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MAINSITE Contemporary Art: Home of the Norman Arts Council is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition H2OK: Native Responses to Water Issues in Oklahoma along with the NAC Featured Artist, Heather Clark Hilliard.

Exhibition Dates: February 10 – March 10, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday, February 10th, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. Closing Reception: Friday, March 9th, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Gallery Hours of Operation: 11:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Tuesday – Saturday and by appointment

H2OK: Native Responses to Water Issues in Oklahoma

Artists from across Oklahoma’s diverse tribal landscape are participating in H2OK: Native Response to Water Issues in Oklahoma, a group art show opening in Norman, Oklahoma and traveling to Muskogee, Oklahoma. The show will open at MAINSITE Contemporary Art: Home of the Norman Arts Council, 122 E. Main Street, Norman, from February 10 – March 10, 2012. The exhibition will then travel to Bacone College’s Art Gallery in the McCombs Hall Art Building, 2299 Old Bacone Road, Muskogee, and be on view from April 6 – May 13, 2012.

The artists will express cultural attitudes to water in all of its forms, such as rivers, oceans, rain, and drinking water, environmental aspects of water; confront political realities of our dwindling water supplies; or the aesthetics of water within their culture practices.  Organized around this broad theme, artists are working in media ranging from underwater photography, to digital art, sculpture, printmaking, painting, and installation. All the artists are either living in Oklahoma or are affiliated with at least one of Oklahoma’s 39 tribes.

America Meredith, heather ahtone, and Tony Tiger are curating this exhibit as a way to address the state’s recent floods, drought, and the role that water plays within cultural traditions for many of the local tribes.  Their curatorial statement says: “In the last few years, while gas prices have skyrocketed and the discussion about renewable energy, especially wind, have been thrown around as political ballyhoo, critical water issues have been rising like the slow moving floods of the Mississippi River… We conceive of this exhibition as an opportunity to serve as a conduit through which dialogue and creativity might flow through our community.”  In addition to the exhibition, community members have been invited to engage in a dialogue held at the MAINSITE exhibit location that will address issues of water from a diverse spectrum of perspectives.

Participating artists include: Norman Akers, Marwin Begaye, Roy Boney Jr., Joseph Erb, Anita Fields, Tom Fields, Yatika Fields, Sue Fish, Brent Greenwood, Sam Atakra Haozous, Troy Jackson, Matt Jarvis, Linda Lomahaftewa, Bob Martin, America Meredith, Molly Murphy, Juanita Pahdopony, Tom Poolaw, and Tony Tiger.

MAINSITE Contemporary Art, a non-profit gallery operated by the Norman Arts Council, is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 11:30 am to 5:00 pm. Their phone number is (405) 360-1162. The Bacone Arts Gallery is located on the second floor of the McCombs Hall Art Building and is open during school hours. Bacone College has the oldest continuing Native American arts program in the country and can be reached at (918) 822-1402.

For more information about the project, please visit the art show’s website at www.ahalenia.com/h2ok. For more information on MAINSITE Contemporary Art, visit www.mainsite-art.com. For more information on the Norman Arts Council, visit www.normanarts.org.

NAC Featured Artist: Heather Clark Hilliard By Sarah Jesse

The exhibition Lines of Language/Language of Lines features the recent fiber works of Heather Clark Hilliard.  As the title hints, the objects explore a connection between visual and linguistic communication. To Hilliard, stitches represent words, just as rows of them signify sentences.  She also refers to the format of each work as a scroll.  In Hilliard’s alphabet though, hatch marks of wire and knots of wool replace letters as tools to send messages. The exhibition documents Hilliard’s investigation of this metaphor and invites the viewer to consider how the artist communicates meaning beyond language.

Through complex processes of spinning, knitting, stitching, felting and weaving, Hilliard creates deceivingly uncomplicated works that reward a viewer’s careful examination.  Up close, reclaimed telephone wire and industrial iron coils contrast with the delicacy of the yarn in which they are entwined.  The handmade quality of the work is palpable, as no two openings in the loose knit patterns look exactly alike.  Rich textures and subtle gradations of color also come into focus. In turn, the viewer becomes aware of the artist as an alchemist who exploits the properties of natural and botanical dyes for aesthetic gain.

Beyond a rich formal appreciation of the work is Hilliard’s more conceptual aim—communication through the manipulation of materials. In Drop It, she connotes the idea of miscommunication or lack thereof by literally dropping stitches. As a result, large swathes of the nylon ribbon seem precariously on the verge of completely unraveling with one touch.  Through her treatment of the material, Hilliard offers a visual symbol for the consequences of obstructing information.

The work is not totally absent of text in the more traditional sense though. The site-specific project What You Get When I Am Gone consists of Hilliard’s will, which she wrote onto white satin ribbon that was then cut into pieces, folded over yarn and stitched into long strips. In Archives Scroll #7 Hilliard rips pages of old diaries and hand weaves them into long tassels.  While the viewer may discern bits and pieces of the text, the overall meaning is obscured and without context.  By abstracting and concealing the original sources, Hilliard infuses universality in objects of obvious personal significance.

There is an undeniable intimacy to the work—both in terms of the personal content, and the sheer time-consuming processes of creating each object by hand.  But the work transcends the specificity of Hilliard’s biography and instead examines more general ideas related to communication.

Heather Clark Hilliard is a Norman-based artist.  She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and Northern New Mexico College.  Her work has been exhibited at Living Arts of Tulsa, Wichita Center or the Arts, and the Individual Artists of Oklahoma Gallery.  She has won many awards including prizes from the Textile Society of America and the Handweavers Guild of America ]]> http://mainsite-art.com/2012/01/h2ok-native-responses-to-water-issues-in-oklahoma-with-nac-individual-artist-heather-clark-hilliard-%e2%80%93-feb-10-%e2%80%93-mar-10-2012/feed/ 0 http://mainsite-art.com/2012/01/h2ok-native-responses-to-water-issues-in-oklahoma-with-nac-individual-artist-heather-clark-hilliard-%e2%80%93-feb-10-mar-10-2012-5/ http://mainsite-art.com/2012/01/h2ok-native-responses-to-water-issues-in-oklahoma-with-nac-individual-artist-heather-clark-hilliard-%e2%80%93-feb-10-mar-10-2012-5/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:09:18 +0000 mainsite-admin http://mainsite-art.com/?p=539 2nd Friday Event: Opening Reception February 10, 2012 from 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Exhibition Dates: February 10 – March 10, 2012
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday from 11:30am – 5:00pm

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MAINSITE Contemporary Art: Home of the Norman Arts Council is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of the 2011 Emerging Artists Show along with the winning images from the Downtown Norman Photo Month Contest and the second NAC Featured Artist, Tünde Darvay.

Exhibition Dates: December 9, 2011 – January 21, 2012

Opening Reception: Friday, December 9th, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. Closing Reception: Friday, January 21st, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Gallery Hours of Operation: 11:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Tuesday – Saturday and by appointment

Olen Cook: Olen Edward Cook III, 24, graduated from East Central University in 2010 with a B.S. in Mass Communications. He currently lives in Lone Grove, Oklahoma.

His body of work involves extracting a section of an object and taking it out of its environment. These objects have a significant connection with an occurrence that is mutually shared with him. Extracting these sections is taking a piece of every occurrence away from the original object. This originated from thoughts about how objects can influence situations.

Trisha Thompson-Adams: Trisha Thompson-Adams graduated from Oklahoma State University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking and watercolor. Trisha has been selected for inclusion in several regional juried exhibitions, including Biting the Apple at IAO in OKC and Momentum at Living Arts in Tulsa. In 2009 she won the purchase award for Oklahoma State University’s Research Week. She was recently accepted into In Shades of Gray, a monochromatic juried exhibition in LaCrosse, WI.

Her show Dreams and Curious Things is described by the artist, “Dreams and Curious Things is based on dreams that I have dreamt within the past two years. I view this series as visual documentation of my dreams, which makes me view each piece almost in a scientific manner.  Since I’m documenting my dreams the science aspect became an important aesthetic decision.  Most of the work in this series documents vivid dreams that wake me in the middle of the night. Because of this, I often feel confused when I wake up and have to reevaluate my surroundings.  I use images of teeth as a motif in several pieces because when my dreams wake me, my teeth are tightly clenched.  My dreams have always been more on the strange and curious side, and to quote M.C. Escher, “I don’t use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.”

May Yang: May Yang is a Tulsa based artist and designer. She works primarily with printmaking techniques to produce work that explores her cultural background as well as the environment around her. May graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008 focusing on graphic design and printmaking. While there, she interned for Dolphin Press & Print, the school’s print workshop. Continuing her interest in collaborative printmaking, May attended the Tamarind Institute of Lithography in Albuquerque, New Mexico. May is currently (and constantly) working on new artwork.

Yang describes her art, “As a first generation Asian-American, cultural identity has played an important role in my life and work. Growing up in the Midwest, I often felt as if I was not a part of either culture – too American to be Asian and too Asian to be American. The process of printmaking has been significant in this realization of my ideas and experiences. The versatility of the different printmaking mediums lend themselves well to portraying the dichotomy of the two cultures within which I live. Family photographs are treated with a delicate touch whereas English text & letterforms receive a bold treatment, often using bright, eye-catching colors. It is with an experimental nature that I continue my inquiry of my family history.”

Joshua Peck: Born and raised in small towns across eastern Oklahoma, I returned to Tulsa in 2005. Before and after college at the University of Oklahoma, I lived in London, Budapest, Seattle, New York City and Seattle for a second stint.  Peck currently lives in Los Angeles.

Dead Cinema is a series of color photographs that attempt to link the bittersweet remembrance of what once was by exposing the harsh, unforgiving neglect of a beloved cultural institution: the movie theatre.

Theatres of yesterday had marquees lit in vibrant, glowing, buzzing neon. Dead Cinema attempts to shed new light on these slowly dying architectural gems as they have been invisible too long. By exposing the damage to the theatres by ravages of time, the misuse of the structures and the sad beauty these theaters still possess, I hope to suggest that we’ve turned our back on something better.

I work only with analogue film cameras. Film has an immediacy and warmth of tone that I still believe in. All images in Dead Cinema utilize Kodak Ektar 100 film and were taken by a Hasselblad 500 C/M medium format camera. There is no cropping or digital manipulation in any of the images.

Jesse Whittle: Jesse Whittle is from Tulsa. He received his BA from St. Gregory’s University in Studio Art. He has won several awards, including a purchase award at the Young New Collectable Artist show at the JRB art at the Elms gallery. Jesse previous work experience includes the ArtReach program at Philbrook Museum of Art. Currently, Jesse teaches 6^th 7^th and 8^th grade art at Mannford middle school.

Jesse has exhibited at a number of group shows around the state, particularly in Tulsa and Oklahoma City Most recently Jesse has been a featured artist at Istvan Gallery in OKC. Whittles work is abstract in form, employs exuberant strokes and color, but some of the excitement of his work is in what lies beneath. According to the artist, “My work is about fragments, things left behind or discarded. During my painting process I emphasis color by adding and subtracting layers. I use an electric sander to expose previous layers. I experiment with composition by scratching; sanding and removing layers.”

The Downtown Norman Photo Contest

This past summer, the City of Norman Planning Department and the Norman Arts Council joined forces to bring recognition to the City’s efforts to expand the area of downtown Norman that is part of the National Historic Register. That led to the idea of a community-wide photo contest. The photo contest was simple: open to all and take photos of downtown Norman in the month of October 2011.

October Photo Month kicked off with Norman’s participation in the World Wide Photo Walk on October 2, 2011. This annual event saw 1,118 communities around the world participate, with 28,000 people all taking photos of their towns on the same day.

This exhibit features the twenty winning photographs from October Photo Month. These were selected out of the 67 entries received. The winners include: Gayle L. Barrett, Jennifer Burnes, Butch Enterline, Harolda Gibson, David Jeffries, Marvin Lee, Sam Scott, Bob Stovall, Dianna Wilson, and Jerry Worster.

October Photo Month was just one of many community arts activities that took place in that month. Due to the overwhelming participation by the artists, arts organizations, and community members in these events and programs, October was officially declared Arts and Humanities Month in Norman, thanks to a proclamation by Mayor Cindy Rosenthal earlier this year.

NAC Featured Artist: Tünde Darvay

Romanian-born artist Tünde Darvay’s exuberant paintings on wood explore the absence of human contact in contemporary daily life. Whether it is because of an increase in crime and terrorism or our reliance on vehicles and digital media, Darvay posits that people in the United States generally avoid physical contact with each other. Except for forced interaction within the confines of public transportation or an accidental elbow on a busy street, it seems true that for most Americans, avoiding human touch outside of friends and family is desirable.

As Darvay exposes, perhaps nowhere is the impersonal “don’t touch” environment more exaggerated than the context of a gallery where getting too close to an artwork could mean triggering an alarm. Darvay doesn’t just mourn the void of physical human interaction in everyday life and museum environments; she challenges it by asking visitors to actually touch her paintings.  By encouraging the use of touch to perceive and understand her artwork, Darvay aims to subvert the primacy of vision in Western art history. In turn, she calls attention to the sterility of an existence devoid of touch.

Sight has long been emphasized in Western art history as the primary means for both producing and appreciating art.  It is an idea with roots in Aristotle’s writings, in which he describes vision as the most intellectual of the senses and touch as the least.  Darvay’s background growing up in Transylvania, coupled with her experiences living in the United States, gives her a broader perspective that allows her to expand the traditional notion of perception as occurring solely through the act of seeing.

To reward the sense of touch, Darvay exploits the qualities of each irregular wood shape that form the surface of the paintings. She carefully selects, cuts, carves and prepares each wood piece, frequently leaving imperfections and exposing the pattern of the grain.  Often these attributes become part of the narrative, as in The Bike Ride, in which the grain, knots and holes evoke the rough surface of the bicycle’s path. For added texture, Darvay coats the wood with modeling paste and adds staples, cardboard, gold leaf and buttons.

Darvay’s background also gives her the freedom to eschew Western notions of proportion and perspective with an aesthetic that is reminiscent of folk art.  This deliberately “naïve” style imbues her work with a warm, handmade quality. Darvay makes no effort to depict figures in a naturalistic way.  Skin can be painted green, and hair can be purple.  Limbs are elongated in Modigliani-like proportions and depth is mostly communicated by stacking as opposed to linear perspective.  In Romeo and Juliet, a table is rendered with four legs jutting out from all sides, and a paintbrush holder meant to rest on top actually spans beyond the table surface.

Emotion, feeling, touch and sensation trump the laws of formalism in this work.  As a result, Darvay exposes the limits of perception as experienced only through the act of looking.

Tünde Darvay is a Romanian-born artist based in Norman, Oklahoma.  She received a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the University of Fine Arts in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.  After living in Transylvania, Darvay moved to Oklahoma in 2004 and became a permanent resident in 2007.

MAINSITE Contemporary Art: Home of the Norman Arts Council is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of work by Marilyn Artus and John Hadley. These two influential artists use personal experiences as inspiration for their work.

Exhibition Dates: October 14th, 2011 – November 19th, 2011

Opening Reception: Friday, October 14th, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. | Closing Reception: Friday, November 11th, 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Gallery Hours of Operation: 11:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Tuesday – Saturday and by appointment

MARILYN ARTUS hails from a long line of female needle and cloth artists. She infuses this history into her own art by embroidering her canvases that tell stories about the interaction between religion, femininity and mass media.

Graduating with a BFA from the University of Oklahoma in 1991, ARTUS began her career as a designer for United Design Corporation and Relevant Products. In 2004, she co-founded the Girlie Show, a two-day annual all-female art and craft show in Oklahoma City. After creating the Girlie show, she founded the Oklahoma City branch of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School where she serves as headmistress today.

Artus describes her work as “Neo-pop and desires to share with her audience her explorations into the American culture and the expectations that are ever present for women.” Her process involves designing and printing her own canvas and then through a mixture of painting, drawing and embroidering she renders feminine figures. She hopes that by combining feminine images with traditionally feminine skills like embroidery she can “define what it means to be a woman, define an a

spect of the female persona and show how female experiences are unique from most men’s.”

JOHN HADLEY is inspired by music, family, and words in both his songwriting and visual art. The influences of his family and his experiences in the music industry can be seen throughout his work. He uses his work to tell stories about music, words, his wife Judy, their four children and three grandchildren, utilizing both his own imagery and imagery created by family and friends. Not only is his family an inspirational part of his art they are active participants as they contribute to his series of collaborative drawings.

Hadley is a former professor of art at the University of Oklahoma where he taught from 1965 to 1987. Living between Norman and Nashville, Hadley has long been known as an award-winning songwriter for world-famous musicians. Beginning work with the Smothers Brothers in California and then signing on with Sony Music, Hadley has to date written nearly 1,000 songs and has had over 18 million copies of his songs sold worldwide.

Hadley’s experiences in the music industry and his passion for family allow him to give his work a more personal feeling. The family stories that he shares are witty, sentimental and inviting. As you look at the work you become a part of his family for a brief moment.

Artists who have recorded songs either written or co-written by Hadley include Waylon Jennings, Roger Miller, Garth Brooks, The Dixie Chicks, John Hiatt, Joe Cocker, Trisha Yearwood, Wynonna, Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy, George Jones, George Burns, Dean Martin, Jerry Reed, T. Graham Brown, Tim O’Brien, David Olney and Sergio Webb, Gary Nicholson and Asleep at the Wheel, Jools Holland (formerly of “Squeeze”) Bobby Bare, Moe Bandy, Del Reeves, Sammi Smith, Byron Berline and “California, Country Gazette, The Maines Brothers Band, The Bama Band (Hank Williams Jr.’s) band, and many others.

During the opening reception on October 14, 2011, a selection of Hadley’s songs will be played.

Also included in the exhibit will be an exhibit by Tara Najd Ahmadi, the first of six featured artists. The Norman Arts Council introduced the Individual Artists Awards this year. Exhibits will be on display in the MAINSITE Contemporary Art library between October 2011 and June 2012. One of the featured artists will be a Norman high school senior. The selected artists will each receive a $600 honorarium for their project to be paid at the conclusion of the exhibit.

Ahmadi states that “place has always been one of the main themes of artists who have moved and been displaced. Immigrants as growing groups of people, who don’t own any place and constantly move through different borders, form a sort of resistance – a  resistance against the geopolitical rules that shape borders, maps and countries. Immigrants carry the images and memories of different places and juxtapose and adapt them to the pictures of the actual places that they live in. I am interested in working in the intersection of memory and place by creating imaginary maps based on actual places. The idea is influenced by Guy Debord’s texts on moving cities that are in perpetual construction and deconstruction.”

The exhibit will consist of six silkscreen prints on 20 x 20 inch pieces of paper, which form historic maps. The imagery will be representative of two places that Ahmadi has lived and collected photos: Tehran, Iran and Norman, Oklahoma. Both Tehran and Norman are built around railroads and contain a lot of abandoned empty buildings. Life in both of these places has a slower pace than most urbanized areas. Each of the maps will have its own time and narrative from places that are identical and special to her. The images are composed of silkscreen prints of photos and faces and drawings.

For more information on MAINSITE Contemporary Art or the Norman Arts Council, visit www.mainsite-art.com or www.normanarts.org.

2nd Friday Event: Opening Reception August 12, 2011 from 6:00pm – 9:00pm
Exhibition Dates: August 12 – September 24, 2011
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday from 11:30am – 5:00pm

The Norman Arts Council invites all to MAINSITE Contemporary Art for The Inventory Show: A Special Selection of the Artists of MAINSITE Contemporary Art on August 12, 2011 from 6:00 – 9:00 pm.

MAINSITE Contemporary Art has become the new home of the Norman Arts Council. The gallery maintains its vision and purpose as a contemporary art leader in the region, while also providing a multitude of opportunities for the NAC, Norman artists, and arts organizations.

The Inventory Show provides a special opportunity to display works that are in the inventory at the gallery. Artists who have shown at MAINSITE Contemporary Art in the past will often leave pieces of their work behind for the gallery to sell after the exhibit has been taken down. Art buyers are welcome at any time to make an appointment to view or purchase the work.

Artists who have work in the MAINSITE Contemporary Art gallery inventory include Tom Toperzer, Steven Heyman, Alan Atkinson, Dylan Bradway, Carol Beesley, Skip Hill, Haze Diedrich, O. Gail Poole, Nigel Conway, Michelle Martin Coyne, Paul Mays, Richard McKown, and many others.

The NAC is continuously developing events with the Norman Studio Artists Association, SongWriters Association Norman, and Cinematic Artists of Norman as well as coordinating the popular 2nd Friday Circuit of Art. In addition, new programs are in in the works, including the creation of an Individual Artist Award, lecture series, and developing educational aspects of the gallery with work study opportunities, internships, and access to the gallery library. Throughout this, the NAC will operate MAINSITE Contemporary Art gallery and it will continue to function as a space to promote and sell artists’ work.

In nearly all cases, galleries are different than museums in that their purpose is to display and sell work. Even though the NAC has moved into the space, the walls of MAINSITE Contemporary Art are no different. Shows in the space will still feature art that can be purchased by the public. Additionally, the artists selected for the NAC Individual Artists Award will have at least 30% of the work for sale.

One key difference in the change from MAINSITE Contemporary Art as a for-profit business to MAINSITE Contemporary Art: Home of the Norman Arts Council, a non-profit arts organization, is that the commission taken by the gallery has dropped significantly. Prior to the NAC moving in, the proceeds from work sold was split 50% to the artist and 50% to the gallery. The NAC has changed that to 70% to the artist and 30% to the gallery. The 30% will provide the NAC with funds to maintain the gallery and create programs beyond what the budget currently allows.

The goal of the change in commission, as well as the other programs and events at the gallery, is to take an additional step to support the artists of MAINSITE Contemporary Art and Norman, as well as provide a venue for arts in Norman.

For more information on the MAINSITE Contemporary Art gallery, Norman Arts Council, or its events, please contact us at www.normanarts.org or 405-360-1162.