24Works.org
Curator’s statement I am pleased to thank Holly Moye and the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition for the distinct privilege of curating the 2016 iteration of 24 Works on Paper. Many thanks also, obviously, to all the artists who submitted works for consideration. Given the high quality, diversity, and inventiveness of the Oklahoma visual arts community, selecting only 24 works was difficult indeed. Although I was hoping for diversity, my only agenda, frankly, was my own visual pleasure, and yet I hope viewers will agree that the exhibition has an internal integrity. Like Oklahoma, the works are iconoclastic and offbeat; tough and yet sweet and tender; magical and real; and both surreal and sensual. Among the subjects are land, place, and survival; history (deep and recent); and those linked partners, dreams, and desires. The whole of it is shot through with an inspiring vision of what was, is, and might yet be. Twenty-four unique explications are prohibitive, so in no particular order here’s a guide to what I think you may find in the exhibition: mysterious redactions (of technology?) and photographs of alchemical performances; gestural drips evoking the moral sobriety of abstract expressionism; fishheaded flowers that play with outsiderness from the inside; the soaring, fragile beauty of transcendent birds; encaustic monotypes that suggest the watery poems of Helen Frankenthaler; linear entanglements here, teabags and thread over there; paeans to the lush beauty and destructive force of nature (erosion and cyclones); and the oneiric fluidity of Freudian dreamscapes. Be on the lookout also for butterflies abstracted to a cellular level; lyrical flora rendered with dazzling color; mangled survivors and allusions to country and western standards; globalism in the form of archetypal designs of ancient and enduring traditions; enigmatic vignettes of fraternal order; peculiar, indeed, destabilizing shifts in scale; elaborate and inventive technical processes; the continued and nourishing relevance to contemporary art of Native American visual languages; and the quiet autonomy of the desirable body. How could so much life be compressed or called out in 24 modestly scaled works on paper? Like Oklahoma, the exhibition is surprising in both what it reveals and thinly veils from view. Make no mistake—these works on paper will challenge you to look slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully. Fortunately, the rewards are numerous, nuanced, and memorable. It’s hard for me to imagine the exhibition coming from anywhere else.
W. Jackson Rushing III, Ph.D. University of Oklahoma Adkins Presidential Professor of Art History and Mary Lou Milner Carver Chair in Native American Art
VENUES August 12 – September 26, 2016 Guymon Public Library, Guymon, OK October 7 – November 19, 2016 The Wigwam Gallery, Altus, OK December 2, 2016 – January 15, 2017 TAC Gallery | Tulsa Artists’ Coalition, Tulsa, OK January 20 – February 28, 2017 Arts and Preservation in the Osage, Pawhuska, OK March 4 – March 31, 2017 Leslie Powell Gallery, Lawton, OK May 5 – June 17, 2017 Gardiner Gallery of Art, Stillwater, OK Oklahoma State University June 23 – August 5, 2017 Ponca City Art Center, Ponca City, OK August 11 – September 23, 2017 Eleanor Hays Art Gallery, Tonkawa, OK Northern Oklahoma College September 29 – November 10, 2017 Graceful Arts Center, Alva, OK December 1, 2017 – January 13, 2018 Tulsa World | Lorton Family Gallery Gaylord Pickens Museum, home of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City, OK
For more detailed exhibition information, visit www.24Works.org.
M.J. Alexander // mjalexander.com Destroyed for the hubris of daring to challenge the wind, these steel windmills were left bent, bowed and broken in the aftermath of a panhandle tornado. Their twisted remains—silhouetted against a scrim of low clouds above the open plains—echo the lines of James Earle Fraser’s iconic sculpture End of the Trail. The diptych F4 is part of my ongoing series of portraits of the people and places of Oklahoma and the American West.
M.J. Alexander, Oklahoma City F4, 2016, photograph, 16 x 24”
Ginnie Baer // ginniebaer.com I often use actual natural elements in my work—snow, rain, and water from lakes and rivers. I had only lived in Oklahoma for a short time when I made this piece, having just moved from cold and snowy, northern Wisconsin. This painting represents my early relationship with the landscape of Oklahoma, its weather, and the always present challenges and rewards inherent in painting itself.
Ginnie Baer, Guthrie It does snow in Oklahoma, 2016 Oklahoma snow, acrylic, ink, glitter, 25 x 20”
Sarah Bradford The human figure is a work of art in itself. I started this series to capture the perfection and sculptural quality of the human body by adding a natural element that accentuates the figure—in this case, white chalk.
Sarah Bradford, Norman Details , 2015, photograph, 24 x 18”
Tammy Brummell // tammybrummell.com Realizing Ivy is an exploration of composition using photo montage in a digital environment. Photo montage or collage is a derivative form of art in which the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. When creating a collage, I gather random images, assembling them into their own story. Realizing Ivy tells a tale of perseverance, beauty, and defiance. My influences come from early 20th century collage artists such as Romare Bearden and Hannah Höch.
Tammy Brummell, Oklahoma City Realizing Ivy, 2016, digital collage, 16 x 12”
Linda Rimstidt Coward // LindaCowardPottery.blogspot.com My work is inspired by the beauty of the natural world, especially those aspects of nature threatened with extinction. This drawing is my effort to interpret monarch butterfly wings on paper, to magnify the color and grace as of these fragile creatures as they pass through Oklahoma every year on their way to Mexico. I am reminded every time I see them of the wonder of nature and the goodness of creation.
Linda Rimstidt Coward, Tulsa Midnight Monarch, 2016, pen & ink, 8 x 5.5�
Gayle Curry // gaylecurry.com I love exploring contrast, paradoxes, and conflicts. Happiness is a feeling that needs conflict in order for us to appreciate what we have. I use color, bold shapes, and values to express the light as well as the darks of emotions. The purpose of this piece is to find a way to express this feeling without being literal; I explore form, shape, and color to invoke emotion. As an artist, I am particularly drawn to abstraction due to its meditative qualities; one of its greatest benefits being insight into my own life and nature.
Gayle Curry, Oklahoma City Conflicted Happiness, 2015, encaustic monotype, 16 x 12�
BrYan Dahlvang // bryandahlvang.webs.com There really is a fish head flower. Created from an actual fish skull, inlaid with varnished green June beetle (Cotinis nitida) carapaces, it really is beautiful to behold. Formidable greenbriar stems provide excellent support to the heavy head and boar-tusk “leaves.” Once used as currency in Papua New Guinea, the teeth now provide the spray in my arrangement. This painting was a meditation of my real fish head flower, and about finding beauty in the ugly.
Bryan Dahlvang, Oklahoma City Fish Head Flower, 2015, acrylic, 13 x 10”
Leslie Waugh Dallam // leslieslocalcolor.com The inspiration for Erosion #1 comes from the effects of erosion in nature. My interest in erosion is from the trails I bicycle and walk in Norman, OK and the mountain trails I travel and hike in Buena Vista, Colorado. It is remarkable the beauty of the earth as it is uncovered by the effects of heavy rainfall, blowing wind, and melting snow. I enjoy photographing the results of erosion and then using the photographs to create this series. Some of my images range from simple to complex designs of shapes and textures. I use many layers of color and printing, and I overlay that with circular images and diagonal lines made from torn paper staggered to create a landscape.
Leslie Waugh Dallam, Oklahoma City Erosion #1, 2016, mixed media, 22 x 22”
Brian Dehart // BrianDehart.com This drawing is part of a series of drawings that feature portrait-type figures and abstract forms. To make the drawing I used a mix of traditional drawing methods and digital methods. A drawing of a head was made on a computer using a pen tablet, then printed on paper using an inkjet printer. This print was reworked extensively: subtractions were made with sandpaper and erasers; additions were made with charcoal, graphite and drawing ink. Many of the drips, splatters and other extemporaneous marks were printed in inkjet from digitally manipulated images.
Brian Dehart, Tulsa Head [F Farmer Drips], 2016, charcoal, ink, inkjet, 18 x 14�
Cathleen Faubert // cathleenfaubert.com Dust is considered to be any material in the form of tiny particles, such as earth, lint, and skin. Yet, dust can also refer to human mortality. These mundane particles, which are seen as a domestic hindrance, can be thought of as a collection or re-collection of our personal daily matter. The dust in our private spaces is made of us, as well as objects we choose to surround ourselves with. As part of an ongoing art project, Dust & Ash #3 investigates the microcosmic force of this unseen substance activated in my front yard, while utilizing dust and ash collected from inside my home over the course of a year.
Cathleen Faubert, Norman Dust & Ash #3, 2011-2016, photograph, 16 x 22�
Josh Jones // JoshKJones.com Josh Jones is an artist currently living in Oklahoma. His work is inspired by music, nature, architecture, and poetr y. Sk y Interpretation is one of a series of abstract pastel drawings exploring the tumult and flux of spring.
Josh Jones, Norman Sky Interpretation, 2016, pastel, 25 x 19”
Kayleigh Killgore // kaykillgorearts.com Not Yet Lost is a series of drawings created to bring awareness of endangered animals across the world and their relationships to native cultures. In my work I use the juxtaposition of culturally significant patterns onto the silhouettes of endangered animal skulls, creating a unity between the two. I use cultural patterns of groups and tribes native to the regions where the animals are found due to their direct interactions with the species on a daily basis. Through in-depth research of symbols and meanings within the cultural groups I am able to use the patterns in a way that marries the two elements in a respectful fashion. I am drawn towards silhouettes of skulls, as they are the most recognized element of a skeleton. Cross-culturally, they are also meaningful and known to hold the identity of the animal.
Kayleigh Killgore, Edmond
Curator’s Choice Award
Not Yet Lost: Snow Leopard – Tibetan Buddhist, 2016, ink, 17 x 14”
Katelynn Noel Knick // katelynnknick.com Inspired by the colors of summer and a Kitty Wells vinyl playing on repeat, On the Wings of the Great Speckled Bird conveys a fleeting feeling that dances across the paper and into life. By utilizing color, mark-making, and movement, the abstract composition encourages the viewer to engage, explore, and experience something that is playfully unexpected.
Katelynn Noel Knick, Norman On the Wings of the Great Speckled Bird, 2016, colored pencil and graphite, 12 x 9”
Andy Mattern // andymattern.com Through the series Standard Size, I portray packages of photo paper wherein I have physically obscured corporate logos, stock photos, and descriptive text for the purpose of redirecting compositional expectations and aesthetic considerations of subjectbased photography. Distracted by the stock photos and hyper-branding design that appear on packages of photographic paper in my studio, I was moved to purge this extraneous information from my immediate view. I cut or sanded off the product’s dramatic promotional pictures and used colored masking tape to cover up logos and expository text. What began as an effort to obscure or remove things from view resulted in new subjects to photograph — surfaces that seem both familiar and inexplicable. Inspired by hard-edge abstraction and rule-based aesthetics, I want this work to engage both the subtle complexities of representation in general while specifically questioning traditional photographic subjects and methodologies.
Andy Mattern, Stillwater
AWARD OF MERIT
Standard Size #8197, 2014, archival pigment ink print, 16 x 13.5”
Stacey D. Miller // SDMillerART.COM There are a lot of competing memories from my childhood but the greatest among them stem from simple experiences. As a latch-key kid who grew up in the Oklahoma countryside, I was captivated by the bounty that was available in nature. Butterflies and tree frogs were nearer companions than video games, and the tree line beyond the pasture provided all the adventure I sought. Through this piece, Simplicities, I’ve captured impressions of my youth; which at times still guides my adulthood. Using natural plant materials and a printmaking embossment technique similar to collagraphy, I have drawn together small elements of color, embellished with subjective elements created in drawing and lithography.
Stacey D. Miller, Oklahoma City Simplicities, 2015, mixed media monoprint, 22 x 18”
Molly Murphy-Adams // mollymurphybeads.com My work serves as a cultural narrative, an expression of personal experience, and an exploration of form and function. I choose to use specific materials and designs as a way to connect with tribal art forms from antiquity while embracing the reality of mixed heritages. My designs originate from older, more traditional sources while material choices reflect the effect trade goods had on aesthetic and fashion. These physical elements create a specific textural and tactile experience necessary to tell my stories. The liberties I take with materials, line quality, and design elements reflect my interest in contemporary art and the development of abstraction in the Western art tradition. I use the visual language of color and shape to articulate new observations on politics, history, and identity.
Molly Murphy-Adams, Tulsa Beaded Hide Robe, Partial in Gold, 2016, beadwork, embroidery, gouache, 12 x 15”
KIM RICE // KIMRICE.NET I explore whiteness because I see it as a missing link in the conversation on race. This matters because we cannot reason about the role the white race plays in our lives until we can collectively see that it exists. My work explores whiteness as a social construct created through the illusion of ordinariness, symbolism, and institutional power structures such as media, education, the judicial system, and property. This particular work depicts the use of redlining to benefit the white population in Oklahoma City.
Kim Rice, Norman Oklahoma City, OK, 2016, HOLC map, magazines, 26 x 16”
Lauren Scarpello In 2009 I was diagnosed with a tachycardic arrhythmia and my doctor recommended I give up coffee—a huge adjustment from a 2-3 cupa-day lifestyle. We agreed on a daily caffeine allotment of one cup of brewed tea. As a result, I have “Americanized” what is communal in the UK, and ceremonial in places like Japan to be a solitary part of my morning regiment to wake up and ‘get through the day.’ Ten Days is exactly that— ten consecutive days as mapped by tea. Can you look at each tea bag and see it as a reliance to get through the daily ups and downs—the joys and successes, or the heartbreaks and setbacks? If every day can be measured in terms of what happens throughout, surely this is a stitched-together excerpt of my biography.
Lauren Scarpello, Oklahoma City Ten Days (to get through it), 2016 used tea bags, thread, ink, 15 x 11”
Mark Sisson Portrait of Daniel King: Scouting, For Men & For Boys makes me think about creating art in an era almost entirely given over to digital media. Why create portraits by manually drawing them or by using traditional printmaking processes, often onerous or unforgiving, today, when ubiquitous, thoughtlessly derivative, disposable “portraits” can be made and shared by any pea-brain with a cellphone? The answer is because relief prints, intaglios, and lithographs were once seen as disruptive to the comfortable standard and they are now ensconced in the warm embrace of acceptable (historical) media.
Mark Sisson, Stillwater Portrait of Daniel King: Scouting, For Men & For Boys, 2016, combined linocut, woodcut, lithograph, 16.5 x 12.5”
Debra Van Swearingen // vanswearingenphotography.com Captured in the moment of uprising, this great egret seems to be emerging like a “phoenix rising from ashes.” His outstretched, graceful wings with powerful motion uplifting him to new heights—like a soul’s spirit being released. Herons, egrets, and cranes have been a great source of inspiration for me and a passionate challenge to photograph. All of the photographs in this series have been taken in the wild in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. I hope viewers will experience the beauty and elegance of these tall, graceful birds.
Debra Van Swearingen, Norman Emergence, 2014, archival pigment print, 12 x 12”
JIM WEAVER // JWW-ART.com I began tooling leather 13 years ago by learning traditional floral patterns but put tradition aside for broader themes and subject matter. About a year ago I had the idea of making block prints from the leather pieces, like The Cowgirl’s Bouquet. In reinventing and returning to this tradition, the flowers became prickly, a little wild, and highly irregular; while losing their obligatory foliage. As on a belt or saddle, they cover the surface but now have the ability to carry a broader range of meaning.
Jim Weaver, Ada The Cowgirl’s Bouquet, 2016, hand-colored block print, 15 x 11”
GEORGE WILSON Collision is the void between two chaotic systems as they collide and combine resulting in the spark of creation. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.
George Wilson, Oklahoma City Collison, 2016, monoprint with acrylic, 24 x 18”
Malcolm Zachariah // malcolmzachariah.com “Study the science of art and the art of science,” Leonardo da Vinci’s phrase resonates with me as one who studied and researched biochemistry while pursuing art that draws upon the beautiful intricacy of nature. Paper, from my development as a toddler using a kirigami (cut and folded paper) art style, holds a special significance for me; watercolor follows as a natural extension from drawing on this versatile support.
Malcolm Zachariah, Oklahoma City Paean, 2016, watercolor, 18 x 24”
Paean (an Ancient Greek song of triumph) is an abstraction of lines and organic, foliar shapes. My paean follows a “theme and variations” musical form scored for a sextet of colors, reinterpreting the melody with each trio of timbres—each triad of wavelengths.
Shawn Marie Zenthoefer I recently read a statement by a local artist. He proclaimed to no longer question the authenticity of his work or the authenticity of himself as an artist. This gave me hope, for I am constantly questioning myself as an artist and even the idea of art itself. I fear the scrutiny of others and find it difficult to be honest with my work. This new hope can be seen in Ambition. Historically, my art has always been clean, calculated, and exact. This piece has more free form lines and gesture. More grit. More me.
Shawn Marie Zenthoefer, Tulsa Ambition, 2016, ink and watercolor, 15 x 13.5”
The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC) helps artists realize their potential through education, exposure, and funding. Organized in 1988, OVAC is a non-profit organization that supports visual artists living and working in Oklahoma. OVAC promotes public interest in the arts and helps people of all ages understand the visual arts.
Our Mission: Supporting Oklahoma’s visual arts and artists and their power to enrich communities.
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