T
he first of its kind in the state, the Sunny Dayz Mural Festival is a public art event celebrating femaleidentifying and non-binary artists. “Sunny Dayz seeks to uplift and support artists who have been subjected to inequity based off of age, race, and gender. Our core values include a commitment to equitable opportunity and wages, dedicated wall space to “newbies” regardless of age, and the initiation of our high school mentorship program that seeks to empower and educate self identifying women and non binary high school students interested in the arts,” according to its website. Sunny Dayz Mural Festival founder Virginia Sitkes said the idea had been in her head for years but she was able to make it a reality this year. “An all-female mural festival is something I’ve wanted to do for a couple years now. Just kind of didn’t have the right
tools, I guess, or it just wasn’t like the right time. And then back in December, I hopped on the Oklahoma Mural Syndicate Board. February was our first meeting because it took a little holiday break and I pitched the idea,” she said. Just six months later, the first festival will be Aug. 7 from 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the Britton District, 925 W. Britton Road. “The first week of May is when we kind of launched Sunny Dayz to the public. And then, about a week later, our applications for artists went live. For the future, it’s going to be open to anyone. However, it was just Oklahoma artists this year due to COVID and due to budget and timeframe. A week after it launches, we put out the application and that’s when we opened for two weeks. And we got 89 responses,” Sitzes said. Here is a look at four of the 37 artists who will be represented with live work on 33 walls during the festival.
A Place to Call Home | by Marium Rana
Marium Rana neon cactus paradise screenprint on dyed paper 2020 | Virginia Sitzes
Virginia Sitzes Virginia Sitzes painted her first mural in 2019. “It was actually on a dumpster for Scissortail Waste Solutions,” she said. “And then about a month later, I participated in the Mural Fest 66 in Miami, Oklahoma and OMS puts that on as well. Later that year, I participated in Plaza Walls and then also, Chisholm Creek had these semi-temporary, big wooden panels that were blocking construction and so that was a group of us who painted there as well. And so 2019 was kind of the year I was able to enter into more public art stuff.” Also a founding member of Art Group, communal art has always been a focus of Sitzes. “I’m a printmaker, mostly, and also a painter. But with print, you’ve always got print shops with multiple people working and lots of print exchanges and collaborations going on. And so I kind of got the same feels and vibes with mural festivals. You’re creating this awesome commu-
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nity of artists working together and hanging out having fun,” she said. Process and product are inseparable in Sitzes’ work. “I don’t do a lot of hyper-realistic stuff. It’s a lot of abstract expressionistesque, I guess. Very process driven, and so tons and tons of layers. The idea for the past few years I’ve mainly been playing with is all these layers of life. What do we choose to try to cover up? What peeks through and no matter what we do to try to cover it up? And kind of just reflecting on what I made at specific times, so kind of putting pieces in a context and then learning and discovering things from there,” she said. Sitzes’ is featured in the Print on Paseo exhibition in the Paseo Arts Association Gallery until July 31. One of her two pieces in it won “best in show.” Opening a week after Sunny Dayz, the Connect:Collect Print Exchange & Print as Object exhibition will open until October 15. The opening reception will be Sept. 10 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Oklahoma City University Nona Jean Hulsey Gallery.
J U LY 2 1 , 2 0 2 1 | OKGA Z E T TE .COM ART S & CULTURE
Marium Rana first got involved in the Oklahoma City metro arts scene through Momentum when it was in Norman, she said. “I had a pretty ambitious project in mind for a few years. It was to do three, 20-foot double-sided paintings and so I got accepted to be one of the spotlight artists for that,” Rana said. “I come from Florida, in St. Petersburg and Tampa, where street art is pretty big and I’ve done a couple of murals myself. I’ve done one in Joshua Tree, right outside of the Joshua Tree Art Gallery, I had an artist residency there, so I did that and then I did a mural in Tampa. I did one in college, in a restaurant. So I knew it was something that I really loved. I love painting miniatures, and I also like painting murals. It’s these two parts of my personality where I like to do work that is like small whispers and very personal and then I also like to do this large work that has to be seen and is begging to be noticed, and so those two parts of myself exist. And I enjoy taking a break from each one and, you know, going and doing small works and doing larger works.” Born and raised in Long Island, New York, Rana uses both her Pakistani heritage and her American upbringing as inspiration for her work. “The name of the artwork is going to
be LETTING GO. And within this year and a half, a lot of life changes have happened. I’ve become a mother for the first time. Both of my grandparents passed away. I moved to Oklahoma from Florida. I just had a lot of change in my life, and I realized in order to embrace this change, I really had to let go of some parts of myself from before. And so this work is going to be reflective of my Pakistani heritage,” she said. While visiting Pakistan, her grandmother passed away on Valentine’s Day and her grandfather died of COVID-19 in April. “A lot of loss was happening around, as we’ve had friends that have passed to COVID, and so I realized there’s a lot of like, breaking of the previous self happening during quarantine. And during this time,I was like, ‘I just need to, like, go with life.’ Go with things and let things go as they’re happening. Understand it, and process it and not fight against the current. And so this work is about that. And the way that I reflect that is through kites … [Family members] were flying kites from the garden [of her grandparents’ home] and that was that moment of serenity and peace that I want to replicate in this mural,” she said. Her next mural will be for Plaza Walls in October, Rana said, and her work will be featured at Oklahoma Contemporary during an exhibition in January.
