Art 365 2021 by Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition

2021

C ATALOG

CREDITS

COPYRIGHT © 2021 OKLAHOMA VISUAL ARTS COALITION All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ISBN // 978-0-578-92521-9 OKLAHOMA VISUAL ARTS COALITION 1720 N Shartel Ave, Ste B // Oklahoma City, OK 73103 ovac-ok.org // 405.879.2400 DESIGN // Dylan Bradway // dylanbradway.com PHOTO CREDITS // Lauren Fourcade // laurenfourcade.com SPONSORED BY

OKL AHOMA VISUAL ARTS COALITION PRESENTS

2021

JULY 2 - AUGUST 6, 2021 LIVING ARTS // TULSA, OK AUGUST 19 - SEPTEMBER 18, 2021 ARTSPACE AT UNTITLED // OKL AHOMA CIT Y, OK CURATED BY // GR ACE DE VENE Y

T A B L E

O F

C O N T E N T S

ART 365 INTRODUCTION & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS KRYSTLE KAYE // EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR // OKLAHOMA VISUAL ARTS COALITION

CURATOR STATEMENT GRACE DEVENEY // GUEST CURATOR

ARTIST + RESPONSE WRITINGS 12-23

GINNIE BAER // Silver Valley // RESPONSE BY ALYSON ATCHISON

24-35

MAGGIE BOYETT & MARWIN BEGAYE // Body Acknowledgement: The Body as Land // RESPONSE BY KRISTIN GENTRY

36-47

CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL // Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway // RESPONSE BY LIZ BLOOD

48-59

NAIMA LOWE // A token is a stand in for something of value // RESPONSE BY CATHERINE CRAIN

60-71

MIRELLA MARTINEZ // Payne // RESPONSE BY JOHN SELVIDGE

ARTIST BIOS // GINNIE BAER, MARWIN BEGAYE, MAGGIE BOYETT, CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL , NAIMA LOWE, MIRELLA MARTINEZ

WRITER BIOS // ALYSON ATCHISON, LIZ BLOOD, CATHERINE CRAIN, KRISTIN GENTRY, JOHN SELVIDGE

CURATOR BIO // GRACE DEVENEY

ART 365 PARNTER INFORMATION

ART 365 SPONSOR RECOGNITION

Art 365 Exhibition, gallery view, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

ART 365 INTRODUCTION & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

KRYSTLE K AYE // E X ECUTI V E DIRECTOR // OK L A HOM A V ISUA L A RT S COA LITION

Our flagship program, Art 365, supports five projects with

Arts, the Oklahoma Arts Council, National Endowment

stipends of $12,000 each, curatorial support by a nationally

for the Arts, George Kaiser Family Foundation, and

esteemed curator, and one year to create new ambitious

Kirkpatrick Family Fund. In a particularly trying year, our

projects. This framework allows the selected artists to

funders remained unwavering, allowing us to continue to

experiment and grow in their practice, ultimately providing

deliver meaningful programs such as Art 365. We thank

a catalyst for these artists, elevating them to the next

them for their support and believing in the power of the

chapter of their careers.

arts to positively impact communities.

When we first began to plan this iteration of Art 365, words

We also want to say a special thank you to our partner

like innovation and experimentation are what we used to

organizations and the incredible staff that problem-

describe this program. We never could have fathomed the

solved and brought these exhibitions together. Thank

isolation and global tragedy that would be the backdrop

you to Heather Duncan and the team at Living Arts of

as these artists pursued their ambitious projects. The

Tulsa and Laura Warriner and the team at ARTSPACE at

works on display would be considered exceptional during

Untitled, for all of the support in installation, promotion,

any iteration of Art 365, yet, the creation of these five

and programming surrounding Art 365. These individuals

projects during a pandemic that only allowed for Zoom

are the silent workers behind the scenes that make it all

studio visits and meetings, while working on some of the

possible. We are incredibly appreciative of your dedication

largest projects of the artists’ careers, is nothing short of

to this project.

inspirational. I commend these artists for their grit in a deeply troubling year and their perseverance seeing their

Last, but certainly not least, I personally want to thank

concepts to completion.

our board of directors for their vision and support in an unprecedented year. And our staff for their tireless efforts,

This year our guest curator, Grace Deveney, associate

a true demonstration of passion and perseverance:

curator of Prospect.5 in New Orleans, mentored and

Alexa Goetzinger, Associate Director; Audrey Kominski,

guided her selected artists presented to you in this catalog:

Programs & Events Manager; Aunj Braggs, Grants &

Ginnie Baer, duo Maggie Boyett and Marwin Begaye,

Outreach

Crystal Z Campbell, Naima Lowe, and Mirella Martinez.

Marketing Manager; Lauren Fourcade, Media & Programs

Each project explores themes of place and identity, with

Assistant; and Ariana Weir, Office Manager. Truly, a better

common threads of creating in quarantine. As we emerge

team does not exist.

Manager;

Emily

Kaissling,

Membership

from a year of fear and loss, we are honored to share these projects with the community.

OVAC’s board of directors and staff are pleased to present to you the catalog for this iteration of Art 365, which

These projects, the culminating exhibitions and catalog,

captures the work, the curator and artists’ processes, and

and free public workshops are generously supported by

reflective written responses. We hope you will be as moved

Mid-America Arts Alliance, NBC Oklahoma, and The Andy

and inspired as we were while experiencing these projects.

Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. And nothing we do would be possible without continued support from Allied Crystal Z Campbell, Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway, printed banners on tyvek, 13’ x 2’

Naima Lowe, installation view of A token is a stand in for something of value, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

C U R A T O R

S T A T E M E N T

GRACE DEVENEY // ASSOCIATE CURATOR // PROSPECT NEW ORLEANS

Art 365: Five Views on Land, Value, and Embodiment

During the opening of the Art 365 exhibition at Living Arts of

Further, organizing the exhibition over video rather than

Tulsa, Marwin Begaye and Maggie Boyett presented the live

in-person studio visits meant that my time with the artists

performance aspect of their project, Body Acknowledgement:

was largely spent in conversation about the ideas driving

Body as Land. At the close of the performance, I was struck by

their practices. These compelling conversations revealed

how facets of it resonated with my experience as the exhibition

connections between the five projects that transcended their

curator over the last year. At the end of Maggie Boyett’s

shared geography. Through painting, photography, video,

mesmerizing and evocative dance, applause erupted and then

printmaking, dance, and sound, the artists used materials

many people continued in their viewing of the show. But for

and processes to explore histories related to land, value,

those who lingered, there was a quieter second act: Begaye

and the ways inner life is shaped by communal and personal

and his assistants deconstructed the dance floor, revealing

expressions of sorrow and joy.

that Boyett’s dancing body had also served as a kind of printing press, transferring ink to the paper below to create a new edition

For example, Naima Lowe and Ginnie Baer considered how

of the 15-foot print hanging on a nearby wall. The reveal of the

their work as artists brought value and purpose amidst the

print below the surface felt analogous to the thrill of seeing the

upheaval of a global pandemic and public reckonings with

results of 14 months of research, making, and experimentation

racism and imbalances of power that bubbled to the surface

by Ginnie Baer, collaborators Marwin Begaye and Maggie

in 2020. For her project, A token is a stand in for something

Boyett, Crystal Z Campbell, Naima Lowe, and Mirella Martinez,

of value, Lowe looked to numbers as a grounding force in

as they worked toward the exhibition.

unstable and unnerving times. Her project mined the depths of her experience while considering ways to reframe value

The year over which our process unfolded was unlike any other—

as subjective, rather than based on monetary systems. Her

it began during the early days of shelter-in-place mandates when

complex thinking and use of metaphor came together in an

I, as OVAC’s guest curator, invited six artists to complete five

installation that marked time through unconventional means.

projects for the exhibition. The timeframe of the exhibition meant

Her agile installation of non-monetary “tokens” arched and

that my work with the artists spanned the depths of the COVID-19

weaved through the gallery offers a testament to daily practice

pandemic—our first studio visits took place in May 2020 and the

as a way to move through difficult times.

exhibition opened at Living Arts Tulsa in July 2021. Although with

each passing season between our initial visits and this summer I

The paintings of Silver Valley, Ginnie Baer’s project, teeter

hoped I would eventually get to see the artists in person, the year

between representing familiar landscapes, and abstract

had other plans. We adapted to remote viewing and communication

bursts of color. Each work offers a glimpse into an imagined

while holding space for the general and specific forms of duress

place, a window on to an elsewhere. At the same time, the

each of us experienced. In that time, each artist also shifted their

paintings on panel present familiar aspects of the natural

project to the conditions of distance, as well as resolved how to

world, such as shrubs and trees, embedded in rhythmic arcs

sustain their work despite relative isolation.

of color that evoke the calming movement of water, or the

ripple of dunes. By occupying a space between the known and

realities and potential of fragmentation and the experience of

the uncertain, Baer’s work is an invitation to occupy spaces of

being situated between multiple cultures.

calm and care, in a moment when it may feel that those values are in short supply.

Crystal Z Campbell’s Hi, Hi, Hi Highway relies on what the artist calls the politics of witnessing, to draw attention to the

Collaborators Maggie Boyett and Marwin Begaye, multimedia

spatial violence of building Highway 75 through the Greenwood

artist Crystal Z Campbell, and photographer Mirella Martinez

District of Tulsa in the 1960s. She does so during a moment

explored various ways migration and displacement inform

of acknowledgment of the inexcusable violence of the 1921

contemporary life in Oklahoma. In their project Body

Tulsa Race Massacre, allowing us to see the connections

Acknowledgement: Body as Land, Begaye and Boyett merge

between the overtly violent displacement of 100 years ago,

their respective practices, transforming dance into a

and the more invisible forms of violence that have continued

means of transferring ink for printmaking and woodblock

to shape the city. Campbell’s optically disorienting patterned

as a supportive floor for dance. This cross-pollination was

banners introduce the sensation of movement to the stillness

grounded in the inquiry at the heart of their project: Indigenous

of the gallery while offering two declarations: “Highways

identity and urban experience. As they have described, to

Race Us” and “Highways Move Us.” Campbell’s work further

think of the body as land implies a connection between lived

animates this history by bringing together archival footage

experience and nature, that the self is marked and shaped by

of promotional videos from the building of the highway with

encounters with others. Boyett and Begaye brought together

contemporary performers using the space as a generative

aspects of the wisdom that comes from this perspective,

site. Campbell’s work disorients the familiar, and in doing

embracing and exploring notions of fragmentation through

so, invites us to question the normality of a highway cutting

their formal process.

directly through a residential and commercial neighborhood, a choice that often impacts Black communities and communities

Mirella Martinez’s documentary photographs explore Payne

of color across the United States.

County, and the Mexican communities that live there, and in the Oklahoma plains. Martinez’s installation includes images

Overall, each of the five projects offered windows into ways

of both the land and sky, as well as covert glimpses into

of seeing life land, value, and embodiment, raising complex

social gatherings such as weddings and quinceañeras. The

questions about identity, belonging, care, and placemaking. As

photographs are a testament to Martinez’s keen eye and way of

a guest, I’m grateful to each artist for allowing me a window into

seeing, drawing attention to details, giving the viewer striking

their practice and their ways of seeing Oklahoma and beyond.

visual details of daily life. In keeping with her investment in photography as a portal, Martinez’s photographs don’t seek to answer questions or define what it means to be Mexican in Oklahoma; instead, like Boyett and Begaye, she revels in the Marwin Begaye and Maggie Boyett, detail shot of Fragmentation, woodblock and oil-based ink on paper, 15’ x 15’

Ginnie Baer, detail view of A Happier Place, acrylic and watercolor on wood panel, 20” x 20”

G INNIE B A ER Silver Valley

Ginnie Baer, installation view of Silver Valley, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

A R T I S T

S T A T E M E N T

GINNIE BAER // Silver Valley

Silver Valley is a place, though it may only exist in your mind. Silver Valley is fuzzy, beautiful, and strange, appearing better in memory than any reality. Silver Valley is a dreamy escape that acknowledges the universal experiences of loss, grief, pain, and joy. Silver Valley is a series of paintings that developed as a way to offer tranquility and comfort in response to my own past experiences with profound grief. After losing both of my parents by age 22, and more recent experiences with chronic pain, I’ve searched for healing by making work that feels positive. This has led me to painting landscapes—as a metaphor, and a vessel capable of holding an inner world. When I am ill and in pain, everything seems incredibly dark. Once I eventually feel better things seems lighter, I feel lighter—the world seems a little brighter, a little more sparkly and hopeful. I wanted to offer that present, meditative way of seeing things to viewers in the hopes of easing their pain as well as my own. The painting process and materials figure heavily into this work and its meaning. The paints I use are very fluid—watercolors and high-flow acrylics—paints that will run and stain. Colors are often pulled directly from the landscape, though increasingly within this project, I tended to lean heavily on the same colors again and again—colors that seem to exist solely within the invented palette of Silver Valley. I use lots of water, especially in the early stages of a painting, allowing the paint to puddle and mix, not quite knowing how it will dry. Each painting session is a response to the last one. I let the painting tell me what should happen next, making decisions spontaneously, intuitively. Some decisions don’t work out. The painting may be

overworked or feel as though it cannot be resolved. If all goes well and the materials and I have done our jobs, there will be a certain amount of mystery left in the painting. Glitter, which I use as another type of pigment, also serves as a representation for negative ions—molecules found in nature that promote a sense of calm and well-being. I could have used an entire bucket of glitter for 2020. As the pandemic arrived and went on for days and months the project changed—not because I wanted it to necessarily, but because, like many others, my mental and physical health declined, making it increasingly challenging to access those places that felt calm, comfortable, or hopeful. 2020 was difficult in so many ways, on a global scale certainly, but it seems so many people had, and are continuing to have, a difficult year on top of the pandemic on account of the individual and collective struggles against police brutality, as well as political and personal upheaval more generally. This was definitely true for me as I struggled with new, mysterious health issues, had job-related anxiety, and lost a family member. Often, I felt like the anxiety I was experiencing disqualified me from attempting to offer comfort or solace. At the same time, the events of 2020 made this desire to offer comfort more urgent, though I felt much less equipped to offer any kind of hopeful message. Eventually, the colors became more toned down, the scenes became more ambiguous and abstracted and my relationship to materials and marks became more loose and less controlled. I felt like I was painting through the uneasiness—thinking of these more ambiguous spaces as a metaphor for the times we are living in.

Over the past year, then, the project also evolved into something even more personal than I had originally intended. It became a sort of painted diary that embodies my personal day-to-day life and studio practice as well as the impact of national and global social and political events. When I look at the paintings, I see all of it—the overwhelm and anxiety so many of us felt as well as a hopeful sort of longing. The play between representation and abstraction is a constant back and forth in these paintings. I enjoy how they work together, and how sometimes one wins out over the other. I am most happy when abstraction has the upper hand and a more open, poetic, and mysterious painting emerges. These paintings reflect a magical, dreamy, meditative state of being. They are part memory, part reality, and part escapist. There is a sense of joy, longing, and heartbreak infused into each one. The sparkly, hopeful parts were tough to find last year. They were still there, though I sometimes had to shut out the world for a little bit to find them. I hope Silver Valley helps you see them too.

TOP: Ginnie Baer, installation view of Silver Valley, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021 BOTTOM: Ginnie Baer, Detail view of Silver Valley, acrylic watercolor, and glitter on wood panel, 36” x 48”

Ginnie Baer, Silver Valley, acrylic, watercolor, and glitter on wood panel, 36” x 48”

Ginnie Baer, Lagoon, acrylic and watercolor on wood panel, 30” x 30”

ALYSON ATCHISON // RESPONSE TO: Silver Valley

Looking back at the years that comprise my lifetime, each individual year is readily defined by a summary of accomplishments and failures, births and deaths, and some moments of self-discovery. To me, the years behind look like squares with bold outlines and sharp corners that hold bullet-pointed lists within them. Except for 2020. Two thousand twenty looks like a nearly formed bubble that is still attached to the wand waiting for one last breath to send it floating away. It stays just inches from my lips. It grows and shrinks and adopts everchanging amoebic-like shapes. The millisecond it would take to complete it with one tiny breath has lasted well into 2021. But still, it hangs there from the wand. From inside this bubble, the rest of the world is out of focus. The tricky lure of staying home to save lives dances with its more problematic partner who forbids us from hugging our mothers. Inside this bubble, we sit on the patio under a warm sunset. We chase specks of light before they rise too high to catch them. And we wonder if our laughter is too loud. Under the stars, we draw our futures in pastel colored chalk on the concrete before the rain washes it away while we sleep. On the outside of the bubble, we is me. The space where the bubble meets the wand leaves an opening too small to climb back in, and the weight is too great to trust it again. The intimacy is larger than the space allowed.

Outside of the bubble, we count deaths, votes, and dollars. Degrees of temperature and trends in weather determine tomorrow. And the space outside of the bubble is infinite. I am both out of sustaining breaths to give 2020 and not yet ready to let it go. So, I let it sit there, inches from my lips, becoming bottom-heavy and sagging. In Silver Valley, a series of paintings by Ginnie Baer for Art 365, I recognize the iridescent vulnerability of that ultrathin skin of the bubble. It is the ephemeral and impossible-to-hold tiny part of 2020 that I have been trying to hide away and keep for tomorrow. It is the glint of a diamond amid the coal—as if a diamond ceases to exist upon touch. Walking through Baer’s paintings, I realize that it is not what is inside the bubble that I want to keep, nor is it the reality of today from the outside looking back. Baer illustrates the walk I want to keep taking right where the skin of the bubble connects the inside to the rest of the world. And we breathe...

Ginnie Baer, installation view of Silver Valley, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

LEFT: Ginnie Baer, Fairytale Ending, acrylic and watercolor on wood panel, 20” x 20” CENTER: Ginnie Baer, A Place for Joy, acrylic, watercolor, and glitter on wood panel, 20” x 24” RIGHT: Ginnie Baer, Pink Sands, acrylic and watercolor on wood panel, 20” x 20”

LEFT: Ginnie Baer, I’ve Been Running Through the Landscapes of My Mind, acrylic, watercolor, and glitter on wood panel, 36” x 36” RIGHT: Ginnie Baer, A Place to Believe In, acrylic, watercolor, and glitter on wood panel, 36” x 36”

Artist Name, Title, Description, Size x Size

M A R W I N B E G A Y E + M A G G I E B O Y E T T

Body Acknowledgement: The Body as Land

Maggie Boyett, performing Fragmentation, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

Marwin Begaye and Maggie Boyett, Fragmentation, woodblock and oil-based ink on paper, 15’ x 15’

A R T I S T

S T A T E M E N T

MARWIN BEGAYE & MAGGIE BOYETT // Body Acknowledgement: The Body as Land

Through their collaboration, Body Acknowledgment: The Body

work on Body Acknowledgment beyond 2021 so that their

as Land, printmaker Marwin Begaye and performer Maggie

work through the yearlong Art 365 program could focus

Boyett investigate their identities as Urban Indians. Boyett

narrowly on investigating how they individually embody land

(saawanwa/Cáuigù) grew up dancing in the sprawl of Tulsa,

acknowledgment.

Oklahoma, near her Algonquian cultural community but displaced from their ancestral homelands. Begaye (Diné) is an

Like many Native people, Begaye and Boyett wrestle daily

artist who was raised in southwest New Mexico, near Gallup

with the concept of “living in two worlds”—the idea that

on the Navajo Reservation. They come from very different

colonization forces Native people to navigate American social

landscapes and cultures. However, they found a shared

customs and culture while also creating space and time to

value within their cultures that acknowledges the life force

live out their Indigenous values. This perspective fractures

in everything around us and that we as humans do not have

and obscures cultural knowledge and practices, affecting

dominion over everything but rather should live in communion

relationships with land and community.

with it all. The concept of “all my relations,” a phrase often associated with the brotherhood of humans, is not limited to

The artists created a tangible experience of this perspective

nuclear human family networks. It extends kinship to plant

through

and animal relations, air, water, and earth. Many Indigenous

titled Fragmentation. Boyett has created an impressionist

people, including the artists, feel that the body can attune

performance piece in response to the natural elements of air,

itself to the land and shifts in the environment. The recent

fire, earth, and water. During the process, Boyett uncovered

uptick in land acknowledgments at public events, award

a poem she had drafted back in April 2019 where she invoked

ceremonies and in television and film inspired the artists to

each of the same natural elements she was exploring

explore how the concept of land acknowledgment could serve

choreographically for Fragmentation. The order in which

as an entry point to deepening their kinships with land, self,

each element appeared in that poem became its placement

and time.

in this performance. Boyett broke apart her choreography

large-scale

performance-based

installation

by intentionally utilizing chance. She recorded rolls of her We’ve been moving for a long time, but the land moves

traditional Shawnee dice and a twenty-sided die to determine

with you like memory. An Urban Indian belongs to the city,

specific movement phrases’ timing and chronological order.

and cities belong to the earth... Being Indian has never

She will perform the piece over the surface of a fifteen-

been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere

foot diameter woodblock, surrounded by mirror-tinted

or nowhere.

panels suspended from the ceiling—an additional layer of obscuration for the viewer.

–Tommy Orange (Cheyenne, Arapaho) excerpted from There, There (2018)

Boyett collaborated with musicians, field recordists, and producers to develop a disparate musical score for the

Mediating cultural values as contemporary urban artists

performance. She found and conceptualized each song

can be complex. Early in the process, the pair’s research

individually, then turned her focus entirely to the movement,

and conversation pointed to several different directions the

letting the songs fall into sequential order naturally. The

collaboration could head. The two set intentions to continue

music includes original compositions created from sound

samples of Begaye working in his printmaking studio, as well

mirror-tinted plexiglass of varying widths, suspended on the

as covers of Rumble by Link Wray (Shawnee) and Rebel Girl by

outer perimeter of the woodblock. Additionally, the artists

riot grrrl trailblazers Bikini Kill, sung entirely in the Shawnee

created textile work and two hand-pulled prints of 4’ x 4’

language.

woodblocks onto paper representing both the Sun and Moon.

The large-scale woodblock Boyett will dance on includes

With Fragmentation, the first project out of the duo’s

graphic elements Begaye has pulled from both Shawnee and

collaborative Body Acknowledgment: The Body as Land, Begaye

Navajo cultures. Begaye also researched graphic elements

and Boyett have integrated their Indigenous philosophies

from the Caddo and Wichita cultures when preparing the block

and artistry to approach the creative process as ceremony,

because they have the longest historical presence within the

exploring how printmaking, dance, space, and sound can

landscape of Oklahoma. From this research, Begaye identified

work in communion with each other. The dissimilarities

designs that referenced the cosmos and stars, the earth, air,

between their ancestral and personal backgrounds refute the

fire, and water. He prepared these designs into a composition

misconception that Native America is a singular, monolithic

that pays homage to all the natural elements. He sought to

culture. Their artistic practices arguably have even less in

create a visual harmony within the circular form upon which

common. Yet through this work, the two have bridged the

Boyett’s movements would transfer the ink to the paper,

gap between their respective modalities and deepened their

expressing the transient connections made and bridging the

understanding of the body’s attunement to landscape and

spaces between past, present, and future.

time. They have deconstructed their preferred art forms of live performance and woodblock printing and reintegrated

The performance explores an alternative way to produce

them to create a new vehicle for visual storytelling.

a relief print of such an expansive scale. The installation combines a variety of materials, including the fifteen-foot diameter woodblock and 96 strips of eight-foot-long hanging LEFT: Marwin Begaye, inking woodblock for Fragmentation performance, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021 RIGHT: Maggie Boyett, performing Fragmentation, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

LEFT: Marwin Begaye and Maggie Boyett, Johanaai, oil-based ink on paper, 48” x 48” RIGHT: Marwin Begaye and Maggie Boyett, Tiaa hanaaii, oil-based ink and glow in the dark pigment on muslin, 48” x 48”

Artist assistants unveiling Fragmentation print after performance, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

KRISTIN GENTRY (CHAHTA) // RESPONSE TO: Body Acknowledgement: The Body as Land

Native American art is contemporary art—a reflection and response to our current world through artistic ex pr e s sion . For A r t 365 2 0 21, one dancer and one printmaker came together to embody a Land Acknowledgement. The collaborative works of Maggie Boyett and Marwin Begaye were created through visual and performance work reflective of their matriarchal societies, and it is an acknowledgment of the various tribal lands on which the work is displayed in both Tulsa and Oklahoma City exhibition spaces. Maggie is from the Shawnee and Kiowa Nations, and Marwin is from the Dine, Navajo Nation, but the artists’ collaboration demonstrates how people and land are synonymous—and while being part of the land, we are also its caretakers. In many ways, the collaborators exemplify a living land acknowledgement through their pr actices. Their ideas were initiated over a five-year period of breaking bread together, talking, making, collaborating, and challenging each other’s artistic ideas. Despite the real-time descriptor of their personal ideas merging, their works have been in the making since their respective tribal cultures began. Mar win car ved a fifteen-foot woodblock with design work reflective of both of their tribal identities, cultural stories, and cosmologies for Maggie to dance upon to tell the stor y about waking up the old traditions through contemporar y printmaking. As she danced her thoughtful and abstracted choreographed movements upon the block, her body weight and movements transferred the ink from Mar win’s block to the paper underfoot as Maggie became the printing press. Through choreographed dance and cultural designs, they further abstracted the experience for the viewer to also see their own reflection through

their performance. The perimeter of the large block was encircled with long hanging mirrored strips for the viewers to watch Maggie dance through. During the process, Maggie found that through contemporar y dance she could wake up a song that had been either forgotten or lost due to assimilation. This fragmented view of her dancing was reflective of the way cultural memories return in fragments within our own minds. Maggie composed four songs to reflect the four cardinal directions with importance to their tribes, all Indigenous people, and all people on the land in which the exhibition rests. They wanted their piece to embody community, and how people connect to the land in contemporar y art spaces. They wanted the Indigenous peoples viewing their work to think about what it means for them to exist within the urban setting. The bold contrast of the black ink of relief printed images on white paper created ver y powerful visual imager y for viewers. Fabric was printed from the blocks as well, and Maggie’s mother sewed it into the clothing she wore for the opening performance of the exhibition. The visual arts process usually involves some type of line or mark making. Maggie impressed viewers to know that “the mark you are making in this moment is sacred. It’s important, and you shouldn’t just throw it away.”

Marwin Begaye and Maggie Boyett, Duality, oil-based in on silk, hand constructed skirt

Marwin Begaye and Maggie Boyett, Fragmentation, performance and installation, wood, mirrored plexi glass, steel, oil-based ink on paper, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

C RYS TA L Z C A MPBELL Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway

Crystal Z Campbell, detail view of Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

Crystal Z Campbell, Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway, printed banners on tyvek, 13’ x 2’

A R T I S T

S T A T E M E N T

CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL // Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway

The first time I drove on a highway, I legally should not have been driving. I was four years old, in the driver’s seat of my mother’s boxy navy blue Toyota Camry. Approaching a peak in the highway, I tried to brake, but slammed on the gas instead. It was clear then, that the highway had a literal break in it, a fifteen foot gap between where my car was heading and the next strip of highway after it. It was clear then, that my car would fit neatly in this hole where it could fall to the ground. It was too late to slow the car down. The next time I drove on a highway, awake this time, was because I had twisted the truth. A tired friend, a year older with a cur v y and brand new red Toyota Corolla, asked if I could drive…if I would like to take the wheel. My father had been taking me along back roads and parking lots where I stuttered along, tr ying to coordinate my large feet between the brake and pedal in a zippy old Lincoln. I begged to drive. Driving was freedom. Driving was autonomy. I found myself in the driver’s seat of the Corolla, and somehow navigated my friends and I safely to the mall. It seemed urgent, then. When I lived in Tulsa on Greenwood Ave, I often walked towards the Greenwood District. And with what little of the district remains, it is impossible to miss the bulging concrete known commonly as a highway, arching right through it. It is a curious thing, to have this slice of the highway arching across the remnants of Greenwood like a stale, icy, concrete rainbow. The highway splits the business strip from the church and Greenwood Cultural Center right behind it. A wave of urban renewal manifested this highway, alongside other deliberate ruptures in Black communities and other communities of color across the country. What would change, if this

highway was undone? Can these acts of displacement, of architectural violence, be reversed? With the highway act, cities found a way to use eminent domain to dispossess Black people of land and community. Cities held hands with federal agencies, to provide a way for white residents to flee the city from above, to the suburbs. White flight was facilitated by these zippy high roads leading away from the pulse of the city. These highways helped fuel the oil and automotive industries, reinforcing the deep connection that Americans have with cars. Akin to my youth, the car became a romantic symbol of selfhood and freedom, and the highways provided a space to activate these lofty escapes. But escape, for who? In Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway, I am working with this section of the highway that splits Greenwood, activated by performers who are working upon it. With the performers, we have developed a choreography along the underpass and highway median. These Tulsa-based performers, Nicos Norris and Daniel Pender, play the highway like sonic graffiti. With dented steel poles, they rap along its surface, extracting sound from a site of architectural violence that has noise pollution, as one of its perks. Reclaiming sacred space, we use debris from dead auto bodies to punctuate time, to ask the highway how it came to be here, and how it comes to be a monument of communal dispossession. The soundtrack of this video work, is derived mostly from the I-244 highway itself. The sound has been recorded on site, grazing along the highway’s industrials nooks and picking up the wind from constant acceleration. The sound is recorded from over and under passes, from what is commonly referred to as dead space. But upon each

visit, it is clear that these spaces have been inhabited. That someone’s dead space, is another’s space for living. That a space for living was destroyed for this highway to be here, but it has been inhabited again. I have heard that realtors get bonus points, when they list a property with easy access to the highway. And in my youth, I had wrongly thought of it just the same, a seemingly endless road symbolizing access and freedom. Today, the highway is also a means for the reversal of white flight, this time catalyzing gentrification. The performances in the video are spliced with archival footage that complicate these architectural vestiges that double as markers of America’s dividing lines— unintentional monuments of an intentionally segregated United States of America. Recalling a song that I listened to when I was learning to control the wheel, Tony Rich’s Highway claims: “I drive the highway, in no direction.” Once you are on it, it is easy to stay on. It is easy to block things out. It is sometimes, easy, to turn around in a speed that delivers everything around it as a blur.

LEFT: Crystal Z Campbell, Hi, Hi, HI, Highway, printed banners on tyvek, 13’ x 2’ RIGHT: Crystal Z Campbell, Hi,Hi,Hi,Highway, 4’52” minute digital video loop, digital video, stereo sound, banners, performers: Nicos Norris and Daniel Pender

Crystal Z Campbell, installation view of Hi, Hi, HI, Highway, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

LIZ BLOOD // RESPONSE TO: Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway

Crystal Z Campbell’s video Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway opens with a

to the late 1950s–early 1960s. The film, which praises the

shot of a bronze plaque on Greenwood Avenue, site of the

interstate system, is overlaid by Campbell with a spinning

1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The plaque commemorates

black-and-white-checkered graphic, reminiscent of an

Commodore’s (Knotts) Cotton Club, one of the hundreds

optical illusion, which demands the viewers attention while

of Black-owned businesses that comprised Black Wall

calling into question the content of the video it obscures.

Street before the neighborhood was burned to the

Meant to engender feelings of positivity towards the large-

ground by a white mob. Commodore’s Cotton Club never

scale disruption that is highway creation, the historic

reopened, and today, Interstate 244 runs over the land

film’s narrator can be heard saying, “Our country will be

where it once stood.

united like never before.” Just before another glimpse of contemporary Greenwood overrun by the highway, the

While Commodore’s didn’t reopen after the massacre,

vintage narrator says, “The new interstate system will

many businesses did, making Greenwood yet again one

mean many different things to many different people.”

of the most prosperous Black neighborhoods in the US, through the mid-1950s. Then came the federally-funded

Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway is in step with national conversation.

highways, Campbell’s departure point for their latest work.

This year, U.S. Senators introduced legislation to fund the removal or retrofitting of highway systems that

Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway is in the lineage of Campbell’s work

displaced and disrupted communities of color. While much

examining the dispossession of Black people in the

of Campbell’s work looks back on a century of violence

Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In her 2019

against Black people in Tulsa, it also looks forward, begging

performative piece, Model Citizen: Here I Stand, Campbell’s

questions about the legacies Tulsa and, by extension, the

collaborator-performers used the same yellow metal poles

country, will choose to perpetuate.

seen in Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway to create sonic reverberations in an massacre-era building-turned-gallery, Living Arts of

In the gallery, Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway is projected onto a

Tulsa, where Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway is now shown.

temporary wall. Some of the projection bleeds over and onto the interior structure of Living Arts, suggesting

As in Model Citizen, the sound employed in Hi, Hi, Hi,

that an act, like a highway, reaches beyond its immediate

Highway grinds on the observer. It is grating, eery—steel

location. Six floor-length banners, arranged before and to

scraped on concrete as vehicles rattle and rumble the

each side of the projection, feature single words printed

bridge overhead. Performers Daniel Pender and Nicos

on each side in mixed forward and reverse text. The first

Norris sweep and beat the steel rods against the ungiving

group: highways, race, us. The second: highways, move,

overpass of I-244. In a few instances, they scrape away

us. In relationship with the video’s spinning graphic, their

at loose dirt and concrete, perhaps questioning the

black and white op-art-style background plays with ideas

overpass’s permanence.

of appearance, illusion, and acts of attention.

Interspersed between the footage from beneath I-244 are clips from a government-commissioned archival film dating TOP: Crystal Z Campbell, Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway, 4’ 52” minute digital video loop, digital video, stereo sound, banners, performers: Nicos Norris and Daniel Pender

BOTTOM: Crystal Z Campbell, Audience interacting with Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

Crystal Z Campbell, detail view of Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

N A I M A L O W E A token is a stand in for something of value

Naima Lowe, detail view of Sum Total, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

Naima Lowe, Sum Total, yellow chromate washers, nuts, and assorted fasteners, nylon paracord

A R T I S T

S T A T E M E N T

NAIMA LOWE // A token is a stand in for something of value

the full 16 introductory bars of Billie Holiday’s “Pennies From Heaven” feels self-consciously, even slyly, perfect. The air caught between the notes is just on the edge of sarcastic, but then again don’t we all just want to be loved? This project is a formal and conceptual exploration of labor, valuation, numeracy, and the unbearable weight of living through late capitalism with self-awareness. The sculptural, sound, and text works that I’ve created borrow aesthetic language and conceptual considerations from the retail design shop that I created during 2020 in my latest attempt to free myself from the stranglehold of institutions more interested in the appearance of Black inclusion than the actuality of Black freedom. I needed a means of economic support that wasn’t dependent on the whims of philanthropic or academic patronage, which led me down the often precarious path of entrepreneurship and self employment. I don’t feel unencumbered by the perils of capitalist exploitation by taking this route. I do feel more at home within my lineage of Black working artists who turned survival into the most beautiful music. My bills need to be paid, so I’m out here hustling. My favorite Louis Armstrong song is the jovial rendition of a show tune about a lying murdering pimp written by a notorious Marxist. For my sculptural installation, Sum Total (2021), I’ve used craft and manufacturing materials as well as rudimentary algebra to visually and spatially represent an accumulation of time, grief, and personal growth through a global crisis. I’ve assembled 4753 pieces of construction hardware, in various sizes, colors, and patinas; ordered into 97 sets resembling necklaces or key rings, the pieces are hung

on brightly colored paracord, and held together by several yards of dense but flexible bungee cord. I was inspired by research into alternative currency systems, like those developed by company stores to entrap its workers into perpetual dependency or arcade token systems designed to offer prizes for successful game play. Government funded social programs also create tokens for use within food banks and farmers markets, as do board and role playing games. I’m attracted to the formal elements that occur in these systems: mimicking or mocking government issued currency and creating numerical patterns and shapes that are easily recognizable. I also find it curious to consider the arbitrariness of assigning value to specific bits of paper or metal. Monetary systems, “legitimate” or otherwise, are astounding forms of language and meaning making. I undertook this exploration of currency as a way of addressing the complex ways that creativity, self-worth, and identity are inscribed through and by systems that are simultaneously complete fictions and the most concrete element of our shared lives in contemporary capitalism. While Sum Total reflects on accumulation in relation to value and currency, 97 Days Between is a text and sound work that enumerates time. The hand-written text acts as the provisional score for the sound recordings by outlining rhythm, cadence, tone and emotional color for the improvising musicians. You’re invited to listen and read along, carrying this painstakingly rendered archive of physical memory in your hands. The narrative is derived from my daily documentation of the emotional toll of living through the first ninety-seven days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The piece tracks a mix of mundane tasks under quarantine, challenging interpersonal transformations, and the myriad of watershed historical events that occurred during that time frame. During those first several months of the pandemic, I was hyper aware of the ways that time and space seemed to collapse on itself, fractured by the varying

paces with which people came to accept and respond to the crisis. Every conversation about the pandemic seemed marked by utterly incomprehensible calculations as everyone was suddenly tasked with becoming an armchair epidemiologist. The comparisons made between data sets were (are) almost absurd to think about: 98% survival rate vs. 3 million dead. The cost to the economy of thousands dying vs. the cost to the economy of thousands not working. How does one “calculate” loss and gains during a time like this? It seemed only feasible by zooming into the hyperspecific experience of day-to-day living. The sound component was co-conceived and performed with my life long musical collaborators, Bill Lowe and Taylor Ho Bynum, and was partially supported by a commission from the Jack Straw Cultural Center and the Henry Art Gallery as part of their Sonolocations music series. As improvisers in various media, we explore how AfricanAmerican cultural production offers a methodology for creative survival and resistance by embracing the tensions between individual and collective expression. We created this music together at great physical distance, using my text as a multi-modal score to help us lay down tracks recorded in Tulsa and Boston respectively. This adaptation, made necessary by the unique circumstances

of the pandemic, was possible because we’ve developed a shared artistic language through decades of shared creative history and trust building. I’ve infused an improvisational ethos into all aspects of the work, particularly by designing the sculpture to adapt within each iteration of its installation. Like the recording and drawing of 97 Days Between, Sum Total is the artifact of a ritualized performance and living memorial to what’s lost and found when racial capitalism threatens to eclipse our cultural imagination. When Faith Evans trills “I don’t know what they want from me It’s like...” I’m reminded that Black music is, after all is said and done, the most cost effective time travel device ever invented. How else could we experience our past present and future at once, all while looking incredibly cool and never once breaking a sweat.

LEFT: Naima Lowe, installation view of A token is a stand in for something of value, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021 RIGHT: Naima Lowe, 97 Days Between, 8’ 44” minute audio loop, accompanying text

Naima Lowe, detail view of Sum Total, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

CATHERINE CRAIN // RESPONSE TO: A token is a stand in for something of value

Naima Lowe makes metal feel warm. The material surrounds

97 Days Between (2021) deepens the experience and burrows

us: it is the material of the laptop on which I am typing this,

into my spine. Lowe creates an experience in these works

the material of treasure, the material of violence. It is crisp,

that makes each thing I have never thought of until it was all

hard, fabricated, but it also is born of fire and responds so

there was into exquisite clarity.

beautifully to the warmth of the hand. At first glance Sum Total (2021) threads antique patinated coins, forged in raging

coins clink clink clink as she recounts the moments.

fires and held by untold hands across time and space. In

listen to audiobooks. clink clink clink. draw the world,

reality they are faded yellow industrial nuts and washers,

real and imagined. trumpets womp womp womppping.

otherwise destined to be placed under a sink somewhere

the clinking picks up. aspirational real estate hunt

by skilled hands to hold something important (though

commences. womp womp womppp.

completely ignored by us) in working order. The sounds are vibrant and raw. I can feel the humanity of the Under different circumstances, mistaking a washer for

musicians—the speaker, the craftspeople that once forged

loose change would be disappointing, but why? It is just

coins that would have heard that same clink. I missed humanity,

the same piece of metal, only now we have all agreed

and I never thought that metal, the very same material that

that it represents value. With NFTs and bitcoin rising to

defines our digitally-imprisoned, artificial world, would make

the forefront, artists like Banksy or Lindsay Lohan sell

me feel so warm and connected. It is an artificial material

imaginary art for imaginary currency. Coins seem obsolete

used for an artificial system of valuing the world, but hidden

and honestly, the washer seems more appealing. At least a

somewhere Naima Lowe found something alive.

nut or bolt has a function beyond the acquisition of capital. They twist and tighten, build and secure—they fit in your hand, not in your pocket wasting away waiting to be traded for something better. Ultimately, what are we working for? The pads of my fingers are buzzing now, pulling at me to try

TOP: Naima Lowe, Sum Total, yellow chromate washers, nuts, and assorted

and seek out these odd chunks of manufacturing. Maybe by

fasteners, nylon paracord

holding them, feeling the energy from each hand that has held

BOTTOM LEFT: Naima Lowe, viewer interacting with 97 Days Between, audio loop

them before, their secrets will become clear. I have started

BOTTOM RIGHT: Naima Lowe, A token in a stand in for something of value,

listening to my fingers more since the pandemic, since my

screenprint and watercolor on paper, 14” x 11”

isolation forced me to pay attention to the sensations each finger communicates to me, the knowledge they carry. Lowe is tapping into this impulse to touch and feel; we don’t want to see anything anymore, we just want to feel with our entire bodies something new, something real. A jingling loop of hardware that would once slip by my attention now enraptures me. Touch is not the only sense that is activated, a recorded performance blending music and spoken word in

Naima Lowe, installation view of A token is a stand in for something of value, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

M I R E L L A

M A R T I N E Z

Payne

Mirella Martinez, Arreglarle su vestido, mounted archival pigment print, 16” x 12”

Mirella Martinez, Camióneta 1, mounted archival pigment print, 6” x 4”

Mirella Martinez, Cebollas, mounted archival pigment print, 11” x 16.5”

A R T I S T

S T A T E M E N T

MIRELLA MARTINEZ // Payne

This project is an exploration of the Latinx identity in Oklahoma, specifically Payne County. At the core, it is documentary photography showing the small intimate moments of a specific culture in a small region not typically paired with each other. While traditions and economic standings vary from household to household, there is an overall feeling of culture and shared sense of unity in celebrations such as quinceañeras and weddings among other significant life markers within this region of the United States. These particular celebrations are something extremely traditional to Mexican culture, yet as they are replicated here in Oklahoma, there is a merging of western and Latinx cultures. My prior work was an avenue for finding an artistic voice, and this project is a step toward vulnerability by showing a glimpse into the very specific realities within the life and culture of this particular subgroup of Latinx Oklahomans. With these photographs, I want to transport the audience to a different place by allowing viewers a small glimpse of a celebration or event that they may otherwise never experience. I use photography as a portal, both literal and the implied magic of it. Creating new work amidst a pandemic, I have drawn inspiration from my personal life. Born in Mexico, I immigrated to the US with my family at a young age. A transformative move and transition for anyone, this experience further draws parallels to the works included in Payne; large celebrations also often focus on periods of change, heavy emotions, transformation, and transition. Whether that change is adulthood or a union of families, these events include customs, rituals, and traditions that help establish community and home. Concentrating on the comfort found within the growing group of Mexican-Americans and a subtle sense of danger

and discomfort of documenting events amidst a pandemic, I wanted the focus of Payne to remain on beautiful moments and visual elements rather than any underlying political topics. Within the photographs, the Oklahoma landscape is both a backdrop and visual representation of freedom and opportunity that Mexican families hope to find by moving to Oklahoma. Immigration streams to Oklahoma increased heavily after 1900 when economic conditions and revolution forced thousands of Mexicans, particularly from the populous states of Jalisco, Michoacán, and Guanajuato, to seek refuge and employment across the border. Most came as migrant or contract workers, and labor needs dictated their distribution patterns. Isolated from the larger community and often suffering prejudice and discrimination, they established organizations such as Comisiones Honoríficos and the Cruz Azul to promote ethnic pride, serve as mutual-aid societies, and sponsor patriotic celebrations. The vast majority of these early immigrants were Roman Catholic, however, there were no Spanish-speaking priests in Oklahoma until the arrival of several Spanish Carmelites from Mexico in 1915. While much of the cultural traditions rely heavily on Catholicism and Christianity, I’d be doing a disservice to imply that all of the Latinx community participates exclusively in such practices. The beauty and intricacies come to life when cultural traditions come together and materialize within a younger generation that pulls from two cultures—the one that is handed down and the new American culture. While some of the images within the series are taken from film and others are digital, my work employs printers and scanners to arrive at the final product and installation. Within the day-to-day documentation, I’ve honed in on the details and small nuances of what these celebratory rites of passage entail. From elaborately decorated full-set of nails,

to the apparent youthfulness captured in each quinceañera portrait, these photographs are meant to be captivatingly intimate with a dose of ephemerality. We are welcomed into these celebrations as a guest but experience them as a member of a community, mirrored in the images as having a unique position and point of view amidst the chaos of an event. All of these moments are against the larger backdrop of the location and the beautiful, almost romantic, view of the physical landscape.

ideal pairing, given its long standing agricultural precedents. It offers a similar backdrop filled with promise and potential growth—both of tradition and finance. Events are another key thematic across the photographs. From coming of age celebrations, to weddings, to the loss of loved ones, gatherings that are notable in any culture, we see come alive through the Latinx lens. One constant was the community showing up for each other and the sense of unity that was implied during any given moment during the events.

There are several prominent themes that come up in this body of work. The overall location, the wide open plains of Oklahoma, food, celebrations, and the connection to the physical land. While documenting, I found that many of the families being photographed had similar agricultural upbringings. This desire to cultivate the land was another tradition that appeared to manifest across multiple households regardless of economic standing. Thus, the inclusion of farming and caring of animals came to be an almost integral part of life. While this can be recreated anywhere, the location and access to land in this particular region of the US provides an almost

The images and objects within Payne are meant to be unique but I know that there are actually shared experiences and parallels to these traditions throughout many subcultures. Through Payne, I offer everyone an insight into my specific journey, heritage, and culture. It is a personal story that hopefully resonates with all viewers, but especially those within the Mexican community of the southwest region.

Mirella Martinez, installation view of Payne, series of digital photographs with charcoal writing, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

LEFT: Mirella Martinez, Chueco, digital photograph on vinyl, 24” x 36” RIGHT: Mirella Martinez, El papa, mounted archival pigment print, 10” x 6.5”

JOHN SELVIDGE // RESPONSE TO: Payne

A backyard chef at work shot from a low angle, a soft hide peeled from a slaughtered lamb, rural highway traffic dwarfed by a purple sunset—the disparate images that make up Mirella Martinez’s Payne achieve a rich sense of place that can inspire a poignant meditation on time. Payne County emerges as familiar territory in its agricultural landscapes and panoramic skies, but it’s refigured as differently American through Payne’s consistent focus on emblematic cultural markers— jewelry, leatherwork in a vaquero mode on saddles and lassos, the quinceañera dress—that help underwrite identity in a Latin, rural community several hundred miles north of the border. Martinez’s description of her photographs as portals is vital in at least two ways. If her work in Payne simply opened onto an expanded awareness of Mexican emigrant communities in the Okie diaspora for her viewers, that would likely be enough, considering today’s terrible politics. These works easily achieve that, but it’s as a entry point into a new mindset—a photographic portal into another dimension, if you like, where we might experience memory differently—that I find her project most compelling. Faces are rare in Payne, but Martinez has expressed that, for her, portraiture is more about interacting with the environment within which individuals move. And so we get singular details that stand in for and personalize them via their hands, clothes, food, boots, and livestock, along with the more totemic items mentioned above. These elements are often shown from steeply oblique angles or unorthodox vantage points in a way that’s disorienting but also, somehow, perfectly natural, as if we were so present within a

scene that we’d get a little jostled around inside it, or if we were moving through a space and just happened to glance, just happened to remember. From glimpses transitory, fragmented, spontaneous, kaleidoscopic—along with handwriting between images like snatches of overheard conversation—in this shared space we achieve intimacy…for a moment. But there’s also a strange, spectral absence at the heart of Payne that invites sounding the word aloud. Since gatherings and prominent faces are rare, how does the pandemic haunt this project? We might read a tension between its celebration of community life and its guardedness that recalls the isolation we chose to keep our loved ones safe. When Martinez expands her frame from the intimate to the grandeur of Payne County’s skies in all their sunsetblooming dynamism, with these shifts I can begin to tease out what’s sustaining, even nourishing about the counterintuitive view of memory her photography seems to encourage: what we remember is rarely what we imagine we remember. Yesterday’s isolated snapshots stand disjointed, brusque, and denatured against the walls of our minds—Payne’s layout accomplishes so much in this way—and so we need the swell of our desire to impose continuity, our own constructed sense of passage to preserve them and make them compelling. For the people, places, and moments that have touched us, we always stage our sunrises and sunsets anew.

TOP: Mirella Martinez, Sírvete 1,2,3, mounted archival pigment print, 6” x 4” each

BOTTOM: Mirella Martinez, installation view of Payne, series of digital photographs with charcoal writing, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

Mirella Martinez, Piñata y botas, mounted archival pigment print, 10.5” x 16”

Mirella Martinez, Quemando, digital photograph on vinyl, 24” x 36”

GINNIE BAER // Edmond, Oklahoma // GinnieBaer.com Ginnie Baer was born and raised in Ohio, and after spending two years in frosty northern Wisconsin, she eventually landed in Edmond, Oklahoma. Baer’s work explores the healing potential of landscape, seen through the lens of painting. Baer received an MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA in Painting and Drawing from The Ohio State University. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including a residency and exhibition in Kofu, Japan. She has taught at several universities throughout the US and is currently a Lecturer at Oklahoma State University.

MARWIN BEGAYE // Norman, Oklahoma // MarwinBegaye.com An internationally exhibited artist, Marwin Begaye examines the issues of cultural identity through the intersection of American Indian and popular cultures. His ongoing research investigates the technical processes related to printmaking and construction of mixed-media art. He has received numerous awards as an Artist in Residence and through juried exhibitions, often negotiating the cultivation of his own skills and opening doors for his students. His work has been featured in numerous publications and he maintains an active exhibition schedule, featured in exhibitions in New Zealand, England, Argentina, Paraguay, Italy, Siberia, and Estonia.

MAGGIE BOYETT // Oklahoma City, Oklahoma // MaggieBoyett.info Maggie Boyett is an enrolled member of the Shawnee Tribe (White Oak ceremonial grounds) and belongs to Kiowa, Peoria and Delaware, and non-Native relatives. As a dancer, Maggie began as a baby at powwows and ceremonial functions, but her studio training began at age four with Moscelyne Larkin—Tulsa Ballet co-founder and one of the Five Moon, Oklahoma Indian ballerinas who gained international acclaim with the Ballet Russes. Maggie is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma School of Dance where she studied under Austin Hartel (Hartel Dance Group, Pilobolus) and Derrick Minter (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater). Boyett’s work draws influence from visual art and personal and traditional stories.

CRYSTAL Z CAMPBELL // Oklahoma City, Oklahoma // CrystalZCampbell.com Crystal Z Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer of African American, Filipino, and Chinese descents. Campbell finds complexity in public secrets—fragments of information known by many but untold or unspoken. Honors and awards include the Pollock-Krasner Award, MacDowell, Skowhegan, Rijksakademie, Whitney ISP, Franklin Furnace, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, and Flaherty Film Seminar. Exhibitions and screening include the Drawing Center, ICA-Philadelphia, SFMOMA, REDCAT, Studio Museum of Harlem, Project Row Houses, and SculptureCenter, amongst others. Campbell is founder of archiveacts.com, and is a current Harvard Radcliffe Film Study Center & David and Roberta Logie Fellow (2020-2021). Campbell lives and works in Oklahoma and was recently named a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts.

NAIMA LOWE // Tulsa, Oklahoma // NaimaLowe.net Naima Lowe was born in Connecticut in 1979 and comes from 4 generations of Black people who made things. As musicians, fashion designers, teachers, domestics, crooks, and parents they were experts in turning collective survival into beauty. She earned her BA from Brown University and MFA from Temple University and has exhibited at Anthology Film Archive, Wing Luke Museum, MiX Experimental Film Festival, and was a featured artist in OVAC’s Concept, Oklahoma’s Triennial exhibition of contemporary art. Naima has been an artist in residence at Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, Seattle Center for Contemporary Art, Jack Straw Cultural Center and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. She’s currently living and working in Tulsa, OK where she’s developing a retail art and design business out of her living room.

MIRELLA MARTINEZ // Stillwater, Oklahoma // MirellaMartinez.com Born in Mexico, Mirella Martinez immigrated to the US with her family at a young age and then grew up in Oklahoma. After attending Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota FL, she spent the following years traveling between Oklahoma and the west coast. Currently based out of Stillwater, OK, she continues to make photographs and handbound books among other visual art that questions the way we look at and interact with the world around us. Most of her work is based on the ephemeral intimate moments, both our own and those shared with others. Much of Martinez’s artistic practice draws from memory and the nostalgia attached to our emotions and how our perceptions of them shift as we go throughout life. Her intent is to visually deconstruct our simulation and break it down to an abstract form.

Mirella Martinez, audience interacting with Payne installation, series of digital photographs with charcoal writing, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

ALYSON ATCHISON // Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Alyson Atchison is an artist, curator, and writer based in Oklahoma City. Her career in the arts is guided by two equally vital objectives—to make art accessible and unintimidating for new audiences, and to connect artists with new opportunities and audiences. Atchison earned a bachelor’s degree in twodimensional art and a master’s degree in art education from the University of Central Oklahoma. Her curatorial projects have been featured at Science Museum Oklahoma, Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, and the Oklahoma State Capitol.

LIZ BLOOD // Tulsa, Oklahoma Liz Blood is a writer and editor based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A lifelong Oklahoman, her work focuses on place, memory, and contemporary art. Her nonfiction can be found in Oklahoma Today, Cimarron Review, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She is a three-time recipient of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship and, most recently, was awarded the Fellowship’s 2021 Arts Integration Award to make a creative field guide to northeastern Oklahoma for youth, which will feature the work of dozens of Oklahoma artists and writers. Blood was a 2018–19 Oklahoma Art Writing & Curatorial Fellow at the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition and she is the editor of “Ekphrasis,” a column joining poetry and visual art at Art Focus Oklahoma magazine. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Art and a BA in English from Westminster College.

CATHERINE CRAIN // Chicago, Illinois Catherine Crain is a Chicago-based independent art writer and administrator. Originally from Tulsa, OK, she is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in the Dual Degree program at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), studying Modern & Contemporary Art History and Arts Administration & Policy. Her research centers on issues of accessibility, phenomenological experience, somatic knowledge-building, and contemporary craft. Crain was previously the Community Engagement Manager at 108|Contemporary and a member of the 2018-2019 class of OVAC’s Oklahoma Art Writing & Curatorial Fellowship. She earned her BA in Arts Management and Art History at the University of Tulsa.

KRISTIN GENTRY // Tulsa, Oklahoma Kristin Gentry received an MA in Native Leadership from Southeastern Oklahoma State University and a BFA in Fine Art from Oklahoma State University. She works as a professional visual artist in the areas of relief and monotype printmaking, painting, jewelry, and photography. Formerly a full-time arts educator, Gentry now works as a writer, designer, and curator. Gentry is passionate about using her art to preserve traditional Native American tribal culture, and has exhibited artwork in numerous juried, invited, open, and group shows across the Midwestern United States. Gentry is an enrolled member and registered artist of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

JOHN SELVIDGE // Oklahoma City, Oklahoma John Selvidge works as a writer for a humanitarian nonprofit organization in Oklahoma City where he maintains freelance and creative projects on the side. Before moving back to Oklahoma, he pursued a doctorate in Comparative Literature at Emory University in Atlanta where he was also a member of an experimental poetry collective that helped his work appear locally, nationally, and internationally. Since then, he has worked in nonprofit development for the Ralph Ellison Foundation, as a communications director and program administrator, and has contributed to Oklahoma City’s growing film scene as a writer, actor and producer—most notably as the writing partner of local director Mickey Reece for films like the award-winning Climate of the Hunter along with the forthcoming Agnes and Country Gold. After being selected for OVAC’s Oklahoma Art Writing & Curatorial Fellowship in 2018, he has enjoyed art writing as well. Maggie Boyett, performing Fragmentation, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

GRACE DEVENEY // New Orleans, Louisiana Grace Deveney is a curator and art historian. She is Associate Curator of Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow, a New Orleans-based contemporary art triennial (2021). Previously, she was Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Exhibitions at the MCA include Christina Quarles (2021), Direct Message: Art, Language, and Power (2019), and Groundings (2018; with Tara Aisha Willis), as well as presentations of the work of Paul Pfeiffer, Amanda Williams and Ania Jaworska. She is currently a PhD candidate in Art History at Northwestern University.

Marwin Begaye and Maggie Boyett, installation view of Body Acknowledgement: The Body as Land, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

OKL AHOMA VISUAL ARTS C OALITION // OVAC -OK.ORG The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC) has grown and developed Oklahoma’s visual arts community through education, promotion, connection, and funding for the past 33 years. OVAC continues to support visual artists and their power to enrich communities through our publications, educational programming, exhibitions, and Oklahoma’s largest online gallery to connect audiences to art.

LIVING ARTS OF TULSA // LIVINGARTS.ORG Living Arts presents and develops critically-engaged contemporary art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We are a platform for evolving ideas and aesthetics, interdisciplinarity and community empowerment through exhibitions, workshops, performances, films, lectures, and education: engendering artistic integrity and experimentation for a thoughtful and rigorous arts ecology.

ARTSPACE AT UNTITLED // 1NE3.ORG ARTSPACE at Untitled is an environment designed to stimulate creative thought and new ideas through contemporary art in Oklahoma City. We are committed to providing access to quality exhibitions, education programs, performances, publications, and engaging the community in dialogue and a collaborative creative experience.

Art 365 Exhibition, gallery view, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

OKL AHOMA VISUAL ARTS C OALITION BOARD OF DIREC TORS

President: Douglas Sorocco, Oklahoma City Vice President: Kirsten Olds, Tulsa Secretary: Kyle Larson, Alva Treasurer: Diane Salamon, Tulsa Parliamentarian: Jon Fisher, Oklahoma City Past President: John Marshall, Oklahoma City Susan Agee, Pauls Valley Marjorie Atwood, Tulsa Bob Curtis, Oklahoma City Barbara Gabel, Oklahoma City Anna Inhofe, Tulsa Farooq Karim, Oklahoma City Katheryn Kenney, Tulsa Drew Knox, Oklahoma City Heather Lunsford, Oklahoma City Chris Winland, Oklahoma City

OVAC STAFF

Krystle Kaye, Executive Director Alexa Goetzinger, Associate Director Audrey Kominski, Programs & Events Manager Aunj Braggs, Grants & Outreach Manager Emily Kaisling, Membership & Marketing Manager Ariana Weir, Office Manager

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Crystal Z Campbell, Audience interacting with Hi, Hi, Hi, Highway, Living Arts of Tulsa, 2021

S C A N T O WAT C H ARTIST VIDEOS

O K L A H O M A V I S U A L A R T S C O A L I T I O N // O VA C - O K . O R G G R O W I N G A N D D E V ELO P I N G O K L A H O M A’ S V I S UA L A RT S C O M M U N I T Y T H R O U G H ED U C AT I O N , P R O M OT I O N , C O N N ECT I O N A N D F U N D I N G .