Art Focus Oklahoma, January/February 2014

ArtOFocus k l a h o m a

O k l a ho ma V i s ual A r ts C oal i t i on

Vo l u m e 2 9 N o . 1

January/February 2014

Art OFocus k l a h o m a from the editor Contemporary art comes in a variety of forms. By their nature, artists are experimenters, tinkerers, makers, question-askers. Their inquisitive nature can lead them down unexpected paths and bring them to surprising conclusions. In this issue, we introduce several artists and projects taking an untraditional approach to artistic media.

Investigating how our sense of smell influences our experience of place, Art 365 artist Cathleen Faubert (p. 4) is developing fragrances to capture the essence of various locations across Oklahoma. Rather than represent these places through her typical media of photography, Faubert is translating them into scents, offering an uncommon gallery experience and inviting viewer’s to bring their own olfactory memories to the work.

A collaborative project at Tulsa’s Hardesty Arts Center from artists Ieke Trinks and Sarah McKemie (p. 10) encourages play as performance art. Their project, Unscripted Play, will create a domestic environment prompting interaction, self-awareness, and personal exploration amongst visitors.

Our “On the Map” feature for this issue focuses on the developing arts community in Enid (p.

18), where artistic instigators transformed the town square with a sprawling knit bomb. Knitted yarn covered all kinds of surfaces, from long-standing statues to a bicycle riding up a streetlight pole, giving the community a cause to pause and creating conversation amongst citizens who might otherwise walk on by.

Tahlequah artist Roy Boney, Jr’s (p. 6) use of acrylic paint and pastels isn’t all that uncommon, but his approach to his subjects is. Boney shares traditional Cherokee stories with a twist, incorporating a comic book style that makes the cultural tales more relatable to his own generation, while gaining recognition and support from established Cherokee artists.

These kinds of innovative approaches keep me continually intrigued by what artists are making, researching and thinking about in their studios. It’s a quality in artists that, no matter their chosen media or subject, makes them great assets to their communities. As we ring in this new year, I look forward to the many ways that I may be challenged, surprised, provoked or inspired by artistic innovation in 2014.

Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition 730 W. Wilshire Blvd., Suite 104 Oklahoma City, OK 73116 ph: 405.879.2400 • e: director@ovac-ok.org visit our website at: www.ovac-ok.org Executive Director: Julia Kirt director@ovac-ok.org Editor: Kelsey Karper publications@ovac-ok.org Art Director: Anne Richardson speccreative@gmail.com

Art Focus Oklahoma is a bimonthly publication of the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition dedicated to stimulating insight into and providing current information about the visual arts in Oklahoma.

Mission: Supporting Oklahoma’s visual arts and artists and their power to enrich communities.

OVAC welcomes article submissions related to artists and art in Oklahoma. Call or email the editor for guidelines.

OVAC welcomes your comments. Letters addressed to Art Focus Oklahoma are considered for publication unless otherwise specified. Mail or email comments to the editor at the address above. Letters may be edited for clarity or space reasons. Anonymous letters will not be published. Please include a phone number.

OVAC Board of Directors July 2013 - June 2014: Margo Shultes von Schlageter, MD (Treasurer), Christian Trimble, Edmond; Eric Wright, El Reno; Suzanne Mitchell, Renée Porter (Vice President), Norman; Jennifer Barron, Susan Beaty (Secretary), Bob Curtis, Gina Ellis, Hillary Farrell, Titi Nguyen Fitzsimmons, MD, Michael Hoffner, Kristin Huffaker, Stephen Kovash, Carl Shortt, Oklahoma City; Dean Wyatt, Owasso; Joey Frisillo, Sand Springs; Jean Ann Fausser (President), Susan Green, Janet Shipley Hawks, Sandy Sober, Tulsa The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition is solely responsible for the contents of Art Focus Oklahoma. However, the views expressed in articles do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Board or OVAC staff.

Member Agency of Allied Arts and member of the Americans for the Arts. © 2013, Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition.

All rights reserved.

Kelsey Karper publications@ovac-ok.org p.s. Join OVAC on February 28, 5-8 pm at [Artspace] at Untitled in Oklahoma City for the opening of Art 365, showcasing the results of a year of innovative artistic work by five Oklahoma artists. Visit www.Art365.org for details.

On the cover Cathleen Faubert, Norman, Plant Material, Photograph. For her Art 365 project, Faubert is collecting natural materials from around the state, putting them an old-fashioned steam distillation process. See page 4.

View the online archive at www.ArtFocusOklahoma.org.

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4 Art 365: Cathleen Faubert

Cathleen Faubert, selected as one of five artists for OVAC’s Art 365 exhibition, is traveling the state, gathering material for creating scents which investigate how we understand “place.”

6 An Unconventional Heritage: Cherokee Artist Takes a Modern Look at Time-Honored Traditions Tahlequah artist Roy Boney, Jr fuses his love of comic imagery with deep cultural roots to make Native American art more representative of diverse generations and experiences.

p re v i e w s 8 Glenn Herbert Davis: Whitewashing Value

In a new installation at Living Arts of Tulsa, Davis explores and critiques the idea of valuation as cultural construct by creating all white work in an all-white gallery.

10 Chance, Non-Art, and Unscripted Play

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Artists-in-Residence at Tulsa’s Hardesty Arts Center present a collaborative project cultivating self-awareness through play.

12 It’s All Up in the Air: Mark Cowardin at Gardiner Gallery

An exhibition of mixed-media sculpture in Stillwater uses a touch of humor to help viewers grapple with their relationship with nature.

14 The University of Oklahoma’s 100th Annual Student Exhibit: The Fine Art of Developing Potential Showcasing the best of student work, the University of Oklahoma’s student exhibit celebrates the fine art of developing potential.

16 The Quiet Side of the Peephole: The Art of Lindsay Larremore Craige

Inspired by an assignment to “paint an ugly space beautiful,” Craige presents a series of “peephole paintings” offering viewers a glimpse into the beauty of everyday.

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18 On the Map: Enid

Creative Arts Enid is breathing new energy into Enid’s arts community, with surprising yarn-bomb projects and arts classes for people of all ages.

"Our Father" ink on illustration board. 24" x 28"

20 Inside the Studio: Jason Cytacki

"Commodity" acrylic on wood panel. 24" x 24" 20

heather ahtone visits Norman artist Jason Cytacki in his studio, where he constructs paintings referencing the "ᎠᏓᏅᏙ%ᏳᎴᏫᏍᏔᎾ%ᎠᏲᎱᏍᎪ%ᏴᏫ. (When the hear myth of the American West.

business of art 22 Ask a Creativity Coach: Five Easy Steps to Find Time The Creativity Coach offers tips for finding studio time, even when you think it isn’t there.

OVAC news

24" x 48" 2011 boney0005.jpg

"ᏥᏴᏍᎦᎸᏍᎦ. ᎦᏥᏍᎪᎥᏍᎦ. (She is hiding. She is 2011 boney0006.jpg

"When She Twirls Her Apron Strange Things Hap

"ᎠᏫ%ᎠᎨᏳᏣ (Deer Girl)" pastel Norman, 22" x 30" DeerGir (p. 4) Cathleen Faubert,

Red Earth, Photography

24 OVAC News 25 New and Renewing Members 26 OVAC 25th Anniversary Celebrations

at a glance 27 Donald G. Longcrier and Barbara A. Ryan at MAINSITE Contemporary Art

"ᎣᏍᏓ%ᎤᏍᎩᏘᏍᏗ%ᎤᏚᎵ (She Wants To Dream a (p. 6) -Roy Boney, Tahlequah, 39" GoodDreams.jpg NOTE:Jr,This was my exhibiti

Live Long and Prosper,

"ᎪᎯᏓ%ᎠᎴᏂᏓᏍᏗ%ᎠᎴ%ᏣᏁᏉᏤᎯ%ᎨᏎᏍᏗ (Live Lon LiveLongProsper.jpg 24” x 24”

(p.20) Jason Cytacki, Norman, Grin and Bear it, Oil on panel, 48” x 36”

"ᎠᏫᎠᏍᎦᏯ%ᏗᏎᏍᏗ%ᎪᏗ (Deerman Code)" 18" x 24

"A Trip to the ᎩᏚᏩ Moon" 16" x 20" acrylic on p

A recent Norman exhibition of mixed media works by two artists.

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Art 365: Cathleen Faubert

by Kirsten Olds

Eyakem Gulilat, Norman, Untitled (From the Collaborative Self Series), Archival pigment ink print, 24” x 50”

Cathleen Faubert, Norman, Mixed Grass Prairie, Photograph, 2012. Faubert began her Art 365 project with research on Oklahoma’s eco-regions, such as this one represented in a diorama at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History.

This is the fourth in a series of articles profiling artists selected for Art 365 2014, an Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC) program that supports five artists’ innovative projects over the course of a year. Projects are nurtured in consultation with guest curator Raechell It seems like such a simple question: what does “home” smell like? Yet people’s responses are complex, drawing on a host of sensory memories and emotions that they associate with scents. In her project for Art 365, Assistant Professor of Photography and Video in the Art, Technology & Culture Department at the University of Oklahoma Cathleen Faubert has delved deep into this question, becoming, at times, botanist, apothecary, anthropologist, perfumist, explorer, inventor, and artist. Motivating her inquiry is the desire to investigate how we understand “place” and how we locate ourselves within it. “I like the idea of being able to convey something about a place through a different sensory experience in the gallery,” she reveals. Although

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Smith, Director of the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute, and culminate in the Art 365 exhibition, which opens February 28, 2014 at [Artspace] at Untitled in Oklahoma City and then travels to the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa’s Hardesty Arts Center in Tulsa in May 2014.

her expertise lies especially in lens-based media, she turned to our sense of smell as an artistic tool, attempting to harness its ability to tell stories, to prompt our deep-seated memories, and to provoke a meaningful aesthetic response.

Her interest in scent began when she was in graduate school, pursuing her M.F.A. degree in the joint program of Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

For her thesis exhibition I want more power over my fantasies, she created an installation with video projections, sculptural objects, and even a large spinning cotton candy machine—all of which she described as “a photograph you could walk into.” Taste, tactile, and visual realms

collided; viewers could see, handle, and ingest cotton candy through this mixed-media, multisensory experience. Sticky and sweet, glowing and unearthly, Faubert’s cotton candy invoked both pleasure and something more grotesque, a distorted childhood fantasy.

More recently Faubert has been thinking about landscape after having spent time in a two-week artist’s residency in the Austrian Tyrol. There she roved with her camera, exploring the untrammeled Tux Valley, and thinking more deeply about the transformations nature engenders as part of its life cycles and those that art enables. In her ongoing series Dust and Ash, woodchips

(left) To develop scents, Faubert collects botanical material from different eco-regions around the state and subjects them to an old-fashioned steam distillation process. (right) Short Grass Prairie, Photograph, 2012.

from a local artisan’s studio become fodder for Faubert’s own landscape compositions, or burned, those same chips now provide the pigment for paintings. Art as alchemy figures prominently, with resonances of transmutation, mysticism, and laboratory experiments.

To develop the scents for Accords and Discords, the title of her Art 365 project, Faubert has been collecting botanical materials from different eco-regions throughout the state and subjecting them to an old-fashioned steam distillation process to extract their essential oils and hydrosols, or floral waters. These capture the fragrances of the organic material, and the artist has been investigating how the scents that she has extracted can be combined with other natural materials, such as rain water and soil, and with synthetic materials used in the flavor and fragrance industry. The layering of these different essences will enable her to create complex scents that develop over time, based on the size of the molecules involved.

This project has allowed Faubert, a Rhode Island native, to explore the varied areas of the state, from Tulsa to the panhandle and the southwest reaches. She selected her collection sites initially based on five ecoregions recreated in immersive dioramas at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History in Norman. The categorization of the land into these eco-regions, for example Ozarks highlands and mixed-grass prairie, suggests one means of understanding our sense of place, through the language of ecology and

geography. Yet as she has gotten more involved in the project, she has moved beyond these specific eco-regions to consider other locations in the state, such as urban centers, residential neighborhoods, and spaces in between public and private, in transitional ecologies.

In any single specimen, space and time collapse; as we inhale the aromas, we are transported to a particular moment and place—the swishing grasses of the prairie in the late summer, perhaps—and suspended in time, existing in a transhistorical state where that moment is always present. Art has long been a touchstone of personal and social histories, and Faubert’s work extends this aspect of memory in especially vivid ways because of the link between the olfactory bulb and the limbic center of the brain.

Our sense of smell has been explored by other artists in recent years, among them Martynka Wawrzyniak, Peter De Cupere, Oswaldo Maciá, and Sissel Tolaas. Exhibitions have also taken up the topic, such as 2008’s Odor Limits at the Esther M. Klein Art Gallery in Philadelphia and the recent The Art of the Scent at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. What Faubert’s project contributes to this ongoing discussion is a collision of scent and place, and the intersecting languages of science, art, and memory.

Faubert balances the individual, subjective nature of sensory experience with scientific inquiry. Collaboration with the Chemistry and Biochemistry laboratory at the University of

Oklahoma has produced gas chromatographs, histograms of particular scents. These scent profiles present visual data and categories to help us mediate and understand the sensory data, and yet they evoke none of the wash of emotions and recollections that a momentary whiff of odor stimulates. The graphs also picture the unseen—they give visual form to dematerialized aromas, continuing a line of inquiry that extends through Faubert’s photographic and video work. How gallery goers will interact with the smells she creates has yet to be determined, although the emphasis will be on scent and sound rather than visual information; “we rely so heavily on vision to inform, that I would like the installation to allow visitors to create their internal images based on what they smell.”

Waxing romantic, the artist explains, “Ultimately, the project is not about nature specifically. It’s about using scent as a language to access our ideas, projections, expectations, and locations. It’s about an opportunity to get lost in different places, to collect and bring back different findings and share them with others.” n Kirsten Olds is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Tulsa, where she teaches courses on modern and contemporary art, including the history of photography and video. She has been a juror for exhibitions of contemporary Oklahoma art, and is currently working on a show of Dennis Oppenheim’s architectural models.

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Roy Boney, Jr, Tahlequah, When She Twirls Her Apron Strange Things Happen, Pastel, 22” x 30”

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An Unconventional Heritage: Cherokee Artist Takes a Modern Look at Time-Honored Traditions

by Karen Paul

For Native Oklahoman Roy Boney, Jr., the desire to shift the long-held perceptions of what Native American art should be is a personal mission. Boney’s unique blend of art fuses together a love of comic imagery, his deep cultural roots and a profound desire to make Native American art more representative of other generations and experiences.

Boney, who is a full Cherokee, grew up in the small town of Locust Grove. Early on, he was interested in drawing and comic imagery, but found himself struggling with the images he encountered.

“I was interested in comics, but I wasn’t interested in the stereotypical Native American images in front of me,” Boney said. “They didn’t speak to my experience as a Native American. Growing up, I never saw anything that related to me personally.”

After working for a while as a professional graphic designer, Boney attended graduate school at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. This experience helped shape his knowledge of Cherokee culture and his future artistic endeavors.

“I attended UA because I received a graduate fellowship to study at the Sequoyah National Resource Center,” he said. “I had access to a lot of amazing Cherokee material, including language resources, cultural artifacts. While I was there, I studied everything that I could.”

Boney began to experiment with his own paintings and drawings. He brought together comic-style design elements with traditional cultural icons to create the kinds of images that he wished he could find.

“My work is modern media and traditional media expressing what it’s like to be a Cherokee,” he said.

“Comics are often seen as a secondary art, something that’s thrown away. However, the comic style has a lot of value. It has vivid, bright colors and action. That type of presentation fits perfectly with Cherokee mythology, which is so action-oriented.”

Initially, Boney wasn’t sure that the images he was creating would resonate with anyone other than himself. Dr. Bill Wiggins, who was an art

collector at the Sequoyah National Resource Center, persuaded him to enter the Trail of Tears Art Show in 2006. This show completely changed the direction of Boney’s career and placed him solidly among established Cherokee artists.

“Winning Best in Show was a major shock,” he said. “It still surprises me today. My work was very comic-styled. It didn’t fit the mold of other pieces in the show.

“The show spurred me on to approach my art in a more serious manner,” Boney said.

“It convinced me that there was a market for the kind of work that I was creating and that people would be interested in it.”

After the show, the Cherokee artist community welcomed Boney with open arms, a move that both amazed and humbled him.

“Many of the Cherokee artists have proven to be great mentors, including Bill Glass, Jr. Bill is someone that I’ve looked up to for a long time,” Boney said. “I wasn’t expecting support from the traditional artists in my community.

In addition to helping me with the technical aspects of my work, they provide a lot of cultural knowledge that I didn’t have.”

The mentorship from Cherokee elders also helps Boney navigate the complicated relationship between culture and context.

The elders often provide guidance about how Boney can graphically frame his Cherokeespecific subjects in a way that keeps him in line culturally, while still pushing him forward as an artist.

“My approach to subjects has changed a lot from when I first started,” he said.

In the beginning of his artistic career, he often went for the sheer shock value of a piece. As Boney has matured as an artist, he now wants his work to represent his interests and his personal experiences while giving honor to his Cherokee heritage.

“I still want my work to retain a sense of modern flair, but I want it to be honorable,” he said.

One of his recent works examines the subject of a Raven Mocker, an evil creature in

"Our Father" ink on illustration board. 24" x 28" 20 "Commodity" acrylic on wood panel. 24" x 24" 2011

"ᎠᏓᏅᏙ%ᏳᎴᏫᏍᏔᎾ%ᎠᏲᎱᏍᎪ%ᏴᏫ. (When the heart s 24" x 48" 2011 boney0005.jpg

"ᏥᏴᏍᎦᎸᏍᎦ. ᎦᏥᏍᎪᎥᏍᎦ. (She is hiding. She is ly 2011 boney0006.jpg (She is hiding. She is lying), acrylic on wood panel, 20” x 16” "When Shemythology Twirls Her Strange Things Happen Cherokee thatApron brutally takes away

people’s lives.

"ᎠᏫ%ᎠᎨᏳᏣ (Deer Girl)" pastel 22" x 30" DeerGirl.jp

“Several people said that I shouldn’t have

"ᎣᏍᏓ%ᎤᏍᎩᏘᏍᏗ%ᎤᏚᎵ portrayed it visually,” Boney(She said.Wants “OthersToinDream a Go 39" GoodDreams.jpg NOTE: This was my exhibition

the community were supportive of my work because I did it with respect. It’s a difficult "ᎪᎯᏓ%ᎠᎴᏂᏓᏍᏗ%ᎠᎴ%ᏣᏁᏉᏤᎯ%ᎨᏎᏍᏗ (Live Long a balance to achieve, but my mentors help guide LiveLongProsper.jpg me through it. They tell me when I’ve gone "ᎠᏫᎠᏍᎦᏯ%ᏗᏎᏍᏗ%ᎪᏗ too far with something.” (Deerman Code)" 18" x 24"

"A Trip to the ᎩᏚᏩ Moon" 16" ximages 20" acrylic Boney’s unique blend of traditional and on pan

comic influences is garnering him international attention. In 2012, he was one of 11 Native American artists selected for the Art en Capital exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris.

“In Paris, I realized that art is universal,” he said. “The show made me think about how people outside of my community see my art and how that impacts their view of Native Americans. I now want my work to tell others ‘This is who we are and what we do.’”

See more of his work at www.royboney.com. n A graduate of Oklahoma Baptist University and the University of Oklahoma, Karen Paul is a freelance writer who specializes in arts-based subjects. You may contact her at karenpaulok@gmail.com.

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Glenn Herbert Davis: Whitewashing Value

by Brian Hearn

Digital renderings of Glenn Herbert Davis’ installation at Living Arts show how the work builds on and fills the entire gallery space.

From his studio-shop in West Tulsa, the blue collar side of town known for refineries and railheads, Glenn Herbert Davis builds curious stuff. A bit like Tom Waits’ mysterious neighbor in “What’s He Building?” or like the carpenter whose skills shape the human experience from cradle to coffin, his work tests our assumptions about the built environment, making us wonder “what’s it for?” Davis demonstrates a rigorous reverence for materials, especially wood, down to the dinkiest bits of hardware.

As a “trans-disciplinary maker” his practice encompasses sculpture, furniture, performance, photography, video, writing, and book making. Site-specific installation, however, is where Davis deftly engineers these practices into wholly original

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constructions. “What the hell is he building in there?” growls Waits.

Encountering his large-scale architectural installations one senses something playful in their design while serious in both concept and construction. Built-in themes emerge from his work: the relationship between the human body (often his) and the omnipresent systems it is subject to, the dignity of physical labor, and subverted notions of utility/functionality. “I can tell you one thing - he’s not building a playhouse for the children. What’s he building in there?”

This is building as performance.

Value, his latest installation on view at Living Arts of Tulsa, marks yet another progression in his career. Davis explores and

critiques the idea of valuation as a cultural construct by creating all white work in an all-white gallery. Call it his White Album or his Moby-Dick. The materially intensive installation, fabricated almost entirely on site over two weeks, integrates the entirety of the gallery space from ductwork to structural pillars, transforming it into an immersive environment of life size forms, structures made of whitewashed wood frames skinned with polyethylene sheet plastic, and lit indirectly.

Like polar bears in a snowstorm, the white forms blend into the white cubic gallery space, reducing our perceptions of it to a bodily, sensory experience. Familiar shapes of home, church, and entertainment morph into free standing or attached structures

that suggest physical containers of (perhaps) empty value systems. We enter/ exit hollow structures where our sense of hierarchical value is disrupted by the uniformity of whiteness. In the absence of demarcation we have the potential to release ourselves from false systems of manufactured values whether aesthetic, economic, spiritual or social.

Value can be experienced at Living Arts of Tulsa, 307 East Brady Street, January 3 23, 2014.

Learn more about the work of Glenn Herbert Davis at glennherbertdavis.net. n Brian Hearn is the film curator at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

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Chance, Non-Art, and Unscripted Play

by Tiffany Barber

Ieke Trinks, Rotterdam, Netherlands, sing, sync, sink, Performance, 2013.

Schechner: Is there a difference between a group of people deciding to go to the beach and watching what happens on the beach, and a group of people deciding to go to an Event or an Activity and watching or participating in it?

Cage: If a person assumes that the beach is theatre and experiences it in terms I don’t see that there’s much difference. It is possible for him to take that attitude.

This is very useful because you often find yourself, in your daily life, in irritating circumstances. They won’t be irritating if you see them in terms of theatre.

– “An Interview with John Cage,” The Tulane Drama Review (Winter 1965) The performative and the mundane have come to figure prominently in conceptual and contemporary art. Notable artists like John Cage, Allan Kaprow and neo-Dada artists who formed the international Fluxus network explored notions of indeterminacy through Happenings, scores, and other methods to merge art with the everyday. In the 1950s and ‘60s, Kaprow – who studied aleatoric, time-based composition with Cage at the New School for Social Research in New York

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– developed what he called Environments, Happenings, and Activities. Happenings, Kaprow’s most celebrated contributions to art historical discourse, began as tightly scripted events in which audience members and performers followed cues to activate, experience and realize the artworks. As a result, art was simultaneously an event, an object, and the everyday. (In his 1958 essay titled “The Legacy of Jackson Pollock,” Kaprow proposed a “concrete art” made of everyday materials such as “paint, chairs, food, electric and neon lights, smoke, water, old socks, a dog.”) Indeed with Happenings, the line between artist, audience member, and performer became blurred, thus mirroring the blurring of the separation between life, art, artist, and audience that Kaprow sought to achieve. There was no distinction or hierarchy between artist and viewer. Viewer’s reactions drove each artwork, making Happenings uniquely discreet, ephemeral, impermanent experiences that were meant to exist in a specific moment. Something akin to improvisational theater, Happenings did not contain structured beginnings, middles, or ends and are sometimes referred to as ‘unart’ or ‘anti-art.’ An ‘anti-art,’ do-it-yourself approach is also at the center of Fluxus, a

movement with which Kaprow is frequently associated. Unlike Kaprow’s complicated Happenings, Fluxus artists use brief, simple event scores to emphasize banality and play, and to frustrate the production of elitist, market-driven art. These event scores often take the shape of bulleted lists, proposals, or short instructional phrases that are recontextualized as performance. The idea of ‘a score’ suggests musicality, and similar to a musical score, an event score is open to variation and interpretation.

This month, artists Ieke Trinks and Sarah McKemie bring the spirit of chance, improvisation, and collaboration to the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa’s Hardesty Arts Center (AHHA) in a new project titled Unscripted Play. Trinks, who is based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, works with a six-member improvisation performance collective. Trinks’s performance practice draws on language, instruction, and the limits of interpretation. Using common objects – plastic cups, reams of white printer paper, and cardboard boxes – Trinks employs a sculptural approach to performance to explore order and categorization. McKemie works primarily as a photographer. The two artists met in March 2013 when Trinks

held a residency at Living Arts in Tulsa. McKemie was an MFA student at the University of Oklahoma at the time working on a collaborative theater piece that featured participants with special needs. Trinks’s and McKemie’s individual interests in pushing their practices into new spheres led to their current collaborative project. They are both drawn to non-hierarchical, socially engaged, playful collaborations with non-art communities that question how performance functions in a gallery context as well as in everyday situations.

In preparation for their current project at AHHA, Trinks and McKemie conducted a weeklong series of intensive improvisation and performance workshops called TEST LABs in September 2013. One such workshop required participants to navigate AHHA’s exhibition space with closed eyes, thus heightening the participants’ sensory capacities and challenging sight as a privileged sense. TEST LABs also center on the idea of ‘participant as instigator.’ Unscripted Play comes out of these workshops and is supported by Trinks’s spring 2014 residency at AHHA. The collaboration includes working with several Tulsa-based community-centered groups including Oklahomans for Equality, Crossroads, the Broadmoor Retirement Living Community, and possibly The Center. With Unscripted Play, Trinks and McKemie aim to cultivate self-awareness through play and to bring performance outside of the gallery. The end of the artists’ residency will culminate in an exhibition featuring videos of their collaborative performances along with an interactive piece to encourage viewer participation.

Trinks’s and McKemie’s approaches to performance and ‘the performative’ intersect, overlap and diverge in Unscripted Play. Both artists have an interest in the amateur, what McKemie identifies as “the non-artist’s perspective of performance.” Here, the artists are concerned not with addressing or refining performance as an art practice in itself, but rather with focusing on and honing the absence of skill or craft. Spontaneity, play, and the unexpected are at the heart of Trinks’s and McKemie’s project, but Unscripted Play is also about interrogating the very logic of performance. What qualities, if any, do notions of the everyday and performance share? How are everyday activities and performance art at once ritualistic yet distinct? Chance and play lend to Trinks’s and McKemie’s investigations into these questions. Using voice, the body, space, and objects, Unscripted Play purposefully confuses the everyday with performance.

Experience Unscripted Play at AHHA January 3-March 9, 2014. Visit www. ahct.org for more information. n Tiffany Barber is a freelance visual arts writer and organizer. Her curatorial projects have featured work by artists responding aesthetically to the conditions of urbanization in the contemporary moment. Tiffany is a PhD student in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester. Her writings on contemporary art have been published in Beautiful/Decay, THE Magazine Los Angeles, Public Art Review, Art Focus Oklahoma and online publications for ForYourArt, Americans for the Arts, LatinArt, and Evil Monito Magazine. (top) Ieke Trinks, Rotterdam, Netherlands, multiple (un)related causes #6, Performance, 2012. (bottom 4) Sarah McKemie, Tulsa, Stills from the making of Werewolves and Princesses, a collaborative film project.

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It’s All Up in the Air: Mark Cowardin at Gardiner Gallery

by Mary Kathryn Moeller

Mark Cowardin, Overland Park, KS, Get a Grip, 2012, Ebonized Walnut, Maple, & Paint

It is the small details of daily existence that captivate sculptor Mark Cowardin. Isolating seemingly inconsequential elements from their context, Cowardin raises the question What’s Up? in his exhibition opening January 13 at the Gardiner Gallery in Stillwater. The answer(s) to the question is up to the viewer, but before coming to a decision, visitors will grapple with their relationship to nature through Cowardin’s blend of humor and social criticism.

An Associate Professor at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS, Cowardin says his work is centered on the theme of how people find balance with nature.

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“More specifically,” he stated, “how we don’t think about the necessity of that relationship.”

The balance struck between humans and nature is tenuous at best but more often than not tips in the favor of human consumption. Cowardin says his recent work revolves around what he calls “the aesthetics of ugly” in terms of our continuous consumption of nature.

He was drawn to the idea on his daily commute through Lawrence, KS. Driving within sight of a power plant, Cowardin was struck by the beauty of the puffs of smoke emitting from the site. Though harnessing energy from nature may often be a grotesque

and dirty business, Cowardin says he was struck by the hypnotic quality of the smoke.

It drew him to consider his own place within twin processes of creation and destruction that result from human interaction with nature. “It is a connection I cannot escape.

I am a part of that consumption. I am part of what I am critiquing,” said Cowardin.

Though his earlier work dealt more explicitly with the political and economic ramifications of consumption, Cowardin says his work of the last few years offers more observation than political punch on the topic.

The billowy forms of industrial smoke make

regular appearances in Cowardin’s work as is seen in Left, Right, Left from 2012. The gritty smoke pours from the stacks as an embodiment of the force of human will while the hands extend the act of consumption as a precious, albeit dangerous, offering. Though both the arms and the smoke stacks are made from wood, the ebonized stacks comment on the invasive means by which we make nature complicit in its own consumption. The absurdity of these contradictory elements is a key aspect of Cowardin’s work. “I never want to get away too much from absurdity and humor. Humor softens the edges and makes it more palatable to get to the meat of the matter.” In this way, Cowardin hopes to create a conversation about the beauty to be found in the destruction of nature for the sake of creation.

While addressing such global issues, much of Cowardin’s work is also autobiographical, but in a way, he believes, that is accessible for all viewers. In works such as Get a Grip, Cowardin seems to exhort, literally, the holding on to one’s roots as the wellspring of new life.

Pieces like The Great Escape, on the other hand, could be understood as the thrill of flight from the past or alternatively, the terror of being held captive by one’s heritage. Like the puffs of smoke, roots are a recurring element in Cowardin’s work. They mark the “transition between two realms,” he said. “They are the ground that we stand on and the ground that sustains us.”

Though wood serves as a material base for much of Cowardin’s work, he considers himself a mixed-media artist rather than a wood sculptor.

He incorporates foam, plaster, and plastic as well as found objects such as hot pads and a taxidermy pheasant. Currently he is working to integrate electronic and light elements into his pieces. It all fuses into a quirky and surrealistic commentary on our place in the world and the destructive beauty of our actions and choices.

For more information about Mark Cowardin, visit markcowardin.com.

What’s Up? will be on view from January 13-February 14, with a reception to be held on Thursday, January 23rd from 5-6 pm followed by an artist’s talk from 6-7 pm. The Gardiner Gallery is located on the first floor of the Bartlett Center for the Visual Arts on the Oklahoma State University campus in Stillwater. For more information call 405-744-6016 or visit museum.okstate.edu. Cowardin will also lead a free public workshop on Friday, January 24th at the Multi Arts Center, 1001 S. Duck Street in Stillwater. For details call 405-747-8084 or visit multiartscenter.org. n Mary Kathryn Moeller is currently pursuing her Master’s in art history at Oklahoma State University where she works as a Graduate Research Assistant for the OSU Museum of Art. She is available via e-mail at mkmoeller77@gmail.com.

(top) Left, Right, Left, 2012, Ebonized Walnut, Mixed Media, Flocking, Maple, & Hot Pads (bottom) The Great Escape, 2012, Ebonized Walnut & Taxidermy Pheasant

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The University of Oklahoma’s 100th Annual Student Exhibit: The Fine Art of Developing Potential

by Lucie Smoker

From the 99th Annual Student Exhibition, winner of the T.G. Mays Purchase Award: Jessica Ann, Coordiate Retriever, Interactive electronics and video, 17” x 12 ½” x 3”

“It’s the arts that tear down the limits ... they provide the spark of creativity for our entire society,” said David L. Boren, President of the University of Oklahoma, former Governor of Oklahoma and U.S. Senator. It is the art educators who empower new artists to tear down their personal limits, reach beyond expectations and generate the ideas of our future.

Students compete for high-visibility awards, among them, the coveted T.G. Mays Purchase Award which earns the winning work a place in the museum’s permanent collection.

The 100th annual student exhibit at the University of Oklahoma (OU) works in conjunction with a faculty art show and student acquisitions exhibit to celebrate what is truly the fine art of developing potential.

It gives all of us a chance to sample cuttingedge ideas, to touch the pulse of new art.

Yes they did create those works of art on display, but what empowered them to reach deep inside and pull out their very best?

How did they develop the skills to take that idea from impulse to exhibit with passion?

Opening on January 14th at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art (FJJMA) on the OU campus in Norman, this juried exhibition spotlights works by OU School of Art and Art History students, the art masters of the future.

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“We’re very proud of our students’ accomplishments. I try to remind them that they did it all themselves,” said Robert Dohrmann, a professor in OU’s art school.

The School of Art and Art History teaches a wide range of visual and technical skills to not only empower the students but also inspire them. The coursework lays a groundwork, but also sets out challenging obstacles integrating research, intense work, writing and ... gulp, learning to present artwork to curators and

potential buyers alike.

Derrick Adams is a Studio Art major with an emphasis in printmaking. When asked about his greatest challenge so far at OU he said, “In Curtis Jones’ serigraphy class we were given an assignment to work on a show for the Lightwell Gallery. Another student, Eric Piper, and I decided to build a cathedral made from prints and cardboard. It ended up being over two stories tall ... a daunting task, but worth it.”

Angela Rodriguez is a Studio Art major from Tulsa. When asked about the difference an OU art education has made in her work, she said, “My work would still have evolved and matured ... but I would not have been able to easily tackle the business side of the art world or have as many opportunities for valuable internships, critiques and workshops.”

Adams agrees, “There have been a lot of

opportunities for improvement in my time at OU. Not just to improve techniques, but to give and receive feedback that is unique to this community.”

The students learn all of the interrelated skills they need to become successful, professional artists. “They’re from the quick-fix Google generation and often tend to get frustrated when I can’t turn them into da Vinci in a few weeks. It takes time. It takes hard work. Rejection and hard knocks are part of it,” said Dohrmann.

Preparing for a show like the 100th Anniversary Student Exhibition is most students’ first opportunity to go through the complete process and stand before the public as a real artist, ready to face critique or to inspire accolades.

“We point the way and try to show them concepts and techniques, but encourage them to ‘Go now grasshopper, go figure it out,’” explained Dohrmann.

But again, the only way an artist can mine his potential is to reach deep inside himself. He has to merge well-known techniques with concepts that come from personal insights, gut feelings ... maybe the wind. It takes confidence. That’s the key. And it takes that kernel of an idea.

That’s the potential.

As Rodriguez said, “The University has provided me with a guilt-free period of time to solely focus on my work and myself.”

Michael Ray Charles, the juror for the 100th anniversary exhibit, brings a world-class career of experience to the mix. His work expresses explosive commentaries on the legacy of demeaning black stereotypes in our modern society. Now a professor of art at the University of Texas, Charles is a past panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and a juror for the Bush Artist Fellowship. With past exhibits on four continents, he personifies the dream of success to which many OU art students aspire. He will offer up some wisdom in a free, public lecture at FJJMA on Thursday, January 16th from 7-8 pm.

No matter what he and the talented faculty at the University of Oklahoma set before the students, it is something within that finally propels the idea to take form as a work of art. “On the way to being a self-sufficient and successful artist, this very talented, very driven individual gets that ah-ha moment,” said Professor Dohrmann. “I get to point out, ‘You did this.’ That’s very satisfying.”

(foreground) Christopher Fleming, La Rouge Fatale, Steel, automotive paint, 30” x 4” x 7” (background) Alexa Healy, Everyone Else and I, Oil on canvas, 21” x 51”

HUNDREDTH ANNUAL STUDENT EXHIBITION

SCHOOL OF ART & ART HISTORY

The 100th Annual School of Art and Art History Student Exhibit will be at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, 555 Elm Avenue, from January 14 through February 16. A free, public reception will be held on January 17th at 7 p.m. with an awards presentation beginning at 8 p.m. The Alumni Exhibition will be on display in the Lightwell Gallery from January 13 through February 14. n A suspense author, Lucie Smoker uses high concept art to explore low concept crime. Her first mystery, Distortion, is available now from Buzz Books USA. Its sequel is in the process of moving from kernel-of-an-idea to finished book. luciesmoker.wordpress.com.

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The Quiet Side of the Peephole: The Art of Lindsay Larremore Craige

by Barbara L. Eikner

Lindsay Larremore Craige, Tulsa, 5:56 pm, Oil, 8” diameter

The inaugural 2014 exhibition at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center Gallery, 110 E 2nd Street, will be the peephole art of Lindsay Larremore Craige. The Quiet Side of the Peephole is Craige’s first solo show and Oklahomans must move quickly and quietly to view and collect her new and unusual style of art presentation.

Some art jumps out at you, some art leaves you wondering what just happened, others leave you questioning what you should feel or see.

However, when you enter the peephole, you feel like you are looking from a secret vantage point to a world unaware of your presence.

Craige pulls, pushes and slips us into the peephole, inviting all to come as she brings a new entrée into the world of art. The paintings

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are made up of images and events reflected in doorknobs that usually go unnoticed by the naked eye. The idea of reflections in the doorknob came to the artist from a challenge by an art professor, Angela Piehl, to paint an ugly space beautiful. After some hours of thought, Lindsay created the doorknob and the peephole effect. Images are curved, warped and in some instances rearranged by the reflections of light, shadows and shades.

Your mind, spirit and eyes must be in control, grabbing what you can before someone else catches you peeping, before the quiet of the evening reveals the lighting and swaying of the lens of the eye into the peephole.

The peephole paintings are on circular canvases. This helps enhance the imagery, captured completely inside another dimension of the present world.

Her artwork titles are time stamped, so we know exactly the feel of the artist during the ante meridiem or post meridiem hours.

5:56 pm The end of the workday. The beginning of the evening of life at home.

The reflections of Dory, as she busily searches for something in the unpacked boxes with a freedom that she is not being watched. The light assists in creating action and giving the furniture and other items a floating movement. A peephole… looking through a magic mirror, a wormhole or a telescope from the 15th century and knowing that no one else sees what you see.

participated in OVAC’s Momentum exhibition where she received the Viewer’s Choice Award in 2010. Her most recent exhibit was a group international exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts.

Craige cites Eric Fischl and Ellen Altfest as her favorite artists. She admires their style of portraying people, light and everyday activity.

She says that she counts painter and professor Liz Roth as a mentor, who helped direct and guide her skills and development.

The Tulsa Performing Arts Center exhibition runs from January 6 to January 31. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday from 10 am to 5:30 pm and during all Chapman Music Hall events. The TPAC Gallery is located on the same level as the ticket office. All art is for sale. n Barbara L. Eikner is author, writer and owner of Trabar & Associates, and can be reached by email at Trabar@windstream.net.

Craige, her husband Aaron and Dory (her Jack Russell Terrier) live in Tulsa. See more of her work at www.lindsaylarremore.com.

8:31 pm Working after work, browsing the internet, looking for new ideas.

Do not disturb is the quiet message you get without a sign on the doorknob.

Craige has been painting since 2009 and drawing since middle school. She is a 2011 graduate of Oklahoma State University, Stillwater with a BFA in Studio Arts and a degree in Interior Design in 2006. Before completing her studies at OSU, Craige studied painting and language in Florence, Italy and New Mexico. While at OSU, she received the OVAC Student Award of Excellence and the OSU Outstanding Senior of the Year award from the Art Department.

Craige has exhibited in Tulsa Artists’ Coalition’s 5x5 exhibition and at the M. A. Doran Gallery in Tulsa. She has

Lindsay Larremore Craige, Tulsa, 8:31 pm, Oil, 11” diameter.

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ON THE

Enid

by Lucie Smoker

“Art has moved out of the back seat. For Yarnover Enid, we got to drive,” said Paula Nightengale of Creative Arts Enid.

(left) A yarn-covered bicycle rides up a street pole during Yarnover Enid. Photo by Sarah Smith Photography. (right) Susan Southall with the Keeper of the Plains statue. (Image by Kelly Tompkins, Main Street Enid)

In northwest Oklahoma, down lonely highway 412, an upstart community movement is shifting Enid arts into high gear. Creative Arts Enid (CA) and its Prairie YarnStormers recently plastered the town square with textile bicycles, knitted butterflies, beaded medicine bags, handwork sculptures and crocheted afghans to adorn every tree, every landmark—and no, they didn’t ask permission.

“What’s it for?” a passerby asked about a collage of sock monkeys.

“To bring the community together,” answered Nightengale, “with snippets of delight.”

During this “yarn storm” people rediscovered downtown. Statues that had been there all along seemed less stone-hard, more whimsical, and almost alive. Teens “pinned” photos of knitted

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spider webs around the rotunda. Moms posted Facebook photos of their kids hugging parking meters, the ones with the monster faces and feet.

Everyone else just talked.

Creative Arts Enid brings that sense of enchantment into projects that reach out to all ages. Expanding on the work of local arts powerhouses - Leonardo’s Discovery Warehouse, Main Street Enid, Gaslight Theater, Enid Symphony Orchestra, and Northern Oklahoma College - Creative Arts just ramps up the attitude.

“It’s never too late to learn art. It’s never too early to start art. It just isn’t.” - Paula Nightengale.

Their fledgling Art in Schools project chauffeured free-to-schools art classes to over 2,800 students last year. Expanding in

2013-2014 to reach 1,500 more children, Art in Schools achieves one part of their central goal: to start early. Said Nightengale, “Any kid who is encouraged in art is going to do better across the board.”

Research backs her up. A 2-year study by the Mississippi State University’s Stennis Institute examined the impact of arts integration on the academic performance of over 5,000 students in both public and parochial schools. Its recently released conclusion: arts integration improved test scores in math and language arts, plus reduced or eliminated the achievement gap for economically disadvantaged students.

At Enid’s Garfield Elementary, the students of one 5th grade class created Dust Bowl landscapes in an Art in Schools lesson

Road trips

to Enid First Fridays from 6-9 p.m: Live music, special events, great food, art and eclectic shopping on the square.

Sponsored by Main Street Enid. www.mainstreetenid.org Gaslight Theater will perform (left) A Garfield Elementary 5th grader begins work on an Oklahoma landscape. (right) Students from the Creative Arts Enid preschool class completing a mask project.

combining Oklahoma history with art appreciation and watercolor pencil technique.

Every child’s face seemed to ponder their next stroke of pencil as CA instructor Phyllis Wright encouraged their first efforts at sketching, otherwise known as creative problem-solving.

The mission of Creative Arts Enid is “Art for all ages.”

At their backstreet studio in downtown Enid, Creative Arts preschoolers delighted in a mask project. One mother drove forty minutes from an outlying town to bring her wide-eyed son here.

“I like to draw. I paint, too,” he said after class.

His enthusiasm seemed electric.

Another mom saves the time and energy she used to spend driving her kindergartner to Oklahoma City for an art class. Creative Arts hosts local, low-cost classes in watercolor, acrylics, mixed media, pencil drawing, creative movement, and pottery for preschool through adult students. With upcoming summer camps they will soon add storytelling and photography.

Retiree Carol Dockins was once told by a fourth grade teacher, “I think you have a gift. You can draw.” That single comment launched a lifetime of fine art projects now culminating with her teaching preschool through adult classes at Creative Arts Enid. Paula Nightengale herself took her first art class at age 62. It was the inaugural drawing class conducted by founder and award-winning Oklahoma artist, Patricia Ridge Bradley.

In their new arts-district digs, Creative Arts Enid has space to develop a fine art gallery and new projects. Through an arrangement with Northern Oklahoma College, their pottery students have access to a fully-equipped lab.

Sessions are led by experienced artists, retired teachers and community volunteers. Open studio times encourage even the mildly curious to give art a starting shot.

Shhh, they’re telling everyone.

The Prairie YarnStormers have concocted notso-secret plans to turn local Champlin Park into Candy Land this spring. As part of International Yarn Bombing Day on June 7, they will candystripe the trees, construct a yarn-covered castle, mark out a life-sized game board, and knit 30inch figures of Princess Lolly, Lord Licorice, etc.

Area children will be the game pieces, playing for free. The project hasn’t yet been approved by the city, but Nightengale says, “If they don’t grant approval, we’ll do it anyway.”

For more information on Creative Arts Enid, visit www.creativeartsenid.org n

The 39 Steps (based on the Hitchcock film) February 21, 22, 28 and March 1. www.gaslighttheatre.org Enid Symphony Orchestra will present Valentine at Pops with British vocalist Helen Welch February 14 and 15. www.enidsymphony.org Leonardo’s Discovery Warehouse delights children of all ages with thrilling, hands-on art and science experiences. Open 10-5 Mon.-Sat. and 1-5 Sun. www.leonardos.org

A suspense author, Smoker’s first artist mystery, Distortion, drew on the reverse perspectives of Patrick Hughes. Its sequel, Paradox, is inspired by the works of Banksy, ROA, Jeremy Geddes, plus the artists she meets while writing for Art Focus Oklahoma. More information at luciesmoker.wordpress.com.

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Inside the Studio: Jason Cytacki by heather ahtone

Jason Cytacki, Norman, See the USA, Oil on canvas, 42” x 62”

Jason Cytacki’s studio is nestled in a quiet industrial area on the west side of Norman, on the second floor of a building dedicated to studios for the faculty and graduate students from the University of Oklahoma’s School of Art and Art History. Cytacki has been a tenure-track professor of painting for a couple of years and has simultaneously established himself as one of the shining lights of painting in Oklahoma. He greeted me at the building entrance, which is kept locked due to the private use of the facility, led me up a narrow staircase while he lugged a painting in one hand and some works on paper in the other. Cytacki has a quiet, charming demeanor, no less for the upturned handlebar mustache he sports while dressed like a young professional. We entered his studio, a broad room about the size of a single car garage with a single, northern window covered by stacked canvases and frames leaning against the wall.

Jason put down his canvas and carefully placed the large sheets. He and I sat in the only two office chairs in the space. In that space on a

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November afternoon, we visited about his work. heather ahtone: Can you describe your current art to me in one sentence?

Jason Cytacki: Hmm, that’s difficult but let me try. My paintings use contemporary and traditional methods that explore cultural identity and mythology. ha: I can see you are using references to the myth of the American West, toys and childhood, and also referencing historical Western painting.

JC: Yes. In these bodies of work I use the American West as an expression of larger themes such as cultural identity and nostalgia. How the way we view ourselves is influenced by our culture. Growing up in Indiana, my interest in the West stems from exposure to the mythical West seen in popular culture, TV, and movies. I think I was first attracted to the subject through the cowboy hero whom I explore in some of my

works. Overall, my use of the West is more of a critical examination about the nostalgia for something that never really existed in this way.

More broadly it’s about the misplaced longing for something simpler or more “pure” the same way many look back on the toys of their childhood. My works are also informed by the history of painting from Hopper, Caravaggio to Bierstadt. When attempting to talk about older work it is difficult to accurately describe my thoughts about their creation and my intentions because there were those things I was thinking about when I made the work and then those that I’ve discovered about them since. My thoughts about the work are always evolving, making it difficult to do just one or the other. ha: I’m glad to hear you reference Bierstadt because I’ve wondered if you are making visual reference to specific historic paintings or just alluding to their traditional formats?

JC: Some of the early landscape paintings are

(left) A view inside Jason Cytacki’s Norman studio. (right) Shoot for the Stars, Oil on canvas, 84” x 60”

homages to specific Bierstadt paintings, I used to remember the titles. That is where they started, riffing on the constructed nature of his landscapes by reconstructing his scenes in cardboard. As the idea evolved and I continued thinking about the myth that Bierstadt participated in, I moved away from him as a specific reference. I began collecting historic postcard images and personal photographs that I took traveling through those spaces. It’s important to know that as a kid I took road trips to Colorado, Arizona, the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. I had a personal experience with those picturesque spaces. The series of images I’m making now are an amalgam of different sources, looking for a mixture of personal, purchased, and popular culture. I took them and funneled them into a similar aesthetic.

drawn canvas in the fourth corner. Between the door and the easel stand two large, probably seven foot paintings. These paintings have been exhibited before, Jason explains, and he had pulled them out of the open crate for a recent studio visit. He describes that their size is a challenge for him to manage storing and that they sat in his house for six months for lack of a better home when he first arrived in Oklahoma in 2011. They live now in that crate, waiting for a permanent home.

Looking around the studio, the large room is organized into a corner used for storage, holding frames, stretcher bars, crates (a large open crate and a few closed). Along the same long wall, in the opposing corner, stands a tall stack of flat drawers. On the top of the stack is a rig, suspending open bulbs over various organic shapes created from canned spray foam held together with cardboard forms. One of the flat drawers is partially open, revealing the organized rows of toys, like things placed together and divided from unlike things. Jason describes that these drawers are full of toys and props that are used with the rig on top to create the dioramas that appear in the oil paintings stacked with the other stored items. In the studio, the entrance door is the third corner and a tall, sturdy wooden easel holds a partially

ha: What other things do you listen to?

ha: Tell me what you listen to you when you’re working.

JC: It can be anything. I listen to audio books, both fiction and non-fiction. I recently listened to Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. It’s easy to borrow books that can be downloaded for free from the Norman Public Library.

JC: I listen to podcasts, especially This American Life, RadioLab, TEDtalks, The Moth… I listen to Indie and Alternative music, whatever that is called now. ha: Who comes to mind right off?

JC: Mountain Goats, My Morning Jacket…

I guess I’m thinking of ‘M’ names (he laughs).

Sometimes I listen to upbeat music to wake up, but other days I start out with something downtempo to start out easy. It just depends on the day. ha: Many young artists think that successful artists make their living from their art. But that is the rare exception. Most professional

artists, like you, have to have a regular source of income that allows them to keep the bills paid and food on the table. Since your full-time job is teaching and you have irregular periods of being consumed with teaching, how do you manage to find time to work?

JC: It’s always a challenge to find time, or the right kind of time. It seems like through the course of the year, some things take precedence over making art. This could be grading or preparing PowerPoints. That time balance is always shifting, so just when I’ve got it figured out, things change. Regardless, I’m learning how to use my time effectively and efficiently so that I can meet all the existing demands.

Now, work time is work time… that time is precious and limited. Now I treat it as a job. I get my coffee and go to work every day. That’s less romantic but everyday I’m working at my studio practice and it’s all connected, even if I’m not moving paint around.

Jason Cytacki’s work can be seen at www.JasonCytacki.com. n heather ahtone is James T. Bialac Asst. Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. She actively supports the Oklahoma arts community and inter-disciplinary cultural engagement.

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Ask a Creativity Coach:

Five Easy Steps to Find Time

by Romney Nesbitt

Dear Romney, I know I should be painting, and I want to paint, but I just can’t find the time with job and family responsibilities. Can you help me find a few free hours every week?

—No time

Dear No, It is difficult to find time for creating when much of your time is constrained by “non-negotiables” (job, family, commuting, chores etc.). You can find time by viewing time in “segments.” A segment of time is about an hour.

Let’s say you have a full time job Monday-Friday, your possible studio times will be found on weekday evening hours and on the weekends. (Don’t fall for the perfectionistic thinking trap that demands a half-day or full day of uninterrupted time in order to do any “real” artwork. An hour here and there over time will result in a completed painting).

HOW TO FIND TIME: Decide on a certain number of hours/segments you would like to have for artmaking in the coming week.

Call to Artists

than 10” x 10” x 10”)

Deadline 10/20/14 Exhibition 11/7/14 - 11/29/14

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business of art

Look over the next seven days and block off enough segments to add up to your desired number of studio hours. You have now found several studio appointment times scattered over a week.

The beauty of this segment technique is that you’re always in charge. If something unexpected comes up on one of the days when you planned to paint, be flexible and choose another segment later in the week. The breaks in between studio time will give your brain time to evaluate and plan your next steps.

Commit to a certain number of hours per week for painting and the results will show. You can find the time! n

Member Show (all media accepted) Deadline 1/20/13 Exhibition 2/7/14 - 3/1/14 smART show (small works no larger

works that explore ‘containment’)

Identify the segments of time that are free/uncommitted. This is where you’ll find time. For example, if your Tuesday evening is open after dinner, you may have 2-3 segments of free time available for the studio. Over the course of seven days you could have up to a dozen segments of uncommitted time.

Show up at your studio appointment time and paint!

2014 Paseo Arts Association

Deadline 2/17/14 Exhibition 4/4/14 - 4/30/14 Installation Project Deadline 5/12/14 Exhibition 8/1/14 - 8/30/14 PhotoFest (photography of all kinds) Deadline 8/18/14 Exhibition 9/5/14 - 9/30/14 Container Show (three-dimensional

Choose a month-at-a-glance calendar (you’ll need squares big enough to write in). View each day as starting after work (6-10 p.m.). Identify segments/hours already committed to favorite TV shows, club meetings, church activities, exercise classes, etc.

The Historic Paseo Arts District stretches from N.W. 28th and Walker to N.W. 30th and Dewey, and is the oldest arts district in Oklahoma City.

For more information, call 405.525.2688 or visit thepaseo.com.

Romney Nesbitt is a Creativity Coach and author of Secrets From a Creativity Coach (available at amazon.com). She welcomes your questions and suggestions for this column. Book her to speak to your group through OVAC’s ARTiculate Speakers Bureau. Contact her at romneynesbitt@gmail.com.

Christoph’s Fine

Framing

You have a passion for your art,

I have a passion for framing it!

!

Members-Only Exhibit | Call for Entries 108 | Contemporary is honoring our fantastic artist members by hosting a survey exhibit of their work. 108 | Contemporary: Members-Only Exhibit, open to all members, will feature Oklahoma 108 | Contemporary artist members in multiple media including fiber, wood, ceramics, metals, glass, installations, and more. We encourage members to submit up to three entries. The exhibition will present a diversified look at contemporary artistic talent in Oklahoma.

MEMBERS-ONLY EXHIBIT 2014 CALL FOR ARTISTS • Deadline: February 2, 2014, 5 p.m.

• Opening Reception: April 4, 2014 at 108 | Contemporary

• Professional picture framing services at rates about half of what a frame shop will charge.!

• Entry Requirements: You must be a member of 108 | Contemporary to apply for this exhibition. If you are not a member and would like to join, visit 108contemporary.org/membership or contact us by phone at 918-895-6302.

• I have over 15 years experience as a professional picture framer.!

• How to Submit: Visit 108contemporary.org/submissions and fill out the online form to submit work for the Members-Only Exhibit. Please type “Members Exhibit 2014” in the purpose of submission box and label all images with last and first name. Additional images may be emailed to director@108contemporary.org.

! !

• I offer my services by appointment at your convenience: I come to you. I also pick up, deliver, and hang all art I frame. !

!

Visit 108contemporary.org/programs for more information about the event or call 918-895-6302.

Call or text 405 569-8452, or email hollrah1@gmail.com for information, or to set an appointment.

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OVAC NEWS

january | february 2014

25th Anniversary Celebrations For 25 years, the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition has helped artists throughout Oklahoma realize their potential through education, exposure and funding.

As of December 15, 32 donors have pledged to OVAC’ campaign, including:

Visionary: John McNeese & John Richardson Robert & Cara Barnes Developer: Jean Ann & Tom Fausser Collaborators: Ad Astra Foundation

Advocates: TiTi & Brian Fitzsimmons Suzanne Mitchell & Sam Fulkerson Ira & Sandy Schlezinger Sue Moss & Andy Sullivan The Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation

Sustainer: Bob Curtis Hillary & Peter Farrell Ken Fergeson, NBC Bank Chip & Shannon Fudge

Michael Hoffner Julia Kirt & Nathan Guilford, DDS Stephen Kovash Renée & Chris Porter Carl and Beth Shortt

Ally: Rand & Jeanette Elliott Gina H. Ellis Edward & Brenda Granger Sue Hale Meg Salyer Georgia Williams in Memory of Gete Weisman

Friends & Backers: Lisa Jean Allswede Jennifer Barron & Bonnie Allen Susan Beaty Joey Frisillo Susan Green Janet Shipley Hawks Tom Mills Margo Shultes von Schlageter, MD Supporters: Jennifer James McCollum Kathy McRuiz Diana Smith M. Teresa Valero

Watch for a special feature about the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition on OETA’s Gallery show on January 9 and repeating through the month.

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ovac news

Celebrating OVAC’s past impact on the state and artists, we have been raising funds to support OVAC’s mission and future longterm strength. The 25th Anniversary Campaign will allow OVAC to expand artist awards, professional education, public outreach and organizational sustainability. We invite your support to help OVAC serve artists and our state for the next 25 years.

The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition is still seeking donations to…

• Expand artist education, offering more Artist Survival Kit workshops and resources around the state.

• Add technical assistance for OVAC artist grantees, helping their projects reach their full potential.

• Grow the OVAC endowment to support one $5,000 Artist Fellowship per year continually.

Find more information and pledge via mail, phone or online at http://tiny.cc/OVAC25.

Multiple year pledges are gladly received as well.

25th Anniversary Committee: Co-Chairs: Sue Moss Sullivan & Sam Fulkerson Adrienne Barnett Gina Ellis Jean Ann Fausser Stephen Kovash Renée Porter Carl Shortt

For Artist INC Live OKC, 25 artists gathered once a week for 8 weeks to learn business of art skills and apply them collaboratively with their peers.

We want to recognize and thank OVAC’s Fall 2013 Interns: Joshua Cassella, Katelynn Knick and Meredith Tatum, for their help throughout the semester. Joshua Cassella holds a BFA with a focus on Painting from Oklahoma City University. In addition to previously serving on the Momentum OKC committee, he diligently put his time and talents to work for other OVAC activities including Art Focus, membership and the 12x12 Art Fundraiser. Katelynn Knick is a junior at the University of Oklahoma working toward a BFA in Contemporary Sculpture and Painting. Katelynn brought her love of art and learning to the internship, assisting with events, absorbing the nonprofit life and attending the 2013 Oklahoma Arts Conference. Meredith Tatum is a recent Oklahoma State University graduate, receiving a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Administration. Her expertise, organizational skills and reliability were welcomed throughout the office, especially with 12x12 and Momentum Tulsa event coordination.

Thank you Joshua, Katelynn and Meredith for all your hard work!

Amazed by the enthusiasm and strength of the fellows, OVAC wrapped up the first Artist INC Live program in Oklahoma City in November. Through the 8-week program, 25 artists gained entrepreneurial skills and developed their artistic practices

collaboratively. The wonderful Peer Facilitators included Michelle Moeller, Beau Leland, Robert Matson, Sunni Mercer and Jerod Tate with Sarah Hearn as lead facilitator.

OVAC organized the Artist INC program in collaboration with the Norman Arts Council, Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, Oklahoma Film & Music Office, and the City of Oklahoma City Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) brought the program to Oklahoma with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and local funders Sonic America’s Drive In, the Ad Adstra Foundation and the Cultural Development Corporation of Central Oklahoma. Thank you to all the partners and sponsors.

Thanks much to the Momentum Tulsa committee, led by co-chairs Julianne Clark & Valentin Esparza, for organizing a fun and creative event. Emily Kern and Krystle Brewer curated the exhibition featuring 51 artists at Living Arts of Tulsa. We appreciate all the event sponsors, especially The George Kaiser Family Foundation, Fowler Chevrolet of Tulsa and Fowler Toyota of Tulsa.

Congratulations to our recent grant recipients. Artist project support for the quarter totals $4,700 to five artists. Marwin

Begaye, Norman, received a Creative Projects Grant to exhibit his work and lead a printmaking workshop at the Ngapuhi Festival in New Zealand. Oklahoma City printmaker Stacey D. Miller received a Creative Projects Grant to help build an exposure unit for her home studio to allow her and other local artists to produce high quality and cost efficient editions of their work. Through the support of a Professional Basics Grant, Ellen Moershel, Norman, constructed two large canvases and professionally framed her work for a show at LOCAL. Natalie Slater, Tulsa, will use her Professional Basics Grant to travel her exhibition Mother Road Revisited to several regional venues, including those in Longview, TX, and Joplin, MO. With the help of a Community/Artist Partnership Grant, Miami artist Jessica Stout will create a permanent mural titled What’s Where in Southwest Oklahoma in the Visitors Center at the Museum of the Western Prairie in Altus.

Celebrating OVAC’s 25th Anniversary and organizational founder, we are pleased to announce the John McNeese Grant: Professional Development in Socially-Engaged Artwork.

With these grants, OVAC seeks to help visual artists work as catalysts for action and community improvement offering up (continued to p.26)

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(continued from p. 25)

to $1,500 for artists. See the guidelines on OVAC’s website www.ovac-ok.org.

Save the date for the Tulsa Art Studio Tour on April 12 and 13, 2014. Artists will open their working studios to the public in a self-guided tour. Watch www.TulsaArtStudioTour.org for updates.

Art People Dr. Emily Ballew Neff has been named director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman. Neff comes to Norman from the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston where she was a curator of American painting and sculpture. Welcome Dr. Neff! n

November 19, 2013 was declared “Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Day” in the City of Oklahoma City.

Pictured here: Renee Porter, OVAC Vice President; Mick Cornett, Mayor of Oklahoma City; Julia Kirt, OVAC Executive Director; and Kelsey Karper, OVAC Associate Director.

November 21, 2013 was declared “Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Day” in the City of Tulsa.

Pictured here: Blake Ewing, Tulsa City Councilor; Julia Kirt; Jean Ann Fausser, OVAC President; and Dewey Bartlett, Mayor of Tulsa.

Thank you to our new and renewing members from September and October 2013 Jo Ann Adams Cynthia Akers Jessica Ann Alan Atkinson Paul Bagley Bjorn Bauer Matthew Bearden Gina Boerner Kristen Brown Tsinena Bruno Thompson, Oklahoma Lawyers for Children Eliseo Casiano Dylan Cavin Emily Clark Julianne Clark Diane U. Coady Renee Coon Susan Cromer Yback Jason Cytacki and Haley Prestifilippo Sam Dahr Melody Davis

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ovac news

Eliza Delaney Joel Dixon Christiane E. Faris Beverly K. Fentress Daniel Giles Helm Susan Green Samantha Greer Victoria Gribble Deb and Larry Grizzle Megan Guderian Michelle Hammond Bradsher Burt Harbison Timothy Hearne Jan Hellwege & Frank Wert Suzanne Henthorn Larry K. Hill Heather Clark Hilliard David Holland Helen F. Howerton Megan Hughes Frances Hymes Stephanie D. Jackson Patricia Jellerson

Robert C. Johnson Curtis Jones Jody Karr Jim Keffer Emily Kern Casey Kim Karen Kirkpatrick Katelynn Knick Lindsay Larremore Craige Erin Latham Trent Lawson Thomas Lehner P. Keith Lenington Zach Litwack Lana Lopez Rebecca Lowber-Collins Kristina Makowicz Scout Marshall Debra Martin-Barber Micah McGahan Sara McMican Sylvia Miller Carla Miller

Brad Morrow Anne Motley Gregory Motto Regina Murphy Debbie Musick Wallace Owens Ronna Pernell Paul Pfrehm Hugh Pickens Angela Piehl Anne Richardson Angela Rodriguez Deborah Ross Abe Rucker Mary Ruggles Roger Runge Anna Rutherford Barbara Ryan Diane Salamon Audrey Schmitz and Ken Crowder Charis Anne Schneider L.A. Scott

Bert D. Seabourn Byron Shen Natalie Slater Riley D. Smith Sandy and Bob Sober Blake Stewart Patrick Synar J. Diane Trout Harwood University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History Terri Wagner Kelley Walker Samuel Wargin Lori Weatherholtz Sharon Webster Jim Rau and Shanley WellsRau Chandler Wilson Julia Woodson James and Denise Wedel, Cobblestone Galleries Susan York Molly Youngblood

AT A GLANCE Donald G. Longcrier and Barbara A. Ryan at MAINSITE Contemporary Art

by Laura Reese Contemplative practices of Western and Eastern traditions combined with paintings of found objects for Wooden Fish, an exhibition of new work by Donald G. Longcrier, October 11 through November 9 at MAINSITE Contemporary Art in Norman.

The title of the show is a reference to a Buddhist tradition of striking a simple percussion instrument to maintain rhythm while reciting scriptures. The fish was used to call monks to duties, signifying wakefulness. The “fish” here are the real objects, fishing lures, boats and tools, a reference to Longcrier’s own interest in fishing, and in the mindfulness of tradition.

On one side of the gallery, layers of measuring tape are combined to create angles and patterns that hypnotize; a geometric testament to a meditation on function. On the other side of the gallery, white wooden panels with fishing lures and metal spheres appear to be trompe l’oeils, realistically rendered drawings. Yet, upon closer inspection, the viewer is fooled by the real object placed in front of a blank canvas. Longcrier uses the seemingly simple object to reference itself; its essence and its presence become its aesthetic.

Printmaker Barbara A. Ryan, with a humorous surface and bright graphics, tackled a dark and controversial subject in her series Play is Practice, in the Library Gallery of MAINSITE, October 11 through November 9.

Ryan, winner of the Norman Arts Council Individual Artist Award, combines toy guns and sweets in a series of representational paintings which focus on childhood habits that foreshadow pathological adult behaviors. An

installation of multiple prints of toy guns on paper in plastic wrapping signifies the shiny and saccharine packaging of violence sold to children. On an adjacent wall, silhouettes of adult figures holding guns are superimposed upon the graphic logos used for the toy guns, with titles that harken back to play, e.g. “He always wanted to be the hero”.

In the corner, Ryan placed functional vending machine of her toy gun prints, the proceeds of which are donated to the Children’s Defense Fund; thus cleverly repurposing the mass marketing used to sell violence to children. Ryan’s work, though addressing a difficult subject, is easily approached due to pleasing use of vivid colors and bright graphics.

For more information, visit: www.donaldglongcrier.com, www.barbararyan360.com or www.mainsite-art.com. n Laura Reese is event coordinator for the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. She is an artist, curator and writer based out of Norman.

She can be reached at events@ovac-ok.org.

(top) Donald Longcrier, Norman, Untitled (Tape Measures, Number 1), detail, Tape measures on wood,108” x 108” (bottom) Practice is Play by Barbara A. Ryan at the Library Gallery in MAINSITE Contemporary Art.

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Because when you support the arts, you’re actually supporting work for thousands of Oklahomans.

Think of it this way. When you support the arts, you help fund programs that help to improve our community. Not just in creating works of art, but creating a thriving economy. Because the nonprofit arts industry in Oklahoma supports more than 10,000 jobs in our state.

And you can help by supporting Allied Arts. It doesn’t take a big donation to make a big difference.

A little give ... is all it takes.

Desmond Mason Artist, Former NBA Player

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UNI_CR-M26_Allied_Arts_2013_Desmond_Mason.indd 1

Donate Today 405.278.8944 alliedartsokc.com

11/25/13 2:03 PM

Gallery Listings & Exhibition Schedule

Ada Eric Wright January 13-February 7 Interscholastic Exhibit February 10-14 24 Works on Paper February 17-March 14 The Pogue Gallery Hallie Brown Ford Fine Arts Center 900 Centennial Plaza (580) 559-5353 ecok.edu

Ardmore

Jean Perry and Rick McClure with USAO Biennial Juried Show Through January 10 Al Bostick and Lola Jenkins January 14-March 1 Opening January 17, 6:30-7:30 The Goddard Center 401 First Avenue SW (580) 226-0909 goddardcenter.org

Bartlesville Bauhaus twenty-21: An Ongoing Legacy- Photographs by Gordan Watkinson January 24-May 4 Price Tower Arts Center 510 Dewey Ave. (918) 336-4949 pricetower.org

Lawton Sandra Dunn, Clark Smith Opening January 11, 7-9 pm The Leslie Powell Foundation and Gallery 620 D Avenue (580) 357-9526 lpgallery.org

Norman Firehouse Talent January 10-March 1 Firehouse Art Center 444 South Flood (405) 329-4523 normanfirehouse.com Chocolate Festival and Arts Day February 1 Jacobson House 609 Chautauqua (405) 366-1667 jacobsonhouse.com

Libertad de Expresión: the Art of Americas and Cold War Politics Through January 5 Dark Light: the Micaceous Ceramics of Christine Nofchissey McHorse Through January 12 On Assignment: the Photojournalism of Horace Bristol Through May 18 Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art 555 Elm Ave. (405) 325-4938 ou.edu/fjjma Printmaking Intersession Exhibit Through January 2 100th Annual SoA&AH Student Exhibit January 13-February 14 Reception January 17, 7-9 pm Lightwell Gallery, University of Oklahoma 520 Parrington Oval (405) 325-2691 art.ou.edu

Oklahoma City James Sullivan Through January 4 American History in Print: Michelle Martin The Shack: Bryce Brimer January 10-February 15 Opening January 10, 5-8 pm [ArtSpace] at Untitled 1 NE 3rd St. (405) 815-9995 artspaceatuntitled.org To Pioneer: Denise Duong Through January 4 The Daily Artifact: Corey Fuller January 16-April 5 Opening January 16, 5-7 pm Gaylord-Pickens Oklahoma Heritage Museum 1400 Classen Dr. (405) 235-4458 oklahomaheritage.com The Company You Keep: Bonnie Allen, Jennifer Barron, Kelsey Karper, Lori Oden, romy owens and Stephanie Ruggles Winter Through January 4 Closing Potluck Dinner, January 4, 3-6 pm Red State Project: Ashley Griffith Through January 4 Individual Artists of Oklahoma 706 W Sheridan (405) 232-6060 iaogallery.org

Traditional Cowboy Arts Association 15th Annual Exhibition and Sale Through January 5 Cowboy Artists of America 48th Annual Sale and Exhibition Through January 5 Allan Houser and His Students Through May 11 National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum 1700 NE 63rd (405) 478-2250 nationalcowboymuseum.org Art Now 2014 January 20-February 7 Gala Event January 24 Chuck Webster February 25-May 16 Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center 3000 General Pershing Blvd.

(405) 951-0000 oklahomacontemporary.org Randall Watkins Through January 12 North Gallery Michelle Himes McCrory Through January 19 East Gallery Marjorie Atwood Through January 26 Governor’s Gallery Oklahoma State Capitol Galleries 2300 N. Lincoln Blvd (405) 521-2931 arts.ok.gov Chuck Close: Works on Paper Through February 16 Lisa Hoke: Come on Down Through April 13 Oklahoma City Museum of Art 415 Couch Drive (405) 236-3100 okcmoa.com Annual PAA Member’s Show February 7-28 Paseo Art Space 3022 Paseo (405) 525-2688 thepaseo.com Jennifer Cocoma Hustis: Untamed: The Mustang’s Plight and Behavior Through Art Through March 1 Composites: Robert Dohrmann, Pete

Froslie, Brent Richardson, Matthew Kaney, Stuart Whitis, J. Craig Tompkins, Kyle Edward Van Osdol Through April 10 The Satellite Galleries at Science Museum Oklahoma 2100 NE 52nd St (405) 602-6664 sciencemuseumok.org

Park Hill Cherokee Nation: A Portrait of a People: Portraits by David Fitzgerald Through March 31 Cherokee National Historical Society, Inc. 21192 S. Keeler Drive (918) 456-6007 cherokeeheritage.org

Ponca City 24 Works on Paper Through January 4 Ponca City Art Center 819 East Central (580) 765-9746 poncacityartcenter.com

Stillwater What Goes Up? Recent Works by Mark H. Cowardin January 13-February 14 Opening January 23, 5-7 pm Across the Divide February 17-March 21 Opening February 20, 5-7 pm Gardiner Gallery Oklahoma State University Museum of Art 108 Bartlett Center for the Visual Arts (405) 744-4143 museum.okstate.edu Sharing a Journey: Building the Oklahoma State University Museum of Art Collection January 14-May 25 Opening January 3, 5-7 pm Postal Plaza Gallery Oklahoma State University Museum of Art 700 S Husband Street (405) 744-4143 museum.okstate.edu

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Tulsa Member’s Juried Exhibit Through January 5 108 Contemporary 108 E Brady (918) 237-9592 108contemporary.org Folio Editions: Art in the Service of Science Through March 23 Form and Line: Allan Houser’s Sculpture and Drawings February 23-June 29 Gilcrease Museum 1400 Gilcrease Road (918) 596-2700 gilcrease.org Imagin8: Tulsa Girls Art School The Sherman Smith Family Gallery January 17-March 2 Henry Zarrow Center for Art and Education 124 E Brady St (918) 631-4400 gilcrease.utulsa.edu/Explore/Zarrow Caleb Burgess January 13-February 28 Opening January 16, 5-7 pm Holliman Gallery Holland Hall 5666 East 81st Street (918) 481-1111 hollandhall.org

Glenn Herbert Davis: Value Western Dougherty: Room #116 January 3-23 Maria Valesco: Very Long Night February 7-March 27 Love and Lust February 15 New Genre Festival XXI February 25-March 8 Living Arts 307 E. Brady (918) 585-1234 livingarts.org

Tallasi: Town You Can See: Jeff Hogue and Mark Kuykendall January 3-25 Beyond the Powwow: Native Dancers of the American West: Photography by MJ Alexander February 7-22 Tulsa Artists Coalition Gallery 9 East Brady (918) 592-0041 tacgallery.org Lindsay Larremore-Craige January Michelle Firment Reid February Tulsa Performing Arts Center Gallery Third and Cincinnati (918) 596-2368 tulsapac.com

Games People Play Through January 12 Collective Future Through January 26 In Glorious Light Through March 16 Identity & Inspiration Through June 29 Opening Abstraction Through June 29 The Philbrook Museum of Art 2727 South Rockford Road (918) 749-7941 philbrook.org

Become a member of the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition.

Join today to begin enjoying the benefits of membership, including a subscription to Art Focus Oklahoma.

PATRON - $250

-Listing of self or business on signage at events -Invitation for two people to private reception with visiting curators -$210 of this membership is tax deductible.

-All of below

FELLOW - $125

-Acknowledgement in the Resource Guide and Art Focus Oklahoma -Copy of each OVAC exhibition catalog -$85 of this membership is tax deductible.

-All of below

FAMILY - $60

MJ Alexander, Oklahoma City, Beyond the Powwow, Photography, on display at Tulsa Artists’ Coalition Gallery February 7-22.

MEMBER FORM ¨ Patron

¨ Fellow

¨ Family

¨ Individual

Name Street Address City, State, Zip

-Same benefits as Individual level for two people in household

Email

INDIVIDUAL - $40

Website

Phone

Credit card #

Exp. Date

-Subscription to Art Focus Oklahoma -Monthly e-newsletter of visual art events statewide (sample) -Receive all OVAC mailings -Listing in Annual Resource Guide and Member Directory -Copy of Annual Resource Guide and Member Directory -Access to “Members Only” area on OVAC website -Invitation to Annual Meeting Plus, artists receive: -Inclusion in online Virtual Gallery -Monthly e-newsletter of opportunities for artists (sample) -Artist entry fees waived for OVAC sponsored exhibitions -Up to 50% discount on Artist Survival Kit workshops -Associate Membership in Fractured Atlas, with access to services such as insurance, online courses and other special offers.

STUDENT - $20

-Valid student ID required. Same benefits as Individual level.

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p ro f i l e

¨ Student

Are you an artist? Y N Medium?_____________________________________ Would you like to be included in the Membership Directory? Y N Would you like us to share your information for other arts-related events?

Y

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Comments:

Detach and mail form along with payment to: OVAC, 730 W. Wilshire Blvd, Suite 104, Oklahoma City, OK 73116 Or join online at www.ovac-ok.org

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ArtOFocus k l a h o m a Annual Subscriptions to Art Focus Oklahoma are free with OVAC membership.

730 W. Wilshire Blvd, Suite 104 Oklahoma City, OK 73116 The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition supports Oklahoma’s visual arts and artists and their power to enrich communities.

Non Profit Org. US POSTAGE PAID Oklahoma City, OK Permit No. 113

Visit www.ovac-ok.org to learn more.

Jan 9:

OETA “Gallery” Feature on OVAC

Jan 15:

OVAC Grants for Artists Deadline

Feb 22: ASK Workshop Business of Art 101, Chickasha Feb 28:

Art 365 Opening Reception, OKC

Mar 7-8:

Momentum, OKC

JANUARY WHITE ON WHITE SHOW

Opening Reception: FRIDAY, JANUARY 3 6 - 10 P.M.

FEBRUARY JONATHAN HILS Opening Reception: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7 6 - 10 P.M. Gallery Hours: Mon - Sat 10 am - 6 pm Sun 1 pm - 5 pm

2810 North Walker Phone: 405.528.6336 www.jrbartgallery.com

JRB

ART

AT THE ELMS