It's Back! - Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition

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10 reviews William Struby (OKC) Distance – Mixed Media - Nice piece, reminiscent of a post-WWI French Poster, very blue, slender woman (in bondage?). Kathleen Rivers (Ada) The Dance - Collage Monotype - Businessman walking, towering buildings, crumbling destruction, fire, smoke, scribbling over the top of the piece. Kathleen Rivers (Ada) Morning Coffee - Giclee – Voluptuous female form, nice use of color, with black, white, pink (blood), yellow and orange predominating. A fancy coffee order is written over the piece. Trent Lawson (OKC) Belly - Mixed Media/Acrylic - paint and other material is layered on thick, creating a texture that looks like cracked earth/sculpture/ raku. Very earthy, like the floor of the Mojave Desert. D.J. Lafon (Norman) Gertrude Stein - Charcoal – VERY nice study of a woman (Gertrude Stein maybe?). Kolbe Roper (Edmond) Simple Celebration – Mixed Media - Middle Eastern feel, collage, Whirling Dervishes, people praying, Russian (?) Musicians in a rotunda (think Library of Congress). Collage includes three illustrations of some sort of grain. Mark Hatley (Ada/South Carolina) Sorry Spot – Monotype - Picasso meets Ren and Stimpy. Disturbing yet very pleasing. Great use of color – multicolor Ren with one big arm, one little arm, surrounded by stars. Green, blue and red predominate. Chris Corbett (OKC) In the Motionless and Timeless Center - Silver Gelatin Photo – Timeless is appropriate – classic female nude in a hollow tree/sylvan setting. Sue Clancy (OKC) Hungry for Music - Mixed Media – Classic Sue, whimsical figure, eating and drinking musical notes, hand made paper (Sue’s specialty), collage of images include Beethoven, Ears and the statement “About 1801, Beethoven began to experience deafness, but he did not allow this to interfere with his composing.” Christina Busche (OKC) Untitled - Photograph - Black and White, ghostly images (looks like New Orleans), possibly a man and woman in a hallway. Eerie yet compelling. Amanda Boehm (Lawton) 6 Visits or 21 Days Carpal #3 - Intaglio – very interesting, ropy and masculine, resembles a Japanese back tattoo. Keith Ball (OKC) Hub Cap Giclee Print, Acrylic – Partial photograph of a vintage wire hubcap, finished in graphite, paint splatters and graphics reminiscent of 80’s pop art – Duran Duran meets A-HA in automobile alley. Alyson Atchison (OKC) Girl with Grace - Serigraph – Alyson is going to be big, pick up her stuff while it is still underpriced. The print shows a figure of a girl commanding a fish from the water, stars and moon in the background. Turquoise blue, red, yellow and orange predominate. F. Bradley Jessop (Ada) Blue Yodel #2 - Monotype, Mixed Media – Industrial, 50’s/60’s (post?) modern images – female in profile, whimsical cat scratched cartoon. Neat high tech material – aluminized ink. Jacquelyn J. Knapp (Chickasha) Searching - Graphite – Very nice graphite (almost 3D) representation/ study of clouds possibly storm clouds. Betty Wood (Norman) Fantasy Landscape – Monoprint - Rolling destitute landscape, dried leaves/weeds, willow branches – lonely highway? Betty Wood (Norman) Arching Forms - Monoprint - Stark, black and white, deathly, arch shape predominates (tombstone?), winter, iris, ginkgo, willow branch. Petas (OKC) Symbols of Us, Reprise - Mixed Media- The Artist formerly known as Wendy Mahsetky-Poolaw – Cave paintings, horses, plants and flowers. Stark and compelling. Petas (OKC) Symbols of Us - Mixed Media – Very challenging piece, deceptive, images are there, you have to find them, face of a man in pain, conflict, wings. Black and whites predominate. Tim Sullivan (Norman) Apotheosis - Screen print – Kaleidoscopic vista of human form, black, blue, purple and earth tones, images intertwined in a psychedelic background, very 60’s. Michael Wilson (Norman) Precious - Monotype - Schizophrenic, beautiful, misshapen daisy with dollar bills for leaves, writing, coherent yet conflicting and contradictory. Michael Wilson (Norman) Ways In - Monotype – Child images, block numbers, windows, quote “Happiness is a warm puppy/so I got on/His name is Happy Stefan Chinov (Ada) Untitled – Etching – Black ink, white paper, rhomboid and other uneven shapes. This is a great, well juried show and is an excellent representation of what the artists in <strong>Oklahoma</strong> are currently doing. Please don’t miss it at the Leslie Powell Gallery or the IAO in July. Post Script – I promised to give a few words about Mark Hatley, who received one of the two awards of merit. Mark recently graduated from the Art Program at ECU which continues to produce very promising artists. I recently looked at Mark’s senior show that, while undisciplined, was wonderful to view. He shares the quirky dark cartoon style of many of his contemporaries and he deserved the award of merit. His “24 Works” piece nicely represents his overall portfolio. Mark has moved to South Carolina to pursue graduate work. I look forward to see his work as it matures.
Bradley Jessop Blue Yodel #2 Monotype and mixed media Ace Cuervo’s 24 Hours from Tulsa By Janice McCormick Unlike Ian and Sylvia’s song of the same name, Ace Cuervo’s 24 Hours from Tulsa (recently at Holliman Gallery, Holland Hall campus) captures not a physical distance from Tulsa, but rather a psychological distance experienced while within Tulsa’s city limits. The titles to all of Cuervo’s black and white photographs merely state the exact time they were taken. His approach to the traditional subject matter of cityscape and architectural detail has a decidedly post-modern flair with its highly self-reflexive emphasis on the nature of photographic images as images. He achieves this by deliberately misemploying photographic techniques: over exposure when taking the picture or underexposure when printing (2:20pm); jostling the camera during a very long exposure resulting in wavy lines of light (1:26am, 1:45am); and simply leaving it out of focus (2:38pm). Among these images of Tulsa’s urban environment, there are familiar architectural landmarks: the old Mayo Hotel (3:08pm), the soon-to-be-demolished Denver Grill (1: 27pm; 1:14pm), and the Admiral Twin Drivein Theater (10:22am). Even a new landmark is tossed in for good measure - the retro- Art-Deco downtown Bus Station (3:17pm). Yet, such familiarity does not bring comfort. Something is lacking. It takes a moment to realize that there are no people in this city. The very purpose for this architecture – to serve human needs – remains unfulfilled. You can almost hear the hollow footsteps of the photographer on an empty street. 2:20pm, a large 17” by 22” photograph, captures the sweep of an extended overpass as viewed from below. Its concrete arc dominates the entire image. As it hovers over and curves away from you, a palpable sense of distance separates you from the bleached-out cityscape beyond. The “T” shaped concrete supports and steel guardrail heighten this separation. Here, the image’s large blank white areas (deliberately the result of improper exposure) amplify the barrenness of the scene. 1:45am strikes the viewer as a drive-by shot of the cityscape taken at night from afar. Jiggling the camera while set on a long exposure distorts the lights of skyscrapers and lampposts into sharply delineated streaks, bars and tildes. The resulting rhythmic liveliness contrasts with the rather dark, uneventful sky and totally black foreground. Reflecting on this liveliness, you realize that it comes not from the city itself, but rather from the photographer’s actions. For all you see, this is a dead city. Furthermore, this blurred skyline of unremarkable, late modern glass-boxes (which could be any where in the world) leaves you disoriented and wondering, “Am I the only one here? And, where am I, anyway?” Several signs crop up through out the exhibit, but one in particular caught and held my attention. The lit neon sign in 9:53pm reads: “COUPLE $28 / Gateway Motor Hotel / WKLY EXTENDED STAY / RATES STARTING AT $22/ SLEEP AMERICAN.” At first, the cartoon-like Uncle Sam holding a stars and stripes suitcase brings a smile because of its folksy charm. But, when coupled with the phrase “Sleep American”, it takes on an unwelcoming and excluding tone. And, you feel a bit sheepish for having found it amusing. With only traces of human activity found (a sun-lit but empty sidewalk - 4:25pm, an unmanned bike leaning against a bar or liquor store wall - 1:52pm, and a motel sign lit up to attract sleepy passer-bys - 9:53pm), it is startling and rather surreal to find human faces. But, these faces turn out to be images in the mural on the south-facing wall of the Denver Grill (1:14pm), taken in December 2004. On a larger-than-life scale and painted in an awkward manner, the heads of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Elvis Presley peer out across a broad and empty stretch of gravel. All their color drained away by the black and white photograph portends their imminent destruction by the bulldozer. Breaking with the traditional, objective documentary approach that merely records what is present, Cuervo explores his own complex and ambivalent reactions to Tulsa by manipulating various photographic processes. And, in the process, he creates a psychic distance that allows us to look at Tulsa from a different perspective. 11
Page 1 and 2: Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition ArtF
Page 3 and 4: Explore Behind the scenes with cera
Page 5 and 6: dressing my dolls in scarves as a y
Page 7 and 8: Morgan Robinson seed pod/picked up/
Page 9: 24 Works on Paper Traveling Exhibit
Page 13 and 14: Back to Basics Photography In an ag
Page 15 and 16: Audrey Schmitz Icon Photo-assemblag
Page 17 and 18: Viewer’s Choice winner Matt Wiens
Page 19 and 20: Kirkpatrick Galleries at the Omnipl

It's Back! - Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition

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