Friday, May 14, 2021
Thriving artists How OSU’s art program mentors future artists Haley Carr Staff Reporter Art students at Oklahoma State University have finished their capstone projects and are looking forward to graduation. Their future comes with the stigma that a degree in the arts isn’t as useful as other degrees. The Department of Art is working hard to prepare these students for their careers after college and the challenges they may face. The program has accomplished this in part by hosting capstone exhibitions, which art students can use to showcase the artistic development they have achieved after years of research, experimentation and critical thinking. Andy Mattern,
Assistant Professor of Photography, teaches the photography courses in the Department of Art. For the past three years, he has also worked closely with students finishing their capstone projects. In his time as an artist and educator, Mattern has experienced his fair share of critics opposed to the idea of art as a viable career path for him and his students. “I think that people are afraid of art like they’re afraid of math… and I think that kind of fear is where the naysaying comes from,” Mattern said. “It seems like it’s something that only a couple of special few people have or can do, and really that’s a myth.” Like so many other See Thriving on pg. 2
One of the art pieces in OSU’s art department.
College of Arts and Sciences
‘Quality education’ Richard Desirey’s view of Greenwood Sudeep Tumma Staff Reporter
Ninth IN A SERIES “Greenwood Here and Now’ is a project by The O’Colly Media Group that highlights the tragedy and triumph of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, 100 years after the Tulsa race massacre.”
Richard Desirey has counseled a bevy of traumatized people in his life, but there’s one type of experience that consistently nags at him. “The experience that most impacts me is when I witness, on a fairly regular basis, a parent who I know who has experienced pretty traumatic things, who has hurt and angry and is being hurtful toward a child, not attending to a child’s need,” Desirey said. “I think, how did we become, in our society, so unwilling to step in and give more support to these families and these kids? “How is it that it’s a commonplace thing to see a child verbally or physically abused and no one believes they can step in?” That’s one of the most
severe things Desirey has to deal with. A licensed professional counselor, Desirey spent the majority of his life creating nonprofits and working in other organizations before establishing “A New Way Center” in 2011 — his final project. Desirey grew up in Tulsa, spending all his years until high school in that community. “I lived in a completely segregated, white neighborhood in south Tulsa,” Desirey said. “I attended all-white schools. In the 60s, as a teenager, I became aware the world I lived in was very segregated, and my family and the people around me seemed very comfortable with that segregation. But there was a much more diverse world outside of the community” From there, Desirey attended Oklahoma University before returning to Tulsa to begin working. And he had a specific focus. “The importance of quality education and effective, relevant mental health in the
Black community was historically underrepresented, in terms of resources,” Desirey said. “So that has been the focus of my career for 40-plus years.” Desirey has worked all over the state, but in his final years he wanted to establish A New Way Center in Greenwood, which he describes as the vortex of the community. A New Way Center has a focus on helping the children deal with trauma, although they work with people of all age groups. “With each generation, prior to 1921 and subsequent to 1921, there have been extreme hardships and injustices,” Desirey said. “With that trauma for the generation that experiences it and the children that experience it, when they become parents and the world they live in is not fair and just, then their children experience it.” From there, it just becomes a trickle-down effect. “They’re not as See Greenwood on pg. 2