cannabis and cannabinoids in Oklahoma leading up to the June 26 medical marijuana referendum.

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There are many Oklahomans who advocate for the health benefits legalized medical marijuana could bring to the state, but some law enforcement groups argue that State Question 788 will bring new challenges to their agencies.

Voters are set to decide on SQ788, which would legalize marijuana for medical purposes, during the June 26 state primaries. Kevin Buchanan, president of Oklahoma District Attorneys Association and district attorney over Oklahoma’s District 11 in the state’s northeast corner, believes the language in the measure is misleading.

“We perceive this to be recreational marijuana masquerading as medical,” Buchanan said.

The primary point of contention between those who helped write the language in SQ788 and law enforcement groups is an intentional lack of qualifying conditions for which medical marijuana could be prescribed.

Proponents of SQ788 frequently state that pre-set conditions would hinder free market development and could exclude some who need treatment. Law enforcement agencies and other opponents to the state question argue that the lack of description makes the new proposed law recreational by default.

Buchanan believes SQ788 is an intentionally secretive attempt to bring de facto recreational marijuana to Oklahoma without saying so.

“If we’re going to do it,” he said, “then let’s put it on the ballot, call it what it is and let the vote happen. Then we’ll live with it however that vote falls.”

Oklahoma District Attorneys Association is one of several coalition agencies in the oppositional super PAC (political action committee) SQ788 Is Not Medical. Other member groups include the advocacy groups Oklahoma State Medical Association, Oklahoma Pharmacists Association, State Chamber of Oklahoma, Greater Oklahoma City Chamber and others.

Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association is another member of the super PAC. Executive director Ray McNair questions the necessity of SQ788 when some cannabidiol, or CBD, products are already legal in the state.

The CBD products sold in the state do not contain tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the substance in marijuana that can get users high. Proponents of SQ788 and those who have studied the medical uses of cannabis argue that the presence of THC makes some CBD products more effective and THC might have its own health benefits, like in the treatment of some types of cancer.

Though he is skeptical about the benefits of THC, McNair said his agency is not against the CBD products that are already legal.

Oklahoma District Attorneys Association president Kevin Buchanan believes State Question 788 consitiutes de facto recreational marijuana legalization. | Photo Oklahoma District Attorneys Council / provided

“There are conditions out there that people suffer from that we understand there is a potential value to those people,” McNair said.

Some concerns

McNair sees a number of potential problems that could occur if SQ788 were approved by voters. For one, he wonders if the Oklahoma Department of Health will be able to set up a state medical marijuana program in the 30 days the state question’s language requires.

“Anybody in this state understands that state government doesn’t move that quick while still being efficient at it and having all of the controls in place,” he said.

McNair also thinks the lack of preapproved conditions for marijuana prescription will inevitably lead to doctors writing scripts for anyone who agrees to pay them a high fee and will eventually wind up mirroring the opioid epidemic.

“There’s some concerns there that you’re swapping out one drug for another drug now,” he said.

According to national data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Disease Prevention (CDC), there were 63,632 drug overdose deaths in 2016.

An estimated 42,249 of those deaths involved opioids.

U. S .

Drug E n f o r c e m e nt Administration’s official drug fact sheet indicates that no marijuana overdose deaths have been reported.

Because dispensary costs can be higher than some people can afford, McNair also anticipates that many will be led to purchase their marijuana from unapproved sources. People with a license can legally possess medical marijuana, but they must purchase it from an approved and regulated vendor or it could be considered a misdemeanor offense.

McNair believes an increase in these types of misdemeanors could lead to increased traffic in county jails, which some counties are not in a position to facilitate.

“We just know from other states that there is an increase in it because the people that typically get these cards don’t have the type of funds to go to a pricy dispensary that’s selling the product,” he said.

Unanswered questions

McNair thinks there are other issues with the state question that law enforcement would like to see sorted out, like whether medical marijuana would be considered a pharmaceutical drug that county jail inmates could not be denied.

He hopes legislators will actively address law enforcement and other concerns in the event that SQ788 is approved by state voters.

“You’ll see a lot of issues that need to be worked out — hopefully legislatively and quickly — if it does pass,” he said.

Buchanan said the state question raises as many questions as it provides

answers. The language in SQ788 specifies that those with a marijuana license can grow or possess up to six mature marijuana plants and six seedling plants. But regulating what people grow in their own homes could be challenging.

“How, legitimately, is law enforcement going to monitor that?” Buchanan said.

The district attorney also gave a hypothetical scenario in which someone gets pulled over and a drug dog sniffs marijuana. The driver of the car might not have a license, but if the person can supply a medical explanation for why he has the marijuana, the state question describes the offense as a misdemeanor.

Buchanan said this puts officers in a position to determine if they have been given an adequate medical explanation. He believes SQ788 was intentionally drafted to be vague.

“It’s just so gray there’s no way there’s ever going to be a black-and-white situation,” he said.

Not consulted

Buchanan said the advice of the District Attorney’s Council (DAC) was never sought in the drafting of SQ788’s language.

“Having read this, it seems to be the daydream of some marijuana smokers to me,” he said. “I don’t think they desired any sort of law enforcement insight into this proposition.”

Buchanan said proponents for SQ788 have often said that any issues with the language can be corrected in statute by legislators after its passage. He said he heard the same thing in 2016 from proponents of SQ780, a measure that reclassified several drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors.

After SQ780 was passed with more than 58 percent of the vote, he remembers the outcry that arose after any attempt to change the statute legislatively.

“The same people that were saying, ‘Hey, we can change this if we got something wrong,’ were screaming to the rafters that it was violating the will of the people,” he said.

Any opponents of SQ780 were “villains bar none,” he said. That backlash might prevent the DAC from directly advocating legislative changes to SQ788.

“That is a ploy which neither I nor the DAs will fall for ever again,” he said.

Buchanan said there is no clear consensus within the law enforcement community about the effectiveness of medical marijuana. But when it comes to the law as specified in SQ788, he believes it is a different story.

“Are we against this particular proposition that has been put forth and the provisions that are contained in it?

Yes, I think we are universally against this form,” he said.

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Primary decisions Oklahoma County sample ballot for June 26 primary and State Question 788 vote

CONGRESSIONAL OFFICERS U.S. Representative District 04 Republican Tom Cole James Taylor Democrat Roxann Klutts Mary Brannon Fred Gipson Mallory Varner U.S. Representative District 05 Republican Gregory Dunson DeJuan Edwards Steve Russell Democrat Leona Kelley-Leonard Ed Porter Elysabeth Britt Tom Guild Tyson Todd Meade Kendra Horn

Lieutenant Governor Republican Eddie Fields Dana Murphy Dominique DaMon Block Matt Pinnell Democrat Anastasia A. Pittman Anna Dearmore State Auditor and Inspector Republican Cindy Byrd Charlie Prater John Uzzo Attorney General Republican Angela Bonilla Mike Hunter Gentner Drummond Superintendent of Public Instruction Republican Will Farrell Linda Murphy Joy Hofmeister Commissioner of Labor

STATE OFFICERS Governor Republican Christopher Barnett Dan Fisher Eric Foutch Kevin Stitt Todd G. Lamb Barry Gowdy Blake Cowboy Stephens Gary A. Jones Mick Cornett Gary Richardson Democrat Drew Edmondson Connie Johnson Libertarian Chris Powell Rex L. Lawhorn Joe Exotic

Republican Leslie Osborn Keith Swinton Cathy Costello Democrat Fred Dorrell Sam A Mis-soum

COUNTY OFFICERS County Assessor Republican Larry Stein Gary Banz County Treasurer Republican Daren Ward Forrest Butch Freeman County Commissioner District 1 Republican Chad Albee Brad Reeves Democrat Carrie Blumert Ben M. Janloo John A. Pettis, Jr. Al McAffrey County Commissioner District 3 Republican Kevin Calvey Rick Buchanan

JUDICIAL OFFICERS District Judge District 7, Office 3 Howard R. Haralson Amy Palumbo Mark K. Bailey

Insurance Commissioner

District Judge District 7, Office 5

Republican Donald Chasteen Glen Mulready

Natalie Mai Hank Young Erik Motsinger Chris Sloan

Corporation Commissioner Republican Bob Anthony Brian Bingman Harold Spradling Democrat Ken Reich Beau Williams Blake Cummings Ashley Nicole McCray

STATE QUESTION State Question No. 788 Initiative Petition No. 412 This measure amends the Oklahoma State Statutes. A yes vote legalizes the licensed use, sale, and growth of marijuana in Oklahoma for medicinal purposes. A license is required for use and possession of marijuana for medicinal purposes and must be approved by an Oklahoma Board Certified Physician. The State Department of Health will issue medical marijuana licenses if the applicant is eighteen years or older and an Oklahoma resident. A special exception will be granted to an applicant under the age of eighteen, however these applications must be signed by two physicians and a parent or legal guardian. The Department will also issue seller, grower, packaging, transportation, research and caregiver licenses. Individual and retail businesses must meet minimal requirements to be licensed to sell marijuana to licensees. The punishment for unlicensed possession of permitted amounts of marijuana for individuals who can state a medical condition is a fine not exceeding four hundred dollars. Fees and zoning restrictions are established. A seven percent state tax is imposed on medical marijuana sales.

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Open minds

New Juneteenth education requirements are intended to broaden diversity education.

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Anastasia Pittman did not ask for her Mother of Reconciliation label, but she certainly owned it.

Pittman was a longtime state representative for majority AfricanAmerican District 99 in Oklahoma City before her 2014 election to the state senate for District 48. She reached her term limit at the end of the most recent legislative session.

She has also frequently put herself in the middle of Oklahoma’s most highprofile instances of racial insensitivity in the role of mediator. In August 2016, when a retiring Metro Technology Centers teacher presented a black colleague with a Ku Klux Klan hood during a school conference, Pittman met with him to talk about the situation and explain why some found it offensive.

The teacher, Larry Long, offered the robe to his colleague, a friend, as part of an inside joke, but the audience was not in on it and was flabbergasted by the gesture. Long has since apologized.

Pittman was also a central figure in reaching out to University of Oklahoma fraternity member Levi Pettit after a video of him leading a racial slur-laden chant went viral. She wanted to do more than point out where Pettit went wrong. Pittman sought to educate and culturally expose Pettit in a way he had not experienced before. They are still in touch to this day.

“I went to his college graduation,” Pittman said. “We didn’t just bring him into our community and expose him to leaders of our community.”

Pittman, a Democrat currently running for lieutenant governor, has found that many cases of racial insensitivity stem from a lack of diversity education.

For the same reason, she helped lead a push during her final legislative session to get Juneteenth — a holiday recognizing the emancipation of American slaves in 1863 — and expanded cultural education into school curriculums.

Seeking education

Juneteenth is officially observed each year on June 19, although the day on which it is celebrated can vary for convenience and to not conflict with Father’s Day. While the Emancipation Proclamation was signed Jan. 1, 1863, news in the day did not spread quickly, and this was something slave owners would rather not have spread. Juneteenth marks the day the news finally spread to Texas, the last state to adhere to slavery’s abolition.

“They were free and still working under involuntary servitude,” Pittman said, “so when they got the news, they

had a party.”

Juneteenth National Freedom Day was already officially recognized in Oklahoma before the most recent legislative session, but on the third Monday in June instead of on a Saturday, the day on which the holiday is most often celebrated.

At first, Pittman co-authored a bill with Rep. John Paul Jordan, R-Yukon, as an attempt to change the day on which the state observed Juneteenth. The bill had strong support and was approved by a House vote but never got a hearing on the Senate floor. The proposed change of date would have had a fiscal impact on the state, and while that impact was relatively small, it could not be justified as a priority during the same session in which teachers were fervently fighting for a pay raise and uptick in education funding.

But Pittman was not ready to give up on her attempts to increase Juneteenth’s visibility before her time in the Senate expired. She decided to take a different route, one that promoted real learning instead of an arbitrary change of date for a holiday many people are not aware of in the first place.

Pittman was able to add a friendly amendment to a bill by Sen. Gary Stanislawski, R-Tulsa, which directed the state Department of Education to add Juneteenth to the state’s social studies core curriculum.

The bill, with its Juneteenth amendment, was signed by Gov. Mary Fallin on May 8. Pittman sees it as a huge victory for cultural awareness in Oklahoma.

“If you don’t update the curriculum,” she said, “those who live outside of African-American communities are not going to come in for a celebration that they don’t know is happening.”

Pittman comes from a diverse heritage. She has one set of grandparents who were survivors of the Tulsa race riot of 1921 and another that came to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears. She also has some Irish heritage.

The diversity in her own background is the backbone of her interest in making Oklahoma a rich mesh of cultures.

“I’ve had the best of exposure and the best of embracing who I am,” she said.

“For a part of my destiny to be an elected official who can effect change — something that is perpetual and transcends all barriers and cultures — I’m very proud.”

Building resources

In 2007, Pittman got a letter from an Oklahoma teacher in a predominantly African-American school district. The teacher told Pittman that she was leaving the state for her native Arkansas, partly

because Oklahoma lacked tools for teaching African-American students about their own history.

With the letter, the teacher also sent Pittman a copy of a free coloring book published by the state of Arkansas. The coloring book’s pages were full of significant African-American figures in Arkansas history.

Pittman, a former teacher, took the letter as a sobering alarm. She teamed up with Oklahoma Centennial Commission to develop a similar coloring book that would reflect the state’s rich AfricanAmerican history. National civil rights leaders are known far and wide, but she knew that many significant AfricanAmerican Oklahomans were anonymous even in their birth state.

“Nobody knows the contributions of these different members of our society,” she said.

The book, titled We Remember ...

Before and Beyond, can be accessed on the Oklahoma Historical Society webpage okhistory.org by clicking on the For Kids tab and then the For Parents and Teachers section. Oklahomans included in the book include former State Supreme Court justice Juanita Kidd Stout and Joseph Jacob Simmons, Jr., who negotiated major oil contracts with African countries Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.

Part of the reason Pittman was confident about introducing Juneteenth studies into the state curriculum was that she helped put together another booklet, Long Road to Liberty: Oklahoma’s African American History and Culture, which could be used as a resource.

The book, developed in partnership between the Historical Society, Oklahoma Department of Tourism and others, can be ordered for free at travelok.com.

Former state senator Anastasia Pittman pushed to require Juneteenth education in the state’s social studies curriculum in her final term of office. | Photo provided

Pittman hopes Juneteenth studies can be used to lead into a greater understanding of local African-American history.

“It’s only fitting that now that we have some tools that can be utilized, let’s include them in curriculum so that teachers can be creative and be inclusive,” she said.

Learning, growing

Some people might be reluctant to acknowledge Juneteenth because it is a reminder of a dark time in this nation’s history. Ameenah Fuller, a Californiabased activist working with Pittman on an upcoming oral history project for those who share African-American and Native American heritage, believes it would be a mistake to ignore the past.

“You can’t hide and mask history,” she said. “What you can do is learn from it.”

Fuller enthusiastically supports diversity education, particularly the local efforts in which Pittman is involved. She agrees with the former senator that a lack of education is at the root of most racial misunderstandings.

“That diversity curriculum should be taught across the nation — in the schools and even in the workplaces,” Fuller said.

“I think that’s a major component of reconciliation that never happened, that no one was taught about diversity.”

By going back to embrace the history that Juneteenth represents, it opens up potential for a brighter future.

“Juneteenth is a part of celebrating the past, honoring our present and cultivating the future,” Pittman said.

“We’ve got to do those things.”

O kg a z e t t e . c o m | j u n e 1 3 , 2 0 1 8

11

chicken

friedNEWS

Murray bills There comes a time in every young man’s life when he faces a familiar choice: become a millionaire firstround baseball prospect or play quarterback for one of college football’s most storied programs.

Oh, we neglected to mention that by “every young man,” what we really mean is, “pretty much only Kyler Murray.” Earlier this month, the 20-year-old University of Oklahoma (OU) sophomore was selected ninth overall in the 2018 Major League Baseball draft by the Oakland Athletics.

Murray is clearly a fantastic baseball outfielder, but he was a highschool football phenom in Texas just a few years ago. Highly recruited, he chose to attend Texas A&M before transferring to OU after one year.

Last season he served as OU’s backup quarterback. Some fans will likely remember him as the guy who had a 65-yard run and led an OU touchdown drive in just two plays in the one series former starter Baker Mayfield was suspended for after his notorious Kansas crotch grab.

Most people expect Murray to

sign a contract with Oakland sometime this summer and pick up a signing bonus in the neighborhood of $5 million. Then he will play quarterback in the fall and go pro in baseball after the season is done.

It should be noted that OU football coach Lincoln Riley makes only $3.1 million per year. A college kid who makes $2 million more than his 34-year-old boss? Nope; no way that could ever lead to confusion on the team’s power dynamic.

If Riley has any concerns about the situation, he’s not speaking about them publicly.

“We’re excited to have [Murray] here with us for this upcoming football season,” Riley told The Norman Transcript. “We’re looking forward to getting him back around our team this summer, and he’s excited to get into workouts and help us continue to pursue another championship.

We’re also equally excited for his opportunity with Major League Baseball and being the ninth pick in the draft. It’s a great honor for him, and he’s going to have some great options going forward.”

If the other sport Murray was passionate about was something like pillow fighting or tiddlywinks, his

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choice wouldn’t be such a big deal. But in case our fine ChickenFried News readers have never noticed, football tends to be a dangerous sport, particularly for quarterbacks.

A serious injury could risk derailing his a promising baseball career that has the potential to generate him many, many more millions in the future.

Murray is not projected to have nearly as impactful of a future in pro football, so baseball might be his best and only shot at a pro career. But a $5 million signing bonus, if managed properly, could have one set for life. Maybe Murray’s career choice is, in fact, none of our business.

Mor chik’n

Sometimes, the Chicken-Fried News staff desperately tries to keep Environmental “Protection” Agency administrator Scott Pruitt out of its pages. After all, we want to be fair to everyone from this fair state that manages to reset Oklahoma’s “number of days without a national embarrassment” counter.

But Pruitt is, as U.S. Sen. John “Not That One” Kennedy, R-Louisiana, told CNN’s John Berman on June 7, “acting like a moron and he needs to stop it.”

Now, without a corkboard covered with news clippings connected with red string to various photos of Cole Haans landing in fresh dog feces, most news consumers would have difficulty determining which story Kennedy found most egregious and moronic.

It was, of course, the Chick-fil-A incident.

No, Pruitt didn’t spend $400 in one month gorging on Chick-fil-A’s spicy chicken sandwiches. Actually, he racked up those monthly expenses at

the White House mess hall, where, according to Politico, he dined on so many beer-braised brisket tacos and some glop called “Chocolate Freedom” that the White House had to put the kibosh on Pruitt’s din-din time at the mess.

What he allegedly did do was attempt to use the power of his office to get his wife, Marlyn, a Chick-fil-A franchise in Tulsa.

According to a June 5 report from The Washington Post, Pruitt had his executive scheduler, Oklahoma’s Own™ Sydney Hupp, contact Chikfil-A president and chairman Dan Cathy in May 2017 about what was described as a “potential business opportunity.” As the Post helpfully points out, “Federal ethics laws bar public officials from using their position or staff for private gain.”

A call between Pruitt and Cathy was planned but later canceled. Pruitt did follow up with a member of the Chick-fil-A legal team, during which he pitched this exciting opportunity for his wife to oversee a franchise that will not serve you chicken on Sunday because of Jesus.

According to the Post, Marlyn Pruitt did not follow through on her application to sell admittedly delicious chicken to a dedicated constituency that will pack a drive-thru lane on Mike Huckabee’s command. It’s a

shame for her, because the odds of getting a Chick-fil-A franchise are on par with winning the lottery while being struck by lightning.

In a separate June 7 story, the Post reported that of 40,000 franchise applicants each year, only 100 to 115 make it through to open a new Chick-fil-A. In comparison, about 20 times more people get into Harvard University each year, which receives roughly the same number of applicants.

Pruitt just allegedly wanted a little affirmative chicken action for his wife, that’s all, and to make Tulsa smell that much more like fried food.

“Chick-fil-A is a franchise of faith, and it’s one of the best in the country, and so that’s something we were very excited about, so … and we need more of them in Tulsa and we need more of them across the country,” Pruitt told report-

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er Jessica Smith of Nexstar Media Group.

Of course, a hankering for a hunk of Chick-fil-A was not the sum total of Pruitt’s problems. He also wanted a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel. No, not that mattress. For your information, conspiracy theorist, that one’s in Moscow.

According to a June 4 letter from Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, and Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Virginia, to House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, Pruitt aide Millan Hupp (Sydney Hupp’s sister) told the committee that Pruitt asked her to get an old mattress from the

International House of Emoluments.

“As I remember, the administrator had spoken with someone at the Trump Hotel who had indicated that there could be a mattress that he could purchase, an old mattress that he could purchase, but that’s the extent of the conversation that I can — that I can remember,” Hupp said in a transcript of the meeting.

On June 6, Elaina Plott of The Atlantic reported that Millan Hupp resigned her position at E“P”A, having tired of fetching used Sertas and, according to an unnamed official quoted in the story, “being thrown under the bus by Pruitt.”

Plott asked E“P”A spokesman Jahan Wilcox for comment on the story. Wilcox, in a display of the courtliness and impeccable etiquette that has taken Washington, D.C., by storm, said to Plott, “You have a great day, you’re a piece of trash.”

This proves the E“P”A doesn’t even know what trash is anymore.

Editor’s note: Chicken-Fried News is not affiliated in any way with Chickfil-A. In addition, it should be noted that the original name for Chick-fil-A was Dwarf House and several locations in the Atlanta area still operate under the name Chick-fil-A Dwarf House, which CFN thinks is inappropriate.

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Review

EAT & DRINK

Chile-roasted

Chile Pepper Café delivers memorable queso and vegetarian rolled tacos. By Jacob Threadgill

Chile Pepper Café 15220 N. Western Ave, Suite G, Edmond chilepeppercafe.com | 405-285-1160 What works: The smoked portabella rolled taco strikes a balance between smoky and sweet.

What needs work: The street tacos are competent, but not as good as the rest of the menu.

Tip: Order the queso blanco on everything.

The smell of roasted peppers and smoked brisket permeates the air inside Chile Pepper Café, which should be a recipe for success, but according to owner Debra Haney, people have had trouble locating the restaurant tucked inside of a shopping center near the border between north Oklahoma City and Edmond.

Located at 15220 N. Western Ave., Suite G, Chile Pepper Café opened about seven months ago and is the culmination of Haney’s passion for cooking and her travels across the Southwest.

“The smell of chile peppers is one of those things that reminds me of childhood, and it makes me happy,” Haney said.

Growing up in Edmond, Haney and her brothers were active participants in extracurricular activities, which meant plenty of late nights.

“Whoever was the first one home from practice got to cook dinner,” Haney said. “Cooking is love; it’s family, and it’s friends. I always grew up trying to keep everyone happy, and the easiest way to do that is to fill them up with food.”

When the opportunity to open Chile Pepper Café came about, Haney wasn’t going to pass, even though it meant some very long weeks. Haney is managing the restaurant while continuing to work for Chesapeake Energy’s field services department. She said she’s working about 97 hours a week.

The drive that fuels Haney while bouncing from job to job is a commitment to fresh food and showcasing the flavors of the Southwest that she fell in love with as a child. The kitchen roasts Anaheim, poblano, and jalapeño peppers multiple times a day in a custom-built pepper roaster, and the fresh

roasted chiles are the stars of some of the restaurant’s best dishes.

No meal at Chile Pepper Café should begin without its queso blanco, unless you’re lactose intolerant. The fresh roasted chiles provide smokiness and of flavor not found in your average Tex-Mex queso. The queso ($8) contains roasted poblano and jalapeños complete with seeds and membrane for added kick.

“I get all kinds of comments on the queso from ‘This is the stuff dreams are made of’ and ‘I could bathe in the stuff,’” Haney said.

I have to agree. It is some wonderfully cheesy goodness. I recommend ordering a sauce trio that features queso, fresh guacamole and an excellent habanero sauce made with tomatillos.

Quite often, a salsa verde is the milder available salsa, but the habanero gives it a fiery kick without being overkill.

The stuffed jalapeños ($8) are a lighter take on the fried jalapeño popper. They’re broiled instead of fried

A Chile Pepper Café burrito stuffed with smoked brisket, cilantro-lime rice, pinto beans, cheese and pico de gallo. | Photo Jacob Threadgill

and stuffed with a Southwest cream cheese. I appreciated the charred texture and departure from the normally greasy appetizer, but it’s not my favorite menu item. I can see a true stuffed jalapeño fan really enjoying the interpretation.

An electric smoker stands near the chile roaster, where it turns out smoked chicken, brisket and portabello mushrooms every day. The smoked meats can be added to any of the variety of house specialties, like street tacos, rolled tacos, burritos and nachos.

The nachos ($11) allow diners another opportunity to try its queso that is covered with additional melted cheese, pinto beans and a dollop of sour cream.

The stuffed burrito ($10) showcases excellent cilantro-lime rice and pinto continued on page 16

A fresh 1/3-pound burger topped with house-roasted Anaheim chiles and served with hand-cut fries. | Photo Jacob Threadgil O kg a z e t t e . c o m | j u n e 1 3 , 2 0 1 8

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beans, both of which are prepared without chicken stock to remain an option for vegetarians. Haney said customers will often order burritos with guacamole or sliced avocados as a meat replacement.

Every once in a while, I find a dish that becomes a personal revelation. I’ve had plenty of rolled tacos that are essentially crispy flautas or taquitos, but Chile Pepper Café’s version is lightly fried, and the flour tortillas retain a soft interior with a slightly crispy exterior.

The fresh roasted chiles provide smokiness and of flavor not found in your average Tex-Mex queso.

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While you might reflexively order smoked chicken or brisket in the tacos, I urge you to try the filling with smoked portobello and sweet peppers. Forget just being a meat replacement; this filling is hands-down the most flavorful item on the menu. The combination of smoke with the mushroom and sweetness from the pepper is excellent.

I don’t want the endorsement of the mushroom filling to besmirch the brisket and chicken that arrives fresh every day from Oklahoma City Meat Company because they’re both com-

Stuffed jalapeños are joined by queso, guacamole and two salsas. | Photo Jacob Threadgill

mendable efforts.

Smoked chicken breast is about the only way I’ll enjoy eating chicken breast, and while brisket from an electric smoker won’t win any competition barbecue ribbons, it’s the best option for Chile Pepper Café’s street tacos ($10), which come three to an order.

In an ode to New Mexico, the green chile burger with 1/3-pound beef comes topped with chipotle mayo, cheddar cheese and roasted Anaheim peppers that are more smoky than spicy. Each burger is served with a healthy portion of hand-cut fries and fry sauce made with ketchup, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce and a little bit of honey.

“We got kids who come in here and order a big thing of fries just so they can eat the sauce,” Haney said.

I didn’t know what to expect when I pulled into the shopping center housing Chile Pepper Café, but I was thoroughly impressed. The fresh roasted chiles are such a welcome addition to every bite, and the smoked portobello is the equivalent of a supporting actor stealing scenes from a high-paid Hollywood star.

Go to Chile Pepper Café, and prepare to maybe fill your tub with its queso blanco.

The rolled tacos are lightly fried to keep the interior of the flour tortillas soft. | Photo Jacob Threadgill

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Courting talent

The Collective Kitchens + Cocktails is taking applications for its food hall concept through June 22.

By Jacob Threadgill

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The Collective Kitchens + Cocktails aims to be the city’s first food hall, which will operate like an incubator for up-and-coming chefs and entrepreneurs at its Midtown location once it opens in early 2019.

The Collective is currently taking applications until June 22 to be one of the seven kitchens inside the twostory, 12,600 square-foot facility located at the Conley Building at 308 NW 10th St. The concept began as an idea with restaurateur Truong Le (Okie Pokie, Noodee, Chick N Beer, Covell Park), who is working with Northline Development, operator Jenny Nguyen and a few other private investors.

Le said that when the project was announced, he immediately began to hear the same question: “What’s the catch?”

“We’re in the position to give folks an opportunity for their own brickand-mortar with very minimal risk,” Le said. “There is no catch. This is us knowing that there are talented people out there that don’t have the opportunity yet to present their concept and their ability to be an entrepreneur.”

The Collective does not require money down to set up in the kitchen and will provide an allowance to create signage while also performing equipment maintenance. The Collective will collect a percentage of gross sales each month and will operate a coffee shop and two craft cocktail bars to boost income.

Le said the incubator model is welcome for those entering the restau-

rant industry. He said that converting a building to open a restaurant costs an average of $250,000, which means taking out a loan or bringing on partners.

The Collective offers a turnkey solution.

Kitchen operators are only responsible for bringing pots, pans, knives and other kitchen utensils. “[At a traditional restaurant model], it could take two years to make a profit, and that’s if you’re lucky,” Le said. “It’s one of the hardest industries to survive in. With us, in one month, you’re collecting.”

Le said that they’ve been overwhelmed with applications, which will continue through late June. To apply, visit thecollectiveokc.com and fill out the form under the “auditions” tab. The preliminary application only requires a name, email address, personal background (experience in the restaurant industry or as a home cook) and a brief

I want to see people in the industry do their own thing.

Truong Le description of the proposed food concept.

“We want some personality in the application,” Le said. “After June 22, our team will sit down and, based on the description, we will reach out and they will require a more detailed application with a business plan.”

The Collective team will whittle ap-

The Collective Kitchens + Cocktails will be located at 308 NW 10th St. and is slated for an early 2019 opening. | Photo provided

plicants down to 30 finalists who will compete in an audition process beginning July 19 for a panel of judges that will ask finalists to prepare a mock lunch or dinner service where they will be asked to prepare multiple orders within a relatively short amount of time. The auditions will be held over a three-day period in a facility with a full kitchen.

Le said that they have received applications from home cooks and those with restaurant experience, but applicants currently working at a restaurant who want to keep their involvement discreet through the audition process and before opening next year should make note of that on their application.

“Even within my own business, I’m not going to hold it against you to want to grow,” Le said. “I even told my staff, ‘If you have an idea and a knack and want to do your own business, you need to apply.’ I want to see people in the industry do their own thing.”

Le said that The Collective will not ask its kitchens to compete against each

other with similar concepts and they want a wide variety of ethnic cuisine and meals available throughout the day.

Once the concepts are finalized, they will begin to announce each kitchen one by one with produced video interviews modeled after reality television in order to build anticipation for the food hall leading up to its opening in early 2019.

Le said that owners will not be tied down to long-term contracts.

Ultimately, they are encouraged to save enough money to move to their own brick-and-mortar location. He said that once someone gives notice to move out, they will open the process up to new applicants but some of the 30 finalists could be contacted.

“This industry changes so quickly and there are so many ideas that are constantly coming out; we don’t want to be in a position where we’re stagnant,” Le said. “Don’t get me wrong; if they want to stay, that’s perfectly fine as well.

When people have the ability to grow, they probably will, and we want that.”

Le has used his own concepts of Okie Pokie and Noodee, which began operation as separate restaurants inside his former Guernsey Park restaurant in March, as a dry run for the point-of-sale system that will manage the multiple concepts at The Collective.

“I love the transition that we’ve made; we’ve learned a lot, and it’s gone really well,” Le said. “I think it is going to work. This is my test subject for The Collective with the two different concepts we have in here. It’s worked great.”

Le said that construction is slated to finish on the Midtown site by December and it will be operational by Spring 2019 at the latest, but they are shooting for January or February 2019.

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The Collective will collect a percentage of gross restaurant sales each month while providing signage, kitchen equipment and maintenance. | Photo provided O kg a z e t t e . c o m | j u n e 1 3 , 2 0 1 8

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One of the most frustrating days of work for small business owner Dewayne Callahan turned into the most fortuitous for his burgeoning Chicago-style hot dog truck.

With the Oklahoma wind whipping and sales slow one afternoon, Callahan’s daughter Maddi sent out a tweet from her Twitter account showcasing her father’s hard work at Callahan’s Chicago Dogs and their newest creation: an allbeef hot dog topped with macaroni and cheese and crumbled bacon.

“Guys, my dad literally loves cooking so much & owning this business means the world to him. His food is seriously amazing…I don’t have many followers so this won’t get much exposure but if you see this plz RT [retweet] it,” Maddi wrote from the account @duhitzmaddii on May 19. The tweet has received over 115,000 retweets and gotten more than 160,000 likes on the social media app.

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A Chicago Dog from Callahan’s Chicago Dogs | Photo Jacob Threadgill

Dewayne Callahan stands near his hot dog truck in a photo that garnered over 115,000 retweets on Twitter. | Photo provided

Callahan’s Chicago Dog from a twicea-month operation to being open five days per week. Callahan’s stepson Malik Dotson quit his day job with United Parcel Service (UPS) to manage the cart during weekdays while Callahan works as a radiation therapist at ProCure Proton Therapy Center.

Callahan grew up in the Chicago area, eating hot dogs on the way to Bears, Cubs and White Sox games and has always dreamed about one day owning a stand like the ones back home.

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A Mac Dog from Callahan’s Chicago Dogs

He bought his first hot dog stand in Oklahoma City a few years ago, after joining the Facebook group Hot Dog Slingers R Us — a national group devoted to providing tips and techniques for hot dog vendors.

“I started by working basketball tournaments with the kids, but I never felt like I was doing it the way that I wanted,” Callahan said.

He bought a new cart complete with built-in steam trays about a year ago but wasn’t able to expand beyond more than two to three events per month.

“I realized that I am getting older and if I really want this thing to go, I have to put in what I want to get out of it,” Callahan said. “A few months before the tweet went out, I decided that I’m either going to get in and put a lot into it or I’m going to sell both of the carts and find something different.”

Those thoughts were running through his head on the fateful day in May. Callahan and his daughter Maddi were set up outside Turf Wars for a packed event filled with birthday parties, but they kept seeing families bring in pizza box after pizza box.

It was the first day they added a macaroni and cheese hot dog to the menu, but after being set up for a few hours, they had only one sale.

“I was starting to get a little frustrated, and Maddi was like ‘It’s OK if we’re not getting people,’ and then she said, ‘Do you mind if I send a tweet out?’ and the rest is where we are now.”

After the tweet exploded, Callahan said that he began receiving offers to set up his truck instead of him having to solicit businesses. Callahan’s Chicago Dogs is usually set up during the week in the parking lot of Family Video at 7025 NW 122nd St. two to three days a week for lunch and dinner and has an arrangem e nt w it h Edna’s at 5137 Classen Circle to serve 9 p.m.-2 a.m.

Fridays and Saturdays.

“I think it was smart because Oklahoma City doesn’t have a market where they serve a quality Chicago dog,” Dotson said. “He timed it well and took the success of the tweet and it ran with it. I couldn’t be more proud.”

Callahan’s Chicago Dogs specializes in the traditional Chicago dog ($5),

| Jacob Threadgill

complete with neon green relish, tomatoes, pickles and sport peppers. It also serves bratwurst, Polish sausage, nachos and the creation that is now call the Mac Dog ($6), an all-beef natural Vienna hot dog topped with macaroni and cheese and crumbled bacon.

The picture of the macaroni dog in the tweet brought Luke Lupton all the way from Moore to Callahan’s Family Video location in early June for lunch.

Lupton said that when he saw the tweet, he knew he wanted to support a fellow small business owner. He started Lupton Lawn Care with his brother Samuel this year.

I really want this thing to go, I have to put in what I want to get out of it.

Dewayne Callahan “When I see someone out there that is offering a great product and providing for the community, I’m always going to go out and support it,” Lupton said.

“When I saw the tweet and saw that he actually enjoys what he is doing, there was no was I was going to miss it.”

Since expanding the cart service, Callahan said that he has had to buy a new refrigerator to store the orders of Vienna Beef hot dogs, which is a Chicago institution since 1893.

The first cart that Callahan bought is currently being retrofitted to remove a grill that is against city health department regulations, and he is hopeful that it will be operational in the coming weeks. After the second cart is up and running, his dream is to open a brickand-mortar restaurant.

“We’ve got a lot of legwork between now and [opening a brick-and-mortar],” Callahan said. “It’s brought us all together as a family business. It is all hands on deck. It’s great because we spend time working and planning.

When we get a break, we enjoy it and have a good time.”

Follow @dcallahanokc on Twitter and @hotdogchi on Facebook for updates on times and locations of Callahan’s Chicago Dogs.

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eat & DRINK

Fruit fun

One of the perks of enduring the heat of summer is access to fresh fruit that doesn’t come from a hothouse. From drinks to dessert and salads, here are seven restaurants that are having fun with fruit this summer.

By Jacob Threadgill | Photos by Jacob Threadgill, Gazette / file and provided

Cafe 501

5825 NW Grand Boulevard hrgok.com/cafe-501 | 405-844-1501

What’s more fun than combining fruit with fried goat cheese? That’s what you can get on the lunch menu with Cafe 501’s strawberry and spinach salad that also includes chicken, hearts of palm, carrots, sugared walnuts and balsamic vinaigrette. If you go for brunch, order the stuffed French toast that puts strawberries in walnut raisin bread.

Raspados Hawaiian 6041 NW 23rd St. raspadoshawaiianokc.com 405-603-3060

What started in a tiny shack in 2012 expanded to two locations in 2015.

Raspados are the Mexican equivalent to shaved ice, but with over 40 flavors from which to choose, you can find plenty of options beyond your normal shaved ice stand. Obispos are made with fresh fruit in four flavors — mango, strawberry, pineapple and banana — that are topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Pie Junkie

1711 NW 16th St. piejunkie.com | 405-605-8767

It’s not summer unless you’re watching baseball with a slice of apple pie, right?

If outdated stereotypes aren’t your thing, don’t worry because Pie Junkie has much more than just apple. Dig into a slice of blackberry crumble with a scoop of ice cream or enjoy a whip creamtopped strawberry diner slice. Lemon cream is the pie of the month for June.

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324 SW 25th St. grillonthehillokc.com | 405-634-9866

The fritter offering at Grill on the Hill has expanded over the years. It started with the somewhat traditional apple cinnamon, which is now joined by strawberry-pineapple, blueberry-lime and its more recent addition, peach. At just $1 for an order of two, they can be a start or finish to your meal at this Capitol Hill restaurant that recently celebrated its 10th anniversary.

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Fresh fruit is displayed in a variety of forms at this Windsor neighborhood spot. It serves up fruit ice cream, raspados, and agua fresca, among other options. You can also get a fruit cocktail platter that is covered in lime juice and topped with chili seasoning for an acidic and spicy kick. The fruit cocktail includes watermelon, mango, cantaloupe, cucumber and jicama.

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ARTS & CULTURE

cov er

A 2017 FiberWorks entry by Pamela Husky | Image provided

The tapestry Fiber is taking over the metro art scene. By Ben Luschen

Many of Oklahoma City’s biggest summer art exhibitions share a common thread. Fiber art has entangled the local scene.

There was no grand meeting of art galleries and institutions to plan shows around the broad medium. But with at least three major fiber exhibits in the metropolitan area running all at once, there clearly is a lot of contemporary interest in the potential of the medium’s varying forms.

“I’m not sure if I’m just noticing it now or if this is really just kind of a resurgence of fiber arts into the culture,” said Sarah Atlee, a longtime painter who switched her art focus to quilting two years ago.

Atlee is one of many featured artists in Once Old Is New, an exhibition by the Modern Quilt Guild’s OKC chapter. The exhibit — dedicated to presenting traditional American quilting styles with a fresh, contemporary twist — opens

Thursday at [Artspace] at Untitled, 1 NE Third St., and runs through Aug. 18.

But that’s far from all. Here is a short list of the other fiber shows going on in the state: • The juried FiberWorks exhibit has become the state’s definitive annual fiber art event. This year’s show — running Friday-Aug. 10 at Individual Artists of Oklahoma (IAO), 706 W. Sheridan Ave. — is the 40th yearly exhibit for Fiber Artists of Oklahoma.

• Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center welcomes Japanese-born and Kansas-based fiber artist Chiyoko Myose into its main gallery space for her solo exhibit Sojourning, which opened in early June and concludes Aug. 11 at the art center’s State Fair Park location, 3000 General Pershing Blvd.

• Outside the metro area, Oklahoma State University Museum of Art’s Layered Voices national quilting exhibition is open through Aug. 18 at 720 S. Hubbard St. in Stillwater.

Obviously the fiber arts — knitting, crochet, needlework and other fiber arrangements — are enjoying a local renaissance.

But the medium is as tied to the past as it is the present.

Once Old

Painting used to be like a chore for Atlee, which is unA 2017 FiberWorks entry by Molly Murphy Adams | Photo provided

fortunate considering her dream of finding prestige as a renowned gallery painter.

Atlee grew up knowing how to sew.

It is a skill she learned from her parents, who made their own clothes — a tradition that goes back in her family at least a few generations.

Growing up in an art-appreciative household, Atlee felt at home expressing herself creatively in a variety of mediums. While she has been a quilter for as long as she has been a painter and appreciates both as valid forms of art, she always viewed painting as her most direct ticket to professional artistry.

As Atlee worked toward her goal of becoming an accomplished painter, she never stopped quilting. In fact, her love for the activity only intensified over time.

More and more, painting was becoming something she did to fulfill other people’s desires and expectations. Quilting felt more personal and more rewarding.

“Quilting was joyful,” she said. “It was my dessert, but I had to eat my vegetables first.”

Eventually, it dawned on Atlee that there was no reason quilting couldn’t be her main course. After wrapping up a series of paintings she had committed to finishing for a gallery exhibition, she decided to turn her full art focus and energy toward quilting. Atlee has been a full-time quilter for the last two years.

“I am so glad I did that,” she said, “because it has been the most fun I’ve had making art in years.”

Atlee is a member of OKC’s Modern Quilt Guild, which is comprised of between 100 and 150 members. Once Old Is New, the group’s show at Untitled, will feature dozens of quilts that apply a fresh perspective to traditional quilting forms.

Quilting is an art form that exists in many cultures, and thus there is no one standard quilting tradition. Once Old focuses on the classic American styles and blocks, like the common “diamond square” or triangular “flying geese” patterns one might recognize from something a parent or grandparent made.

“We love to take something — a pattern that has been in use for hundreds of years — and give it a modern twist,” Atlee said. “That might mean blowing it up real big or using wild and crazy fabrics. Or maybe a quilt that is just one giant triangle and it’s the flying geese.”

Some Modern Quilt Guild members might label themselves artists while others would be more reluctant to do so. Atlee said the beauty of Once Old is that it puts all the quilts on display in a legitimate fine-art venue. It is simultaneous validation of the art form and its sometimes-unhailed artists.

“I think for probably several people in our group, they’ve never had a quilt in any show before,” she said. “[For them] to have one in this gallery here is so exciting for me personally.”

Families add knots to “A Thread X A Thread” during the opening of Chiyoko Myose’s Sojourning. | Photo Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center / provided

Visitor Ruby Jean Butler takes inspiration from “Akari” during the Sojourning opening. “Akari” is made of shoji paper and wood strips, used to make shoji panels that serve as room dividers and doors in traditional Japanese architecture. | Photo Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center / provided

FiberWorks

Fiber Artists of Oklahoma was founded in 1976 as Hand Weavers League of Oklahoma, and Sue Moss Sullivan was one of the group’s founding members.

In ’78, the first FiberWorks show was held at Kirkpatrick Planetarium, now Science Museum Oklahoma.

“It was not a juried show,” Sullivan said. “It was just an exhibit to show what quote ‘fiber art’ meant.”

What fiber art actually means, Sullivan said, is quite broad. Fiber art can be anything from crochet to a large, abstract gallery installation. What defines it is the use of string, thread or other supple, flexible materials to create something more elaborate.

Sullivan said many traditional fiber art forms got their start as “women’s continued on page 26

O kg a z e t t e . c o m | j u n e 1 3 , 2 0 1 8

25

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work” — at least in this culture.

But respect for and refinement of the works has grown over time.

“Anything considered fine art now began as a craft,” she said.

“Painting on cave walls thousands of years ago became fineart painting.”

Many forms of fiber art have strong ties to familial tradition. This is because sewing and crochet skills were once necessary for survival. Before people could go out and buy a blanket at the store, they needed to make their own.

“There are very few people who look at all of these fiber pieces and [aren’t] reminded of their grandmother who had a quilt,” Sullivan said.

The kind of works that are submitted into FiberWorks has evolved over time, but Sullivan said fiber artists have been challenging the conventions of the art form for decades. The show is always a good opportunity to keep up with the work of the area’s best and most well known fiber artists, but

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Sullivan’s favorite part of each year is learning about new, emerging talent.

“Just come see the show; the work speaks for itself,” Sullivan said. “Every year, it’s different.”

Sojourning

If something is still in place, but just barely, people often say it is hanging by a thread. To get somewhere in a hurry, we weave in and out of traffic.

When people say they are on pins and needles, it means they are alert.

The English language includes many allusions to fiber work.

“It’s not a coincidence,” said Jennifer Scanlan, Oklahoma Contemporary’s curatorial and exhibitions director. “It really is a source from which we draw a lot of ideas about how the world works.”

Myose’s Sojourning contains several large fiber installations. Often, her thread acts as a tangible representation of figurative threads, like the passage of time of the bonds that exist between people.

Scanlan said Myose began her art career as a painter but shifted to a fiber focus because of its three-dimensional potential.

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Sarah Atlee is one of several artists with quilts on display in the Once Old Is New exhibition at [Artspace] at Untitled. | Photo Amanda Lipscomb / provided 26

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“She’s very excited about her work being accessible, so she chose fiber on purpose to bring people in,” she said.

“She very much enjoys creating these immersive environments.”

Art can sometimes feel intimidating or foreign. But Myose puts her installations together with common thread. One piece titled “Bloom” uses stones and dryer sheets for great symbolic purpose.

When a piece is familiar and inviting, it is easier to think about it more critically as art. Fiber art is often made of things people see and touch on a daily basis, which helps break down walls.

“There’s something about it that’s really approachable,” Scanlan said. “And there’s a long history of fiber, so there’s these great traditions in cultures all over the world. It’s one of those things that connects us to all of humanity.”

‘Big comeback’

In some cases, quilting is an art form that is passed down within a family from generation to generation. That process slowed down in the post-industrial years when people were working with thread less often.

There might have been some risk of a lost art, but these days, people can learn the basics of quilting without having a grandmother who even knows

Sarah Atlee switched her full-time art focus from painting to quilting two years ago. | Photo Mark Hancock

how to sew. Atlee learned how to quilt by watching YouTube videos. The internet has made sewing, weaving and other fiber-related skills easy to pick up.

“There’s this incredible new resource we have for learning these things,” she said.

There is a common misconception that art cannot be functional or that things are functional could never be considered art. Atlee has found that often, when she gives quilts to people, they tell her they will never use it because it’s a work of art. That is not Atlee’s intention.

“There is no hard difference [between art and function],” she said.

“There’s subtle distinctions that are different for everybody.”

Atlee encourages anyone considering quilting but intimidated by it to press forward anyway. Nothing, she said, should hold a person back from trying something new. It is a surge of self-starters that has helped fuel the fiber revolution of today.

“Culturally, we lost touch with it for a little while,” Atlee said, “but it’s having a big comeback right now.”

Isabelle de Borchgrave, Marie de’ Medici, 2006, based on a 1595 portrait by Pietro Facchetti in the collection of the Palazzo Lancellotti, Rome.

Photo: Andreas von Einsiedel.

O kg a z e t t e . c o m | j u n e 1 3 , 2 0 1 8

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NomiNatioNs are Now opeN! Oklahoma City’s first and longest-running readers’ poll, Best of OKC, is back for its 34th year! We need your input to tell us the best our city offers, so nominate your favorites online at bestofoklahomacity.com, via Facebook or on our Best of oKC app until June 18.

save the dates for Best of oKC voting and the results!

NomiNatioN votiNg June 6-18

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Fiery landscapes

J. Chris Johnson uses symbolic images for his latest series of portraits at Mainsite Contemporary Art in Norman. By Jeremy Martin

The inspiration for J. Chris Johnson’s latest oil paintings came from not wanting to upset his mother.

“I’d done this show of portraits, and they were friends of mine,” Johnson said, “and some of them were people with substance abuse problems or mental issues. And my mom came to that show, and I could tell she was, like, disturbed by those faces. … I was trying to figure out a way to get my mom to see them without being disturbed.”

Johnson, a Norman-based artist with several recent works on display at Mainsite Contemporary Art, 122 E. Main St., in Norman through July 14, has primarily been known for his portraits since he began painting in oil about five years ago, but his mother’s response to his 2015 show made him try a different technique: painting “landscapes of people.” Even when people he’s painting are represented by sailboats on the sea or farmhouses against the sky, Johnson does not shy away from the inner conflicts that manifest themselves in outer signs of distress.

“I tried to find a way to show people that same thing but as boats on fire,” Johnson said. “So, I mean, some of these things are still disturbing, but nobody’s dying in them. There’s no people in them, but they’re portraits of people, you know, the idea of them. … It was the easiest way to make that metaphoric connection between those portraits and the viewer. So these paintings, they’re about the viewer having some kind of emotional reaction to them even if they don’t know what it is, because if I don’t tell people that these are portraits of people, they just think they’re pictures

“Sunrise on 1004 N. Porter” by J. Chris Johnson | Image provided

of cool boats on fire.”

Each painting was inspired by an individual, but the titles — “Car on Fire in the Cul de Sac,” “Family Silo” — give no indication of the intended subjects’ identities. The personal connection is intentionally obscured. In many ways, the portraits are more about the observer’s inability to save someone else from a bad situation, removed from their problems by the “metaphoric ocean” separating people from one another.

“People that need help generally won’t ask,” Johnson said, “and you can’t help them, and there’s nothing you can do but watch.”

For each viewer, the deeper meaning is different, and the fire doesn’t have to be something as serious as substance abuse or mental illness.

“It could relate to anything and anybody,” Johnson said. “It could be like, someone at your job gets promoted over you and you know they’re going to be terrible. You know, you’re going to eventually watch that boat burn down and sink into the sea.”

Fight or flight

Joshua Boydston, Mainsite’s associate director, said the paintings convey a common experience in modern life.

“J. Chris Johnson’s exhibition feels really relevant to the moment,” Boydston wrote in an email. “A lot of us feel like we are being confronted with a new disaster, political or otherwise, with every breaking news alert or refresh of our Twitter feed. Many of us are witnessing it from a place of relative comfort, behind a screen in the comfort of our home or office, but there are real people out there actually hurting and suffering, and you feel this sense of needing to do or say something but you don’t know what or how. This exhibition captures that fightor-flight sensation in a clever way, I think, and these paintings of burning homes and ships force you to confront that.”

Some paintings in Johnson’s latest exhibit depict a car or a barn on fire instead. The subject of one painting is a burning lighthouse.

“I talked to the person that I painted that after, and I kind of let it out of the bag that it was her,” Johnson said.

“She’s generally like a person you go to when you have problems. She’s like the mother of a group, but there’s also times when she has her own problems, and so it’s like going to a lighthouse and it’s not what you need it to be at that moment. I kind of just said it out of nowhere, and then I kind of realized, like, ‘Oh shit. Is she offended by that?

Was that all right?’”

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Though Johnson grew up in the coastal city of Corpus Christi, Texas, and rode Captain Clark’s Flagship paddlewheeler as a child, he said he has spent very little time on the water.

“I got married on a boat, but no, I don’t have any boating experience whatsoever,” he said.

He has also never taken an oil painting class and said he was originally drawn to the medium because he was unsure of his ability to do it.

“Painting was something different where I couldn’t use my experience drawing,” Johnson said. “I could possibly fail, and I did fail for years and years. … I like that risk of failure. It’s OK. If you know it’s going to be perfect what are you doing it for? Just take a photo and get on with your life.”

Johnson discovered that oil paints offer at least one advantage.

“It’s easier to paint fire with oil paints, you know what I mean?”

Johnson said. “It’s gray and black, and you make it warmer or cooler. Figuring out the warm and cool colors in paints is the biggest learning curve.”

Mention Gaz-Rej-5/16 to Receive discount

“Car on Fire in the Cul de Sac”

by J. Chris Johnson | Image provided

“Family Silo” by J. Chris Johnson | Image provided

Art scars

For his 2015 exhibition at Brass Bell Studios, Johnson created 44 oil paintings to cover a 35-foot wall, leaving an inch of space surrounding each one. He planned the layout using AutoCAD drafting software to determine how big each canvas should be before he started painting. His biggest failure in preparing for the show was failing to read the safety warnings for a caustic chemical he used for an unorthodox technique.

“I didn’t realize that turpentine would, like, hurt your hands,” Johnson said, “because I was dipping socks in turpentine and painting with it, and so my hands are scarred from it. So I stopped doing that.”

However, he has never been able to stop himself from drawing and has never let his lack of artistic education dissuade him from pursuing a career in art.

“I used to hound these people that owned a custom frame shop and art gallery in Corpus Christi, where I just went in there every day until they hired me,” Johnson said. “So I learned custom framing, I learned a little bit about the art world in Corpus Christi. I’m not

“Sunrise Over a Field” by J. Chris Johnson | Image provided

stoppable. I’m going to do it anyway.”

Johnson said his mother told him he started drawing before he could talk.

While Johnson’s mother might have inspired his latest show, he said there are no paintings representing her in the exhibition.

“No, not in this one,” Johnson said, laughing. “Even if there was, I would not say.”

Visit mainsitecontemporaryart. com.

J. Chris Johnson 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday through July 14 Mainsite Contemporary Art 122 E. Main St., Norman mainsitecontemporaryart.com | 405-360-1162

HONEY

an immersive performance June 14-16 and 21-23 A collaboration with Fresh Paint Lab, inspired by narratives of desire and intimate moments between strangers.

Tickets available: oklahomacontemporary.org oklahomacontemporary.org | 405 951 0000 | @okcontemporary 3000 General Pershing Blvd. | Oklahoma City, OK 73107

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ARTS & CULTURE

ART

“The Lady” by Tyra Shackelford | Photo Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art / Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art / provided

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Modern modes A Chickasaw art exhibit reveals the modern sensibilities of the tribe. By Nazarene Harris

Five years ago, the last monolingual Chickasaw language speaker died in Ada at the age of 93. The loss was monumental to the Chickasaw people, leaving those who knew Emily Dickerson with grief and those who had only heard of the tribal elder with worry that future Chickasaws would never know of a world where one of their own identified as Chickasaw first and foremost and refused to conform to anything else.

“I don’t think there’s a single Chickasaw who doesn’t worry about our culture being lost in one way or another,” Chickasaw tribe member and textile artist Tyra Shackleford said.

While there are less than one hundred people today who speak Chickasaw bilingually, The Chickasaw Nation, headquartered in Ada, is working to bring that number up.

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“Blood Bling” by Kristen Dorsey | Photo Chickasaw Press / Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art / provided

“The tribe has been working to build its resources for years,” Shackleford said. “Now that we have a solid foundation, we can support each other like never before.”

That support can be seen in the language, history, cooking and culture lessons that The Chickasaw Nation provides to its members and in the Nation’s sponsorship of the upcoming and unprecedented traveling art exhibit Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art. The exhibit launched June 7 at Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma, 555 Elm Ave., in Norman. Shackleford and 14 other Chickasaw artists will display over 60 combined pieces of art that contrast in every way but their meaning: the Chickasaw people are alive, thriving and cannot be silenced.

In a world where not one person speaks Chickasaw exclusively, 15 of the tribe’s artists hope to assure their tribe members and remind non-tribe members that the Chickasaw people still have a voice.

“Our culture is old, but it is not outdated,” Shackleford said. “Traditions our ancestors used hundreds of years ago have a place in our modern world.”

To create their one-of-a-kind works of art, each one of the exhibition’s artists used a method that their ancestors used as well.

In addition to Shackleford, the artists are sculptor Joanna Underwood Blackburn, painter Norma Howard, painter Erin Shaw, jeweler Kristen Dorsey, photographer Lisa Hudson, painter Brent Greenwood, painter Brenda Kingery, textile artist Maya Stewart, painter Bill Hensley, painter and printmaker Dustin Illetewahke Mater, textile artist Margaret Roach Wheeler, painter Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson), painter Paul Moore and blade maker Dan Worcester.

The exhibit’s curator, Manuela WellOff-Man, said the show will display art that reflects the blending of Chickasaw traditions with modern-day life.

Well-Off-Man and co-curator Karen Whitecotton selected the artists from a pool of applicants. Those chosen, they said, reflect the best of contemporary

“Watching Now” by Brenda Kingery | Image Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art / provided

Chickasaw art.

“From oil and watercolor to textiles and metals, glass, bronze and other materials, the artwork of the fifteen featured Chickasaw artists in this exhibition are unique, intrinsically Southeastern and distinctive in design among today’s contemporary tribal artists,” Well-Off-Man said.

Metal statement

Dorsey said her work packs a punch.

“I don’t mind making a political statement if it means standing up for my beliefs,” Dorsey, who owns her own jewelry store in Los Angeles, said. “To me, every piece of jewelry makes a statement.”

While every piece of jewelry in Dorsey’s L.A. store tells a story from Chickasaw history, she said her pieces in Visual Voices send a message.

“Blood Bling” is the name Dorsey gave to a necklace she created to be “intentionally gaudy.” It is nothing like the fine jewelry she sells in her boutique, designed with copper, freshwater pearls or precious stones.

By contrast, “Blood Bling” hangs on a heavy brass chain, the kind that is supposed to stand out and emphasize

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art

one’s power. An etched photo of Dorsey’s mother’s CDIB card hangs from the chain. A European-style frame with red, white and blue jewels holds the card in place. The jewels are cubic zirconia, Dorsey said, because the materials’ artificiality fit right in.

“It’s just very tacky,” Dorsey said. “I wanted it to be sarcastic. Blood quantum was a tool used by white supremacists in the early 19th century to control the population of Native people with the hope that eventually our people would no longer exist. People today think that Native Americans require proof of blood for you to identify with us, but the truth is that that whole concept was one that was imposed upon our people to oppress and eradicate us.”

“Blood Bling,” Dorsey said, is symbolic of the artificial Native American identity European settlers tried to impose upon the Chickasaw people.

Another one of Dorsey’s pieces in Visual Voices incorporates the logo of an oil company based in Oklahoma.

“This Oklahoma corporation donates to many politicians who, in turn, create biased policies regarding the fossil fuel industry based primarily upon whether or not they can keep being funded by the industry and its leaders,” she said.

“The process is more than unethical; it’s damning for future generations.”

Weaving dreams

While Dorsey’s art is sure to make you think, Schackleford’s will make you dream.

Shackelford’s piece “The Lady” is a ghostlike nine-foot silky shawl that the

artist made using an ancient Chickasaw technique similar to weaving.

The idea came to Shackelford after reading a passage from The De Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Henando de Soto to North America in 1539-1543, a collection of the impressions and observations that Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto experienced while traveling through North America in the mid-16th century. Much of the Chronicles are reflective of the interactions De Soto had with Native Americans.

“There is a passage in the Chronicles about a Chickasaw woman,” Shackelford said. “Hernando De Soto described her as kind and humble yet incredibly powerful. De Soto wrote that when he first saw this woman, she was wearing all white and was surrounded and adored by her fellow Chickasaws.”

The passage made an impression on Shackelford. The artist said for a European in the 16th century to hold a woman and a Native American with such high regard meant that she had to be truly special.

“The Lady,” Shackelford said, is a tribute to the Chickasaw woman.

The art featured in Visual Voices is symbolic of the artists, different in their details but similar at their core.

“We fear that the past could repeat itself,” Shackelford said, “that in the midst of change we’ll lose our identity.

But the reality is that we are changing because we are growing and improving.

We are expanding and thriving, and we are using the tools we have in today’s modern world to preserve our past and to move it forward.”

Dorsey said part of the exhibit is to show the differences in modern-day Chickasaws as well as the similarities.

“If there is one thing that I hope people will take away from this exhibit,” Dorsey said reflecting upon Shackelford’s sentiments, “it’s that just like art, the Chickasaw people are constantly evolving. We are all different, but we are all Chickasaw.”

Visit chickasawartists.com.

Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Wednesdays and Fridays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.- 9 p.m. Thursdays, 1-5 p.m. Sundays through Sept. 9

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Real intimacy

Honey explores the job hazards and emotional experiences of sex workers. By Jeremy Martin

The second show in Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center’s Women in Performance series follows symphonies with sex work.

Honey, a play commissioned from performance art collective Fresh Paint Performance Lab, runs ThursdaySunday and June 21-23 at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center and is the second of three planned entries in the Women in Performance series after The Other Mozart, which ran in March.

When Fresh Paint’s artistic director Chelcy Harrell began discussing the meaning of Women in Performance with the dream team she assembled to create a work on that theme, she began to notice a hidden subtext to their discussions.

“There almost always seemed to be some kind of crossover or parallels with using your body in the performing arts and also using your body for sex work or, how we address it in the show is, ‘intimate labor,’” Harrell said. “It’s something that really interested both of us to explore more deeply than what we might know on the surface or what we might think we know.”

Once Harrell and New York City-based director Katherine Wilkinson began exploring the idea with the performers, they realized many of their peers had personal experiences to draw from.

“We gathered 40 different artists in New York City, and we just started making a bunch of stuff. It was really cursory, and it was really kind of crazy and chaotic and fun,” Wilkinson said.

“We were all sitting around, talking, and people were starting to feel very comfortable, and all of a sudden, people I had known for years were like, ‘I’ve done sex work,’ and I had no idea at all.

I mean, there was no judgment from us … but it is something that is very pervasive and it’s everywhere, and

people don’t want to talk about it, but it’s a part of their lives.”

Even using the knowledge of the performers who had done some form of intimate labor, Wilkinson and Harrell soon discovered they needed to do more research.

“We realized that we didn’t know enough. We were like, ‘Oh my gosh; we also are making some serious assumptions about what it means to be engaged in intimate labor, and from there, in the middle of that week, I remember turning to Chelcy and both of us sort of at the same time were like, ‘We need to talk to people.

We need to talk to a lot of people.’”

Job interviews

The two conducted about 30 interviews over the next six months with women who have performed various types of intimate labor such as sex workers, exotic and burlesque dancers, massage therapists and nude models. Wilkinson conducted most of the interviews because it was easier to find people to talk to in New York City.

“I would get phone calls at very weird hours or, like, show up in the Bronx here and this woman will talk to you for an hour, which was always very scary and interesting,” Wilkinson said. “There’s very few things in New York City that are taboo. There are very few things that people aren’t just like, ‘Let’s talk about it.’”

People in Oklahoma were more reluctant to talk, especially on the record, because of the state’s stricter laws, Wilkinson said.

“It is a really taboo subject,” she said.

“It is a really hot topic, and particularly in Oklahoma City with the laws that are passed, people really conflate and confuse sex trafficking versus sex work, and they’re really different things.”

Not only are sex work and intimate

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labor different from sex trafficking, they are similar to other jobs and roles women have in society where the distinction bears further examination.

“Because of the way our world operates, intimacy, whether it be emotional or physical, is really central to a lot of the ways that women work in the world,” Wilkinson said. “There’s a lot of emotional labor that women do.”

Honey attempts to explore the ways people negotiate and manipulate with their bodies in order to move through the world and the capitalistic economy.

“That’s something we’ve actually explored, what actually defines sex work or intimate labor,” Harrell said. “If you go to a restaurant and have dinner with someone, are you expected to … is there some kind of trade that’s involved?”

Even the “sex” in sex work is more nebulous than it might seem.

“We had a bunch of sex workers who were like, ‘I don’t have sex most of the time,’” Wilkinson recalled. “‘These guys just want to sit with me. They want company.’”

Though they used the interviews for inspiration, Honey doesn’t draw from any of them directly.

“We did not feel that we, as non-sexworkers, could speak for sex workers.

That’s its own slippery slope,” Wilkinson said.

Work play

Honey focuses on the character Melissa, who is in a hotel on a business trip with a purpose that is largely ambiguous. Melissa is loosely based on the experience of an interview subject who worked as a prostitute in a hotel room during business conventions, but most of the more explicit details of her job are left out of the play.

“We didn’t really talk about the sex stuff,” Wilkinson said. “We really talked about, ‘So, like, do they clean the room every time after, or do they clean the room once a day? How many people do you see?’

— funny, weird details. … She was like, ‘No we don’t clean it every time, but make sure you get at least 20 towels, because they all take a shower afterwards.’”

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right Morgaine Gooding Silverwood and Holli Would in Honey left The cast of Honey | Photos provided

To Wilkinson, the similarities between the sex worker in the hotel room and the maid cleaning up after her are evident.

“Both of them are intimately engaged with people’s lives,” Wilkinson said. “Domestic workers are in your bathroom … often while you are there … and they’re both trades that are really shamed societally, because these forms of labor are usually done by women and done by poor women and often women of color, and because they’re also not jobs that are considered using intellect, which is so wrong. The sex workers we spoke to were some of the smartest fucking women on the planet.”

By artfully examining one woman’s experience in detail, Wilkinson and Harrell hope to open a wider, thoughtful discussion about heavily charged topics.

“We knew that we wanted to look very diligently at one individual and really create something that allowed us to get to know one person on an intimate level, and intimate not being sex-wise, intimate like, ‘Oh I know she makes avocado toast for breakfast,’” Wilkinson said. “Those kind of tiny details that make us fall in love with people and feel close to them … and also because we’re all theater geeks, we want magic. We want the ability for one person to open up into an entire universe. … What if we took away those assumptions and just told the story of this one woman in time and space and the multiplicity that one person can be?”

Honey’s creators stress that the play’s content would not merit more than a PG rating on film and invite people of all beliefs to participate in the discussion with open dialogue after the Thursday performances Thursday and June 21.

Visit oklahomacontemporary.org.

We offer great benefits Competitive Pay Benefits after 30 days include 2 weeks vacation Daycare reimbursement benefit! |

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Honey: An Immersive Performance 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, June 21-23 Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center 3000 General Pershing Blvd. oklahomacontemporary.org | 405-951-0000 $25

O kg a z e t t e . c o m | j u n e 1 3 , 2 0 1 8

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ARTS & CULTURE

High flying

The sixth annual Oklahoma City Burlesque Festival showcases a wide range of performance styles.

By Jacob Threadgill

While planning the sixth annual Oklahoma City Burlesque Festival, organizer and performer Adèle Wolf wants to show off a diverse group of performance types with high production values.

The Friday-Saturday festival at Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma, 1727 NW 16th St., featuring headliners Raquel Reed and Sydni Deveraux includes a wide selection of burlesque and variety performances — aerial, sword-swallowing, tap dancing and even snake charming — by 26 performers.

Wolf will perform twice over the weekend, including a new snake-charming set on Friday with her ball python named Lazarus. Wolf, who splits her time between Oklahoma City, Paris and Berlin, got what she calls “snake fever” when performing burlesque in New Orleans, where the act is popular.

“You don’t train the snake; that’s not possible,” Wolf said. “My rehearsal with him consists of mostly improv because I never know what he is going to do. It is just a matter of knowing what parts he’s comfortable resting on my body when I need to move him. Learning to move him gracefully is difficult because they’re really strong, even the smaller snakes.”

On Saturday, Wolf performs her most requested act that features giant fans and singing in a red-and-gold costume.

In total, she hosts about 10 public shows per year, including the annual New

Year’s Eve party at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center and a large number of corporate and private events.

“I’ve performed in 11 countries as a solo performer, and I’m always trying to expand,” she said. “I love to travel. I’ve done multiple productions in the U.S., and you always have comfort in your hometown, especially since I’ve been established for almost eight years. I have a good, supportive fan base here. I was recognized on the street last time I was in Berlin, and that was really exciting.”

World-renowned

As Wolf grows her brand, she said she’s always excited to perform in the place that gave her burlesque career its start: Oklahoma City. While her quarterly shows are often built around themes for holidays like Valentine’s Day, Halloween or New Year’s Eve, Oklahoma City Burlesque Festival is designed to showcase a wide selection of themes and styles.

Wolf hand-picked Reed and Deveraux to headline the festival but opened the featured performance slots for applications. Reed was New Orleans Queen of Burlesque in 2017 and was recently cast in the Las Vegas production Absinthe.

“Her costumes are gorgeous, and she is going to be doing award-wining rockabilly roller act,” Wolf said. “It’s very showgirl.”

Deveraux is a two-time runner-up (first runner-up in 2013 and second in 2017) at Miss Exotic World at the Burlesque Hall of Fame, which Wolf said is the most prestigious burlesque competition in the country.

She is one of several Oklahoma City Burlesque Festival performers who have runner-up finishes at Miss Exotic World. Los Angeles-based performer Jessabelle Thunder makes her Oklahoma debut after finishing first runner-up at the competition April 22. “[Thunder will] be doing the same act that placed there and that’s exciting,” Wolf said. “She’s one of the people that you see and her presence is just magnetic. She has an amazing stage presence and is an emotive dancer.”

Wolf takes pride in her ability to find talent, making note that half of last week’s Queen of Burlesque competitors have performed in one of her Oklahoma City productions.

“We’ve had a lot of Oklahoma debuts,” she said. “We want to bring world-class burlesque and variety to Oklahoma. I’ll go to shows around the world from Moulin Rouge to Las Vegas, and those play in my mind when I put together a show. We want high production value and really polished acts on a professional level.”

The festival also includes workshops in the fields of splits, fan dance, musicality and other performance tips hosted by Deveraux, Reed, Thunder and Emma D’Lemma. Wolf said that the workshops are primarily for other performers, but they are open to the public.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve never tried to do the splits in your entire life,” Wolf said. “Even people that just want to learn a new skill and aren’t necessarily in performance [are welcome.]”

Tickets are $30-$60. Guests must be at least 18 years old to enter and 21 to drink.

“I consider myself a feminist and body-positive, queer-friendly producer, so it’s important to me that audience members can see someone that represents them on stage,” Wolf said.

After performing all over the world, Wolf enjoys bringing burlesque to Oklahoma City, which only had a nascent scene when she began performing. She said about half the audience has supported her shows since the beginning.

“We get performers from around the world, and they always talk about how great the audience is. Oklahomans — whether it is sports or burlesque — if they support what you’re doing, they’re going to show up and be really enthusiastic and give great support,” she said.

Visit okcburlesquefest.com.

from left Raquel Reed, New Orleans Queen of Burlesque, is headlining 2018’s Oklahoma City Burlesque Festival; Jessabelle Thunder will make her Oklahoma debut weeks after finishing second in the prestigious Miss Exotic World competition; Sydni Deveraux is a headliner at Oklahoma City Burlesque Festival; and Adèle Wolf is based in Oklahoma City, Paris and Berlin. | Photos provided

OKC Burlesque Festival 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday Lyric Theatre | 1727 NW 16th St. okcburlesquefest.com | 405-673-6162 $30-$60 38

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t h eater

ARTS & CULTURE

Freaky modern

Disney’s Freaky Friday comes to Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma. By Nazarene Harris

For more than 40 years, fans have adored the story Freaky Friday. From its novel debut in 1972 to the film adaptation in 1976 with Jodie Foster and again in 2003 with Lindsey Lohan, families have enjoyed immersing themselves in the delightfully hilarious tale of a mother and daughter who magically wake up one Friday morning having unknowingly switched bodies overnight.

This year, The Walt Disney Company gave a few theaters across the nation permission to use the film’s story line and turn it into a theatrical celebration featuring unique music, plot twists, characters and costumes. Lyric Theatre

of Oklahoma took on the challenge and will debut its modern-day version of Freaky Friday June 26.

“This is a brand-new story based on the concept of Freaky Friday,” said Lyric Theatre’s producing artistic director, Michael Baron. “Our version is super modern and relatable to families today.

Throughout the play, characters can be seen embracing diversity and feminism, which I don’t think audiences really saw in past productions.”

I wanted to know if what she read in the script really mirrored what life for her is like in high school right now.

Jennifer Teel Indeed, in every scene except for one in the play, women are in the forefront.

“In the one scene where men are in the forefront,” Baron said with a laugh, “they are talking about the women.”

Intricate problems

Jennifer Teel plays mother Katherine Blake in Lyric Theatre’s production of Disney’s Freaky Friday. | Photo Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma / provided

Lyric Theatre’s version of the story also includes a high school demographic that is incredibly technology savvy.

For as modern as the version is, Jennifer Teel, who plays the mother in Lyric Theatre’s production, said the story’s message is one that surpasses time.

“It’s ancient,” Teel, an Oklahoma mother of two, said. “As parents, we get busy trying to provide the best life possible for our kids. Our days are filled with trying to balance our work life, home life and personal life. It becomes

easy for us to believe that our kid’s problems can’t possibly be bigger than ours.”

She hinted upon the play’s opening song titled “I Got This,” in which, after both the mother and daughter have realized they have switched bodies, they declare that the change will be a breeze since each views the other’s life as a walk in the park.

“The daughter, once in her mother’s shoes, realizes just how hard her mom works and how much she really loves her children while the mother realizes that her daughter’s problems are far from trivial,” Teel said. “They switch bodies just in time, right before a connection between them could have been lost but is instead made stronger.”

The best part of the play, Teel said, is that families will walk away from it with either a better understanding of one another or a desire to learn more about one another.

“No matter how small our kids’ problems might seem, the reality is that if they are big to our kids, then they are big — period,” Teel said.

She rehearsed her lines for the play with her teenage daughter.

“I wanted her perspective,” Teel said.

“I wanted to know if what she read in the script really mirrored what life for her is like in high school right now.”

Her daughter, 15-year-old Sarah, said the play is spot-on.

“Another way that this version is different than past versions is that we intentionally casted the daughter to be different than what audiences typically see on the big screen,” Teel said.

“We intentionally chose someone who is not super skinny, someone who could portray a normal girl in high school just trying to survive.”

Modern lessons

In addition to the outward theme of the mother-daughter bond, the play also touches upon topics like acceptance of homosexuality and the benefits of diversity.

“High school today is not like how high school was 30, 40 or even 20 years ago,” Baron said. “And audiences who see this play will pick up on that quickly.”

Celeste Rose plays daughter Ellie Blake, who switches bodies with her mother, in Lyric Theatre’s production of Disney’s Freaky Friday. | Photo Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma / provided

Like most theatrical successes, the moral lessons in Lyric Theatre’s Freaky Friday are conveyed through stunning song and dance performances.

“The music in this play is outstanding,” Baron said. “There’s a lot of pop rock and a lot of collaborations. I think the audience will get a kick out of the music and the humor.”

Lyric’s cast includes mother Katherine Blake played by Jennifer Teel, daughter Ellie Blake played by Celeste Rose, Noah Waggoner, Mateja Govich, Sean Watkinson, Maggie Spicer, Madison Hamilton, Ashley Arnold, Gordie Beingesser, Cale Richards, Abbie Ruff, Caitlin Belcik and Justin Deparis.

Freaky Friday runs June 26-July 1 at Civic Center Music Hall, 201 N. Walker Ave. Tickets are $37-$93. Call 297-2264 or visit lyrictheatreokc.com.

Disney’s Freaky Friday June 26-July 1 Civic Center Music Hall | 201 N. Walker Ave. lyrictheatreokc.com | 405-297-2264 $37-$93

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ARTS & CULTURE

CO M M U N I T Y

Jesus House offers shelter and support for the homeless, nearly homeless, addicted and mentally ill people in the community. | Photo Jesus House / provided

Recovery work

Jesus House celebrates 45 years of service.

By Daniel Bokemper

For 45 years, Jesus House has grown synonymous with the care and rehabilitation of Oklahoma City’s downtrodden. Founded by Sister Ruth Wynne and Sister Betty Adams in 1973, the nonprofit began as a ministry dedicated to providing for the homeless. After years of meaningful growth, Jesus House has developed into a premiere outreach program for the impoverished population of the greater metro.

Throughout the organization’s existence, it has transformed from just providing meals to offering a comprehensive prog ram for individuals experiencing hardship. Not only does Jesus House continue to provide support to the homeless, but its support has grown to provide aid to victims of mental illness and addiction.

Recently, Michael Bateman assumed the role of executive director of Jesus House. However, his interest in his cause even preceeds his years as director of operations for the establishment.

“If you’re in social services, you’re in it because you have a heart for the population,” Bateman said. “When I was a kid, my mom, my sister and I volunteered at the Veterans Affairs office, went through nursing homes and handed out sack lunches to people on skid row. My mom instilled in us the necessity of loving and helping people no matter the circumstances.”

During his tenure, Bateman has witnessed Jesus House assist hundreds of thousands of those in need. A fixture of the community, Jesus House has been able to broaden its horizons while still maintaining the mission Wynne and Adams sought years ago.

With this endeavor came a deeper understanding of how to effectively 42

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treat those in recovery. Shortly after Bateman became director, he found there was a desperate need for the program to expand.

“The length of our recovery program used to be six months, but now it’s 10 to a year,” Bateman said. “It takes the average addict or someone with mental illness about 10 months for them to feel better and meaningfully improve. The ability to establish a routine, make meetings and maintain a job — it all takes time.”

Previously, Bateman felt though the regimen itself was strong, Jesus House still experienced a questionable number of relapses. However, with the implantation of a longer program, a noticeable reduction of recurring clients occurred.

The extension under Bateman instilled a stronger sense of discipline and overall quality of life in those graduating Jesus House. Furthermore, the work of Jesus House’s career development sector has added another dimension to its graduates’ long-term success.

“After a client graduates our program, they move into a six-month transitional period designed to help them develop job and interview skills,” Bateman said. “Afterwards, we help to find them avenues of work, especially if their previous job might not be healthy for them in the long run. We even help them build up a savings account and work towards major transactions like buying a vehicle and getting their own place to live. We really do a lot here.”

Volunteer driven

In the midst of its transformation Jesus House has experienced growth in other sectors as well. In Bateman’s eyes, the

program’s outreach has, in turn, led to an influx of civil support.

“I noticed our family feedings have gone up,” Bateman said. “Beyond that, we’ve seen growth in the community outreach we do. More organizations and churches are coming to be involved with us. The word’s been getting out through our Love Thy Neighbor ministry. The work here has just been impactful.”

As a nonprofit, Jesus House’s ability to sustain itself has come largely from a vast network of volunteers. Be it working in a day in their warehouse or orchestrating a massive outreach campaign, the success of Jesus House has always been contingent upon the presence of those striving towards a greater good.

“There is no way we could do this without our volunteers,” Bateman said.

“In the kitchen, in the classes, as mentors, we have to have them. It’s awesome to see people who want to serve — individuals, churches and big corporations alike. It’s an absolute blessing.”

Just as Jesus House seeks to improve the lives of those enrolling in its program, so too does the institution better those coming to serve. The ability for Jesus House to retain volunteers and welcome newcomers is pivotal to the establishment’s continued success.

Their presence fosters a sense of empathy and obligation within the community, empowering Oklahoma City’s less fortunate in the process.

During his time at Jesus House, Bateman has observed volunteers develop into proactive leaders.

Recurring faces often spur a higher rate of effectiveness within Jesus House’s many practices.

“We can always measure the power of our cause by the volunteers we continue to have,” Bateman said. “Over my five years here, we’ve maintained many of the volunteers we had even from before I started. They continue to see our growth and are able to actively to contribute to our success. They may feel blessed to have a little part in this, but I know they are a major impact on our clients.”

Bateman said Jesus House is always seeking volunteers. With additional

support, he predicts Jesus House is prime for more significant expansion.

However, there are few aspects of the facility that he feels they need to address.

“We’re in a 1938 school building right now,” Bateman said. “Though we’re not looking to move, we still need to update some stuff. We’re still using window units and a boiler system in place of central heating and air, for instance.

Beyond our home building, we’re looking to add a few dormitories and a gym and multipurpose building so our clients can exercise better and we can house more people in inclement weather.”

If you’re in social services, you’re in it because you have a heart for the population.

Michael Bateman Through the efforts of Jesus House, Bateman has noticed a significant and positive impact on the city. Though Jesus House’s staff efforts are deliberate, the director feels the willingness to give and provide help is second nature to Oklahomans.

“Oklahomans are always willing to give and help,” Bateman said. “Jesus House seeks to grow that very nature in everyone we interact with. As long as I’m blessed enough to be involved with this, we will continue to honor the mission of Sister Ruth and Sister Betty.

I absolutely cannot thank our founders and the people of our community enough. We want to be around for another 45 years, and the folks continuing to help us will ensure we get there.”

Over nearly half a century, Jesus House has become one of the most prominent nondenominational Christian outreach programs in the country.

Call 405-232-7164 or visit jesushouseokc.org.

Jesus House was founded in 1973 by Sister Ruth Wynne and Sister Betty Adams. | Photo Jesus House / provided

H ealth

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Measuring movement

University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center’s new facility brings new technology to the region.

By Jeremy Martin

Technology evolved from World War II-era flight simulators and similar to that used to create computer-generated characters in blockbuster movies and video games will help physicians, physical therapists and educators assess human movement and prevent injury at a new facility opening this spring at University of Oklahoma’s College of Allied Health.

The Center for Human Performance Measurement, the only facility of its kind in the Oklahoma City metro region, is home to a motion-analysis system utilizing 12 cameras to detect movements in three dimensions.

Human participants outfitted with strategically positioned reflective markers perform physical tasks on camera, allowing their movement to be captured and analyzed in great detail. Force plates installed in the floor measure ground-reaction forces to help determine kinetics.

“There are two parts of biomechanics: kinematics, which is movement, and kinetics, which is forces placed upon each joint system,” said Carol Dionne, doctor of physical therapy and the center’s director. “This is fancy talk meaning that we can assess any joint within our bodies during the performance of any kind of movement. … In summary, we can de-

Doctors and scientists at OU’s Center for Human Performance Measurement will assess movement with a new motion analysis system. | Photo University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center / provided

termine the biomechanics of any movement and the muscle activity during that movement at the same time. So it’s a full assessment of people’s movement and muscle activity.”

The equipment at the new center is capable of measuring gait, balance and muscle activation in such specific detail that the data can be used to determine subtle deviations that might lead to greater injury risk over time.

Dionne, an associate professor of rehabilitation sciences at the university, said she has been seeking opportunities to analyze human biomechanics in greater detail since she began practicing physical therapy in 1977.

“I’ve always analyzed movement; that’s the core of what physical therapists do — assess human movement,” Dionne said. “This was an opportunity where all the conditions were right — the location, the funding, the grant application — all at once. … I was very fortunate. All the stars were in alignment, so to speak.”

continued on page 44

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ARTS & CULTURE H ealth

continued from page 43

Historic data

The center acquired equipment through a grant from Presbyterian Health Foundation, a nonprofit organization funding medical research and education in Oklahoma City.

The center’s administrators are hiring staff to run the facility and operate the equipment, which also includes a wireless electromyography machine to detect muscle activation and two high-powered computers to analyze the large volumes of data collected.

“Processing data is huge,” Dionne said. “There’s a lot of data points.”

The technology has advanced tremendously since Edwin Link first began teaching Air Corps pilots to read flight gauges using a facsimile airplane attached to a system of pneumatic organ bellows and vacuum tubes during World War II, and the potential uses for motion detection have multiplied exponentially.

“From that, the computer went from the size of a room to the size of the palm of your hand,” Dionne said.

“Engineering can go right, left and center, and the applications are all over the place.”

Potential movement

One application for human performance measurement will be helpful to Dionne

in her work as the director of the university’s Mechanical Therapy Research Lab, which is dedicated to researching ways people with lower limb loss can prevent work-related injuries.

“We have a population of workingage adults who have undergone, for whatever reason, limb amputation, and after rehab, we have to determine if they’re ready to go back to work,” said Dionne of the study’s participants.

“These are people who are already working and they have volunteered themselves to see how they perform, how they walk at different paces, how they lift weighted objects, how they carry weighted objects — in other words simulating a job-type activity, and we analyze that to determine a potential risk for injury.”

Other potential studies are widely varied, and Dionne said that the center will be utilized by researchers and educators throughout the university system as well as medical practitioners seeking research to develop more effective rehabilitation and risk-assessment.

Though the center is not a patient-care facility, the studies conducted there might have a wide-ranging impact on treatment methods.

“I’m in the process of working with what we call the primary investigators who are very interested in using the center,” Dionne said, “and we’re col-

laborating with them to apply for grant funding, and right now, we’re in those stages. We’re also working to negotiate and form relationships with different physician groups.”

We can determine the biomechanics of any movement and the muscle activity during that movement at the same time.

Carol Dionne Studies performed at the center might have applications for professional athletes, ballet dancers, people suffering from multiple sclerosis and medical professionals performing resuscitation in neonatal intensive care units. The equipment can be calibrated to measure the biomechanics of people of all shapes and sizes.

“We also are able to test people throughout the age span,“ Dionne said.

“These are sensitive enough instruments [that] we in this particular center have tested babies. You can adjust the settings and the parameters and also the force plates and the processing speed by which we detect the movement accordingly so

we can measure infant movement.”

Though some researchers in other fields have also suggested potential applications for veterinarian medicine and even the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles, Dionne said these types of studies are not the center’s immediate priority.

“But I think right now, our focus is human performance measurement, underline human,” she said.

Within the field of physical therapy alone, the potential for advancing knowledge through research conducted at the new center is considerable because the measurement of human movement is at the heart of how physical therapists help people.

“Assessing movement is like the fruition of our work in rehabilitation sciences,” Dionne said. “We assess patients, evaluate patients, and we have to perhaps minimize, reduce or eliminate pain because that’s the big disruptor in movement, but the end result, performance, is what it’s all about — return to work, return to sport, live pain-free. That’s what we do. That’s our job.”

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Ride on

Full Moon Bike Ride and Run celebrates the summer solstice. By Heather Warlick

Summer Solstice on June 21 is the official first day of summer, the longest day of the year and a time for celebration at Myriad Botanical Gardens. The Summer Solstice Celebration makes the most of the long twilight with free yoga, live music, flower crown making, vendors, food offerings and a Full Moon Bike Ride and Run. The bike ride and run usually draws hundreds of attendees geared up to get some exercise and have fun doing it. The run is a 5K led by OK Runner. At 8 p.m., runners will take their marks and enjoy the non-competitive run winding through scenic downtown as the sun sets.

At 8:30 p.m., cyclists will helmet up and join in the fun, pedaling en masse through the city. Often, the rides follow alongside the Oklahoma River or snake through downtown.

Erin Engelke, 39, will take her mark with her fellow runners for the 5K. She’s an avid runner but also loves to ride bicycles with her husband and three kids. Between the five of them, they own eight bikes.

Jason Engelke; the couple’s son Gabe, age 12; and daughters Ava, 10, and Elin, 7, will be Erin’s cheerleaders as she crosses the finish line. The family has a routine for these events, being regulars for the past four years. Dad and the kids drop Mom off at the start of the run, park and unload their bikes and safety equipment and then wait for Mom at the finish line, with her bike, shoes and helmet ready.

“Then I throw my shoes on and hop on my bike and we head out for the ride,” Erin Engelke said. “The ride is an easy one, and even after running a 5K, you’re not huffing and puffing.”

The Engelkes are one of many families who try not to miss the Full Moon Bike Ride and Run, which is held monthly through August. June 21 is this season’s

from left Jason, Erin, Gabe, Ava and Elin Engelke will participate in the Full Moon Bike Ride and Run June 21 for their fourth summer. | Photo provided

first event, as last month’s was canceled due to a threat of extreme weather.

Community cycling

While Erin Engelke might get the most intense exercise at the event, Jason Engelke is more invested in the local cycling community. He participates in many local riding events, including the Tuesday night Wheeler races and Cyclocross, an event combining short courses of various terrain and obstacles.

Elin has been riding a bike in the Full

Moon Bike Ride and Run since she was still in a carseat. The Engelkes are a biking family, for sure, and they look forward to the Full Moon event every month, rarely missing one.

The Full Moon rides combine healthy activities in a social and festive atmosphere. During the ride, they said, some cyclists get extra festive with stereo setups on their bikes. Some people decorate their bikes with lights. Some decorate themselves. During the Halloween Bike Ride and Run, the sky’s the limit.

“Cycling is a friendly sport, and the majority of people down there are smiling and happy because exercising releases those endorphins,” Jason said.

“It’s just fun. It’s like a party on a bike,” Erin added.

Biking might be a social sport, but running, she said, is a bit more solitary.

Being more physically demanding than a leisurely ride, it’s hard to converse with fellow runners.

“Runners, they kind of just run on their own,” she said. “But it’s fun when you get to the end because there’s a whole line of cyclists that are cheering you on. It’s definitely a team environment. It’s not like cyclists against runners or anything.”

Jason is trying to start a bike club for elementary school-age kids in the metro. The idea comes from Tulsa Bicycle Club, which he said has been extremely successful in getting kids active and engaged with biking.

“They have a curriculum the kids follow with teacher support, and they have a lot of volunteers that come in from the community,” he said.

The kids learn bike etiquette and safety, bike maintenance, riding techniques and

more. If they stick with the program for the entire school year and graduate the program, they are awarded a bike.

“The Tulsa schools have found that it is so meaningful, it’s increased the attendance of the kids, it’s increased the overall positive outlook of school by the members of the Bike Club,” Jason said. “They’re trying to track it to see if it will increase their graduation rates.”

He is excited by the growing cycling community in the metro and about the area’s investment in creating trails, such as the one Oklahoma City is building to link the districts and Edmond’s trail project, which links that city’s parks and public spaces to Lake Arcadia.

Safety first

The Engelkes offered some tips for safe riding and running and some of the rules for the Full Moon Bike Ride and Run. Riders are required to have a blinker or flasher on the front and rear of their bikes. Because it’s a twilight and moonlight ride, a headlight is also a good idea.

Spokies Bike Share OKC bikes will be available to rent at the event and are equipped with headlights and taillights.

When biking in large groups such as at the Full Moon event, riding etiquette is very important for safety.

Signal the direction you’re going to turn and observe any traffic signs and signals. If you’re passing a slower rider, announce yourself and on which side you’ll be passing. A simple “on the left” will suffice.

Point out any rocks or potholes, water spots, gravel, railroad tracks and other hazards on the road and try to ride consistently and don’t make sudden moves or brake unexpectedly. It can be tough to communicate these things when riders wear headphones.

In general, Jason said the law states that when cars approach a cyclist from behind to pass, they’re required to give at least three feet of clearance to the cyclist, but five feet is a better space for the safety of all.

“It’s a human being on that bike,” he said. “It’s likely a mom or a dad that’s just trying to get out and be healthy.

They’re not meaning to be a nuisance and slow people down.”

OK Runner, Schlegel Bicycles and Ride OKC will hold ride and run safety workshops 15 minutes prior to the event start times.

Visit myriadgardens.com.

Myriad Gardens Summer Solstice Celebration 7:30-10:30 p.m. June 21 Myriad Botanical Gardens 301 W. Reno Ave. myriadgardens.com | 405-445-7080 Free

Full Moon Bike Ride and Run 8 p.m. June 21 Full Moon Bike Ride and Run is June 21 at Myriad Botanical Gardens. | Photo provided

$5 O kg a z e t t e . c o m | J u n e 1 3 , 2 0 1 8

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CALENDAR These are events recommended

by Oklahoma Gazette editorial staff members. For full calendar listings, go to okgazette.com.

Books Bard’s Book Club read plays by Shakespeare and several other authors and join a discussion about the characters, language, plot and more, 6-7:45 p.m.

May 15, June 19, July 17, August 21. Shakespeare on Paseo, 2920 Paseo St., 405-235-3700, oklahomashakespeare.org. TUE Brad McLelland Book Signing the author will sign copies of Legends of the Lost Causes, an adventure story for middle-grade children about a band of zombie-fighting orphans, 12-1:30 p.m. June 16. Best of Books, 1313 E. Danforth Road, 405-3409202, bestofbooksok.com. SAT Cristee Cook Book Signing the author will autograph copies of her children’s nonfiction book Your Hands Can Change The World!, 2-5 p.m. June 16, Full Circle Bookstore, 1900 Northwest Expressway, 405-842-2900, fullcirclebooks.com. SAT An Evening with Terry Brooks New York Times bestselling author Terry Brooks signs his latest book The Skaar Invasion, 6 p.m. June 18. Full Circle Bookstore, 1900 Northwest Expressway, 405-842-2900, fullcirclebooks.com. MON Grand Re-Opening celebrate the opening of an African-American bookstore with soul food, 10 a.m.7 p.m. June 16. Nappy Roots, 3705 Springlake Drive, 405-896-0203. SAT Karen Robards Book Signing the author will autograph copies of her adventure novel The Moscow Deception, 6:30-8 p.m. June 20. Full Circle Bookstore, 1900 Northwest Expressway, 405-8422900, fullcirclebooks.com. WED Rick Bragg Book Signing the author will autograph copies of his childhood memoir and cookbook The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. June 16, Full Circle Bookstore, 1900 Northwest Expressway, 405-8422900, fullcirclebooks.com. SAT Sara Cunningham Book Signing the author will autograph copies of her memoir How We Sleep at Night, about learning to accept her gay son and ultimately the LGBT community as a whole, 6:30 p.m.

June 19, Commonplace Books, 1325 N. Walker Ave., 405-534-4540, commonplacebooksokc.com. TUE

Nominations Are Open!

Tracy K. Smith join 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States Tracy K. Smith for a book signing and reading, 7 p.m. June 14. The Paramount Room, 701 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-887-3327, theparamountroom.com. THU

Film Filmography: deadCenter Curated Shorts an encore presentation of some of the local film festival’s most popular short films, 8-10 p.m. June 15.

21c Museum Hotel, 900 W. Main St., 405-982-6900, 21cmuseumhotels.com. FRI Let the Sunshine In (France, 2017, Claire Denis) a middle-age Parisian divorcée keeps looking for love despite many failed attempts, 5:30 p.m. June 16-17.

5:30 p.m. Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, 405-236-3100, okcmoa.com. SAT-SUN

Little Shop of Horrors (USA, 1986, Frank Oz) a singing man-eating plant helps a shy florist gain confidence and woo his dream girl; presented by VHS and Chill, 8-11:30 p.m. June 14. 51st Street Speakeasy, 1114 NW 51st St., 405-463-0470, 51stspeakeasy.com. THU The NeverEnding Story (USA, 1984, Wolfgang Petersen) using a magical book, young Bastian escapes from bullies into a fantasy world full of danger; screenings of other ’80s adventures Flight of the Navigator and The Dark Crystal follow, 1 p.m. June 17. Tower Theatre, 425 NW 23rd St., 405-708-6937, towertheatreokc.com. SUN Sonic Summer Movies: Despicable Me 3 (2017, USA, Kyle Balda and Pierre Coffin), Gru meets his long-lost twin brother Dru who team up for one last heist, 9 p.m. June 20. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405-445-7080, oklahomacitybotanicalgardens.com. WED

Happenings Art Moments Dads Will Love celebrate Father’s Day with a visit to the museum’s collections and exhibitions, 1-2 p.m. June 17. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63rd St., 405478-2250, nationalcowboymuseum.org. SUN Bead Making with Walmart Grocery Bags recycle plastic bags into custom-made jewelry, 9 a.m.-noon June 1. The Craft Room, 3017 N. Lee Ave., Suite F, 817-455-2972, craftroom.us. SAT Central Oklahoma Cactus & Succulent Society Annual Show & Sale have your questions about desert plants answered by enthusiasts, and shop thousands of succulents along with pottery, soil and other items, June 16-17. Will Rogers Garden Center, 3400 NW 36th St., 405-943-0827, okc.gov. SAT-SUN Church vs. Culture: Who’s Influencing Who sponsored by the DEN, this public discussion focuses on the impact of religion in modern society, 7-10 p.m.

June 15, Aloft Hotel Downtown-Bricktown, 209 N. Walnut Ave., 405-605-2100, alofthotels.com/oklahoma. FRI Dads Fest Car Show a Father’s Day auto show featuring muscle cars, trucks, motorcycles and more, plus food trucks, kid’s activities and giveaways, 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. June 17. Crossings Community Church, 14600 N. Portland Ave., 405755-2227, crossingschurch.com. SUN Drag Bingo hosted by former Miss International Gay Rodeo Association Luxx Bentley, this fundraiser for Other Options and Great Plains Rodeo Association will feature food, drinks and prizes, 7 p.m. June 17, The Boom, 2218 NW 39th St., 405-601-7200, theboomokc.com. SUN Gypsy Glam Roadshow Music and Wine Festival features Oklahoma wineries, live music, performances from A Mirage Dance Company, food trucks, pop-up shops and more, 5-10 p.m. June 16.

Tony’s Tree Plantation, 3801 S. Post Road, 405-6021851, oklahomagypsyglam.com. SAT JediOKC Meeting the club for OKC Star Wars fans will plan future events and discuss the film series, 7-9 p.m. June 16, Johnnies Charcoal Broiler, 2652 W. Britton road, 405-721-7974, johnniesburgers.com. SAT Juneteenth Celebration Pop Up Shop celebrate African-American Culture with more than 30 vendors and live performers and a special kids zone, June 16. Ice Event Center & Grill, 1148 NE 36th St., 405-208-4240, iceeventcentergrill.eat24hour.com. SAT

Class of 2018 Help us recognize outstanding leaders.

To nominate one of Oklahoma City’s brightest young leaders visit okgazette.com deadline is friday, july 6

Call 405.605.6789 or email advertising@okgazette.com 46

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Jazz in June Started in 1984 as a fundraiser for Cimarron Opera, Norman’s long-running jazz festival annually attracts tens of thousands of music lovers for concerts, clinics and jam sessions. This year’s lineup includes a night of blues headlined by guitarist Eric Gales followed by two nights of jazz featuring Oklahoma Army National Guard’s 145th Army Band, father-son pianist duet Ryan & Ryan and New York fusion band Tauk. The self-proclaimed “hippest jazz festival around” plays 7:30-11 p.m. Thursday-Friday at Brookhaven Village Plaza, 3700 W. Robinson St., and 6:30-11 p.m. Saturday at Andrews Park, 201 W. Daws St., in Norman. Admission is free. Visit jazzinjune.org. Thursday-Saturday Photo J Mimna Photography/provided

Tuesday Night Classics: American Graffiti Writer and director George Lucas followed up the bleak, sexless and nearly black-and-white future dystopia laid out in THX 1138 with a rose-tinted look back into the lives of teens in the early ’60s, complete with hamburgers, hot rods, hormones and Wolfman Jack. The film was nominated for five Oscars and clearly inspired nostalgia-fests such as Happy Days, The Wonder Years and Dazed and Confused, and if memory serves, Lucas was so pleased with the results that he never made another film. The cinematic sock-hop starts 7 p.m. Tuesday at Harkins Theatres Bricktown 16, 150 E. Reno Ave. Tickets are $5. Call 405-231-4747 or visit harkins.com. Tuesday Photo provided Junk Utopia antique, vintage and salvage vendors sale up-cycled, handmade and boutique wares, Sat., 9 a.m.-5 p.m. June 16. Oklahoma State Fair Park, 3220 Great Plains Walk, 405-948-6700, okstatefair.com. SAT Legalization vs. Decriminalization an open forum discussing the differences between allowing legal access to medicinal marijuana and decriminalizing it entirely, 6-8 p.m. June 16. Cannabis Aid, 1612 N.E. 23RD St., 405-470-9179, caidnow.com. SAT Made in Oklahoma Fest local wine and beer makers, artists, restaurants and other vendors will offer tastings, demonstrate products and sell their merchandise, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. June 16. Reed Conference Center, Sheraton Hotel, 5750 Will Rogers road, 405-455-1800, starwoodhotels.com/sheraton. SAT June Mysteries of the Mansion Tour a unique tour that explores behind-the-scenes history and spaces not typically on a regular tour, 7-9 p.m. June 21. $20. Overholser Mansion, 405 NW 15th St., 405525-5325, preservationok.org. THU Mindful Yoga Happy Hour practice mindful meditation with Bhante Santhapiya, followed by coffee, tea and conversation, 5-7 p.m. Fridays.

Oklahoma Buddhist Vihara, 4820 N Portland Ave., 405-810-6528, okbv.org. FRI Mr. and Ms. OKC Pride Pageant an inaugural charity event raising funds for OKC Pride, 9 p.m.-2 a.m. June 17. The Copa at the Habana, 2200 NW 39th St. SUN OKC Pride Kickoff start Pride Week with appetizers, door prizes, a cash bar and a special Rainbow Ribbon Cutting ceremony, 5 p.m. June 18. Fassler Hall, 421 NW 10th St., 405-609-3300, fasslerhall.com. MON Oklahoma Gardeners Association Garden Garage Sale find some great gardening treasures such as books, art, tools, plants and much more, 9 a.m.-noon June 16. Free. Urban Mission, 3737 N. Portland Ave., 405-946-1556, urbanmissionokc.org. SAT Open Fiber Night a weekly crafting meet-up for knitters, crocheters, spinners and weavers, 5-8 p.m. Thursdays.

Yarnatopia, 8407 S. Western Ave., 405-601-9995, yarnatopia.com. THU Paint Your Pride paint a pre-chosen design celebrating Pride Week, with karaoke and beverages from Twister Drink Factory beer and margarita truck, 7-11 p.m. June 20, The Diversity Center, 2242 N.W. 39th Street, 405-252-0372. WED Pollinators: Honeybees and More a seminar offering an introduction to beekeeping and information about other pollinators as well, 6 p.m. June 13, Will Rogers Garden Center, 3400 NW 36th St., 405-943-0827, okc.gov. WED Quinceañera/Wedding Expo several vendors can help you plan your upcoming event with special promotions on both days, 12-5 p.m. June 16, and 1-6 p.m. June 17. Cantera Event Center, 1 SE 59th St. Suite E, 405-367-1082. SAT-SUN Red Tent Oklahoma a gathering of women sharing experience, wisdom and food in a safe space, 6-9 p.m. June 16. Beautifully Connected, 13524 Railway Drive, Suite J, 262-753-6852, beautifullyconnectedwellness.com. SAT Soldered China Pendant Workshop learn how to create a pendant necklace from a piece of china, 1-4 p.m. June 16. The Craft Room, 3017 N. Lee Ave., Suite F, 817-455-2972, craftroom.us. SAT

Summer White Party dress in your best summer white and join Preservation Oklahoma for an evening of live music, dancing, drinks, heavy hors d’oeuvres, and a raffle, 7-10 p.m. June 16. $65. Overholser Mansion, 405 NW 15th St., 405-525-5325, preservationok.org. SAT Wine & Howl hosted by the Central Oklahoma Humane Society to benefit companion animals, this event features wine, craft beer, appetizers, live entertainment and a silent auction, 5:30-8 p.m. June 14, Dunlap Codding, 609 W. Sheridan Ave., 405607-8600, dunlapcodding.com. THU

Food The Art of Brunch wash down a chef-curated menu with bottomless mimosas and enjoy live music, demonstrations from local artists and a tour of the sculptures in Guerrilla Art Park, 10 a.m. June 16. Oklahoma Contemporary Campbell Art Park, NW 11th St. and Broadway Drive, 405-951-0000, oklahomacontemporary.org. SAT The Lost Ogle Trivia for ages 21 and up, test your knowledge with free trivia play and half-priced sausages, 8-10 p.m. Tuesdays. Fassler Hall, 421 NW 10th St., 405-609-3300, fasslerhall.com. TUE Paseo Farmers Market shop for fresh food from local vendors at this weekly outdoor event, 9 a.m.-noon Saturdays. SixTwelve, 612 NW 29th St., 405-208-8291, sixtwelve.org. SAT Pride Wine Bottling Party enjoy appetizers, wine and short tour of the wine-making process culminating in bottling your own bottle to commemorate OKC Pride Week, 7-9 p.m. June 19. Waters Edge Winery-OKC, 712 N. Broadway Ave., 405-232-9463, http:wewokc.com. TUE ¡Viva Sabor! a food, wine and tequila tasting hosted by the Greater Oklahoma City Hispanic Chamber of Commerce with live entertainment and Hispanic and Latino art on display, 6-10 p.m. June 15, Tower Theatre, 425 NW 23rd St., 405-708-6937, towertheatreokc.com. FRI Wine Dinner pair a gourmet five-course meal with carefully selected wines from Sean Minor, 6:30-9:30 p.m. June 20. Vast, 333 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-7627262, vastokc.com. WED

Youth Art Adventures bring your young artists ages 3 to 5 to experience art through books with related art projects, 10:30 a.m.-noon Tuesdays through June. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 555 Elm Ave., 405-325-3272, ou.edu/fjjma. TUE Children’s Garden Festival inspired by A.A. Milne’s classic children’s book Winnie the Pooh, this 10-day festival features crafts, story times, beekeeping and gardening lessons and displays created by local artists, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. through June 17. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405-4457080, oklahomacitybotanicalgardens.com. FRI-SUN Early Explorers toddlers and preschoolers can participate in fun scientific activities they can repeat later at home, 10-11 a.m. Thursdays, Science Museum Oklahoma, 2100 NE 52nd St., 405-602-6664, sciencemuseumok.org. THU

Summer Special

No Cover For Ladies!

OKC’s Newest Nightclub & Lounge Upcoming Bands June 14 – Born In November June 15 – Avenue June 16 – Brandi Reloaded June 21 – Drive June 22 – Replay June 23 – Life of The Party

Thur - Sat 8 pm - 2 am Now open for Happy Hour Mon - Fri 4pm Address - 12000 N. May Ave. • Phone - 405-205-0807 The Shoppes At Northpark Check out our FB page or website thelisztokc.com.

continued on page 48

go to okgazette.com for full listings!

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calendar C A L E N DA R

continued from page 47 The Fairy Ball an annual fanciful dance where fantasy-inspired homemade costumes are highly encouraged, 7-9 p.m. June 16, First Christian Church of Oklahoma City, 3700 N. Walker Ave., 405-525-6551, restorationdome.church. SAT

Farm Camp learn to grow vegetables, harvest herbs, collect eggs and care for goats, dogs, chickens, ducks and horses at this camp for children 6-12, 8 a.m.-1 p.m. June 4-29.

4C Ag Service, 18750 NE 122nd St., 405-990-7791, 4cagservice.com. MON-FRI Fit For Youth Day Camp a camp of engaging activities including sports, arts and crafts, swimming, recreation games, nature and outdoor activities and more, 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Mon-Fri. Foster Recreation Center, 614 NE 4th St., 405-297-2409, okc.gov/parks. MON-FRI Intensive Annual Summer Dance Camp children ages 7-17 can participate in a variety of dance classes offering instruction in ballet, tap, jazz, modern, hiphop and more along with lessons in music and dramatic and visual arts, June 18-29. Metropolitan School of Dance, 414 NW 7th St., 405-236-5026. MON-FRI My Oklahoma, My Museum enroll your kids ages 10-12 for a camp about Oklahoma and taking photos, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. June 19. Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, 405-236-3100, okcmoa.com. TUE-FRI Poptacular Paper! a camp for ages 6-7 to learn about the art of paper and different styles of pop art and optical art, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. June 12-15. Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, 405-236-3100, okcmoa.com. TUE-FRI Summer Camp Contemporary children in grades K-9 can learn about clay, robotics, hip-hop and many other artistic topics in a variety of camps, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. through June 20. Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, 3000 General Pershing Blvd., 405-951-0000, oklahomacontemporary.org. MON-WED Summer Explorers: Creepy Crawlies this outdoor program introduces children to several animals that slither, creep and/or crawl, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. June 11-15. Sam Noble Museum, 2401 Chautauqua Ave., 405-325-4712, samnoblemuseum.ou.edu. MON-FRI

Summer Explorers: Get Lost be prepared for emergency situations by learning survival skills such as building a fire, using a compass and searching for shelter, 2-4 p.m. June 11-15. Sam Noble Museum, 2401 Chautauqua Ave., 405-325-4712, samnoblemuseum. ou.edu. MON-FRI Summer Explorers: Nature at Night study nocturnal creatures in their natural environments in this outdoor program for children age 12-14, 7:30-9:30 p.m.

June 11-15. Sam Noble Museum, 2401 Chautauqua Ave., 405-325-4712, samnoblemuseum.ou.edu. MON-FRI Summer Explorers: Nature Explorers bring your kids ages 5-6 to explore the critters living in the parks, 8-10 a.m. June 11-15. Sam Noble Museum, 2401 Chautauqua Ave., 405-325-4712, samnoblemuseum. ou.edu. MON-FRI Summer Explorers: Slime and Scales I learn to safely catch and handle slimy animals such as turtles and salamanders in their natural environments, 2-4 p.m.

June 18-22. Sam Noble Museum, 2401 Chautauqua Ave., 405-325-4712, samnoblemuseum.ou.edu. MON-FRI Summer Explorers: Slime and Scales II check out turtles, frogs and other reptiles and amphibians in their natural habitat and find out how to safely catch and handle them, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. June 18-22.

Sam Noble Museum, 2401 Chautauqua Ave., 405325-4712, samnoblemuseum.ou.edu. MON-FRI Summer Thursdays presented by the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, this free family event features movie screenings, story times and crafting projects, 10:30 a.m. Thursdays, through Aug. 30. Gaylord-Pickens Oklahoma Heritage Museum, 1400 Classen Drive, 405-235-4458, oklahomaheritage.com. THU Western Explorers Summer Camp campers age 8-15 can explore trails, view museum exhibitions and participate in crafts, games and art projects in weeklong sessions, June 18-July 27. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum (3), 1700 NE 63rd St. MON-FRI

Performing Arts Acoustic Open Mic musicians are invited to perform unplugged, 8 p.m. June 20, VZD’s Restaurant & Bar, 4200 N. Western Ave., 405-602-3006, vzds.com. WED Andy Woodhull the Indiana comic has appeared on Conan and The Late Late Show With James Corden, 8 p.m. June 20, Loony Bin Comedy Club, 8503 N. Rockwell Ave., 405-239-4242, loonybincomedy.com. WED-SAT Arab After Hours a weekly belly-dancing performance featuring dancers from the Aalim Belly Dance Academy, 8:30-10:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Dec. 25.

Hubbly Bubbly Hookah & Café, 2900 N. Classen Blvd.

Sutie K, 405-609-2930. TUE Bricktown Blues Festival an outdoor music festival featuring food, cold beer and performances

by Ian Moore, Cadillac Blues Assembly, Albert Cummings and more, 4 p.m. June 15, and 2 p.m. June 16, Bricktown Blues Festival, Oklahoma Ave and Reno Ave., bricktownokc.com. FRI-SAT Brightmusic Goes Hollywood: The Chamber Music of Film Composers a four-concert festival featuring the work of famous soundtrack composers including John Williams and Ennio Morricone, June 14-19. St. Paul’s Cathedral, 127 NW Seventh St., 405235-3436, stpaulscathedralokc.org. THU-TUE Divine Comedy a weekly local showcase featuring a variety of comedians, 9 p.m. Wednesdays, 51st Street Speakeasy, 1114 NW 51st St., 405-463-0470, 51stspeakeasy.com. WED Erik Knowles the former Marine and war veteran performs standup comedy, June 14-16. Loony Bin Comedy Club, 8503 N. Rockwell Ave., 405-239-4242, loonybincomedy.com. WED-SAT Heard on Hurd a street festival featuring live music and family friendly activities, June 16. Citizens Bank of Edmond, 32 N. Broadway, 405-341-6650, citizensedmond.com. SAT

Twister Fest No offense to ’70s rockers FireFall, co-headliners Ramsay Midwood and Jonathan Tyler, Rolling Stones tribute band Dead Flowers or any of the other dozens of musicians rocking the stages at this three-day event, but on Friday, the first night of the fest, Dr. Danger, featured on American Daredevils and America’s Got Talent, is scheduled to climb inside a car rigged with two pounds of explosives and 20 gallons of gasoline and somehow escape the fiery aftermath when it’s detonated.

Even the Stones themselves would find that a tough act to follow. The Twister touches down Friday-Sunday at Muscle Car Ranch, 3609 S. 16th St., in Chickasha.

Tickets are $20-$35, and camping and RV hookups are available. Call 405-222-4910 or visit twisterfest.com. FRIDAY-SUNDAY Provided provided

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream a comedy by Shakespeare about two couples dealing with love and all that comes with it, Through June 23. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405-445-7080, oklahomacitybotanicalgardens.com. THU-SAT Nothin’ Betta Than Operetta presented by Opera on Tap, this production bridges the gap between musical theater and opera, 8-10 p.m. June 16, The Root, 3012 N. Walker Ave., 405-655-5889, therootokc.com. SAT Open Mic hosted by Elecktra, this open mic has an open-stage, almost-anything-goes policy and a booked feature act, 6-11:30 p.m. Mondays. The Root, 3012 N. Walker Ave., 405-655-5889, therootokc.com. MON Round Dance written by Arigon Starr, this play focuses on a Native American veteran who moves from rural Oklahoma to downtown Los Angeles, Through June 16. Civic Center Music Hall, 201 N. Walker Ave., 405-297-2264, okcciviccenter.com. THU-SAT Victim of Retirement a murder-mystery comedy produced by Whodunnit Dinner Theater and appropriate for all ages, 6-9 p.m. Fri., June 15, Cattlemen’s Steakhouse, 1309 S. Agnew Ave., 405-420-3222 whodunit.net. FRI Women of Woodyfest Fundraiser a charity event with proceeds going to the continuation of the annual Woody Guthrie Festival in Okemah, Sat., June

Camp SMOnawanna: Salute Your Science There’s a good reason the summer camps you grew up at didn’t happen indoors and the counselors never let you drink booze: Your parents would have insisted you drop them off there instead. This pseudo-camp for adventurers age 21 and older features fire-starting, archery, humansized foosball, access to a full bar and, since it takes place in a science museum, we’re assuming an educational value of some kind, but maybe hearing ghost stories in the planetarium counts as astronomy. Camp runs 6:30-10 p.m. June 22. Tickets are $21$25. Call 405-602-3760 or visit sciencemuseumok.org. June 22 bigstockphoto.com

16, 6 p.m. The Bottle Cap Barn, 3600 Rogers drive, 405-919-9214, bottlecapbarn.com. SAT

Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63rd St., 405-478-2250, nationalcowboymuseum.org.

Active

Ink & Draw a weekly meet-up for illustrators, artists and comic book creators, 4-6 p.m. Sundays. The Paseo Plunge, 3010 Paseo Plunge, 405-315-6224, paseoplunge.org. SUN

Baseball OKC Dodgers vs Salt Lake, 7:05 p.m. June 13-15. Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark, 2 S. Mickey Mantle Drive, 405-218-1000, okcballparkevents.com. WED-FRI Bends & Brews bring your own mat for this alllevels yoga class with a beer back, Sundays, 11 a.m. through June 24. Stonecloud Brewing Co., 1012 NW First St., stonecloudbrewing.com. SUN Bike the Streetcar Line take a bicycle tour of the 4.6-mile line opening this fall then meet for drinks at Santa Fe station, 6-7:30 p.m. June 14. Dewey Street Station, 1135 N Dewey Ave. THU Flow a weekly yoga class taught by Casey Freeman; bring your own mat, 7-9:30 p.m.

Mondays. IAO Gallery, 706 W. Sheridan Ave., 405-232-6060, iaogallery.org. MON Learn-to-Swim Program giving residents of all ages and financial situations the opportunity to learn to swim with proper technique and basic water safety at their own pace offered by the King Marlin Swim Club, ongoing, Through Dec. 31. Lighthouse Fitness (Front), 3333 W. Hefner, 405-845-5672, marlinswimamerica.com. SAT-SUN Monday Night Group Ride meet up for a weekly 25-30 minute bicycle ride at about 18 miles-per-hour through East Oklahoma City, 6 p.m. Mondays. The Bike Lab OKC, 2200 W. Hefner Rd., 405-603-7655. MON Thursday Night Dirt Crits weekly criterium trials for all ability levels meeting at the Mountain Bike Trailhead and hosted by Oklahoma Earthbike Fellowship, 7-9 p.m. Thursdays. Lake Stanley Draper Trails, 8898 S. Post Rd. FRI Yoga in the Gardens bring your mat for an alllevels class with Lisa Woodard from This Land yoga, 5:45 p.m. Tuesdays. Myriad Botanical Gardens, 301 W. Reno Ave., 405-445-7080, oklahomacitybotanicalgardens.com. TUE

Visual Arts Sketches New work from Norman Artist Todd Jenkins. Contemporary Metal Sculpture., ThursdaysSaturdays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. through June 30. CMG Art Gallery, 1104 NW 30 Street, 405-808-5005, cmgartgallery.com. FRI-SAT The 46th Annual Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition & Sale features more than 300 Western paintings and sculptures by contemporary Western artists of landscapes, wildlife and illustrative scenes, Through Aug. 5. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63rd St., 405-478-2250, nationalcowboymuseum.org. FRI-SUN The Art of Oklahoma celebrate the 110th anniversary of Oklahoma statehood with a diverse collection of art created by or about Oklahomans and the cities and landscapes they call home.; featuring works by John Steuart Curry, Oscar Brousse Jacobson, Nellie Shepherd, David Fitzgerald and Woody Big Bow, Through Sept. 2. Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, 405-236-3100, okcmoa.com. THU-SUN Artist Talk: Skip Hill the mixed-media artist will discuss his work and creative process, 2-3 p.m. June 16, JRB Art at The Elms, 2810 N. Walker Ave., 405528-6336, jrbartgallery.com. SAT The Experimental Geography Studio University of Oklahoma professor Nicholas Bauch and his Digital Geo-Humanities class combine new media art with scholarship in geography, ongoing. Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, 3000 General Pershing Blvd., 405-951-0000, oklahomacontemporary.org.

WED-SUN

In the Principles Office: Tom Ryan the Art Student learn the principles of art as Tom Ryan did with his instruction on “general illustration” with famed teacher Frank Reilly, through Nov. 11. National

go to okgazette.com for full listings!

SAT-SUN

Into the Fold: The Art and Science of Origami features origami artists from around the world and displays the techniques of artful paper folding and other unique applications of origami, through Jan. 13, 2019. Science Museum Oklahoma, 2100 NE 52nd St., 405-602-6664, sciencemuseumok.org.

FRI-SUN

Isabelle de Borchgrave: Fashioning Art from Paper features l’œil paper works by Belgian artist Isabelle de Borchgrave showcasing four collections her work together for the first time, June 16-Sept.

9. Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive, 405-236-3100, okcmoa.com. SAT-FRI Mosaics, Oil and Jewelry an exhibition featuring gallery resident artists Jerron Johnston and Alice Baker and guest artist Katie Bixby, Through June 16, 12-5 p.m. In Your Eye Gallery, 3005 Paseo St., 405-525-2161, inyoureyegallery.com. THU-SAT Oklahoma Illustrators features the work of illustrators Arjan Jager, Jeff Sparks and Greg White, through July 9. DNA Galleries, 1709 NW 16th St., 405-525-3499, dnagalleries.com. THU-MON Porcelain Art Exhibit World Organization of China Painters presents a free tour for the member porcelain art exhibit, through June 22. Porcelain Art Museum, 2700 N. Portland Ave., 405-521-1234, wocp. org. WED-FRI Prix de West Workshop: Birds in Sculpture Learn to sculpt birds in oil-based clay with wildlife artist Sandy Scott, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. June 11-14. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, 1700 NE 63rd St., 405-478-2250, nationalcowboymuseum.org.

MON-THU

Reflection: An Exhibition of Glass and Light featuring works by artists Rick and Tracey Bewley using glass and light to creative reflection of colored geometric shapes mixed with metal structures., through Aug. 24. Oklahoma City University School of Visual Arts, 1601 NW 26th St., 405-208-5226, okcu. edu/artsci/departments/visualart. WED-FRI Space Burial an exhibit using satellite dishes as a burial object for a space-faring culture and facilitates the dead’s afterlife journey, through Sep. 2. Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 555 Elm Ave., 405-3253272, ou.edu/fjjma. TUE-SUN Transitions features graffiti and street art that celebrates Native American culture by artists Yatika Starr Fields, Hoka Skenadore and Josh Johnico, through June 30. Exhibit C, 1 E. Sheridan Ave., 405767-8900, exhibitcgallery.com. THU-SAT

Submissions must be received

by Oklahoma Gazette no later than noon on Wednesday seven days before the desired publication date.

Late submissions will not be included in the listings.

Submissions run as space allows, although we strive to make the listings as inclusive as possible. Fax your listings to 528-4600 or e-mail them to listings@okgazette.com.

Sorry, but phone submissions cannot be accepted.

35TH ANNUAL

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F E AT U R E

MUSIC

Special effects Student Film returns with synth-laden until we are in fashion again. By Ben Luschen

Student Film was once known for having as many as a dozen members in its rotating ensemble cast of players. But even though the current roster is down to just four, the cerebral Oklahoma City rock band is sounding as large as ever.

The band — comprised of lead vocalist, synth-player, songwriter and founding member Justin Rice, synth-player and vocalist Chris Anderson, bassist Taylor Johnson and drummer Drew Ramsey — was founded in 2003 and has had a productive 15-year history despite some periods of extended inactivity.

While the band was cumbersome in some of its past forms, a trimmed-down model offers more efficiency.

“I think it’s a lot easier to have a smaller number of people, just as far as practicalities are concerned,” Rice said in a recent Oklahoma Gazette interview.

Its new album until we are in fashion again was released May 4. The nine-song record is different from the guitar-driven rock Student Film fans might be familiar with, but the band finds great success with the fullest dive it has yet to take into a newfound fascination with synthesizers.

Rice took some time to speak with Gazette about the new album, pulling his last album from the internet and recording a pop cover of Cheyenne’s “The Whale.”

Oklahoma Gazette: When was this record written?

Justin Rice: A couple of songs were written before Student Film took a break, because we took a break in 2013 and ’14, so a few songs came before that.

And during the break, I just kept writing and wrote a bunch of songs. When the band got back together, we just kind of picked the ones we liked the most.

OKG: Interesting. So some of this had been saved up for quite awhile.

Rice: Yeah. So, basically, 2013, ’14 and ’15, I did most of the writing [for this project]. We spent the last couple of years trying to get the right-sounding recording and trying to shape up a band again, which was kind of difficult.

OKG: What was the cause of the break that you all had?

Rice: Well, we were just kind of spinning our wheels. Things went really well, I think you could say, for the first several years. It was a pretty good time. Then there were a few years there when it felt stagnant and there wasn’t really any growth. There were also differences in what people wanted out of the group.

When you have so many people, you have a lot of different voices and a lot of different tastes and visions and stuff.

The break was good because it had

been 10 years and we had traveled some.

We had played a ton of shows, mostly in the region. And it’s just good, I think, to take a break anyway, you know? To kind of set it down and not worry about whether or not we were going to do it again.

OKG: The sound on this album feels very atmospheric. I feel like I’m being transported somewhere when I put this on.

Rice: Good.

OKG: It seems like you took a different approach to the instrumentation on this project.

Rice: Definitely. I have really developed a taste for synthesizers, and so have the other guys in the band. We were able to bring synths in in a way that we hadn’t before. Mostly the band had been guitar-based, so it was nice to write songs based off of keys and bass.

OKG: Did Taylor Johnson have a big role in producing this record?

Rice: He did; he worked at the end of it.

Chris Anderson is the one who recorded and mixed the vast majority of it. But Taylor definitely mastered it, and he’s working with us on the next batch we’re recording right now. He’s really fun to work with.

OKG: So you all are working on new material?

Rice: Yeah, we’re hoping to just put them out as small EPs starting at the end of July, hopefully. It could end up being a record, but we’ll probably just end up doing EPs and singles for the rest of the year.

OKG: That’s cool, especially considering for a while, there was a gap where people wondered if they would ever hear anything again.

Rice: Yeah, definitely.

OKG: I love the song “Deep Blue Pool” and the songwriting on there. It has this opening line, “Don’t expect your rejection of science to go well for you.” I was hoping you could elaborate on the meaning of that song.

Rice: I was thinking it was a reference to people who try to ignore or deny climate change or maybe even evolutionary biology. I guess it’s sort of a culture war chat.

OKG: Was there any event in particular that sparked that song, or was it just something on your mind?

Rice: I think it was geared at the local politicians, especially the idea that fracking didn’t have any impact on the environment or taking other states’

Student Film | Photo provided

wastewater didn’t have any impact on the environment. It’s just so ridiculous.

OKG: It’s amazing how science is routinely politicized when it’s supposed to be neutral and fact-based.

Rice: It’s frustrating. With my job, I teach, and I think a lot of people just don’t appreciate thinking about things at a deeper level or appreciating complexity or something. It’s just not widespread, that sort of value.

OKG: I know you all were also involved on the Cheyenne Songs compilation. How did that get set up? Did [Cheyenne frontman] Beau [Jennings] approach you?

Rice: Yeah, I think he did. I don’t know if he talked to me or if I demanded he let me do it. I might have demanded he let me do it. But it was nice of him to let us. We worked on it for months and tried several different drafts, so we were way behind schedule. He was patient, and it was nice to be on it.

OKG: What’s it like to approach a cover like that from someone you know?

Rice: I think my thought was that I wanted to turn it into a pop song. Most of the songs, I think, wouldn’t work as pop songs, but I think that one could.

We basically just split it up and had Drew play all these different drum parts to the different parts. We added a bassist and worked our way up from there.

I would like to do a cover record at some point because it was fun and I had never really done anything like that before.

OKG: What are you working on now?

Any big shows?

Rice: We’ve been mostly trying to record and book some shows for the fall when school is back in session. It’s funny because some of the people that used to be in the band also did all the booking and stuff. So now everyone who’s left is like, ‘So how do we get shows?’ It’s kind of like starting over again.

OKG: Is that exciting, in a way?

Rice: Yeah, definitely. It’s just a really

nice, low-stress time for everybody. It’s very fruitful because we’re constantly writing, but we don’t feel any pressure to do anything other than just keep doing whatever we’re doing.

OKG: Do you feel like your mindset has changed in any way from the time when some of your songs were first written for this album to now?

Rice: Well, the record is basically about death and all these different ideas about reincarnation, rebirth and resurrection. I guess I was more just trying to sort through those ideas than take a position, necessarily. My ideas and thoughts on those sorts of things are always changing, that’s for sure.

OKG: Where did the album title come from?

Rice: Well, I thought about it in terms of Oklahoma City. When we first started playing, there were all these bands back in the day. Things were going well — there was kind of a scene or whatever you want to call it. And that sort of thing fluctuates, you know? And I think Oklahoma City is really flourishing compared to what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. So the record is really about that coming back again. And that’s within the context of those bigger ideas about rebirth and stuff.

OKG: How many years of total work went into this album?

Rice: Probably three years. We had finished the Facts & Values album. I don’t really like it and wasn’t happy with it. I don’t know if anyone else was. Maybe they were. They probably were more than I was. But I jerked it from the internet and just left the single up there.

But that was 2012, and this stuff began the next year.

OKG: Do you feel like you’re a perfectionist?

Rice: Yeah, I could be for sure. But this will be a nice year that the band will be putting out a lot of material and hopefully figuring out how to play shows again.

O kg a z e t t e . c o m | J u n e 1 3 , 2 0 1 8

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MUSIC

Event

Yob | Photo Jimmy Hubbard / provided

Gut check

Doom metal band Yob finds a new footing after singer-guitarist Mike Scheidt’s emergency surgery.

By Jeremy Martin

Last year, Yob’s metaphysical doom metal was playing in an operating room.

The patient on the table was lead singer and guitarist Mike Scheidt, undergoing the seven-hour emergency abdominal surgery that ultimately saved his life.

“Once they started having these complications and they were trying to get Mike to stabilize and they needed like an X-factor or they wanted every extra bit of help they could get just to keep him responsive for treatments and everything, they played Yob apparently,” said bassist Aaron Rieseberg. “I don’t think Mike was conscious for it, but they totally did it.”

Since Rieseberg wasn’t there at the time, he can only speculate about the reaction anyone overhearing such heavy music coming out of an operating room might have had.

“Everybody outside the room is like, ‘What the hell?’” Rieseberg imagined. “’They’re going through some shit in there.’”

Yob plays 7:30 p.m. Thursday at 89th Street-OKC, 8911 N. Western Ave. Our Raw Heart, the band’s latest album released June 8, is inspired in part by Scheidt’s near-fatal medical emergency.

Doctors diagnosed Scheidt with the intestinal disease acute diverticulitis in 2016, but Rieseberg said he hadn’t heard about his bandmate’s problems until the frontman and primary songwriter texted Rieseberg and drummer Travis Foster to cancel their weekly practice in January 2017.

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“Mike sent Travis and I a message saying, ‘Hey guys, I’m feeling a little off today, like maybe I shouldn’t practice,’” Rieseberg said. “It wasn’t like he was freaked out or anything. He was just like, ‘Oh I’m feeling some discomfort.’”

Scheidt wrote about the attack that followed last year on the music site Noisey.

“When we went to the store, in the deli section to be exact, a bout of pain hit me so hard the entire room spun and I broke out in a cold sweat,” Scheidt wrote. “I stood there clutching the shopping cart until Kris [Keyser, Scheidt’s girlfriend] found me, and I told her, ‘We needed to leave, like, now.’”

After Scheidt went to the emergency room, doctors determined his sigmoid colon had become infected and inflamed and one of the diverticula in his digestive tract burst, causing a perforation that allowed air to leak into his abdomen. The surgery required to remove the infected part of his colon was complicated and followed by several days Scheidt describes as full of hallucinations and other bad reactions to medication. Even after the deliria and nausea began to subside, he was still physically weak.

“I’d go down and visit, but Mike couldn’t even pick up the guitar for a while,” Rieseberg said. “Even sitting with the guitar, whenever he’d lean in to strum with his right hand, it would just send these shooting pains through his body. … Just strumming the guitar was like torqueing his innards.”

During Scheidt’s monthslong recovery process, Foster and Rieseberg were uncertain if Yob would ever play together again. Rieseberg completed work on an album released by his other band, Norska.

Before he could think about playing guitar or singing/screaming the way he once did, Scheidt had to rest and change his diet.

“So he just laid off for a long time,” Rieseberg said, “and once he did start playing guitar again, that’s kind of all he did at the house and just wrote a whole heap of new material along with some stuff that we had already been working on.”

Though the lead-up to the new album was harrowing, Rieseberg said the recording process was similar to previous albums once they hit the studio.

Billy Barnett, who recorded 2014’s Clearing the Path to Ascend, even returned to co-produce. Rieseberg said the only notable difference in the process is how much the band played the material before recording.

“We just demoed it over and over again and refined it and listened a lot and then re-demoed it again,” he said. “So we were extra-prepared for the studio this time. We were extra-surefooted going in and there was a little bit more of a relaxed vibe. Once we were in the studio recording, we were super up on the songs. It leant a little more relaxed kind of vibe when we were tracking.”

Reassured they would be able to continue as a band, they wanted to take full advantage of any chance they had to make music.

“We were just so elated to be still playing together and for Mike to be healthy,” Rieseberg said. “Not only alive but healthy and fully functioning. …

There was a different kind of feeling in the studio this time, for sure. … I don’t think we’ve ever played that much together. It was like every free moment we had we were getting together.”

Rieseberg said Scheidt also seems

happier.

“I would say one thing I’ve really noticed is it seems like he’s less tightly wound and he’s got a — how should I put this? — it’s like this level of gratitude, or I don’t know what he’s feeling, but he’s a lot more relaxed these days and just a little bit more going with the flow,” he said. “It really put things in perspective for him.”

Our Raw Heart is unmistakably touched by the experiences of surviving an existential threat.

“It really just makes you remember how quickly it can all just go away,” Rieseberg said. “It just shifts your priorities a little bit or puts you in check, like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s that quick.’ … And there’s not a lot of mercy in situations like that. …

Coming out of it and being like, ‘Holy shit; we’re going to make a record and we’re going to keep making these songs.’ There’s this perpetuating stokedness and gratitude and love within our band between us, and also it just bled into the songs and it’s very evident in the lyrics, I think.”

The inescapable, merciless nature of death has been a favorite topic in metal since the days of Black Sabbath and Coven, and Our Raw Heart contains one of the heaviest songs Yob has released to date (“The Screen”). Less common themes such as gratitude for “love from miracles” and the Andean concept of ayni, or sacred reciprocity, give a spiritual optimism to the title track, and “Beauty in Falling Leaves” finds Scheidt repeatedly proclaiming, “Your heart brings me home.”

Metal, Rieseberg said, is an expansive musical genre capable of conveying the complexity of the human experience, even if some fans are put off by any shade lighter than pitch black.

“Maybe it’s because of what our heroes have wrote about in the past,” he said. “The bands that shaped us maybe didn’t sing about the same things. So I think it might be uncomfortable for people to sing about that or yell about it or roar, but I feel like there’s a lot of room for it.”

Even when the music is dark, Rieseberg said the experience of playing metal with Yob remains a highlight of his life.

“But as far as us playing together and being in the room together, we’ve never been better friends,” he said. “We got tighter as friends and as a band. It really just shifted perspective for me. These guys are hugely important to me as people in my life, and I love what we make together.”

Visit 89thstreetokc.com.

Yob 7:30 p.m. Thursday 89th Street - OKC 8911 N. Western Ave. | 89thstreetokc.com $12-$15

LIVE MUSIC are events recommended

by Oklahoma Gazette editorial staff members For full calendar listings, go to okgazette.com.

On a Whim, Bossa Nova Caipirinha Lounge. JAZZ

Young Valley, Red Brick Bar. COUNTRY

Randy Cassimus, Full Circle Bookstore. ACOUSTIC

Sunday, Jun. 17

Redd Volkaert Trio, The Blue Door. COUNTRY Revival Drive, Belle Isle Restaurant & Brewing Company.

ROCK

Wednesday, Jun. 13 Replay, Sidecar Barley & Wine Bar. COVER SOB x RBE/Trip G/DJ Reaper, Tower Theatre. HIP-HOP Vintage Pistol, The Deli. ROCK

Thursday, Jun. 14 Black Oak Shillelagh, Sean Cumming’s Irish Restaurant.

FOLK

Born in November, The Liszt. SOUL Crimson Faith, Chisholm Trail Park. POP Dischordia/The Summoned/Perseus, Snug Bar. METAL Edgar Cruz, UCO Jazz Lab. ACOUSTIC The Flannels, Sidecar Barley & Wine Bar. COVER Kyle Dillingham, CHK/Central Boathouse. FOLK Kyle Reid & The Low Swinging Chariots, Legacy Park. JAZZ Lost Kozz, Iron Horse Bar & Grill. ROCK A Perfect Body, Royal Bavaria Restaurant & Brewery.

JAZZ

Raul Reyes, Saints Pub. JAZZ Yob/Bell Witch, 89th Street Collective. METAL

Friday, Jun. 15 Ann Rena/Sonja Martinez/Alison Scott, Frankie’s.

COUNTRY

Brooke Hollow/Rooftop Renegades, The Root.

Smash Mouth/Spin Doctors, Newcastle Casino. ROCK Souled Out, UCO Jazz Lab. BLUES Steve Crossley, Louie’s Grill and Bar. R&B

Direct Connect Band, Elmer’s Uptown. BLUES Electric Jam with Aaron/Gonzo/Mad Dog, Still Working Bar. ROCK Eric Herndon, Full Circle Bookstore. ROCK Handmade Moments, Norman Santa Fe Depot. JAZZ Marley’s Ghost, UCO Jazz Lab. BLUEGRASS

Stewart Wolfs, Legacy on Main Street. COVER

Sad2/Matt Pless/ Pauly Creepo, Sauced on Paseo. PUNK

Tandem, Redrock Canyon Grill. ELECTRONIC Tribesmen/Bad Jokes, Bison Witches Bar & Deli. ROCK

Shane Henry Trio/Josh Smith, VZD’s Restaurant & Bar. BLUES

Saturday, Jun. 16

Spaghetti Eddie, Myriad Botanical Gardens. POP

Ashley Windham, Bossa Nova Caipirinha Lounge. POP

Monday, Jun. 18

Brandi Reloaded, The Liszt. COVER Brett Eldredge, WinStar World Casino. COUNTRY Buddy South, Lazy Circles Brewing. ROCK Darren Cipponeri/Alan Doyle/Erin Bates, Chevy Bricktown Events Center. SINGER/SONGWRITER Ellipsis, Brewskey’s. ROCK Golf Clap/Morpei/Deadspace, Farmers Public Market. ELECTRONIC

Corey Hunt Band, Red Brick Bar. COUNTRY Four Year Strong/Grayscale/Tell Lies, 89th Street Collective. PUNK Jason Hunt, Sean Cumming’s Irish Restaurant. FOLK JJ McBride, Tower Theatre. POP Otana Trio/Haniwa, The Deli. DANCE

Tuesday, Jun. 19

The Guillotines/Scary Cherry, Blue Note Lounge.

Acceptable Losses, Blue Note Lounge. PUNK

Helen Kelter Skelter/Locust Avenue, Opolis. ROCK

Devon Allman Project/Duane Betts, VZD’s Restaurant & Bar. ROCK

Howard Brady Band, Full Circle Bookstore.

Forn, 89th Street Collective. METAL

ROCK

SINGER/SONGWRITER

Jackyl/Locust Grove/Ol’ Dixie Wrecked, Legends Pub House & Venue. ROCK Jeremy Thomas/Local Man Ruins Everything, VZD’s Restaurant & Bar. ROCK

Goddamn Gallows/Days N Daze/Pauly Creepo, The Ruins Live. PUNK Kyle Reid, Scratch Kitchen & Cocktails.

SINGER/SONGWRITER

SINGER/SONGWRITER

Joel Melton, Lumpy’s. SINGER/SONGWRITER

Primitive Man/Krallice/Wayfarer, 89th Street Collective. METAL

Cake Eaters, Blue Note Lounge. BLUES

Jordan Law Duo, Bedlam Bar-B-Q.

The Sea & Cake/L.A. Takedown, Opolis. ROCK

Kyle Dillingham & Horseshoe Road, The Deli.

Wednesday, Jun. 20

The Captain Ledge Band, Red Brick Bar. FOLK

SINGER/SONGWRITER

Don’t Tell Dena, Frontier City. ROCK

ACOUSTIC

Heartbreak Rodeo, Royal Bavaria Restaurant & Brewery. ACOUSTIC

Mike Daniels Band, Riverwind Casino. ROCK

Justin Shipley, Fuel Bar & Grill. ACOUSTIC La Sonora Dinamita, Mangos Discotec.

DANCE

Okie Tramps, Belle Isle Brewery. ROCK

FOLK

Kent Fauss Duo, Louie’s Grill and Bar. COUNTRY

Phil Smith & the Blend Project, UCO Jazz Lab. JAZZ

Tory Lanez, The Jones Assembly. RAP

Plain White T’s, Frontier City. POP

Left to Die/Nevermind the Embers/Munkie Gunn, Oklahoma City Limits. ROCK

Shane Henry, Downtown OKC. BLUES

Melody Guy/Ben Brock, JJ’s Alley Bricktown Pub.

Dan Martin/Ben Brock, JJ’s Alley Bricktown Pub.

Panhandle Dirt, Okie Tonk Café. COUNTRY

Layken Urie, Chisholm’s Saloon. COUNTRY

Lynch Mobb/Trifecta Band/Dollar 98, Legends Pub House & Venue. ROCK

Carson McHone, The Blue Door. COUNTRY

Shocker Boys/The Flannels/Alice Unchained, Oklahoma City Limits. COVER Texas Hippie Coalition/Shotgun Rebellion, Diamond Ballroom. METAL

SINGER/SONGWRITER

2nd Annual Juneteenth Film Festival This Juneteenth weekend block party is billed foremost as a film festival, and with good reason.

Cinephiles will enjoy screenings of locally produced films by Samuel C. Bey and Charlie C.J. Skinner, not to mention getting a closer look at Jewel Theater, which opened in 1931 as a movie theater for African-Americans during segregation and has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. But musical performances by Original Flow & the Fervent Route, Fresh, Odessa I Reign and J. Sparxx will keep heads nodding and make this outdoor event a full-on happening with food trucks, local vendors and, of course, popcorn — all to jumpstart fundraising efforts for the Jewel’s restoration. The festival is 2-6 p.m. Saturday at Jewel Theatre, 904 NE Fourth St. The event is free, but donations are appreciated. Call 405-6010104 or visit jeweltheatreokc.org Saturday Photo provided Live music submissions must be received by Oklahoma Gazette no later than noon on Wednesday seven days before the desired publication date.

Late submissions will not be included in the listings. Submissions run as space allows, although we strive to make the listings as inclusive as possible.

Fax your listings to 528-4600 or e-mail to listings@okgazette.com.

Sorry, but phone submissions cannot be accepted.

go to okgazette.com for full listings!

O kg a z e t t e . c o m | J u n e 1 3 , 2 0 1 8

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puzzles New York Times Magazine Crossword Puzzle proving them wrong

By David J. Kahn | Puzzles Edited by Will Shortz | 0610

ACROSS

92 Sound of the South 97 Liability of note?

1 Overawe 100 Swagger 4 Things falling out of Vogue?

11 Words to a Spanish sweetheart 102 ____ Minella (Muppet 16 Mover but not a shaker (one monkey) 105 City ENE of Cleveland, O. hopes) 107 Lady’s title 19 Atlantic 10 Conf. school 108 Anticipate 20 Where techno music 109 Ball bearer originated 110 Fruit-soda brand 21 Belly 111 Temple of Isis site 23 Camel’s-hair color 112 Where General Mills is 24 Surplus headquartered 25 Where the Sun shines?

114 Bank trouble?

26 Doesn’t let it go 116 Dated 28 Star Wars name 117 “Be there in a jiffy!”

29 Got into a mess?

118 Encountered 30 Pie-eyed 119 Not be straight 31 Wee bit 120 Cold War-era inits.

32 Call it a day … or a career 121 Eppie’s adoptive father, in a 33 Sunday delivery: Abbr.

George Eliot novel 34 Woolly ruminant 122 Suffragist Elizabeth Cady 35 Very lowbrow ____ 37 Fabulous fabulist 123 Not opposin’ 39 Achievement

40 Riverboat hazard DOWN 42 Linguists’ interests Is up to the task 46 Boat that landed on 94-Down 1 49 Final, countrywide competition 2 Winston Churchill, notably 3 One concerned with aging?

53 ____ tap 4 Wedding pair 54 Go (for) 5 State since 1864: Abbr.

55 Salary negotiator 6 McQueen or King 56 Alternated 7 Things that corrections correct 58 Dress down 60 Winner of 11 Grand Slam tennis 8 Tour hiree 9 Aggressive types titles 61 Common seasoning for Italian 10 Typical intro?

11 Heavy winds sausage 12 Maternally related 62 Elected 63 Sports axiom refuted by this 13 Colleague of Freud 14 Encountered puzzle 15 Relatives of bobolinks 69 The Handmaid’s Tale author 16 Only African-American to win 72 Not with it

an Oscar, Tony and Emmy for 73 Place in a 1969 western acting 77 Serious devotee 17 Relevant, legally 78 Papal-conclave members 18 With 47-Down, driver’s question 82 Ghostly 83 He said, “It’s not bragging if 22 “Say cheese!”

27 County name in 30 states

you can back it up” 84 Group with five members in 32 House speaker after Boehner 36 Sidesplitter

this puzzle, with “the” 38 ____ platter 85 Court plea 39 “Runaway” singer Shannon, 1961 87 Sleep stage 41 “I’m off” 88 Relief 43 “My dear man” 89 Play the part of 90 Father of Phobos, the god of fear 44 Novelist Patchett

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45 Fastball, in baseball slang 47 See 18-Down 48 Sharp 49 Pick up 50 Back 51 Unaccompanied 52 Company name ender after “&” 53 First U.S. city to host the Olympics 57 “Baseball” documentarian Burns 58 Half a step?

59 What ballplayers look forward

to after playing on the road 61 Sustained 62 Cartoon collectible 64 Mortar carrier 65 Hampton ____ 66 Words of confidence 67 Court plea, briefly

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68 Opera set in 1800 Rome 69 Not even close?

70 Floor piece 71 German hunting dog 74 1904 Jack London novel 75 Your, to Yves 76 Caste member 78 State with five teams in the

84-Across: Abbr.

79 Double-platinum album for

Steely Dan 80 Mythological bird 81 Harriet Beecher Stowe novel

subtitled “A Tale of the Great

Dismal Swamp” 82 Lining up against 84 Ways of doing things, for short 86 Numerical prefix 88 Parlor pieces 91 Bankrupts

93 Points (to) 94 See 46-Across 95 Actress Ryder 96 Admits 98 Charlotte ____ (Caribbean capital) 99 Proffer 100 Greek island where Pythagoras

and Epicurus were born 101 Delivery that’s usually expected 102 Prop for a lion tamer 103 Insurance giant 104 Some calls on a police hotline 106 Kind of chips you shouldn’t eat 111 Before being outed, for short 113 H.S. study 115 Native Oklahoman

Stumped? Call 1-900-285-5656 to get the answers to any three clues by phone ($1.20 a minute).

Sudoku medium | n° 86561 Fill in the grid so that every row, column and 3-by-3 box contains the numbers 1 through 9. www.printmysudoku.com

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New York Times Crossword Puzzle answers Puzzle No. 0603, which appeared in the June 6 issue.

M A Y A N S

C A G E S U P

O N E T I M E

G O O F S

U N C A P

N E C C O

S W I L L S

H I S P E E D

O N A S T A R

A S T T L E F O R D B R E A O M B E R O L L A R A B S I N A T O O M B S I M I T S O N R I T A U T N I N G K E U H A V T E R S G A L I L Y

A T R A I N

T R I S T E

S M A L L A S

I N T E L

B R A I N S

L O N N O L

A T I M E I S T A N N K I N G T S C R H A A L B U M P O E P C T T L I T A R Y E L I O P S M A L L S I D E I N N S W C S A C K J A E L A S T I T H E S E N A G O N O G A N S

L I M B

C H E E S Y

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Digital Media & Calendar Coordinator Jeremy Martin Advertising advertising@okgazette.com 405-528-6000

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Marketing Manager Kelsey Lowe Accounting/HR Manager Marian Harrison

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First-class mail subscriptions are $119 for one year, and most issues at this rate will arrive 1-2 days after publication.

publisher Bill Bleakley

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Account EXECUTIVES Saundra Rinearson Godwin Christy Duane Kurtis DeLozier EDITOR-in-chief George Lang glang@okgazette.com Assistant EDITOR Brittany Pickering Staff reporters Ben Luschen Jacob Threadgill Jeremy Martin contributors Daniel Bokemper, Nazarene Harris, Heather Warlick Circulation Manager Chad Bleakley Senior Graphic Designer Kimberly Lynch Graphic Designers Karson Brooks Ofelia Ochoa

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free will astrology Homework: Many of us try to motivate ourselves through abusive self-criticism. Do you? If so, maybe it’s time to change. Testify at Freewillastrology.com.

moment to vividly register the fact that the story of your life in the coming years will pivot around your relationship with whom and what you love.

for innovative ideas and gizmos to “pleasurable intellectual curiosity.”)

ARIES (March 21-April 19) My Aries acquaintance

CANCER (June 21-July 22) Congratulations on

the work you’ve done to cleanse the psychic toxins from your soul, Cancerian. I love how brave you’ve been as you’ve jettisoned outworn shticks, inadequate theories, and irrelevant worries. It makes my heart sing to have seen you summon the self-respect necessary to stick up for your dreams in the face of so many confusing signals. I do feel a tinge of sadness that your heroism hasn’t been better appreciated by those around you. Is there anything you can do to compensate? Like maybe intensify the appreciation you give yourself?

out wiser and wealthier if you had dropped out of school in third grade? Would it have been better to apprentice yourself to a family of wolves or coyotes rather than trusting your educational fate to institutions whose job it was to acclimate you to society’s madness? I’m happy to let you know that you’re entering a phase when you’ll find it easier than usual to unlearn any old conditioning that might be suppressing your ability to fulfill your rich potentials.

I urge you to seek out opportunities to unleash your skills and enhance your intelligence.

Tatiana decided to eliminate sugar from her diet. She drew up a plan to avoid it completely for 30 days, hoping to permanently break its hold over her. I was surprised to learn that she began the project by making a Dessert Altar in her bedroom, where she placed a chocolate cake and five kinds of candy. She testified that it compelled her willpower to work even harder and become even stronger than if she had excluded all sweet treats from her sight. Do you think this strenuous trick might work for you as you battle your own personal equivalent of a sugar addiction? If not, devise an equally potent strategy. You’re on the verge of forever escaping a temptation that’s no good for you. Or you’re close to vanquishing an influence that has undermined you. Or both.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20) You have caressed and

finessed The Problem. You have tickled and teased and tinkered with it. Now I suggest you let it alone for a while. Give it breathing room. Allow it to evolve under the influence of the tweaks you have instigated.

Although you may need to return and do further work in a few weeks, my guess is that The Problem’s knots are now destined to metamorphose into seeds. The awkwardness you massaged with your love and care will eventually yield a useful magic.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20) “Whether you love what

you love or live in divided ceaseless revolt against it, what you love is your fate.” Gemini poet Frank Bidart wrote that in his poem “Guilty of Dust,” and now I offer it to you. Why? Because it’s an excellent time to be honest with yourself as you identify whom and what you love. It’s also a favorable phase to assess whether you are in any sense at odds with whom and what you love; and if you find you are, to figure out how to be in more harmonic alignment with whom and what you love. Finally, dear Gemini, now is a key

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) I hope you’re reaching the

final stages of your year-long project to make yourself as solid and steady as possible. I trust you have been building a stable foundation that will serve you well for at least the next five years. I pray you have been creating a rich sense of community and establishing vital new traditions and surrounding yourself with environments that bring out the best in you. If there’s any more work to be done in these sacred tasks, intensify your efforts in the coming weeks. If you’re behind schedule, please make up for lost time.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) “Necessity is the mother

of invention,” says an old proverb. In other words, when your need for some correction or improvement becomes overwhelming, you may be driven to get creative. Engineer Allen Dale put a different spin on the issue. He said that “if necessity is the mother of invention, then laziness is the father.” Sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein agreed, asserting that “progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.”

I’m not sure if necessity or laziness will be your motivation, Virgo, but I suspect that the coming weeks could be a golden age of invention for you. What practical innovations might you launch? What useful improvements can you finagle? (P.S. Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead attributed the primary drive

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22) Would you have turned

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21) The temptation to

overdramatize is strong. Going through with a splashy but messy conclusion may have a perverse appeal. But why not wrap things up with an elegant whisper instead of a garish bang? Rather than impressing everyone with how amazingly complicated your crazy life is, why not quietly lay the foundations for a low-key resolution that will set the stage for a productive sequel? Taking the latter route will be much easier on your karma, and in my opinion will make for just as interesting a story.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) Each of us

harbors rough, vulnerable, controversial, or unhoned facets of our identity. And every one of us periodically reaches turning points when it becomes problematic to keep those qualities buried or immature. We need to make them more visible and develop their potential.

I suspect you have arrived at such a turning point. So on behalf of the cosmos, I hereby invite you to enjoy a period of ripening and self-revelation. And I do mean “enjoy.” Find a way to have fun.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) For the next twoplus weeks, an unusual rule will be in effect: The more you lose, the more you gain. That means you will have an aptitude for eliminating hassles, banishing stress, and shedding defense mechanisms. You’ll be able to

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purge emotional congestion that has been preventing clarity. You’ll have good intuitions about how to separate yourself from influences that have made you weak or angry. I’m excited for you, Capricorn! A load of old, moldy karma could dissolve and disperse in what seems like a twinkling. If all goes well, you’ll be traveling much lighter by July 1.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) I suggest you avoid starting a flirtatious correspondence with a convict who’ll be in jail for another 28 years. OK? And don’t snack on fugu, the Japanese delicacy that can poison you if the cook isn’t careful about preparing it. Please?

And don’t participate in a séance where the medium summons the spirits of psychotic ancestors or diabolical celebrities with whom you imagine it might be interesting to converse. Got that? I understand you might be in the mood for high adventure and out-ofthe-ordinary escapades. And that will be fine and healthy as long as you also exert a modicum of caution and discernment.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) I suggest that you pat

yourself on the back with both hands as you sing your own praises and admire your own willful beauty in three mirrors simultaneously. You have won stirring victories over not just your own personal version of the devil, but also over your own inertia and sadness.

From what I can determine, you have corralled what remains of the forces of darkness into a comfy holding cell, sealing off those forces from your future. They won’t bother you for a very long time, maybe never again. Right now you would benefit from a sabbatical -- a vacation from all this high-powered characterbuilding. May I suggest you pay a restorative visit to the Land of Sweet Nonsense?

Go to RealAstrology.com to check out Rob Brezsny’s expanded weekly audio horoscopes /daily text message horoscopes.

The audio horoscopes are also available by phone at 1-877-873-4888 or 1-900-950-7700.

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