Oklahoma City’s rite of spring, The Festival of the Arts, is a community celebration of the visual arts, performing arts, and culinary arts. In this video, I share stories from patrons of the festival to share a community point of view on the popular art festival. This video does use some clips from my documentary, Inviting Art, and includes some parts that didn’t make it in the film.
Festival of the Arts is home to over 100 artists with media forms that include oils, water, drawing and printmaking, photography, clay, glass, sculpture, fiber, jewelry, wood, leather, and two and three-dimensional works. Throughout the festival, the artists will be there personally to answers your questions and discuss their work.
From appetizers to desserts, the Festival is a celebration of the culinary arts as well! Various vendors bring their specialties to the International Food Row and throughout the grounds. Each food vendor is partnered with a local arts organization, so each bite you take supports the arts in central Oklahoma!
The 2018 Festival of the Arts will take place April 24-29.
If you love making art a destination in your travels, then check out my new series, Colorful Escapes!
Get to know the French Chinese restaurant, Kwan’s Kitchen, in Oklahoma City. Mary Jia, Pak Kwan Keong, Zhander P’ng, Donald Kerr, Taylor Gilstrap, and Kim He all explain why you don’t need your passport – just an appetite – to come visit.
This is a unique feature piece for Uncovering Oklahoma for two reasons. First, it features six interviews talking about one place, which in the past the most I’ve had was three people. Second, it’s the first time I did an interview not in English. I had to come up with a solution on the spot, so Zhander translated for me and afterward, provided a dub of the lines in English. I edited the video NPR style where the first few words were in Cantonese and it crossfades into English.
If you haven’t already, please go visit my new series, Colorful Escapes. There are some exciting new rewards for backers.
The women artists of Oklahoma group, Fringe, will have a new gallery space at Verbode, a residential real estate brokerage located on Automobile Alley in downtown Oklahoma City. Verbode will host quarterly art shows over the next year highlighting the work of Fringe member artists. The collaboration between Verbode and Fringe makes local art accessible to a broader audience.
Verbode is hosting the first show, Chromatic Ritual, until June 1, and features the work of Sarah Day-Short, Debra Ashley, and Alexis Austin. Sarah Day-Short is a mixed media abstract artist specializing in highly saturated, colorful acrylic paintings with metallic elements. Debra Ashley layers glass to create simple, elegant forms with contrasting dimensions of color and light. Alexis Austin paints on different types of textiles, resulting in intriguing, textural artwork.
Fringe is a collective of professional women artists in Oklahoma working in a variety of media and styles. Fringe members nurture and empower one another while gaining visibility and creating opportunities for women artists.
Fringe artists will donate a portion of all art sales from all four shows to The Homeless Alliance. The gallery events are made possible by the generous support from Citizens Bank of Edmond.
Verbode is located at 415 North Broadway, Suite 101 in Oklahoma City, in the TAP Architecture Building. Chromatic Ritual opens March 29, 2018, and closes June 1, 2018. Visitors can view the show Monday through Friday from 9 am to 5 pm. For more information about Fringe and its member artists, visit fringeok.com. For more information about Verbode, visit verbodegroup.com.
Three American Indian painters will have their award-winning art on display at Exhibit C in Bricktown from March 1 through June 30, 2018. The show, titled “Transitions,” will feature the unique styles of artists Yatika Starr Fields, Hoka Skenadore, and Josh Johnico.
In this Artist Statement Minute for Uncovering Oklahoma, Hoka Skenadore talks about his work at Exhibit C.
Each artist has a background in graffiti and street art and has recently transitioned their careers to focus on fine art. Through their creations, they celebrate Native American culture and test the boundaries of traditional art to make it their own.
“Displaying the talents of these street artists, who turned to fine art, is one way Exhibit C provides a Native American experience to visitors and locals alike,” said Paige Williams Shepherd, director of corporate development and tourism for the Chickasaw Nation.
Yatika Starr Fields, recently named a Tulsa Art Fellow, paints murals across the world. While attending the Art Institute of Boston, he became interested in graffiti aesthetic and landscape painting, which inspires his current works. The swirling patterns of his canvasses and murals are filled with movement and vibrant colors. Fields said his work is meant to “influence viewers to rethink and reshape their relationships to the world around them.”
For the last decade, Fields lived on the east coast, as well as in Seattle, where the energy of urban life inspired and fed the creative force behind his artwork. Now, Fields lives and works in Tulsa in conjunction with the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.
Hoka Skenadore said he grew up in a home where he learned to appreciate traditional Native American art alongside fine art. On his own, he embraced the D.I.Y. ethos of punk rock and hip-hop culture and painted graffiti art. Skenadore currently lives in Norman and is building off his bachelor of fine arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to pursue a master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma.
With a background in graffiti, murals, painting, and printmaking, Skenadore said his work is a vehicle for creating a less rigid definition of “Native Art” and its potentialities. Through his art, Skenadore said he aims to “bridge the gaps between the gallery, the gutter and everything in between.”
Josh Johnico brings a unique take on contemporary art, painting mostly on canvas. Although Johnico has been creative for as long as he can remember, he said taking art classes at a community college restarted his passion for painting and Native art.
Through his paintings, Johnico said he works to give concepts new life, sometimes painting his own version of old black and white photos.
“I look at Native art as a way to keep Native American history alive, while presenting the culture in a new way,” Johnico said.
Each painter creates through their lens of Native American culture, history and personal experiences. Shepherd said, “Visitors to Exhibit C can experience how the artists’ unique viewpoints contribute to interesting and expressive paintings.”
The Exhibit C art gallery and cultural experience is located in Oklahoma City’s Bricktown. Exhibit C’s art gallery displays works of several artists from the Chickasaw and southeastern tribes and continues the vision of raising awareness of the many cultural and entertainment experiences in Oklahoma set forth by Chickasaw Nation Governor, Bill Anoatubby. Exhibit C is open daily from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. at 1 E. Sheridan, Bricktown. All items located in the Exhibit C art gallery and retail space are for purchase.
I teamed up Kayla Coffey and Anna Farha from Localites OKC; Taylor Lawrence and Tabbi Burwell from Visit OKC on a pub crawl of the Deep Deuce District to show that the area is more than just apartments by visiting its unique bars and restaurants. In this crawl, we visited Urban Johnnies, Anchor Down, Aloft Hotel’s WXYZ Bar, Stag Lounge, and the Deep Deuce Grill. Not only did we learn about each place, but we got history lessons about cocktails and the district.
If you don’t have time to watch the entire pub crawl, the video has been broken down into individual segments as well.
This was a fun project! I wanted to do something different from my Uptown 23rd Pub Crawl and this time around, my video was more interview focused. The wireless mic setup worked well! It was the first video where I got to do this sound setup.
The next time I do a crawl video, I’m going to schedule more time at places as we were cutting it close and I didn’t get as much b-roll footage that I wanted. I’m thinking the next district might be either Midtown or Downtown later in the summer.
