ART 365: Grace Grothaus by Holly Wall Grace Grothaus, Tulsa, Node, Mylar, Duralar, acrylic, spray paint, 24”x36”x6”
The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s exhibition Art 365 will open at [ArtSpace] at Untitled in Oklahoma City in March 2011. Five artists each receive a $12,000 honorarium and one year of interaction with curator Shannon Fitzgerald. Visit www.Art365.org for more information.
Grace Grothaus’s work is easily recognizable to many Tulsans, not only because she’s made fans of most of us, but also because her paintings directly reflect the city in which she lives. Her backlit, large-scale paintings depict the landscape of the Midwest, namely Tulsa, by combining their industrial façade with organic materials. For a number of years, Grothaus has been photographing Tulsa’s land and cityscape and then using those photographs as a framework for her art. With her Art 365 project, Grothaus plans to expand her sphere of inspiration to the entire state, exploring the history of industry and agriculture in Oklahoma. Grothaus’s project is titled OK Landscape: from cornfields to oilfields and will culminate in March of 2011 with 10 2-foot-by-4-foot paintings, backlit with LED lights. “Beginning with westward expansionism and continuing through the oil boom to today, the landscape of Oklahoma has been redefined and sculpted by industry,” Grothaus wrote in her Art 365 proposal. Grothaus is interested in how Oklahoma’s agriculture and energy industries have shifted over time. Whereas the state used to produce an abundance of corn, it now produces mostly wheat
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