ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
ART AROUND TOWN
PAINTS LIKE LIGHTNING Artist continues her family’s creative legacy through a Japanese technique. BY LAURA DENNIS
PIECE: “TRACE” at the Center of the Universe in the Brady Arts District. It is the second art installment by the Urban Core Art Project Initiative, a nonprofit established to bring temporary, siteinspired art to public spaces in Tulsa.
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TulsaPeople DECEMBER 2016
BRAINS BEHIND THE BRIGHT IDEA: Geoffrey Hicks and Grace Grothaus Grimm created the LED brick walkway in May to surprise passersby and give them a moment of joy.
Shawn Wilson practices the art of sumi-é.
the paintbrush is loaded, the painter can achieve variations in tonality, stroke width and shading with the use of different pressure points. “It is absolutely meditational,” Wilson says. “You have to paint like lighting because you’re painting with rice paper, which is so porous, it’s like painting on toilet paper.” In the early 2000s, Wilson brought her love of sumi-é back to Tulsa. Her work is on display locally at the Joseph Gierek Gallery, but Wilson aspires to do more. “I hope to get a commission of some kind,” she says. “That would be my dream: a nice big commission.” TP
HOW THEY DID IT: Each LED paver is individually cast in resin, containing circuitry and software created by the artists through a nearly yearlong collaboration from inception to fabrication. The bricks charge daily via solar panels and light up at dusk. “When stepped on, the bricks illuminate a brilliant blue to visitors,” Grothaus Grimm says. “Moments later they echo blue again, capturing the movements of pedestrians — a fleeting visual record of those who walked the path moments before.” THEIR VISION: It was created as a contribution to Tulsa’s revitalization and economic development by bringing whimsical beauty to a public space while engaging people to rethink their surroundings in a fresh way. SEE IT BEFORE IT’S GONE: “TRACE” will be removed in summer 2017. — EMERALD DEAN
SHAWN WILSON: VALERIE GRANT; TRACE: GRACE GROTHAUS GRIMM
reative talent runs in the family for professional painter Shawn Wilson. As the niece of renowned artist Charles Banks Wilson and daughter and granddaughter of successful jazz horn players, it’s no revelation the Miami, Oklahoma, native took an early interest in the arts. She recalls her uncle’s influence on her passion to paint as a young teen. “He had a wonderful studio above the Wilson paint store,” Wilson reminisces of her grandparents’ shop in Miami, Oklahoma. “He showed me all about stretching and preparing canvas, and he was always ready to answer my questions.” After high school, Wilson moved to New York City to pursue a career in fine art. She found work with Time Magazine in the graphics department and had her first big break when the New Yorker purchased several of her pen-to-ink drawings. But she says what “really set her on fire” was discovering sumi-é, a Japanese ink brush technique that is at least 2,000 years old. Wilson describes sumi-é as a subtle, minimalist art form — much like a martial art with a brush. The craft requires an ink stone, ink stick, a paintbrush and rice paper. While the ink stone holds a well for mixing, the ink stick is used to repetitively grind until a desired ink concentration is reached. Paintbrush bristles are thick at the base and gradually taper to a fine point, so once