VisionMakers2022

VisionMakers is 108|Contemporary’s signature-juried biennial exhibition for contemporary fine craft-based artists in a seven-state region who bridge cutting-edge concepts and traditional skills as they approach boundaries among art, craft and design. With an internationally recognized juror and $5,000 in artist awards, VisionMakers2022 is displayed in the architecturally stunning nine year-old 108|Contemporary gallery in Oklahoma’s Tulsa Arts District. On view from December 2, 2022 through January 22, 2023, this exhibition is full of innovative craft work.

ARTIST AWARD SPONSOR Hogan Assessment Systems

Special thanks to our generous sponsors

PROGRAM PARTNER SPONSORS Peter Walter and Associates Jan Jennings GH2 Architects

VISIONMAKERS2022 SELECTED ARTISTS

Founders’ Contemporary Design Award: Grant Akiyama, Blue and White Cylinder Regional Identity Award: Jim Weaver, Redlining, Urban Renewal, Interstate Highways, a New Art Museum Were Important; Community, Housing and Children Generally Were Not. Craftsmanship Award: Ryan Kepler, Optic Bottle Pair Art + Craft Dialogue Award: Mark Lewis, An Ordinary Day Innovation Award: Anne Yoncha, Re:Peat Quit

Grant Akiyama, OK

Joseph Jenner, OK

Irene Roderick, TX

Kim Eichler-Messmer, KS

Ryan Kepler, OK

Taryn Singleton, OK

Elaine Emmons, OK

Joe Kissinger, OK

Linda Stilley, OK

Jean Ann Fausser, OK

Mark Lewis, OK

Cathryn Thomas, OK

Lillian Fitzpatrick, MO

Steve Liggett & P.S. Gordon, OK

Ruby Troup, NM

Cassidy Frye, OK

Kayla Ohlmer, OK

Yulie Urano, KS

Irmgard Geul, OK

Taylor Painter-Wolfe, OK

Jim Weaver, OK

Katherine Hair, OK

Laurel Payne, OK

Katharine Weber, OK

Janet Shipley-Hawks, OK

Kristen Pease, KS

CJ Wells, OK

Terri Higgs, OK

Cristiana Prado, OK

Chris Whittey, OK

Pamela Husky, OK

Sarah Robl, OK

Anne Yoncha, OK

“

Art has always been a reflection of contemporary culture, politics, and discourse, and the works in this exhibition are no exception.

“

DONNA DAVIES, JUROR Deputy Director, Pilchuck Glass School

It gave me immense joy to jury VisionMakers2022. I found the submitted works to be incredibly exciting, yet I was presented with the difficult role of having to select pieces from a very impressive number of submissions.

As I approached the submitted works, I applied a select criteria for each work — Were materials used in new and innovative ways? Was there a significant sense of the artist’s mark?

Was there a conceptual approach or was a narrative applied to the work?

The beauty of the applied arts is that material is always primary. The artist’s hand is always present and

there’s a strong element of history and tradition; techniques that have been passed on for hundreds of years, if not longer. That history of technique and materiality forms the foundation for VisionMakers2022, how the artists in this biennial have taken those foundations and pushed the materials, challenged concepts, or combined techniques and materials to create a new voice in contemporary craft.

Art has always been a reflection of contemporary culture, politics, and discourse, and the works in this exhibition are no exception.

Statements about the treatment — or mistreatment — of women’s bodies, political commentaries, and

sustainability were combined with the rich process of craftmaking and craftsmanship.

The works in this exhibition are not just statements about the above; they are also, quite simply, commanding works of art that should be visually explored and enjoyed for the virtuosic pieces that they are. I would like to thank 108 Contemporary for inviting me to jury VisionMakers2022, and I would also like to thank all of the artists who submitted their work. I was moved by not just the pieces but also by the level of craftsmanship in this region.

I hope all patrons of this exhibition will make some new discoveries in contemporary craft.

My current work in ceramics, Poprocks, examines the geologic origins of clay and its innate forms and surfaces. I study and implement patterns of pedestrian soils, peculiar boulders, and crystalline aberrations. I focus these raw states of earth into vessels: cups, vases, and shot glasses, among others. Through manic colors and experimental surfaces, I aim to illustrate the mercurial and varied moods found beneath our feet. Poprocks synthesizes a sense of chthonian, earthen nature through a tangible lens of imaginable utility.

Grant Akiyama, OK Blue and White Cynlinder stoneware 16”x 14”x 11” Red and Yellow Cylinder stoneware 12.5”x 10”x 10”

Kim KS TEDEichler-Messmer, ADLER, KANSAS Untitled Vessel (Concrescence), glazed Paths wood-fired stoneware, cotton, linen 30”x 17”x 17”and silk 47” x 47”

Clay My work is interesting explores to rhythm, me as structure, both and pattern in the natural and aconstructed material and world. a metaphor.

The emotional When impact of a landscape, the variability making, of weather I work patterns, to engage and the a sense condensed timeline of the earth visible in of geology made-ness and landforms through the all plasticity speak to me on a spiritual level. I am equally of inspired the material by theand biological the sensuous, and chemical systems that make up living fluid organisms volumes andofthe theplanned vessel. The human systems found in agriculture, towns rich, and cities, variedand surfaces daily routines. of wood-firing My relationship with nature plays a crucial convey role in my thestudio change practice. and fluxGardening, of the foraging, nearly daily walks, and kiln vacations environment. spent hiking Theseallow processes me the time and space to observe, reflect, tend gather, to capture steward,the and sense feel simultaneously of clay’s small and expansive. protean malleability that enhances the way quilts that the objects might be constructed primarily of natural I create and collaged textiles, interpreted materials such as aas metaphor wool, silk, forcotton, the and linen and I use dyes and fugitive pigments nature madeoffrom experience. plants and Byinsects. I grow or forage many of my using own dyes, the vessel such as as black an analogy walnuts, Osage orange, madder, marigolds, and for weld. selfhood Inherently and subjecting tactile, slow, it toand labor-intensive, quilting provides an processes opportunityoffor forming quiet reflection. and firing Fabric is both soft and strong. Piecing, that the act lendofthemselves sewing twotopieces a sense of fabric together, can be precise or of improvisational. transformationA(which stitched is both line can be straight or wiggly. I take advantage actual of these and characteristics figural), I hopetotocreate elicit work that at times feels serious and at aother sense times thatwhimsical. our relationship to ourselves and the world around us is Like more quilting, slippery thethan process we ordinarily of dyeing fabric using natural dyes is slow and like methodical. to admit.From growing, harvesting, and preserving the plant materials, to creating the dye baths and carefully dyeing the fiber, each step creates tedadlerceramics.com an opportunity for reflection and gratitude. Though I strive for a level of control in the process, nature is fundamentally uncontrollable, and I enjoy the variation and surprise that comes through in the work. These variations can feel magical and I often allow them to guide my work.

It can feel frivolous and impractical to use such time-consuming and anachronistic practices, but I am more and more aware of the importance of slowing down, using our hands, and reconnecting with the past as a way to honestly and authentically create a future.

Textiles, and fiber, as a medium have long provided me with means of sculptural expression and experimentation. Only recently has my voice become a real part of my artistic practice.

In times of loud, disparate worlds of thought, I find great peace in working with my hands, to convey my opinions through a combination of soft & clear materials.

Elaine Emmons, OK Hands Off vinyl and mixed media 9” x 9” x 10”

In Hands Off: clear vinyl & acrylic provided a means of communicating my exasperation with the loss of women’s rights. The hand inside the sewn globe is inscribed via image transfer: the June 24th, 2022 Dobbs decision text, overturning Roe v. Wade.

Laser cut acrylic tears and hands, along with hand embroidered references to 1973 float on and inside the globe. The fire in the palm is the fight.

Jean Ann Fausser, OK Inner Beauty handmade paper with encaustic, waxed linen threads, knitted wire 20” x 21”

The main processes employed in my works are felting, knotting, coiling and bead weaving. I have recently added hand paper making and encaustic to the mediums. This work reflects my concerns for women’s rights. The right of women to govern what happens to their bodies is of particular concern. I focus on creating art that draws the viewer into a relationship with the underlying concept. The elemental layer in this work is created with handmade papers. They are strong but delicate which is a fitting material to represent the female form. It reflects the inner person and the wire bodice is lifting off and away as hope in this work.

This body of work explores ways in which we touch—physical interaction with objects and other humans, empathy, tangible and intangible connection. A possible effect of having been educated as a jeweler, my work often invites people to engage with it in some way apart from passive viewing. It needs to be touched, heard, and/or worn to allow for a complete conveyance of sensory information.

Lillian Fitzpatrick, MO Porcelain Touchscape: Forest Floor porcelain, acacia wood, steel wire 13” x 13” x 8”

Vision Experiment is a collection of small viewing frames. Each ceramic frame contains a mixed media piece utilizing photos, plastic, handmade paper, ink drawings, peridot stones, rawhide, etc., and arranged on a light box for viewing stereoscopically. The frames are placed in pairs combining dissimilar images. Stereoscopic glasses are used to look closely into each pair. A viewer should adjust the distance between their face and the glasses until the images within the pair of separate frames appear to overlap as one. This creates the perception of a collage.

Because the images are dissimilar, and one eye is dominant, each image will flash in and out of focus as the eyes try to combine what each is seeing into one unified image. Through this project, we aim to convey the sense of incongruity that comes with being in a place but feeling out of place. Vision Experiment was created during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic—collaborating on this work was challenging, to say the least.

The pandemic and the necessity for physical distance from others put a strain on relationships that were fed by person-to-person interaction, but the new and gaping emptiness of portions of our lives left open space in which other bonds could form. New ways of working, new ways of learning, new ways of sharing emotions like grief and love—all were explored.

Cassidy Frye, OK Crown cast iron, wood 96” x 14” x 12”

I am an interdisciplinary artist who works between the actual and the fictional. Taking concepts of home and interrupting them as altered mundane objects created out of unexpected materials and placing them in the world with unfamiliar elements. I try to emphasize the overlooked by bringing them to eye level, often bridging between sculpture and architecture. I find a way to take objects that hold a class status and are made for an eye-catching presentation and transform them into something else with time. I create branches between the history of the material, subject matter and finish. Growing up in a military family I was raised around uniforms and had multiple moves, without a sense of permanence. This continues to shape my work. By expressing the feeling of impermanence, home is not a permanent place that can be returned to, it is a place that follows and travels. Home cannot fit into boxes or suitcases. It becomes part of your identity; you become the place you are in and embrace the connections you make with people you meet along the way. We become defined by the places where we have lived. When you first meet someone, a common question that is asked is “Where are you from?” The answer begins to shape their image of you. A location that can be temporary and easily changed becomes who you are. Finding home is really about searching and discovering something comfortable.

That comfort comes from the people we have met, the memories that were made, and the places where we have stayed on our journeys.

Flowers make me smile, sing and dance, they represent for me one of the most beautiful creatures of nature. In my artwork I celebrate flowers by rendering them into single objects of extraordinary beauty.

The Iris is a spiritually symbolic flower. The Goddess Iris, the flower Iris, and the colors of the flower itself combine to form the perfect symbolism for a universal and sacred connection to Spirit.

Irmgard Geul, OK Iris II poster board, acrylic paint, embroidery thread 8” x 10”

Each piece is composed of a gestural acrylic under-painting on heavy colored poster board, paired with the craft of embroidery. By perforating the paper with my needle I am not only bleeding the color of the paper into the embroidery but also create an extra dimension to the subject.

The mix of these two materials speaks of contradictions, simplicity and complexity. In the finished work, multiple tensions arise between the spontaneous and the intentional, the gestural and the static, the flat and dimensional, the linear embroidery and the soft perforated lines of the flower.

Katherine Hair, OK Turtle Derby: You Can’t Go Home Again wax, site specific soil, chalk variable size

We live in a time of rapidly degrading environmental change. In my creative research and practice, I am exploring how humans exist with extinction and grief as we manage our own survival and look for solutions, and I am interested in the ways that visual arts can open up these kinds of conversations. How can looking at non-humans be a vehicle for empathy? Can the human tendency to treat non-human persons with a narrow-minded anthropomorphism be reconfigured?

What are the alternatives to this unsustainable reality? My work involves the creation of visual fables using interdisciplinary strategies to identify, forge and strengthen connections between human and non-human persons as an appeal to empathy and action during this time of climate emergency. I use humor, irony and wonder as tools to approach the unspeakable truths about our present and future, and continue to explore effective strategies for sparking conversations about the complexities of our necessary entanglements with the non human world.

The arc of my creative work comes out of personal tragedy, as well as a strong awareness of and connection to the natural world as a foundation to address a wider scope of loss and grief as we hurtle ourselves forward in this present state of emergency.

A recent work, It Comes In Waves, is an amorphous installation of a number of windsocks that explores the phenomena of wind and the subject of grief. Constructed with fabric and dyed with carefully foraged plants, which are native to the areas where windsocks are placed, the windsocks activate each site they inhabit. Swiveling to follow the wind, and elongating or collapsing with it, the windsocks tell stories of the day. The site-reactive nature of this work is something I continue to explore as a way to access the viewer’s time and consideration. As humanity lives through one of the most incredible extinction events, it is becoming increasingly difficult to think through and feel the reality of what is happening. In It Comes In Waves, the interactions between the windsocks and non-humans in the area have sparked intense moments of reflection and wonder with human observers, and I think that type of experience is integral to initiating important human/non-human relations.

Janet Shipley-Hawks, OK Key West Sunrise machine embroidery thread 17” x 15”

I am a long time fiber artist who started at age 6 when I learned to knit and continued to explore all types of techniques with fiber including sewing, crochet, macrame and weaving. As my confidence grew so did my “what ifs?” and I started to use fiber in unconventional ways to create three-dimensional forms. This led to 2007 when I wrote a book, “Sculpted Threads” which explained in detail how to use machine embroidery thread on water soluble stabilizer and free-motion machine stitching to create jewelry and decorative forms. I have continued this technique and most recently began to develop a way of using this stitching to create “thread flowers and foliage” to fill “vases” also made of thread using the same technique, I frequently add hand beading to enhance the pieces.

I am a fiber artist living and working in Tulsa. My main focus for many years has been painting on silk. In 2020 I began learning to make paper. In my recent work I am combining the paper making with scraps from my silk painting and hand stitching to create bowls. The shapes, designs, and often titles of my pieces are influenced by nature and my meditation practice.

Terri Higgs, OK Inner Work hand-made Kozo paper, painted silk, silk roving 5” x 12”

Pamela Husky, OK Rio de Pueblo Taos (River of the Village) hand dyed, spun, and felted wool silk 55” x 42”

My five decades of work in fiber art as a tapestry weaver and feltmaker has focused on landscape as a subject. As a volunteer, I’ve worked in environmental cleanups, park and lake restoration, and as an election poll officer. But my artwork is not a climate or political statement. I work to convey the impression of a place where I’ve lived or traveled, the beauty of the sky, waters, grasses, trees, rock formations, and mountains. It is the challenge of “painting” with wool and silk, of dyeing, spinning and blending these materials, and sharing a sense of place and time that compels the work.

In my current work, I am exploring the body as a design element while drawing inspiration from historical talismans and European mourning jewelry. Traditional mourning jewelry often contained a piece of a loved one’s hair, or a hand painted representation of their eye. Utilizing 3D scanning techniques, I am able to generate accurate models from life that are scaled down and cast into silver. These pieces serve as a physical representation of a person being with you, regardless of their proximity.

Joseph Jenner, OK Eye Talisman sterling silver, 24k gold, black spinel, rubber 1.5” x 1.5”

Ryan Kepler, OK Optic Bottle Pair solid sculpted glass 21.5” x 13” x 13”

VISIONARY

AWARD Craftmanship $1000

My work is a reflection of my constant exploration of the inherent properties of glass as a material. I’m interested in the similarities that glass has with natural materials in that it invokes my curiosity and drives me to explore further. I often highlight the use of optics, complex pattern, color, and the relationship of light and space between the object and the viewer. Using innate material characteristics, I am interested in creating experiences that instill a sense of curiousness and wonder. I often reference nature and natural materials to inform my work. Curiosity in the world around us is something that makes us human. We have always been driven to discover, alter, and refine everything around us in an attempt to understand, and for me, it’s the reason I create.

I’ve been a visual artist for most of my life, working in many disciplines along the way. I bring elements from painting, sculpture, jewelry and ceramics to the wood art I create. The skills learned from those disciplines, combined with inventing new techniques and processes, lets me explore new possibilities in my assembled and turned wood creations.

I always strive to produce new and unexpected results in all my objects, hoping to surprise and amaze the viewers.

Joe Kissinger, OK One Into the Other oak burl, bent red elm, lacquer 9” x 9” x 6.5”

I paint, draw, and collage street scenes. Some are made directly from life (perceptually), and some are invented in the studio. “An Ordinary Day” is a fictional piece dealing with the ordinary and extraordinary experiences from daily life. I construct my work using traditional and nontraditional materials. I love to use found and collected objects and all the implications that the found materials can provide. I love the democratic spaces we live in and I enjoy exploring the human condition through these street scenes.

Mark Lewis, OK An Ordinary Day fabric, yarn, canvas, clothing, quilts, and acrylic paint 108” x 148”

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Steve Liggett, OK Patrick S. Gordon, OK January 6: A Butter Dish ceramic with Kintsugi and Toy Soldiers 23” x 15” x 9.5”

I have chosen 3 painters to collaborate with over the last 3 years: Patrick Gordon, Cynthia Brown and Marjorie Atwood. Each artist/painter was chosen initially due to their amazing abilities to express themselves through their chosen media: paint. We started out with myself throwing and altering the ceramic forms and they took my forms and created surfaces in underglaze painting much in the same way that the art potters did in the late 1800s, only with a twist of the contemporary mind. Over the year that we worked together this changed and sometimes they wished to work a little with the clay and I was invited to paint on the forms. There is not a clean line between my hand and theirs in the final work (or their hand). Each work is a true collaboration of the form and surface verkers and that is what we were after- a blending of the two minds.

Kayla Ohlmer, OK Saint Panthera Tigris cast glass and gilded mirror, 16” x 16” x 6” Saint Pongo cast glass and gilded mirror 16” x 16” Saint Ursus Maritimus cast glass and gilded mirror 16” x 16” x6”

As an artist, I examine the coexistence of the physical reality and the perceived one. The human tendency to experience the world how they want to rather than the way it is, creates an intangible state of being that I investigate in my practice. I use glass because its material properties encapsulate the very notion of duality. It is liquid and solid, fragile and strong, ephemeral and eternal. In this work, I use historic reference and traditional glass making methods to depict endangered species that have been transformed into saints because of their suffering and are simultaneously forgotten by the fickle way that people experience the world.

In these sculptures, I focus on the duality of absence and presence within familiar images of endangered species. Like saints, they have been turned into icons that represent the endangerment of certain species because of things like habitat loss, poaching, and climate change. In some ways, these animals have become patron saints of these issues, but at the same time imagery of their death has become so normalized that they become nothing more than a fleeting thought.

These animals are immortalized while dying, iconified while forgotten, made saints before they are gone.

My work is made entirely of felted wool that I make and dye by hand.

Making my own materials is an important part of my artistic process because it allows me to have a hand in every aspect of creating my art from start to finish. I use the material and its imperfections to inspire me and guide my decision-making process about the art I create with it.

Using traditional fiber art techniques such as felting, dyeing, stitching, and applique, I turn what was once just plain white wool into colorful and dynamic abstract landscapes.

Taylor Painter-Wolfe, OK Upland handmade, hand-dyed felted wool and cotton thread 38” x 32”

My inspiration comes from aerial photography, satellite images, and textures and shapes found in natural environments. From high above, the details of a place are stripped away leaving only an elegant design of intersecting, shapes, colors, and lines. I am particularly interested in representing landscapes where natural and man-made environments intersect and have a compelling influence on each other. My intent is to create a simplified and thought-provoking way to view land, our impact on it, and relationship to it while leaving the work open to interpretation, putting no demands on the viewer to see one particular type of landscape over another.

Laurel Payne, OK Just Breath pen and ink, watercolor 18” x 24”

Being creative makes me happy. Beauty comes from many facets and inspiration is everywhere. I love working from life, whether a landscape, a nude figure, or simply a beautiful flower. I do not endeavor for exact replicas, rather an interpretation or release of my emotions towards a particular scene or object. I focus on elements of color, line, shape and value striving to work by emotion instead of analysis. This process conveys my feelings about the subject, molding a visual impression instead of a mirror reproduction. I primarily use watercolor and ink. I love watercolor for its unpredictability, portability, the flexibility of building layers and ink for its precision and saturation.

When it comes to creating art, my philosophy is that beauty and inspiration can be found in our everyday surroundings.

Kristen Pease, KS Groovy oil on canvas 24” x 24”

A subject I enjoy is people of all walks of life, even of past decades.

There’s something charming about the uniqueness and individuality of their faces. So much can be going on in their lives and yet you only have an instant with them, they are in fact just a stranger you pass by.

Oil paints on canvas is my choice of medium for the flexibility and depth of color. I use bright colors to capture emotion, and texture to create movement.

I was born in the city of Salvador, Brazil, in a historic region of mysticism and diversity. The merging of cultures and religions from European, African, and indigenous peoples have shaped my artistic perspectives. My artwork evolves from my fascination with AfroBrazilian art and the influences of growing up in a sixteenth century port city. Being away from home for many years has flamed my desire to create an artistic archive reflecting my cultural heritage for others to experience.

Cristiana Prado, OK Cyclic Healing stoneware and glaze on wood 12” diameter

My ceramic pieces are mostly symbolic objects in various scales and diverse colors. I create vessels, totems, tiles, artifacts, and sculptures.

While creating, I look for aesthetic relationships within my sources of inspiration. Clay has been the best medium for me to express this dynamic union. I employ labor-intensive surface treatments by using textures, organic shapes, distorted masses, and blended colors. I am constantly experimenting with layers of glazes fired many times to create a unique palette.

Recently, I am more closely observing nature and feeling an intimate connection with flowers, leaves and other natural elements. My interpretations of the natural elements are shaped and glazed to symbolically fuse inspirations from the garden, the ocean, and my heritage.

Sarah Robl, OK Moving Forward with Optimism thread, foam board, watercolor paper 11” x 15”

As a child, I watched my mother toil away at her sewing machine for hours. It seemed obvious that sewing was a chore, just another thing she had to get done. As I grew up, I witnessed a fascinating transformation in my mother: she began sewing for the act of creating. Sewing offered her an escape from illness. Sewing brought comfort and relaxation, not duty and obligation. This inspired me to experiment with thread and needle in my work. I fell in love with the soothing, repetitive act of stitching. I feel a connection to the artisans who have fought to bring textile art into the world of fine art. Crafting these hand-stitched works provides endless opportunities to explore the possibilities within needlework.

I combine color, geometric shapes, and symmetry to create compositions that feel harmonious and invite the viewer to take a closer look. Papers are cut and layered, creating windows of depth within the work. Creating artwork that explores themes of everyday thoughts, feelings, and experiences is my passion. It is through these works on commonality that I hope to achieve a sense of personal connection that is comforting, empathetic, and familiar to those who view it.

Irene Roderick, TX Mark Makers Linked cotton fabric (hand-dyed; commercial), cotton-wool batting, polyester thread 74” x 56”

My quilting activities are a mixture of discovery and elation. I have been an artist for most of my life as my parents gave me a set of oil paints in 3rd grade. I have painted and crafted for over 50 years, mostly in my home while raising four sons and working in retail and administration. I returned to school at the age of 46, earning a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin and a Masters of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 2001. I began quilting in 2016 when I retired from my Administrative position at the University of Texas at Austin. I was searching for a new creative endeavor and happened on “modern” quilts when I was googling for a new bedcovering. The works of Nancy Crow and Gwen Marsden caught my attention and I wanted to make like they were making. No one in my family quilted or did any kind of handwork so quilting was not something I was familiar with. I took a beginning piecework class at a local quilt store and was hooked. I love making “functional” art. I consider my quilts paintings using fabric as my medium. Currently I am working in my studio 12 hours per day, 7 days a week, teaching Zoom workshops and presenting Zoom lectures and trunk shows. There’s even a book on my signature style of improvisational quilting, Dancing With The Wall.

Taryn Singleton is an artist, designer, and educator. She lives in North Eastern Oklahoma, exhibits regionally, and is the creative behind Artist Made Patterns. She works in a variety of mediums to make fine art and functional art objects.

Taryn Singleton, OK A Veil of Silence embroidery and fabric paint on a digitally drawn and painted background 10” diameter

She is interested in the persistence of power dynamics / imbalances and systemic inequality. She explores these concepts through the use of formal elements and implied narrative by creating invented landscape spaces in print, paint, and fiber. She then navigates through the spaces using observation, abstraction, line, shape, pattern, color and the cultivation of accidents. Working non-objectively, one decision informs another and the sum of her choices slowly warps the whole as characters move in and out from their surroundings and one another. In this way the world outside herself slowly merges with the world within and she seeks to understand it all through the process of making.

My usual response regarding the meaning of my work is awkward silence.

I’ve never been able to explain or find the precise words for things I’ve been incubating for years. The “theme” of my work can reside solely in the mind of the viewer. I maintain that the most important meanings are left unsaid, and if said, narrow the interpretation and weaken the intention. Antoni Tàpies said it most eloquently: “The truth we seek will never appear in a painting but will only appear behind the last door that the observer learns to open with his own strength.”

Linda Stilley, OK Untitled #1 raku and gold leaf 12 x 6 x 5”

This new work is my return to clay. I worked in clay for 25 years before starting to paint and now it seems I have come full circle. I haven’t given up painting but have been distracted by the love of clay and threedimensional work.

Reuniting with Sarah Bliss has given me a rare and intriguing retreat into the familiar and very unfamiliar after so many years. Revisiting a former media can sometimes be challenging. But Sarah and I had a yearning for this reunion at every level, and that yearning made the challenges welcome.

Art, like life, is a journey and many of my paths are worth repeating.

My work is an everyday kind of exploration of what matters most to me: my children and friends, my family, my home, and my concerns about connections in my community and world.

Sculpting a narrative figure is where I find my greatest excitement and the most expressive possibilities. I handbuild in terracotta clay and use multiple layerings of drawing, incising, coloring, staining, and additional elements such as birds, nests, insects, trees, and flowers.

Cathryn Thomas, OK Constrained red sculpture clay, white underglaze, stain, wire 17.25” x 10” x 6”

I want to communicate, especially with other women, about the emotions we share of regarding our homes, our bodies, our relationships, and with the natural world.

In Constrained, I turned to clay to express my anger and dismay at the deteriorating status of women in our country, feeling bound and limited in choices and actions.

Serving as both map and legend, my work is a record of my lived experience. With surfaces layered with mark-making, relief, overlay, and color, each of my objects is densely packed with the allegories and symbols that spell out my stories. My hope is that people can see themselves in some of the work, and relate to the imagery that is mine.

This work serves as an archive of lives I have lived and the worlds I have created.

Ruby Troup, NM Every 36 Seconds wood, laser cut acrylic, mixed media 9” x 18” x 9”

As a first generation Japanese American, I attempt to realize how these qualities affect my art and identity. I use my hair in conjunction with the paper structure to tell my story about where, what and who home is to me. The graphic nature of the hair and thread help create a tie between the personal and abstract qualities of the bloodlines and storylines of my family through a byproduct of our body’s long black hair. By intertwining this intimate material with these visceral processes, I work to reflect and enhance my concepts related to lineage, heritage, and familial affection.

Yulie Urano, KS Star Quilt paper, hair, sashiko thread 16” x 16”

My primary medium is tooled leather. Physically, the tooling creates a textured painting surface whose variation influences the flow of paint.

Metaphorically, the tooling imparts indelible marks on the surface much like humans indelibly mark the natural and social landscape.

Jim Weaver, OK Redlining, Urban Renewal, Interstate Highways, a New Art Museum Were Important; Community, Housing and Children Generally Were Not. acrylic on four layer tooled leather; 1967 class photo 21” x 17” A Conversation with Tradition acrylic on tooled leather 18” x 7” x 1” and 18” x 10” x1”

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I grew up in one of the rust belt cities and what was done there from the 1930s on is reflected in Redlining, Urban Renewal, Interstate Highways, and a New Art Museum Were Important; Community, Housing and Children Generally Were Not. Only this year, after much research, did I understand what happened in my community. Redlining created declining neighborhoods; urban renewal and interstate highway construction destroyed housing in the city center. Then part of the freed-up land was used to build a new art museum. As in many places in the U.S., the city and its people suffered and still suffer today because of the decisions made in those days.

Transgressed Boundaries reflects the almost continuous 21st century shattering of norms and physical boundaries, be it Ukraine, gerrymandering, fake election claims, January 6th, racist policing, or rulings from a political Supreme Court.

My work consists of landscape paintings that are covered with a pieced fabric overlay, to represent the cloth that covers us and filters much of our interaction with the world. The cloth between us and the world protects, obscures, conceals, and reveals our experiences. These artworks explore that barrier.

Katharine Weber, MO Cobalt Fog mixed media 42” x 42”

I have been working with clay since 1979. I consider myself more of a craftsman than an artist. My work is focused on form and color. I mix many of my own glazes and use very little decoration; I want the form and the color to speak for themselves, hopefully in an eloquent manner.

CJ Wells, OK Tea(dust) stoneware, teadust glaze 7” x 6” 8”

This work includes an anthropomorphic-scale model of Duchamp’s bottle rack (Hedgehog, 1914), cast with handmade molds from shredded U.S. currency, and a framed page from an illustrated text on animal anatomy that was published around the same time (1917). The Hedgehog, The Horse is a manifestation of my interest in the breakdown of communication.

Chris Whittey, OK The Hedgehog/The Horse cast US currency, print variable size

The horse: The then-current understanding of the evolution of the horse, as indicated in the illustration, proceeds logically and sequentially - from the smallest, to a more robust version of the animal, until it assumes the size it is today: a direct and logical line of communication from the original, to later generations. We now know that this evolution, (which, in the diagram, affords a near-perfect formal inversion of the Hedgehog), was much more scattered, contingent, and rhizomatic; the evolution did not proceed in a simple way from point A to point B. The theory, as represented in the book, while reasonable and predictable, fails to communicate today due to its lack of credibility.

The Hedgehog: After a significant amount of red tape, I was granted permission to acquire shredded U.S. currency in bulk by the Department of Treasury. At that time, (and perhaps still) the government referred to this material as “residue”. The hedgehog component in The Hedgehog, The Horse references the residue of the original avant-garde: another failure to sustain communication. While the avant-garde aimed to eradicate the distinction between art and life by bringing experimental art into the cabarets and streets, it also desired, as evinced through the deskilled and domestic references provided by Duchamp, to bring life into art. This agenda inevitably fails since the avant-garde knew a great deal about art, but perhaps too little about life, and they could not then know that every attempt at aesthetic disruption would be seamlessly co-opted by the institutionality of art.

The primary function of money, as Marx taught, is to communicate between subjects, subjects in a state of profound alienation. Thus, when money is shredded and becomes residue, it becomes mute, its role invalidated. In The Hedgehog, The Horse, currency/residue is reincorporated as disrupted communication, reanimated as art, and I used it to communicate the impossibility of sustained communication.

Anne Yoncha, OK Re:Peat Quilt handmade paper from post-extraction site plants; hand-embroidered with locally-dyed floss with imagery from an aerial map of extracted tracts of land; stereo sound based on hyperspectral camera data comparing restored (right) and unrestored (left) soil samples from site; red marker, guitar tremolo springs, wire, speakers, transducers, pedalactivated sound system 8’ x 6’

VISIONARY

AWARD Innovation $1000

Visual artists can make work which illuminate complex and often hidden ecological relationships. My art-science work explores the mechanics of plant physiology, such as the tension that brings water up a Ponderosa pine against the force of gravity, or the artificial water table manufactured by peatland mosses. I use painting, installation, sculpture, video, and sound to explore questions about how we as humans should understand and intervene in landscapes we have altered through extraction industries. My work combines digital sensing technology, such as biodata sonification, and analog processes including painting with ink I make from locally-sourced plant matter – so the materials used in each piece vary, and connect to place. Engaging with artistic interpretations of plants as entities in dynamic relationships with their surroundings can contribute to our ability to think more critically about our capacity to both fit within and radically change our ecosystems.

Re:Peat is based on an art-science collaboration that began as a Fulbright fellowship. I collaborated with ecologists at the Natural Resources Institute Finland to explore peatland – a rare type of ecosystem where Sphagnum moss slowly decomposes and creates an anaerobic, waterlogged desert where only it can survive and thrive. I explore the physiology of Sphagnum – how cells can expand to hold 20 times their weight in water, how the plants weave together to form a mat, and sometimes create an artificial water table. I combine hand-made paper from plants at our study site, digitally altered photos of the site, laser cuts from microscope images of Sphagnum, to create not-quite-flat works I call “peat quilts”. I also use soil data translated into sound to allow us to hear parts of the ecosystem we can’t see.

PATRONS

Special thanks to the generous patrons of 108|Contemporary

Myra Block Kaiser George Kaiser Family Foundation The Anne and Henry Zarrow Family Foundation Arts Alliance Tulsa The Hardesty Family Foundation The Maxine & Jack Zarrow Family Foundation Oklahoma Arts Council The Mervin Bovaird Foundation Robin Ballenger Corey Block Cecil & Virgie Burton Foundation Jean Ann Fausser James Howard & Kathleen Gerety Hogan Assessment Systems Mary Lee Townsend & Burt Holmes Mary Huckabee The Judith and Jean Pape Adams Charitable Foundation

Knit Stars The McGill Foundation Mid-America Arts Alliance Oklahoma Department of Libraries Bank of Oklahoma Kathie & John Coyle Samantha Weyrauch Davis Penni Gage GH2 Architects Jan Jennings Kathleen Patton Westby Foundation The Kirkpatrick Family Fund Marilyn & Larry Lee Marcia MacLeod Kalpana Misra Ruth K. Nelson Martin Newman Janet Shipley Hawks William F. and Susan W. Thomas Charitable Foundation Whit Todd Tulsa Artist Fellowship

Tulsa Community College Peggy Upham Peter Walter Walter & Associates, Inc. Martin Wing Capital Advisors Nancy Boughey Fiber Artists of Oklahoma Janet & Ken Levit Susan Mase Cristina Umezawa Jeff & Annie Van Hanken Janis Updike Walker Williams Companies Catherine Young Scott & Laura Andrews Kathleen Baab Dan Burnstein Sarah Gilpin Kenneth Lawrence Leigh Ann Moss Kirsten Olds Andrew Webb

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

STAFF

Myra Block Kaiser, Chair Jean Ann Fausser, President Andrew Webb, Treasurer Penni Gage, Secretary Sarah Gilpin Mary Huckabee Amber Litwack Kathy McRuiz Kalpana Misra Leigh Ann Moss Kirsten Olds Shannon Richards Diane Shen Jenny Thai Whit Todd Martin Wing Catherine Young Nic Annette Miller, Intern

Jen Boyd Martin Executive Director Laurel Ryan Programs Director Jolie Hossack Communication Manager Han Dinh Gallery Coordinator Sophie Spoo Gallery Assistant

VM22 COMMITTEE Whit Todd, Co-Chair Jean Ann Fausser, Co-Chair Myra Block Kaiser Kirsten Olds Jenny Thai Teresa Valero

108|Contemporary is a nonprofit community arts organization dedicated to exhibiting the finest in contemporary craft and supporting the artists who create it. Our vision is a community where world class craft and design inspire and educate audiences of all ages, where diverse cultural traditions flourish, and local artists thrive. Our organization was founded in 2011 and we moved into our physical location in 2013. We are celebrating nine years at our beautiful gallery located in the heart of the burgeoning Tulsa Arts District.

The gallery is 3,000 sq. ft. of wide-open space with minimal features designed to accentuate the art and invite cutting-edge installations.

We are dedicated to providing exhibition space for the highest level of innovative contemporary craft from Oklahoma and around the world. Exhibitions feature contemporary ceramics, glass, fiber, jewelry and metals, furniture and wood, and more. Six exhibitions each year drive programs and partnerships based on content, materials, artists and styles.

Bottom left: Object Re:Imagination, John Chang Right: Beauty Shop Aria (for Mabel Little), Skip Hill

Brady Craft, Inc., dba 108|Contemporary, is a charitable organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

VisionMakers2022 Graphics

by Cristina Umezawa © 2022 All Rights Reserved.

Updated by Jolie Hossack, Han Dinh, and Sophie Spoo

12.02.22 - 01.22.23 108|Contemporary 108 East Reconciliation Way Tulsa, Oklahoma 74103 www.108contemporary.org