ON THE COVER // Jaden Pebeahsy, Indian Fair Parade (detail), 2024, oil on canvas, 48” x 36”, page 6. MIDDLE // Detail of samurai armor on display at the Philbrook’s Samurai: Armor from the Collection of Ann & Gabriel Barbier-Mueller, page 10. BOTTOM // Nichole Montgomery, Simon Magus, 2025, mixed media, 20” x 20”, page 22.
Support from:
CONTENTS // Volume 40 No. 3 // SUMMER 2025 4
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
JOHN SELVIDGE
6
18 10 14
SOUTHWESTERN VALUES // In the Studio with Jaden Pebeahsy KAREN PAUL
REVIEW OF ART, WAR, AND JAPAN // Exploring Samurai and Japonisme at the Philbrook ARIANA JAKUB BRANDES
FEATURE FIESTA CENTRAL // Captiol Hill’s Plaza Calle Dos Cinco
OLIVIA DAILEY
PREVIEW MAKING THE CUT // DNA Galleries’ July Group Show PEYTON DECKER
22
26
PREVIEW THE NEUROGRAPHIC FOREST // Nichole Montgomery’s LORE at Liggett Studios
SALLIE CARY GARDNER
INTERMEDIA AN ANIMATOR’S PLAYGROUND // Frame By Frame with Joe Cappa
OKLAHOMA VISUAL ARTS COALITION // PHONE: 405.879.2400
1720 N Shartel Ave, Ste B, Oklahoma City, OK 73103
Web // ovac-ok.org
Executive Director // Rebecca Kinslow, rebecca@ovac-ok.org
Editor // John Selvidge, johnmselvidge@outlook.com
Art Director // Anne Richardson, speccreative@gmail.com
Art Focus is a quarterly publication of the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition dedicated to stimulating insight into and providing current information about the visual arts in Oklahoma. Mission: Growing and developing Oklahoma’s visual arts through education, promotion, connection, and funding. OVAC welcomes article submissions related to artists and art in Oklahoma. Call or email the editor for guidelines. OVAC welcomes comments. Letters addressed to Art Focus are considered for publication unless otherwise specified. Mail or email comments to the editor at the address above. Letters may be edited for clarity or space reasons. Anonymous letters won’t be published. Please include a phone number.
2024-2025 BOARD OF DIRECTORS // Douglas Sorocco, President, OKC; Jon Fisher, Vice President OKC; Matthew Anderson, Secretary, Tahlequah; Jacquelyn Knapp, Parliamentarian, Chickasha; Marjorie Atwood, Tulsa; Barbara Gabel, OKC; Farooq Karim, OKC; Kathryn Kenney, Tulsa; John Marshall, OKC; Kirsten Olds, Tulsa; Chris Winland, OKC
I’ll come right out and say it: editing Art Focus has been amazing. For these past few years, mediating OVAC’s special space to champion Oklahoma artists of all kinds has been deeply enriching, and I’m grateful indeed to have collaborated with such a panoply of talented and insightful writers to open up so many avenues of discovery. We’ve woven a rich tapestry of aesthetic visions and voices together, and I hope my short time at this magazine—whose decades-long legacy has always meant a lot to me—has helped put a little wind in the sails of deserving artists while building some community along the way.
After a tough start to this year, I’ve realized I have to step aside from my editing duties here and maintain a better work/life balance while giving my own artistic pursuits their due. Though this moment is bittersweet, I’m excited about those new horizons. I’m also pleased, with my last editor’s letter, to hint at some exciting new developments ahead for Art Focus, including a new editor for this year’s Fall edition. Stay tuned.
For this issue, however, exploring new frontiers is a pertinent theme. Even with one foot out the door, I’m struck by the projects represented here that open up new spaces, whether in the literal sense of the Plaza Calle Dos Cinco and the vibrancy it will bring the Capitol Hill District (p. 14), especially at a time when Latino culture in the U.S. needs to be visibly celebrated—or else art-historically with the Philbrook’s complementary exhibitions that survey Japan’s past and trace how the country’s aesthetic traditions inspired Western artists (p. 10). DNA Galleries offers diverse takes on the practice of linocut printing through the works of four very different printmakers (p. 18), while Jaden Pebeahsy activates a fertile zone of family memory through her vibrant color-tone storytelling (p. 6), and Nichole Montgomery takes what began as art therapy to new heights through her transcendent mappings of archetypal inner space (p. 22).
All in all, there’s much to celebrate—past, present, and future. Thanks for the memories, friends. I’ll look forward to collaborating on projects yet to come.
—John Selvidge
JOHN SELVIDGE is an award-winning screenwriter who works for a humanitarian nonprofit organization in Oklahoma City while maintaining freelance and creative projects on the side. He was selected for OVAC’s Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship in 2018.
ROBIN CHASE
SOUTHWESTERN VALUES // IN THE STUDIO WITH JADEN PEBEAHSY
by Karen Paul
For Comanche artist Jaden Pebeahsy, colors, patterns, and shapes are gateways to memories. Born and raised in Meers, Pebeahsy finds inspiration in the countryside, sunsets, and the storms of the Southwestern Oklahoma landscape in which she grew up, a place where colors shift seamlessly from one to another and blend into ephemeral tones.
“I originally started out as a biology major, but I took a class in the design department and loved it,” Pebeahsy said. The next semester, she changed her major and moved into oil painting and portraiture, a move that completely changed her artistic trajectory.
Her work, which follows the Expressionist tradition and is inspired by Native American Ledger Art and imagery, incorporates portraiture with simple lines, emotive reflections, and a complex use of color and patterns to weave stories associated with specific moments in time.
“I grew up with a lot of Native American art in my house. It surrounded me as a young kid, and I drew inspiration from it,” Pebeahsy said.
Through her large oil paintings, she has developed a creative process based on images selected from photographs she has taken or collected from her family. These images, most showing the daily activities of life, represent specific emotional moments she wants to preserve.
“I love my siblings so much. I’m almost always taking photos of them and my family because I want to capture those moments,” Pebeahsy said. By incorporating these activities and events into her work, she reflects on their larger meaning by using complex colors and patterns.
Pebeahsy’s paintings are highly process-driven—utilizing a unique set of steps she has designed to facilitate a creative state of flow and the final stages of mixing and applying paint. These paint stages are even more important to her
personally than the final painting because that’s when she feels most connected to her work.
To start her creative process, Pebeahsy takes her selected photo into Procreate, a graphic design app, which lets her remove the original color values, leaving the image in only black and white. It’s a step that initially seems contradictory to the colorful and complex paintings she creates, but it’s a critical step that lays the groundwork for her creativity to follow.
“I often find myself overwhelmed by all the choices I could make, so I limit my palette and options,” Pebeahsy said. With the help of the Procreate platform, she maps out a base color, along with a corresponding value system that aligns with the memory or emotion she wants to capture, giving her a basic template for color creation.
Pebeahsy invests a tremendous amount of time and thought into her initial planning and selection choices because it allows her to paint uninterrupted. Once she determines her basic color scheme, her favorite parts of the creative process—painting and color building—begin. Her desired base-color palette is limited to just two colors and white, which serves as a creative frame for how her painting is composed. With just these two colors and white, Pebeahsy develops two complementary, yet complex, color sets—the only color sets used in the entire painting. She frequently favors greens and reds in conjunction with whites when making her own mixtures and color nuances. These sets of colors, which are both limited and complex at the same time, also deliberately limit the value structures of her darks and lights, which never include the harshness of extreme darks and lights. The result is a unified color structure that feels natural.
The compositions of her paintings are also constructed to serve these complex color palettes. Placing her most
OPPOSITE // Jaden Pebeahsy, Chicken Fight, 2024, oil on canvas, 36” x 48” | All images courtesy of the artist
ABOVE // Jaden Pebeahsy, Check Yourself, 2024, oil on canvas, 48” x 36”
LEFT // Jaden Pebeahsy, FSIS Boys V, 2024, collagraph, 18” x 12”
contrasting images in the middle of her paintings allows Pebeahsy to blend the edges of her works, fading the colors in a dreamlike way. She also applies layers of thinner colors that create the illusion of transparency without any formal use of washes.
Pebeahsy’s ethos toward colors, values, and blends are also integrated into her usage of cultural motifs and patterns inspired by Native American quilts and Comanche Ledger Art. These patterns, which include checkered boxes and Star Quilt-inspired shapes, are also deliberately limited in each of her works. She uses a maximum of two patterns in each painting, but varies the patterns she selects by scale, rotation, and placement as a method to create more unified depth and complexity in her art while incorporating symbols from her Comanche heritage. She places hard edges on some patterns to make them appear flat, while using softer edges to create texture and different color shifts.
Eventually, her processes create paintings that evoke overtones of nostalgia, dreaminess, and the softness found in Southwestern Oklahoma skies—tones that feel like memories of a simpler time that pay homage to her cultural traditions.
You can see more of Jaden Pebeahsy’s artwork at instagram.com/j.pbshe.
KAREN PAUL is a freelance writer and photographer based in Norman. She is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism and has been writing for OVAC’s Art Focus for more than a decade. For more information, you can visit her website at karenpaulok.com.
Jaden Pebeahsy, Pickleball, 2024, oil on canvas, 48” x 36”
OF ART, WAR, AND JAPAN //
EXPLORING SAMURAI AND JAPONISME AT THE PHILBROOK
by Ariana Jakub Brandes
At the exhibition Samurai: Armor from the Collection of Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller, I was greeted by two samurai who seem to guard its entrance, seated figures so fully covered in armor of iron, silver, wood, gold, fur, bronze, brass, and leather that—if they were human—no skin would be exposed. Indeed, a samurai’s identity is conveyed solely through his battle regalia.
Samurai were Japan’s military elite, rising to power in the 12th century and remaining influential for eight centuries. As reflected by the designs and inscriptions on the pieces in this exhibit, the samurai shaped a culture inspired by nature, poetry, and philosophy. You’ll be rewarded for looking closely, as samurai warriors were not just fighters, but concerned with aesthetics, symbolism, and status.
Beyond the entrance, a golden butterfly staff towering over another samurai drew me further ahead. At his feet, bear fur-covered shoes contrast with delicate golden water plantains lacquered on his dark iron shin guards. Look closely and you can see the clan’s crest, a butterfly, holding together the iron sleeves and shin guards. Samurai armor was much lighter than European armor of the Middle Ages, sometimes only one third of the weight. You can actually try on the weight of samurai armor at the end of the exhibition.
The helmet on this figure, originally made in the 14th century, features a golden U-shaped crest modeled after stag beetle mandibles—a symbol of luck and prosperity. This striking design not only served a symbolic purpose but also helped its wearer stand out in the thick smoke of gunfire years later. Passed down from father to son, helmets like this carried deep significance and reflected the samurai ideal of blending beauty with function. Further on, a hallway of helmets shows how styles adapted over time—from low, rounded bowls to Portuguese-inspired designs introduced by missionaries, always changing with the tastes and influences of their new owners.
Perhaps the most dramatic section of the exhibit, a raised platform displays three mounted samurai alongside three standing warriors. On my visit, these drew audible gasps as visitors took in the dynamic armor and striking horse gear. Nearby, an 18th-century gold folding screen illustrates a famous scene from the Genpei War (1180–1185) along the Uji River—an event that marked the beginning of samurai rule in Japan. Painted during the peaceful Edo period when samurai no longer engaged in battle, the screen reflects a nostalgic longing for a heroic past embodying ideals of honor and bravery.
Upstairs, in the Philbrook’s companion exhibit Japonisme: New Perspectives from the Land of the Rising Sun, the Uji River appears again—this time on a 19th-century screen that presents the scene in a very different decorative style. The screen is displayed alongside a grand portrait of artist Lila Cabot Perry, who played a pivotal role in bringing both Japanese and Impressionist art to American audiences. I found her self-portrait The Gold Screen, a recent museum acquisition, to be a highlight of the exhibition.
While the samurai class looked to the past to affirm their values, the artists of Japonisme—a shorthand term for the international craze for Japanese art in the late 19th century— turned to the country’s art as a way to reimagine how they viewed and represented the world around them. In Perry’s painting, she is seated in profile, and a white silk dress cascades from her shoulder to the bottom of the frame. A golden screen behind her is covered in pink, painted flowers, as is the fabric of the sofa where she sits. Living in Tokyo with her husband from 1898 to 1901, Perry studied Japanese art and produced over 80 paintings. Her style incorporated many of the hallmarks of Japonisme such as asymmetrical balance, patterns and textiles, and scenes of daily life.
On the other side of the Uji River screen hangs Julia Bracewell Folkard’s How to be Happy though Single. This painting, whose
composition was lifted from J.M. Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Whistler’s Mother), depicts a young woman sitting peacefully, choosing to finish her drawing rather than walk the spaniel that reaches for her dangling hand. Her decision to remain absorbed in her work suggests the growing sense of independence among women at the time. Behind her, a Japanese folding screen glows in gold, framing her like a halo.
Both of these newly acquired paintings are on view for the first time at the Philbrook. The entire exhibit features works from the museum’s own collection, many unseen for decades, that highlight the influence of Japanese art on Western artists.
Winslow Homer’s Eight Bells deserves a close look. Two sailors stand at the right side of the frame, measuring their ship’s location on a stormy sea. Homer’s etching does not miss the marked movement of the rough waters and stirring wind that fill the left side of this scene, similar to the carvings used to create the ukiyo-e woodblocks placed alongside many of the works in this exhibit. A video in the exhibit examining the most renowned ukiyo-e print, Hokusai’s The Great Wave off
Kanagawa, provides an excellent introduction to how these prints were created.
Ukiyo-e prints, or “images of the floating world,” were the most widely available Japanese artworks to Western artists when Japan opened its borders to trade in 1853 —a development prompted by the gunboat diplomacy of American Commodore Matthew Perry, a relative of Lila Cabot Perry. These woodblock prints captured everyday moments in Japan, inspiring Western artists to look for similar subjects. As a case in point, Utagawa Kunisada’s Two Women and a Child hangs on the adjoining wall near a small print by American artist Mary Cassatt, in which a young girl sits on her mother’s lap, gazing at herself in a small circular mirror they hold together. The simple lines used to draw this ordinary moment and the use of drypoint to capture textures of hair, skin, and clothing show the influence of ukiyo-e prints.
Together, Samurai and Japonisme offer a compelling dialogue between two cultural moments shaped by Japan’s enduring artistic legacy. While the samurai exhibit reflects a historical tradition rooted in honor, discipline, and craftsmanship,
Installation view of the Philbrook’s Samurai | Ariana Jakub Brandes
Japonisme reveals how Japanese artistic traditions sparked a wave of creative reinvention in the western world.
Samurai: Armor from the Collection of Ann & Gabriel BarbierMueller and Japonisme: New Perspectives from the Land of the Rising Sun can be seen through August 3 at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, 2727 S. Rockford Rd. Please visit philbrook.org for more information.
ARIANA JAKUB BRANDES is an artist, educator, and writer who lives in Tulsa. She teaches art at Cascia Hall.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP // Exhibition view of Japonisme: New Perspectives from the Land of the Rising Sun featuring Lila Cabot Perry’s The Gold Screen, 1914, oil on canvas, 54” x 45” | Ariana Jakub Brandes; Utagawa Kunisada, Two Women and a Child, ukiyo-e woodblock print | Ariana Jakub Brandes; Winslow Homer, Eight Bells, 1887, etching | Philbrook Museum of Art
FIESTA CENTRAL // CAPTIOL HILL’S PLAZA CALLE DOS CINCO
by Olivia Dailey
A new Strong Neighborhoods Initiative (SNI) project is underway in Oklahoma City’s Historic Capitol Hill District—a multicultural, multipurpose outdoor plaza. The plaza is located on Harvey Avenue, between Southwest 24th and 25th Streets. The plaza’s name, Plaza Calle Dos Cinco, will appear above a dramatic archway leading into the square with downtown OKC’s skyline in the background. On the west side of the plaza stands the historic church Templo De Alabanza. The plaza is reminiscent of the central public squares or marketplaces commonly found in towns and cities all over Latin and South American countries, a nod to the neighborhood’s Latino culture.
Directly a community project and indirectly an art project, Plaza Calle Dos Cinco’s style and design represent a creative undertaking by the residents that combines dozens of reference photos and ideas. The plaza was designed by Planning Design Group’s Monica Concienne, PLA, and executed by engineering firm CEC Corporation and Downey Construction. The space will be colorful, with lights and banners, Talavera tiles, and serpentine benches covered in mosaic tiles. A large gazebo in the center will host musicians, dancers, and other performers. Once the community begins to use the plaza, there will be ample time to determine how best to incorporate art into the space. While the plaza’s design is very considered, the people who enjoy it will be critical in making it feel lived-in and authentic rather than like a studio set. As the community uses this space, it will increasingly reflect their character and needs.
Capitol Hill’s moment has finally arrived. Just south of the Oklahoma River, between Western Avenue and Shields, Historic Capitol Hill was once a separate city before OKC annexed it in 1911. The idea for a plaza in Capitol Hill has been around for over twenty years. As the nonprofit overseeing the community development for the Historic Capitol Hill Business District, Calle Dos Cinco (C25) applied to the Strong Neighborhoods Initiative in 2017. The Capitol
Hill Business Improvement District (BID) will manage the new plaza.
Steve Mason is vice president of the C25 BID. He owns the newly restored Yale Theater on Southwest 25th Street. According to Mason, the Art Deco event venue has served as an introduction to the neighborhood for thousands of guests “who have never experienced Capitol Hill and are impressed with the Yale experience, the proximity of Capitol Hill to Scissortail Park and the Convention Center, and the beauty of Capitol Hill architecture.”
The Strong Neighborhoods Initiative is a neighborhood revitalization program supported by the City of Oklahoma City. Established in 2010, SNI’s mission is to holistically support neighborhoods to improve, grow, and sustain themselves. Importantly, SNI is not about redevelopment. The initiative collaborates with people who live and work in the neighborhoods it serves, and they are the ones who ultimately guide its work. Shannon Entz is the Urban Revitalization Program Planner for the City of OKC’s Planning Department and has collaborated closely with community leaders on this project.
The plaza is a large-scale SNI project for the neighborhood, but over the past few years, SNI has invested in public art pieces in Capitol Hill. Dancing Ladies by Gabriel Friedman and Denise Duong, installed near the plaza at the corner of Southwest 25th Street and Walker Avenue, is a triptych of wire outline sculptures that resulted from the artists meeting with local dancers. Duong sketched the dancers and Friedman sculpted. The sculptures are colorful, full of movement, and evocative of Capitol Hill’s famous Fiestas De Las Américas.
Another art piece is the whimsical mural Traverse by Nick Bayer on the Lightning Creek Bridge at Southwest 29th Street and Broadway Avenue. It features the sun on one side of the bridge and the moon on the other, both surrounded
ABOVE // A preliminary rendering of Plaza Calle Dos Cinco, facing north, as envisioned by Planning Design Group’s Monica Concienne BELOW // A central, aerial view of the plaza, facing west, as rendered by Monica Concienne of PLG
by flora and fauna. “The idea was to show how a bridge can bring two completely different worlds together, and how this bridge is bringing communities together,” says Bayer. Even more public art can be seen around the neighborhood because Capitol Hill hosted the fifth annual Sunny Dayz Mural Festival this year on May 31.
2025 marks the 20th anniversary of the Fiestas De Las Américas, which will be held in Capitol Hill on September 27, the last Saturday of the month. It is OKC’s largest Latino festival and was recently awarded the honor of “Hometown Hero” by Visit Oklahoma City. There will be live music, a parade, an artisan mercado, and a beloved taco-eating contest. Earlier this year, on January 25, the plaza hosted a groundbreaking ceremony and is now on track to be ready by Fiestas De Las Américas, which will act as its unofficial unveiling. FEATURE
LEFT // Festival scenes from previous years’ Fiestas De Las Américas in the Capitol Hill District
According to Gloria Torres, Executive Director of C25, the significance of the festival and the plaza is that people “get to celebrate and see the value and the beauty of this different culture, which is the complete opposite of what we hear with this political rhetoric going on right now.” Pride in one’s culture and a sense of belonging is “what builds up our kids, strengthening our communities,” says Torres. “When we feel good enough about ourselves, that means we can take care of someone else.” Strong communities create strong leaders—a positive feedback loop.
In addition to the plaza, the SNI project will also help nearby Wiley Post Park be more accessible to area residents by including a trail leading from the plaza to the park, by which one can access Scissortail Park, in effect connecting Capitol Hill with downtown OKC. Especially during the sweltering Oklahoma summers, increasing access to green spaces is critical for communities because green spaces are cooler. Both the park and the plaza are “third places,” a term coined by
ABOVE // Gabriel Friedman and Denise Duong, Dancing Ladies, multicolored wire sculpture at the corner of SW 25th and Walker Avenue | City of Oklahoma City
sociologist Ray Oldenburg that means somewhere public, outside of work and home—something becoming increasingly rare in this stage of late capitalism in the United States. The plaza is inviting to all. Says Entz, “Whether it’s a second, third, or fourth place, I want it to be somewhere to take family pictures, to celebrate a birthday party or a quinceañera, or just have coffee with a friend.” When people come together, they share ideas and resources. As an incubator for shared experiences, the plaza project may even feel radical these days.
The Plaza Calle Dos Cinco and the Wiley Post Park Trail are anticipated to be completed in August 2025.
OLIVIA DAILEY earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma. She works as a program manager at a transportation research center in Norman and is a frequent Art Focus contributor.
ABOVE // A south-facing view of the plaza, with gazebo, as envisioned by Monica Concienne of PLG RIGHT // Nick Bayer, Traverse, mural on the Lightning Creek Bridge at SW 29th and Broadway Avenue | Nick Bayer; BOTTOM RIGHT // Envisioned pergola seating in the plaza, as rendered by Monica Concienne of PLG
MAKING THE CUT // DNA GALLERIES’ JULY GROUP SHOW
by Peyton Decker
DNA Galleries is a cornerstone of Oklahoma City’s Plaza District, offering space for local artists to explore and share work that reflects the richness of our state’s visual culture. The gallery’s July group show highlights relief printmaking and brings together four Oklahoma artists whose approaches and styles differ yet complement one another when viewed in conversation. The show features artists Jim Weaver, Kathleen Neeley, Eduardo Martinez, and David Hertzel.
Jim Weaver, a printmaker and leather tooling artist based in Edmond, presents work shaped by his connection to the American West. What began as a fun project with his son, learning leather tooling to make prints, evolved into a new way of creating his art. Now, after about twenty years, Weaver loves making prints that can be mixed, matched, and layered together to create something fresh every time.
Much of Weaver’s inspiration comes from nature stories that unfold in unexpected ways. This influence is shown in pieces like Contesting and Dreaded Stampede, featured at DNA Galleries this July. “I’ve been strongly influenced by time spent in the national parks to the point where these now form a conceptual basis of my work,” he said. “My hope is to instill appreciation for the environment and the desire to protect the wild spaces we still have.”
Featured in this show, his piece The Reason to Leap was inspired by a bison he saw in the Wichita Mountains, combined with a wild tumbleweed story he heard on a road trip through Texas. The bison is caught mid-jump, escaping danger in a desert landscape. Like much of Jim’s work, it blends real moments with imagined ones to explore our relationship with Western culture.
Tulsa-based artist Kathleen Neeley is a printmaker and illustrator who works mostly in hand-carved linoleum-cut prints with oil-based ink on washi paper. In her work, viewers can find recurring symbols like moons, plants, creatures, satellites, and other orbiting bodies in the sky that she
considers part of an ongoing story meant to spark curiosity and explore hidden connections. At the DNA show, she shares works like The Game and Lush, both of which tell a story without words. What’s remarkable is Neeley doesn’t expect viewers to see what she sees. In fact, she prefers when they don’t.
“My favorite kind of art is the kind where, when you keep looking, you keep noticing things you missed at first glance that recontextualize the meaning,” she said. “I like to make art for people who take their time to notice details. Their meaning is for them, and still correct, even if it’s totally different from mine.”
At DNA, you’ll see several pieces by Neely including Moss Lord Created in 2020, this five-color, multi-block linocut features a landscape covered in moss, blending natural elements with a sense of uncertainty. Like much of her work, Moss Lord reflects a connection to wildlife and the mysteries hidden within it.
Yukon-based artist Eduardo Martinez, who works under the name Doom Dino, has built a unique presence in the Oklahoma art scene through his animal-inspired linoleum cut prints and screen prints. His work features dinosaurs, cryptids, and otherworldly creatures tied to his lifelong love for animals. Each new animal he creates adds to his growing mental museum of imagined creatures.
Before starting a design, Martinez studies the animal’s habitat, diet, and even the types of plants that grow around it. These details help shape each piece he creates, giving it more depth and connection to his audience. “I don’t believe one art medium is superior to another,” he said. “People gravitate to one thing or another, and all of it has artistic merit. I just personally enjoy getting ink on my hands and handling paper.”
CONTINUED OPPOSITE // Kathleen Neeley, The Game, 2023, six-color multi-block linoleum cut hand printed on Okawara paper, 14” x 17” | All images courtesy of the artists
LEFT // Jim Weaver, The Reason to Leap, 2024, relief print from tooled leather on paper, 30” x 22” BELOW // Kathleen Neeley, Moss Lord, 2020, five-color multi-block linoleum cut hand printed on paper, 16” x 20”
Over the years, Martinez has become known in the Oklahoma art community as the “dino guy.” To him, that just means the work is memorable and that it connects with the people who see it.
Lastly, David Hertzel is an Oklahoma City–based artist and retired professor from Southwestern Oklahoma State University. With a background in history and an eye for structure, Hertzel approaches printmaking much like an architect. He doesn’t see himself as someone who paints or draws pictures but as someone who builds them, layer by layer, through a precise process.
Hertzel mechanically constructs his art in a way that allows the meaning to reveal itself slowly over time. Much of his inspiration comes from dreams and early influences that continue to shape his work, including European landmarks and prehistoric cave imagery from Northern Spain and Southern France. At the DNA show, you’ll see this through pieces like Triptych, a three-panel linocut made for a Sámi friend who later framed it alongside her other Sámi paintings, and Passing Through Galway Cemetery, which represents a walk he once took through a cemetery in Ireland.
“Everyone deserves to have beautiful handmade art,” he said. “It’s natural for us to want to express, create, and share with others. My most important tool as an artist is ideas. And my goal is to never conceal the meaning behind my art, but to share it and the expressions I feel inside me.”
Featured at DNA is I, II, III, IV, V, VI, a series of linocut prints that follow the transformation of a single form through six stages. What begins as a simple blue swirl gradually evolves into something much more layered and ambiguous, suggesting growth, change, and interpretation. For Hertzel, the piece is about staying connected to the first spark of an idea and trusting it to lead somewhere unexpected.
Together, these four artists create a collection that speaks not to a single theme, but to the richness of their individuality. While there might be subtle connections between their work like shared materials, similar techniques, or echoes in subject matter, these links are made organically and authentically.
DNA Galleries’ July group art show can be seen from July 10 through August 3, 1709 NW 16th St. in Oklahoma City, with an opening artists’ reception on July 10 from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Visit dnagalleries.com for more information.
PEYTON DECKER is a marketing communications specialist and writer who is passionate about art, storytelling, and making connections through words. Based in Oklahoma, she likes to blend creativity with strategy to share stories that matter. When she’s not writing, Peyton loves hanging out with her two dogs, Dash and Helix, and managing social media accounts.
ABOVE // David Hertzel, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, 2024, single linoleum block hand printed on paper, 12” x 12” each
RIGHT // Eduardo Martinez, Pegasaurus, 2025, two-color screen print on paper, 9” x 12”
THE NEUROGRAPHIC FOREST // NICHOLE MONTGOMERY’S LORE AT LIGGETT STUDIOS
by Sallie Cary Gardner
Nichole Montgomery remembers when she was six and her constant doodling made her the object of teasing. Now in her forties, she reflects that those early days led her to a blossoming art career that has helped heal both her early childhood trauma and PTSD/MST from her service in the military.
Montgomery now doodles with black ink on large wooden panels, then uses acrylic paint to fill in the cavities and create abstracted portraits that make for striking and memorable artworks. Through the end of July at the Liggett Studios Gallery, Montgomery’s solo exhibition Lore will display portraits that depict obscure and popular icons, from the folk tale of “The Two Sisters” to Cruella de Vil.
The practice that Montgomery embraced as a child in the mid-1980s was later elevated by Russian psychologist Pavel Piskarev, who recognized the psychological benefits of doodling and sought to refine its healing potential more intentionally. Piskarev posited that the process of “neurographic” doodling, as he coined the term, can connect the conscious with the unconscious mind and create new neural pathways in the brain.
Montgomery said she needed doodling during childhood to survive, but now that she’s maturing as an artist it makes her feel fulfilled and accomplished. She first displayed her paintings in Tulsa at the Lot 6 Bar in 2022, where they caught Steve Liggett’s attention. “I was taken by her originality and her unique vision of art,” he said. He then selected several of Montgomery’s paintings for his Oklahoma Visionaries exhibition in 2023, recognizing that she fulfilled several criteria to qualify as a “visionary” (or “outsider”) artist— namely, being self-taught, inspired by uniquely personal visions, unconcerned with the mainstream art world, and having experienced some degree of marginalization.
“Nichole has just taken off. She’s a go-getter and didn’t need a push. She made quite an impact on everybody that saw her work,” Liggett said. In conjunction with Lore, Montgomery will teach a class at the Liggett Studio titled Intro to Neuro Art Doodling on July 20.
Her unconventional childhood informs her art to this day. Her mother was a watercolorist who owned a house and 80 acres of forest land in the shadow of Oregon’s Mount Hood. Montgomery’s mother taught her how to hunt and forage for food, but she wouldn’t teach her to paint. “Just watch,” she said. The only sources of entertainment in the house were a TV, always tuned to PBS, and hundreds of books inherited from Montgomery’s grandfather that were kept piled in pyramids on the floor. Montgomery learned to read at an early age and read almost every book in the house that helped develop her vivid imagination, as exemplified by the paintings she’s chosen for Lore. Montgomery said she was also influenced by two coffee table books at the bottom of the pyramids: a book of illustrations by Alphonse Mucha and a book about H.R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer.
The idea for her painting The Two Sisters came from a book of English fairy tales published in 1922. It wasn’t illustrated, so Montgomery imagined how the two sisters looked. It was the same with the 1956 book The Hundred and One Dalmatians that she read, imagining Cruella de Vil to look very different from the book’s illustrations, as reflected in her painting.
The Cruella de Vil painting is somewhat of a departure from Montgomery’s typical works in that the painting is more brightly colorful and its mark-making more pronounced, in contrast to the fluidity of paintings such as The Two Sisters and her self-portrait Escaping to the Forest.
CONTINUED
OPPOSITE // Nichole Montgomery, Bridget Cleary, 2025, mixed media on canvas, 18” x 24” | All images courtesy of the artist
“The Mount Hood wilderness is undoubtedly one of the most stunning forests I’ve ever encountered, and I feel fortunate to have spent half my life there. In contrast, living in cities for the other half of my life often leads me to reflect fondly on my original home,” Montgomery said. She describes Escaping to the Forest as her face emerging from “moss, bark, and memory—layered with growth, silence, and the raw beauty of a life rooted deep in nature.”
In Escaping to the Forest particularly, there’s an eerie beauty to Montgomery’s paintings that viewers might find intriguing. Montgomery’s doodlings render several stereotypical feminine facial attributes, such as an elaborate hairstyle, lush eyelashes, and full lips. But in taking a longer look, the viewer will notice that a third of the face is covered with darkness, there’s a growth under her nose that looks like knotted flesh, and the face appears to be falling apart.
In Cruella de Vil, what one would typically think of as the background is actually the foreground, with de Vil’s colorful
face gazing out from a distance. And if anyone is looking for dalmatian fur, they will find the opposite: white ovals on a black background, arranged almost like puzzle pieces.
The painting The Two Sisters has nothing of the raw wildness of Escaping to the Forest or the bright color and precision of Cruella de Vil. According to Montgomery, she imagined the image of the sisters after reading the fairy tale. In it, the virtuous sister is rewarded in life while the sinful sister is punished. The painting plays with perspective and color as the immoral sister’s image is muted to neutrals and retreats behind the moral sister. The unworthy sister’s neck is stripped down to veins and arteries, and the top of her torso is concealed by the upright sister’s neck. Some viewers may find it grotesque, but there’s a beauty in its simplicity. The painting’s composition is so well balanced that it will come as no surprise to gallery goers that Montgomery spent years doing photography and digital design before turning to painting.
These three paintings, like the rest of the paintings in Lore,
conjure mysteries we will never solve. Only fools would want to. What one should do with these paintings, like so many things in life, is see, accept, and enjoy them.
Nichole Montgomery’s Lore can be seen from July 11 to 31, at Liggett Studios in Tulsa, 314 S. Kenosha. Please visit liggettstudio.com to learn more.
SALLIE CARY GARDNER is retired from a long career in writing and public relations. She enjoys contributing to the Oklahoma arts scene through her volunteer work with the Tulsa Artists’ Coalition. She maintains an art practice primarily in assemblage and collage. Sallie is also a popular storyteller at monthly Tulsa story slams and has competed in annual Grand Slams in 2023 and 2025.
OPPOSITE PAGE // Nichole
THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP // Nichole Montgomery,
2025, mixed media, 18”
Montgomery, The Two Sisters , 2025, mixed media, 30” x 30”
Daphne,
x 24”; Nichole Montgomery, Cruella de Vil , 2025, mixed media, 18” x 24”; Nichole Montgomery, Escaping to the Forest , 2025, mixed media, 30” x 30”
INTERMEDIA - AN ANIMATOR’S PLAYGROUND // FRAME BY FRAME WITH JOE CAPPA
I met Joe Cappa when we were both collaborating on a Mickey Reece film, the first of three we’ve so far worked on together in various capacities. I was quickly impressed by his range of talents—not just as a cinematographer and visual effects artist, but as an actor as well. After a string of successes, from screening his animated short Ghost Dogs at Sundance and later landing a series on Adult Swim, he was generous enough to sit for a short interview with me last fall. – JS
Growing up, what was your early artistic life like? How did it develop?
I credit the Muppet Babies for my career as a filmmaker. There’s an episode where baby Kermit and the gang learn how to make a stop-motion movie with Nanny’s camcorder. I asked my mom if I could play with our camcorder, and she helped me figure out how to capture a quick frame of video by pressing the record button twice, as fast as I could. I still remember the first video I ever made: Sock Crawls Out of Shoe. Later videos featured action figures walking around slapping each other. They eventually matured to human pieces with burglars and shootouts played by me and my siblings.
I attended the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain for filmmaking my junior and senior years of high school. It was the first time I could explore the art form with other young filmmakers who hoped to make an actual career out of it. After high school I went to OU for their fine arts program. Watching experimental films and videos that shaped art movements, redefining what storytelling could be, was a mind-altering experience. After school, I eventually found myself at an ad agency in Oklahoma City where I learned to shoot with studio equipment.
How did you eventually get into animation?
I was a live-action guy, shooting commercials and dumb little skits with my friends on the side, until one night a friend suggested we just sit around and draw. I realized I hadn’t drawn in years and had forgotten how much I enjoyed it.
With a renewed interest in character design, it slowly started to click for me: if I put in the effort and time, I could tell any story I wanted. At first, I mainly found opportunities for animation by producing music videos for my friends.
Tell me a little about Ghost Dogs. What was that journey like, from concept to eventually screening at Sundance?
When I started on Ghost Dogs, I remember I was broke and feeling lost as an artist. Was I going to keep making commercials for small businesses and music videos for my friends’ bands forever? I ran into an acquaintance from high school, J.W. Hallford, and he was willing to finance a short. I had these dog-human characters I loved drawing, and I thought I could center a story around them, so over the next couple of months I storyboarded the whole thing. I bought The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams and started to teach myself frame-by-frame character animation as I made the short.
It ended up taking two years to animate—it would have taken longer, but the pandemic allowed me to just sit down and complete the damn thing. We started sending Ghost Dogs to festivals and got into some but were rejected by many more. It’s pretty surreal to get a phone call from Sundance. I really thought we were pranked since it was my first animated film. Truly magical.
I’m really enjoying Haha, You Clowns. Any thoughts about satirizing the American “good life” and the dude-bros who live it?
Before Haha, You Clowns became a series on Adult Swim I was making minute-long animated shorts on Instagram. It was the first time I started voicing my own stuff and sort of came up with the voices of these three brothers in the booth. It was making me laugh, and I came up with their characters after the fact. That’s all to say, it’s not my intention to satirize American culture. I’m just making stuff that makes me laugh.
TOP // Joe Cappa, still from Ghost Dogs, 2021 | Image courtesy of the artist; ABOVE // Joe Cappa, still from Haha, You Clowns, 2024 | Adult Swim
