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.

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 createsinstallations 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

LEFT: Sarah Ahmad, Cosmic Identity, 2020, multimedia installation, dimensions variable RIGHT: Janae Grass, To Thâkînâwe, 2020, acrylic, antique brass, thread on canvas, 15” x 30”

trauma. As we stand at the threshold, Ahmad gives us the opportunity to look at the details and see how things come together.

This year’s Student Awardees are Julianne Clark (Tulsa) and Janae Grass (Tulsa).

Julianne Clark is a recent MFA graduate from the University of Tulsa. She mines the archive to investigate generational relationships in context with the landscape of the South. Clark’s collage-like installations and photographs explore how memory is tied to the natural world, linking disparate images to create both real and fabricated histories. Clark has previously made work using found photographs and performance to express the difficult intersections of identity, race, memory, history, and the South. Her recent work relates much more to science and to memory; however, the theme of race is still present in the images of white southerners, of white china in a glass case, juxtaposed with colorful landscapes, sometimes devoid of human activity. Clark’s work uses her memory and family history to explore the relationship between art making and nature, as we live on the verge of an anthropocene. She wants us to, “consider how degradation of the land relates to the erosion of family and community.”

Janae Grass is a student at Tulsa Community College. Drawing from her Sac & Fox heritage, Grass uses beadwork and painting to continue tradition and honor the work of those who keep these traditions alive. Her paintings recreate the patterns of ribbon work and applique design from indigenous culture. She enlarges the designs, zooming in and bringing eye level to what would normally be small and close to one’s body. These colorful and meaningful designs would typically move with the body they clothe; now they sit still for the viewer to admire. In her large geometric patterns, Grass’ paintings subvert the history of non-Native Abstract Expressionist artists drawing from Native American paintings. Instead, she brings us insight into tradition through the tools of contemporary art. Her goal is to change the “perception that indigenous art is stagnant and unchanging.”

OVAC puts no limit on what funds are spent on, giving the artists the freedom to use the stipends for materials or any other funds an

artist needs. With these funds OVAC encourages a diverse array of art being made in the state, and directly supports artist’s livelihoods.

OVAC will select a new juror for 2021 and will announce the call in the spring of next year. Learn more at ovacawards.com. n

Laurence Myers Reese is an artist and activist in Las Vegas, NV. He is a co-founder of the Vegas Institute of Contemporary Engagement at University of Nevada Las Vegas, where he is pursuing his MFA. He received his BFA from the University of Oklahoma in 2012, and has since worked as an independent curator, arts writer, factory worker, art instructor, and non-profit director. His work can be found at lmyersreese.com