ON THE COVER // No Relations (Morgan Brown and Sydney Brown), Refuge, 2023, collage and mixed media on dyed paper, 23.5” x 17.5”, page 22. MIDDLE // Emily Lamb, Lioness, 2014, oil on canvas. 56” x 78”. Gift of the 2015 Collectors Circle, National Museum of Wildlife Art | FJMA, page 10. BOTTOM // A view of the open studio and gallery space at Studio Six, page 14.
Support from:
CONTENTS // Volume 39 No. 4 // Fall 2024
4 6 18 10 14
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
JOHN SELVIDGE
IN THE STUDIO // Love, Translated - with Carlos Bejarano
ELIZABETH J. WENGER
REVIEW Savage Beauty // Un/Natural Selections at Fred Jones
MANDY MESSINA
FEATURE Pearl of the Paseo // Thirty Years of Studio Six
OLIVIA DAILEY
PREVIEW The First Rule is We Talk About It // WAR CLUB: Native Art & Activism at the Philbrook
LAYLA MORTADHA
PREVIEW Diverse Vistas // Variations on a Scene at Modella Gallery
KATE BATTERSHELL
26
INTERMEDIA A Book and Its Cover // Envisioning The Bridge Inside
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.
2023-2024 BOARD OF DIRECTORS // Douglas Sorocco, President, OKC; Jon Fisher, Vice President OKC; Diane Salamon, Treasurer, Tulsa; 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; Russ Teubner, Stillwater; Chris Winland, OKC
As I write this, with the windows finally open on the first day of fall, it’s a surprisingly rainy Sunday with a cool breeze, the kind of day that lets you know never to assume what Oklahoma weather will do (this from the guy who left his car windows cracked last night, anticipating another scorcher today). Probably a good practice to expect the unexpected, and I write this with the last several months’ political tumult very much in mind.
For me, there’s always a touch of melancholy, mixed with elation, as this season begins. The fever-pitch of this year’s election, against the backdrop of what seems like an ever-escalating war in the Middle East, is enough to throw some dread into the mix as well. But I’ve learned by now to buffer my realism with optimism and to inject, by any means necessary, some energy and lift into my spirit when considering potentially darker times ahead, especially as sunshine and serotonin levels begin to drop with these shorter days.
Like most of us, I’m hoping to breathe more easily in November, but whatever happens, I know we will manage—because we must. Regardless of results, our work goes on, and it might even become more important. Looking at this issue of Art Focus, I’m struck by so many caretakers and the brave poignancy with which they confront the passing of time.
With an unflinching historical gaze, Anita and Yatika Fields advance the hard work of Indigenous resistance to America’s domestic colonialist legacy with WAR CLUB (p. 18), and the landscape artists of Variations on a Scene (p. 22) apply their craft to celebrate the environments that nurture us—an investment given an incisive, provocative turn with the recent exhibition Un/Natural Selections and its varied ecological commentary (p. 10). The steady dedication of artists like Sue Moss Sullivan and her colleagues at Studio Six shines with the gallery’s recent 30th anniversary (p. 14), and Carlos Bejarano’s commitment to manifesting joy through his painting (p. 6) becomes all the more meaningful when that resource might seem harder to come by.
For now, let’s take care of each other, ourselves, our world. I hope you enjoy reading.
—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
view of Outre West. Photo by Ann Sherman.
LOVE, TRANSLATED // IN THE STUDIO WITH CARLOS BEJARANO
by Elizabeth J. Wenger
Typical of our post-COVID era, I interviewed Carlos Bejarano via video meet-up. These virtual spaces tend to be stale, imbued with a “let’s-get-to-work” atmosphere. But what immediately struck me about Carlos is the joy he can bring to any space, even a virtual one, through his attitude and his mixed-media paintings.
Carlos spoke to me from his office, where he typically works remotely doing government contracting. Behind him hung one of his recent paintings Under the Pink Rainbow. With its vivid colors, enthusiastic line-work, and fanciful shapes, the piece is typical of Bejarano’s style, perhaps most of all because just looking at it made me smile. When I asked about the painting, he told me that he usually swaps out the pieces in his office for hang-tests. When he takes video calls, his colleagues are treated to an ever-turning wheel of his whimsical works.
Unlike the structured world of government contracting, Carlos’s painting is playful. Though he grew up taking art classes in school and was always energized by creativity, it wasn’t until 2016, when he took a class with local Tulsa abstract artist Cynthia Brown, that he returned to painting as a serious hobby and escape from the seriousness of his day job.
It’s a testament to the contagious joy that Carlos emphasizes in his work and life that I left the interview wanting to pick up a brush myself.
You’ve mentioned that, aside from your job contracting, you teach Zumba. I notice your paintings have a lot of movement within them. Do you think there is some sort of connection for you between dance and your visual arts practice?
Yeah, definitely. I paint out of my garage, and it’s a pretty large space where I always have music going. Depending on my mood or whatever music I have playing that day, it really inspires the work. I enjoy moving while I’m painting, too. So the large-scale paintings are so much fun because you really get in there. I’m not sitting at a table or just
standing in front of a canvas. I make sure that movement gets translated into the painting, and I think that’s reflected in a lot of my line work.
Your paintings are more on the abstract end. Do you ever go for something more figurative?
Yeah, I have! The Hispanic Resource Center at the Tulsa City-County Library gave the first Hummingbird Award in Literary Arts to Benjamin Alire Sáenz in 2022. I’m also of Hispanic background, and I really wanted to paint something for that event because I was going to emcee it.
I read a ton of his poetry, and I remember him alluding to hummingbirds as these spiritual creatures. I thought, “I’m really going to try to honor that from his poetry,” so I ended up doing a painting at Martin Regional Library in Tulsa with this hummingbird creature in the middle surrounded by this body of water and a landscape. That was probably the closest to an obvious “figure” that I’ve painted, and it’s probably one of the pieces I love the most. It was very intentional, and the figure kind of emerged from working in my normal abstract process, but I went with that and said, “okay, let me just build around this hummingbird figure that’s already there.”
I wanted to talk about the words and phrases that show up in some of your paintings. I’m wondering about the source of the lettering that appears amid the abstract colors.
Typically I listen to music when I’m painting. Often the words are a combination of lyrics that I’ve heard, or maybe I listen to a song at the very beginning and then later it’s another song. I will combine words between songs or lyrics that resonate with my mood that day. Because I love to inspire joy, I use a lot of X’s and O’s, I use a lot of heart shapes, and then I tend to use the word “love” a lot because it’s how I feel when I’m painting— I really love doing it. I always try to translate that type of energy, and at times that comes through with actual words and text.
OPPOSITE // Carlos Bejarano, XOXO Or Whatever (detail), 2023, mixed media, 36” x 36” | All images courtesy of the artist
TOP //Carlos Bejarano, Under the Pink Rainbow, 2024, mixed media, 36” x 36”; RIGHT // Carlos Bejarano, Wild Sweet Nothing, 2022, mixed media, 24” x 30”
I remember I painted something when I lost my grandmother—a very sad moment in my life. I thought, “okay I can counterbalance sadness with the joy of painting.” In that painting, I had worked on a lot of things, and I wasn’t sure where it was going, but I saw that there was something missing. At that point, I wrote something along the lines of “cherish the moments you have,” and it was connected and inspired by that loss. But somehow it still ended up being a very joyful piece, just those words ended up there because that’s where I was at that time.
How do you know when a painting’s finished?
I finished a piece recently that I remember I started on weeks ago. I worked on it pretty regularly, and there were points when I thought it was done. Then I would sit in the garage and stare at it. When I get to that point, I just sit as
far back as I can and sit there with it for a while, in the space with the piece. But I really think that what I sit and wait for is to observe it as an external part of myself and think, “what am I getting from this?” At some point, this peace just washes over me and says, “this is done.” At that point, I don’t know…there’s something about feeling at peace with the painting itself. I get the feeling that, if I keep working on it, I’m going to overwork it and ruin the happiness that’s in it now. That’s the point when I know it’s done.
ELIZABETH J. WENGER is in the final year of her MFA in creative writing at Iowa State University. Originally from Tulsa, Wenger loves to write about the local art and music of her home state.
Carlos Bejarano, La Tormenta Colibri (The Hummingbird Storm), 2023, mixed media, 24” x 30”
SAVAGE BEAUTY // UN / NATURAL SELECTIONS AT THE FRED JONES JR. MUSEUM OF ART
by Mandy Messina
I found this exhibition to exude a sinister quality—for which the Germans (as ever) have a word: unheimlich. It describes the kind of unease one experiences when seeing the familiar but then realizing something is just slightly off. While the works on display are beautiful to look at, their messages are often dark, depressing reminders of the consequences when one animal decides it exists separate from all others.
There’s a frightening pressure that pulses from viewing this show. Not only is the collective narrative around the impact one species can have—on its own home, no less, but perhaps more importantly, on the super-organism we call Earth—but in order to see this show, viewers were required to descend a flight of stairs into the lowest level of the museum. I wondered if this made Fred Jones into a kind of Kronos that swallows its young, contemporary exhibitions whole, if the terror of an urgent horror we collectively can’t escape was meant to be kept like a secret, in the basement.
The trickster drawings and diagrams of Mark Dion were the first to speak to me because I have a soft spot for artists poking fun at the hifalutin. His World in a Box is a collection of 27 prints that take their inspiration from “cabinets of curiosities,” those private archives of rare and wonderevoking objects collected by the European elite during the age of newly industrialized global trade. These amassed plunders formed some of the first museum collections, which Dion mimics and, by distorting them, mocks the colonial and industrial strategies of monopolizing ways of knowing. To me, reading his images felt very similar to watching a Monty Python skit, where jokes are anticipated and made in the style of (and at the expense of) the target of the joke. The cheeky prints also reminded me of the way writers like Allende, Borges, or Garcia Marquez emphasize the enchanted and fantastical as already weaved into the mundane theater of everyday life as it exists outside of colonial influence.
Dion’s prints range from depictions of silhouetted monsters in miniature, reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch’s otherworldly beings, with lines indicating their domiciles on the territories of the human-animal, to the association of certain flowers with distinct personality traits reserved exclusively by humans for humans—all of which wink playfully from a more-than-human world waiting to be rediscovered by artists and empiricists.
Calling eerily from around a corner in the exhibition space was the sci-fi tinkling of Leslie Thornton’s video piece Binocular Menagerie, whose screen presents a bifurcated view of two circular images like peepholes. Through the first peephole, on the left, a recognizable animal can be seen. Simultaneously on the right, a kaleidoscope-prism echoes the left image but contorts it into a beautiful terror, as if our voyeurism of the familiar entity (for instance, a zebra or an elephant), is re-animated as a kind of malevolent twin or a petri-dish mandala of fractals. Instead of the animal we can identify, the image on the right hosts a more ancient entity like bacteria or some single-celled amoeba.
It’s a very strange and hypnotic video. The spell it cast on me brought images of millennia-old, frozen viruses awakening from relentlessly melting ice while the potential of AI hangs like a man-made cloud, ominously cracking its knuckles. I found the right side’s fractalized, mutant clone both frightening and fascinating, perhaps most pertinently because in a zero-sum worldview there is only enough competitive space for a single twin—as Romulus, the legendary founder of the imperial state, might argue. The juxtaposition of the expected and the unexpected beside one another like this accomplishes at least two things: first, a weirding of the entity we take for granted into its most ancient, protozoan nightmare form, as well as a scrying into the future horrors of newly possible exploitative technologies, a practice the good Dr. Frankenstein might have been familiar with.
CONTINUED
Perhaps the most cursed images on display were a series of altered Audubon prints by Penelope Gottlieb. Intricately graffitied with plant specimens that visit exquisite and ecstatic strangulation on various birds, these alterations are painted directly on the original prints of 19th century naturalist and artist John James Audubon. Gottlieb’s technical skill as a painter creates a real challenge for the viewer in finding where Audubon’s original ends and her revisions take seed, almost as if these prints had been waiting for a couple hundred years to be covered in some kind of “invasion of the birdy snatchers.”
Gottlieb deploys dynamism to great effect in her doctored prints so that viewers remain stuck within the moment of their climactic precipice. I was reminded of Jack the Ripper in Victorian London, at the start of the age of industrial squalor, and our collective fascination with the dark and depraved destruction of his victims. The unheimlich or unsettling element seems to come from the exact moment of demise— because there’s no escape from these stranglers.
ABOVE // Mark Dion, World in a Box, 2015, selection from a suite of 27 prints (lithography, cyanotype, digital, screenprint, etching, letterpress and woodcut) as exhibited at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. Gift of 2016 Blacktail Gala, National Museum of Wildlife Art | Mandy Messina; LEFT // Print from Mark Dion’s World in a Box | Mandy Messina
Considering how much older the plant kingdom is compared to our own, as animals, it feels both ironic and yet still incredibly creepy that such a slow-moving threat could annihilate us so elegantly. Plants have survived so much longer than we have, so maybe there are lessons to be gleaned from that legacy of slowness? The pressure of our dire undoing brings to mind contemporary Nigerian philosopher Bayo Akomolafe as he remembers the words of his elders: the times are urgent; let us slow down.
Un/Natural Selections: Wildlife in Contemporary Art was shown in Norman from June 7 through September 22 at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma.
MANDY MESSINA writes, crafts, gardens, and is paid $2.13/hour (plus tips) in the food service industry in Oklahoma City. They currently maintain a rising sign horoscope at landlabber.com. The flavor of their midlife crisis is CrossFit and ceramics.
ABOVE // Still from Leslie Thornton’s Binocular Menagerie, 2013 | Mandy Messina; RIGHT // Juan Fontanive, Ornithology P, 2014, screen print on Bristol paper, stainless steel, motor, and electronics. 5 ¼” x 4 ¼” x 4”. Gift of the 2017 Blacktail Gala, National Museum of Wildlife Art | FJMA
PEARL OF THE PASEO // THIRTY YEARS OF STUDIO SIX
by Olivia Dailey
In 1994, Studio Six was founded by six women: Mary Nickell, Regina Murphy, Sue Moss Sullivan, Winnie Hawkins, Donna Berryhill, and B.J. White. Celebrating its “pearl” anniversary this year, Studio Six is now the longest-running femaleowned gallery in Oklahoma. Located at the 30th street entrance to the historic Paseo Arts District in Oklahoma City, the building, once a garage and gas station, is in the stucco and Spanish-tile style classic to the Paseo. Paseo means “to stroll,” and here you can stroll for quite a while, losing yourself in the art. A lot of imagination and inspiration fit within the long, winding street of the Paseo.
The First Friday Gallery walks, district-wide events held religiously each month, rain or shine, provide an opportunity to see Studio Six and chat with the owners and resident artists, but the gallery is open every afternoon besides Sunday. Each month, in addition to the resident artists’ new work, there is a guest artist’s work on display as well (usually an artist working in three dimensions, to leave space on the walls for the resident artists). The studio’s current resident artists are Sue Moss Sullivan, Michelle Metcalfe, Gayle Curry, and Marissa Raglin. The studio area is as public facing as the gallery. Whenever an artist works in the studio, visitors are welcome to look around and ask questions. Seeing art in the beginning, middle, and ending phases all at once allows a unique peek into the artists’ processes. There aren’t many formal classes offered at Studio Six—although Curry occasionally hosts a workshop—but opening up the studio offers an education of its own kind. The studio’s shared space, along with its openness to the public, creates community.
Studio Six is intergenerational and has been since its inception. Sadly, the only living Studio Six founders are Sue Moss Sullivan and B.J. White, although the others live on through the spirit of the studio. Michelle “Mikie” Metcalfe, the daughter of founding member Regina Murphy, joined the studio in 2017 and worked alongside her mother for almost two years before she passed. “Mother loved the
studio and looked forward to each day she was there,” says Metcalfe. A painting by Murphy, a traditional landscape artist, still hangs in the studio to honor her. Like many women, Murphy’s artistry began in the domestic sphere, but she became a professional artist in her 40s after being inspired by her daughter, who was then an art major. Metcalfe and her sister, Patricia Murphy Newman, own the studio along with Sue Moss Sullivan, who is primarily a fiber artist.
Marissa Raglin has been with Studio Six for five years. She works in collage and mixed media, often “rescuing” whimsical images from vintage books, magazines, and postcards. In addition to her residency at Studio Six, Raglin’s solo show Impression will be shown at the Oklahoma Hall of Fame from October 10 through December 19. The show explores motherhood in all its complexity and includes a collaborative piece with four other artists who are also mothers. Circles emerge as a theme in Impression representing the cyclical nature of life, the long days and short years with young children with mantras that spiral and repeat. One piece, Evolve, uses acrylic ink in pink and red to evoke a blurred, gaseous planet. The collage piece is an image of kids in matching red shirts who peek over the painted edge, peering over exposed wood. Are they looking over a cliff in the original image, or is that just how Raglin artfully repurposed them? Sandcastles I & II are collages with literal planet imagery: the moons of its bottom half hold up all the playfulness on top, like beaches and balloons, but the title evokes their fleetingness contrasted with the sturdy base of the mother moon.
Gayle Curry is an encaustic artist who has been at Studio Six since 2020 but part of the Paseo scene for over 20 years. Encaustic painting is a vibrant, abstract, and unique technique. From the Greek “to burn,” encaustic is the process of melting beeswax and resin and mixing it with pigment. Curry says her art focuses on capturing “moments in time and space” as she strives to manipulate the melting
TOP // The building at 3021 Paseo that would become Studio Six was a filling station in 1941. | Photographer unknown; BOTTOM // Studio Six’s current resident artists (l to r) Marissa Raglin, Michelle Metcalfe, co-founder Sue Moss Sullivan, and Gayle Curry | Josh Vaughn
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT // Sue Moss Sullivan, A Safe Place, handwoven waxed linen with papers, tubes, and metal hanger; Marissa Raglin, Evolve, 2024, collage and acrylic ink, 24” x 24”; Gayle Curry, Safari Lights, encaustic painting, 4” x 4”; Marissa Raglin, Sandcastles II, 2024, collage and resin, 24” x 18” | All images of artwork courtesy of the artists of Studio Six
wax with “precision and freedom.” According to Curry, the medium is the message: “the process of melting and shifting the wax creates a sense of movement and energy, bringing each piece to life.” Encaustics can also be printed onto paper to create a monotype. The colors and patterns of the prints are as vibrant as those in the paintings. Curry’s print presentation makes them extra special; she uses embroidery loops to frame the prints. Many of these circular frames hang above her workspace, like more planets spinning in the studio.
The studio space is the star at Studio Six, and the collective is more impactful than the individual. The space is alive, buzzing with ideas and artistry—artist to artist, woman to woman, mother to daughter, sister to sister. Women in the arts have historically been ignored and devalued compared to their male counterparts, but Studio Six’s culture is inclusive, spurring creativity with no hint of competitiveness, only support. This is not just a community of female artists, as Raglin speaks about the familial element: “My studio mates have become family and each of them has helped keep me afloat during very difficult times. This makes working here very special.
I’ve also found being near their creativity and various media has allowed me to soak up new ideas via osmosis. Simply sharing their same creative spark-space has equipped me to dare to make more and challenge myself.”
Studio Six’s open-door policy is a big reason for its longevity. A 30th-anniversary celebration and one-night studio retrospective was held in September 2024, bringing together Studio Six supporters, artists, and art past, present, and future.
Studio Six is located at 3021 Paseo in Oklahoma City and can be visited between noon and 5 pm Monday through Saturday and by appointment. Visit the gallery’s Facebook page to learn more.
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.
LEFT // Michelle Metcalfe, Burst of Energy, encaustic and mixed media on birch cradled panel, 12” x 12”; RIGHT // A view of the open studio and gallery space at Studio Six | Olivia Dailey
THE FIRST RULE IS WE TALK ABOUT IT // WAR CLUB: NATIVE ART & ACTIVISM AT THE PHILBROOK
by Layla Mortadha
From the day we are born, we begin collecting stories— stories told to us, stories found in the pages of books, and stories from our own lives that we, in turn, share with others. Discovering how our individual experiences fit into the collective narrative is a critical juncture on the path to identity and cultural belonging.
Storytelling through oral tradition and art practice plays a huge role in recording and preserving Native American histories. When I spoke with visual artist and community organizer Yatika Starr Fields (Osage, Cherokee, and Muscogee) about he and his mother Anita Fields’ (Osage and Muscogee) upcoming exhibition WAR CLUB: Native Art & Activism at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, he told me that storytelling is at the heart of this project. Through a collection of portraits, sculpted objects, and cultural archives, the Fields—in collaboration with Kalyn Barnoski, the Philbrook’s assistant curator for Native Art—invite viewers to gather round the telling of a shared story, one that encompasses Native struggle, resistance, and triumph.
This is not the project’s first iteration. WAR CLUB started in 2017 when the mother-son duo, with the support of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship’s Arts Integration Award, initiated a series of panel discussions on contemporary issues facing Native communities and the tradition of activism in Native art spaces. Their goal was to create a platform for artists and activists to meet. From land sovereignty to climate justice, WAR CLUB engages the role of Native art and activism in enacting change. Since the project’s inception, WAR CLUB has evolved into a collaborative effort to document, archive, and tell the stories of Native community members across generations and lived experiences. The exhibition, on display until next summer, represents the culmination of years of organizing multiple generations of Native folks around a collective history of resistance and pride.
The exhibition’s name comes from a weapon used in handto-hand combat in the 18th and 19th centuries among East
Woodland, Central, and Northern Plains tribes in North America. War clubs took after the shape and length of rifle stocks used by European settlers to give Indigenous fighters mental strength and courage when facing their gun-wielding oppressors on the battlefield. Over time, the weapon used by Native resistance fighters against forced removal, displacement, and genocide became a symbol of Indigenous sovereignty and power.
When I asked Fields why he chose the war club as a focal point in his art, he replied, “We may not be engaging in combat these days, but there are still battles being fought, in schools and courtrooms as examples, and the war club is a reminder of that.” In appreciation for participating in WAR CLUB panel discussions, the Fields gift community members with contemporary war clubs made by Yatika. He then photographs them holding the clubs, using the symbolism of the war club to honor and empower involved community members. The color and creativity infused in the contemporary war clubs highlight the joy and hope generated by community art activism. Fields also explained the portraits are a way to document and preserve work being done today to fight for Native sovereignty in the face of ongoing systemic erasure. The portraits featured in WAR CLUB: Native Art & Activism invite viewers to recognize and celebrate those who are continuing the legacy of resistance forged by art activists in Oklahoma.
Archived objects, including a ledger book from the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969, are featured to remind us that the legacy of resistance is long standing. Retrieved by Yatika’s father, the book includes the names and tribal affiliations of all those who settled in Alcatraz as a form of social protest. Many of the activists were from one of the 39 tribes residing in Oklahoma today, such as the Creek, Choctaw, Caddo, Cherokee, and Shawnee tribes.
Standing apart from the rest of the exhibition is a red and purple neon WAR CLUB bar sign. When I asked him about
The first WAR CLUB event, “The Emergence of Red Power in Oklahoma” at the Center for Public Secrets in Tulsa on June 15, 2021. Pictured here (l. to r.): Casey Camp-Horinek (Ponca) Native rights activist, environmentalist, and actor and Richard Ray Whitman (Yuchi/ Muscogee) activist, artist and actor | Tom Fields
The third iteration of WAR CLUB, “Intergenerational Practices of Activism,” a conversation with Amber Morning Star Byars (Choctaw/Chickasaw), Della Warrior (Otoe-Missouria), and Bineshi Albert (Yuchi/ Anishinaabe), introduced here by Alicia Harris (Assiniboine) and presented by the OU School of Visual Arts’ Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of the Art of the American West, April 7, 2022 | Tom Fields
it, Fields spoke on the high rates of substance misuse in Native communities and how forced assimilation caused the health epidemic we are faced with today. As the U.S. expanded its colonial project, Indigenous people were forced to lay down their war clubs. They turned instead to each other to resist by organizing themselves, often meeting in bars, forming war clubs of their own. With its flashy movement and familiar warmth, the neon bar sign draws our attention to this history while simultaneously
inviting us into a space where we too can turn to each other.
The various mediums and perspectives interwoven throughout WAR CLUB demonstrate how our individual histories and experiences are interconnected and part of a larger story that is still being told. This exhibition provides viewers with an opportunity to engage in the community dialogue and activism sparked by the Fields’ panel discussions. Ultimately, WAR CLUB is not just an exhibition; it is a call to witness, reflect, and take action.
By immersing themselves in the artwork and cultural artifacts presented, viewers have the opportunity to step away with a deeper understanding of Indigenous resistance and a more imaginative vision of what the future could look like for us all.
WAR CLUB: Native Art & Activism can be experienced from October 5 through June 29, 2025, at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa. Please visit philbrook.org for more information.
LAYLA MORTADHA is a Brooklyn-based poet, writer, community organizer, and J.D. candidate at CUNY School of Law. She was drawn to the arts at an early age as a way to access and reconcile her identity as a queer Iraqi American from Oklahoma. Her writing and her work to become a lawyer today are inspired by her passion for collective liberation and social change. This is her first time writing for Art Focus
James Roan Gray (Osage), as Chief of the Osage Nation, led the tribe through a comprehensive restoration of Osage sovereignty. | All portrait photography by Yatika Starr Fields
Yatika Starr Fields, Modern War Clubs, 2019, as displayed at Travois Gallery, Kansas City, as a precursor to the WAR CLUB project | Image courtesy of the artist
Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne, Hodulgee Muscogee) is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator, policy advocate, and 2014 winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Steven Grounds (Navajo, Euchre, Creek, and Seminole) paints a live action portrait of Suzan Shown Harjo during WAR CLUB’s second iteration “Art, Activism, and Policy” at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, November 17, 2021.
Amber Morning Star Byars (Choctaw, Chickasaw) is an activist, artist, and lawyer.
DIVERSE VISTAS // VARIATIONS ON A SCENE AT MODELLA GALLERY
by Kate Battershell
Our environment is always our most significant influence, shaping us into who we are, both through its support and its challenges. Our environments are both the physical landscapes we inhabit and the communities of people we share them with. Both sides of the environment, the physical and the social, are explored in the exhibition Variations on a Scene. Variations is interested in the differences, or rather variations in interpretation when it comes to landscape painting. The four artists featured in the exhibition share ties to Stillwater, Oklahoma, where the exhibition can be seen at the locally owned Modella Gallery.
The artists’ shared connections to the Stillwater community converge on their time at Stillwater High School. In various ways, the epicenter of the exhibition’s artworks can be traced back to Jill Webber, an artist who taught at Stillwater High School for many years, inspiring and shaping her students–three of whom are highlighted in Variations on a Scene alongside her. Amy Angell Brewer, Morgan Brown, and Sydney Brown were all students of Jill Webber at various times in her teaching career, and they all went on to pursue landscape painting like her. Years later, they have now come together to exhibit their works in communion with one another.
A nature lover at heart, Jill Webber often works in the plein air style of landscape painting. Much of her work is done in pastels or water-mixable oils, and her lines are soft and blurred at times, often giving the impression that what we are witnessing is her hazy but well-loved memory of a landscape. In That Magnificent Tree!, an oil-pastel tree stands bare against the changing fall landscape. Webber’s tree branches twist and reach for the sky. The once-green grass has yellowed and the fickle leaves have fallen, as they do, and yet the sturdy tree persists, firmly rooted in the soil. As an art teacher, Webber became a dependable resource for her students–who, like the leaves, cyclically grow, change, and depart as the seasons of life move along.
In Webber’s The Sheltered Path, trees might be understood to be mentor figures, as sun peeks through a row of trees that form a guiding path one might choose to follow.
In contrast, Amy Angell Brewer’s work strays from Webber’s representational approach to offer more streamlined, minimalist renderings of landscapes. A Stillwater native, Brewer spent years living outside Oklahoma and working in various museums and galleries like the Art Institute of Chicago and California’s Heather James Fine Art before finding her way back to her home state to work for the Philbrook in Tulsa. Her landscapes are inspired by her time both in and away from Oklahoma. Brewer breaks her landscapes down to their fundamentals, rebuilding them in boldly lined, flat color blocks that smooth her world into serene, still visions. Filled by oceans, or split by streams, the water painted by Brewer never appears the same from one piece to the next. In Must Be Beautiful This Time of Year, water, mountains, and sky are all a still smooth blue as if the landscape were holding its breath, waiting for the moment to be captured, before allowing its water to ripple or its snowy mountain caps to melt.
Similar to Webber, her once-mentor turned peer, Morgan Brown became an art educator passionate about her community and has developed art curricula and sponsored an after-school art club to enhance the lives and education of her middle school students. After starting out painting mainly the human form, Brown found her way to landscapes, and they have remained her subject of choice ever since. With many of Oklahoma’s state parks as her muses, Brown works in watercolor and alcohol pen, and her landscapes spread and melt over the paper. Her art oscillates between the representational and the abstract. Stretching across wide horizontals, she paints her landscapes as though through a cinemascope lens. A hazy, dream-like quality like that found in Webber’s works takes on a vibrant, idealized quality in Brown’s hands. For instance, Lakeside hardly looks
like a landscape painting at first glance as expanding yellows, a seeping sapphire, and spilled maroon bleed across the wide expanse. The yellow water reflects barely-there green trees into shadows of red thrown across the water by the setting sun.
Sydney Brown’s work rounds out the exhibition with her penchant for color blocking like Brewer, and something of
Morgan Brown’s flexibility of style (though the two Browns are not related). Sydney Brown studied printmaking in college before working in a print studio for eight years, and the mechanics of printing certainly influenced her defined and unblended use of color. Engaged in multiple mediums, Brown’s works range from pastels to digital drawings to being
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP // Morgan Brown, Lakeside, 2019, watercolor on paper, 7.5” x 22.5”; Amy Angell Brewer, Must Be Beautiful This Time of Year, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 12” x 12”; Jill Webber, That Magnificent Tree!, 2023, water mixable oils, 14” x 11”
crafted out of hand-cut paper. Throughout her variations in medium, Brown’s interest in trees and their shadows recur as a motif whether they are abstracted or true to life. In her Trees at Sunset , Brown paints sunlight bursting from behind a row of trees. In large brush strokes, the painting gains a sense of movement as light pours out and streaks the canvas. In the same breath, Brown’s work Shadow Play takes the same landscape subject and flips it on its head by using hand-cut paper to shape the scene. Both pieces abstract the same landscape in different ways: where Trees at Sunset blurs it, Shadow Play draws it into hard focus.
Variations on a Scene lays bare the differences of interpretation that make artists who they are. By showcasing four artists in contrast and comparison with one another, the exhibition questions the influence of both the social environments that mold their artistic approaches and the physical environments that inspire their works. The viewer is left to determine how much interaction between student and teacher is reflected in their artistic choices
and how the places they lived and the careers they chose visibly impacted how they painted their topographies.
Variations on a Scene will be on view from October 3 through November 2 at the Hazel Modella Art Gallery at 721 S. Main Street in Stillwater. Please visit modellaartgallery.org for more details.
KATE BATTERSHELL currently works as the development assistant at 1515 Lincoln Gallery and manages the works of artist Dean Bloodgood. She recently graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Multidisciplinary Studies of the Humanities from Oklahoma State University, which now displays one of her fiber arts pieces in its permanent collection. Her most recent series of fiber art tapestries will be shown in an exhibition in OSU’s Orange Wall Gallery this fall.
Sydney Brown, Trees at Sunset, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 14” x 11”
Sydney Brown, Shadow Play, 2024, hand-cut paper, 11” x 15”
INTERMEDIA – A BOOK AND ITS COVER // ENVISIONING THE BRIDGE INSIDE
Frequent Art Focus contributor Ryann Bee Gordon recently spoke with me about her 2023 novel The Bridge Inside: A Dreamscape About Trauma and Self-Healing. Since it’s somewhat rare for writers to design their own book covers, I was interested in her process of realizing one of her novel’s central images to represent the book as a whole. – JS
So what is the novel about?
The Bridge Inside is a novel about psychedelic therapy for PTSD. It focuses on journey of the main character, Cara Lindberg, as she struggles with PTSD and pursues MDMA therapy treatment, which has shown the highest success rates of any PTSD therapy to date.
To overcome our past trauma, we have to confront it and find some way to accept the past and become stronger from what we’ve endured. I believe this book is a testimony that can reach those going through similar issues, or even vastly different issues, as diverse as trauma is in this world.
What about the literal bridge depicted on the book’s cover? Where is it, and why did you choose this one?
The bridge on the cover is described and revisited often in the book as the location where the main character’s most significant trauma and PTSD all began. I describe in detail the red truss bridge where the event occurs as the main character revisits it in her dreams, unable to put the pieces of the memory together. Throughout the novel, it’s unmissable and unforgettable as it plagues the main character’s mind as a location of great distress.
While the bridge in the book is over part of Lake Eufaula, the bridge on the cover is one I grew up visiting in Catoosa, Oklahoma—Cry Baby Bridge. It’s one of those old, rusty, and relatively unsafe country bridges over a backwoods creek that draws a perfect picture of the Eastern Oklahoma landscape.
What was your process like in adapting this bridge for your cover art?
At the time, I was living in Dallas, far from any of the bridges I knew that fit the description of the one in the book. My mom was still living in Tulsa, where I grew up, so I sent her to work. She went out and photographed several bridges that fit the description I gave her. I remember her texting me, “I would’ve gotten a picture from underneath of this one, but there was a massive bag that looked like a body bag so I didn’t go down.” But, lo and behold, she got the shot!
Once I had the image selected, I used an application to convert it to look like a painting. I wanted it to be a kind of trippy, psychedelic painting. Then I began researching standards for book covers —genre-centric fonts, font colors, word placement, etc. With a moderate amount of graphic design experience, I still had to do a fair amount of research to put together the lettering and design of the cover.
What about your own journey while writing this novel?
This book was inspired by my papa who had PTSD from being a POW in the Vietnam War. I never knew he had PTSD growing up because, for whatever reason, he always was able to talk to me about what happened over there. He’d come speak to my schools, and I always thought he was the biggest gangster out there.
After learning about that, it was about 2017 or so I read an article in Vanity Fair about MDMA therapy for PTSD. The article followed a woman who experienced great tragedy, and it painted a picture of MDMA therapy that was inspired and beautiful. This woman explained her experience as an out-of-body, very ethereal kind of trip. She essentially left her physical self and entered a sort of dream world where she revisited the experiences that had left her scarred and then re-envisioned them in a very grateful and accepting light. It was settling for her and deeply moving to me to read about her replacing such terrible memories with gratitude and beauty. She described her therapy sessions in stunning and otherworldly images, like she’d seen a glimpse of heaven, that brought her peace. That imagery is what directed my entire novel.
You can learn more about, as well as purchase, Gordon’s novel The Bridge Inside: A Dreamscape About Trauma and Self-Healing on Amazon, where you can also read a short excerpt.
RYANN BEE GORDON lives in Tulsa. In addition to her novel The Bridge Inside, she hosts the podcast What Daddy Doesn’t Know and contributes creative writing, journalism, copywriting, and design for leading periodicals in Oklahoma and Texas. After attending the University of Oklahoma, she began writing for publications such as the Dallas Observer, Preview Magazine, and Katy Trail Weekly, where she represents the face of the “Uptown Girl” column.
The Bridge Inside author Gordon treated the original photo taken by Kimberly Blackwell (upper left), with a digital application to eventually arrive at the cover for the hardcover edition.
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