Supporting Creative Exploration and Identity By Laurence Myers Reese
LEFT: Suzanne C. Thomas, Just One of Those Things, 2019, layered embroidery on tulle, painting on canvas, 12”x12” RIGHT: Julianne Clark, Grandmom’s China, 2019, archival inkjet print, 12”x15”
Every year, the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC) offers four awards of unrestricted funds to artists: two artist fellowships of $5,000 and two student awards of excellence at $500. Through this support, OVAC highlights work being made in the state and encourages artists in their careers. OVAC selects a new juror annually, giving applicants an opportunity to show their work to a new audience, viewed by a qualified curator. This year’s juror was Sara O’Keeffe, the Associate Curator of Modern & Contemporary art at Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa. O’Keeffe came to Oklahoma just this year, after serving as the curator at the New Museum in New York City. O’Keeffe’s first curatorial exhibition at the Philbrook will deal with representation and identity. Her curatorial vision comes through in this selection of awardees, as all four artists deal with identity and the relationship to self and community. Each artist finds their artistic practice as a place to explore identity and our place in the world. Many of them find respite in making as a way of healing and strengthening identity.
18 f e a t u re
The 2020 Fellowships were awarded to Suzanne Thomas (OKC) and Sarah Ahmad (Tulsa). Suzanne Thomas creates mixed media works
that explore familial relationships and the body through embroidery. Thomas’ works depict feminine figures on linen, often wearing clothes that are reminiscent of past fashions. Thomas says her work is, “inspired by personal history, familial history, and vintage ‘glamour.’” Her embroideries on lace, linen, and tablecloths all draw connections to the historical relationship of women to fashion, delicacy, womanhood, and domesticity. The world of figures she creates feels matrilineal. Women seem joyous in fields of embroidered flowers, others stand with gold and yellow halos around their heads, now saintly. Thomas sees her work as meditative. Embroidery demands repetition. She uses this meditative practice to build histories with a dedication to fine craft. Thomas’ work invites us to contemplate the act creation through her handling of diverse materials, including fiber, embroidery, and applique. Her work builds a narrative of the women that have come before us, saints,
heroes, relatives, friends, and perhaps the ones that come after us. Sarah Ahmad creates installations that mimic the Islamic patterns that Ahmad grew up seeing in Pakistan. Many of her installations are built with painted wood, that have been cut and carved to create intricate geometric patterns and scenes. Other installations use paper, fiber drawings, and technology to reflect the patterns of space and our universe. Ahmad explores what a borderless, universal humanity could look like, while drawing from her own intersectional experience as an immigrant, South Asian woman, and a single mother. Her artwork is a gateway to transcension. When it comes to making, “I feel free,” says Ahmad. Her acts of creation build scenes both real and surreal, transporting a viewer into a glimpse into something beyond. This is fitting, as many of the geometric patterns she draws on are from the ubiquitous screens that separate rooms and buildings in Islamic architecture. Her fiber installations and drawings use repetitive lines to thread together space and build a web of support. Ahmad’s installations are a way of rebuilding after personal and generational
