Art 365 - 2014 - Exhibition Catalog

A YEAR OF INNOVATION BY OKL AHOMA ARTISTS

A YE AR OF INNOVATION BY OKL AHOMA ARTISTS

The Art 365 exhibition epitomizes the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s

commitment to support artists living and working in our state. The

artists created new projects over the past year with awards of $12,000

each and critical feedback working with the guest curator.

FEBRUARY 28 - MAY 10, 2014[ARTSPACE] AT UNTITLED, OKLAHOMA CIT Y, OK

MAY 23 - AUGUST 9, 2014HARDESTY ARTS CENTER, TULSA, OK

CURATED BY RAECHELL SMITH

ESSAYS BY TIFFANY BARBER, THERESA BEMBNISTER, ALISON HEARST, CORY IMIG + LOUISE SIDDONS

A RT 3 6 5 . O R G

OK L A HOM A V I S UA L A R T S C O A L I T ION P RE SEN T S

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

ART 365 INTRODUCTION & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

JULIA KIRT // EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

CURATOR STATEMENT

RAECHELL SMITH // GUEST CURATOR, ART 365

BRYAN COOK // GIVE NATURE TIME

ARTIST STATEMENT + BIO

SUBLIMATION: THE LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY OF BRYAN COOK, LOUISE SIDDONS

BRYAN COOK IN CONVERSATION WITH RAECHELL SMITH

CATHLEEN FAUBERT // ACCORDS & DISCORDS


THE SCIENCE OF MAKING A PLACE A HOME, CORY IMIG

CATHLEEN FAUBERT IN CONVERSATION WITH RAECHELL SMITH

EYAKEM GULILAT // 11:00 AM


A VIEW FROM THE TOP: EYAKEM GULILAT’S 11:00 AM SERIES, TIFFANY BARBER

EYAKEM GULILAT IN CONVERSATION WITH RAECHELL SMITH

ALEXANDRA KNOX // EXODUS


ALEXANDRA KNOX AND THE PROBLEM OF THE THIRD GENERATION IMMIGRANT, THERESA BEMBNISTER

ALEXANDRA KNOX IN CONVERSATION WITH RAECHELL SMITH

ROMY OWENS // AN IMAGINED OTHERHOOD


A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN, ALISON HEARST

ROMY OWENS IN CONVERSATION WITH RAECHELL SMITH

OKLAHOMA VISUAL ARTS COALITION INFORMATION

ART 365 VENUES

ART 365 SPONSOR RECOGNITION & CATALOG CREDITS

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8

10-19

20-31

32-41

42-51

52-61

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65

66

Eyakem Gulilat, 11:00 am (Installation View at Artspace at Untitled Gallery)

Cathleen Faubert, Accords & Discords (Installation View at Artspace at Untitled Gallery)

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A R T 3 6 5 I N T R O D U C T I O N & A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

JULIA KIRT // EXECUTIVE DIREC TOR // OKL AHOMA VISUAL ARTS C OALITION

During one of the artist talks, Art 365 artist Bryan Cook described a harrowing experience during one of his expeditions

where he reached a mountain peak so treacherous he could not return the way he came. Fortunately, he found a way out.

This experience is called “cliffing out” by hikers.

Starting with the building blocks of artist support - space, funds, feedback and recognition - the Art 365 exhibition

built a supportive catalyst for five Oklahoma artists creating intrepid work. Over the course of one year, Bryan Cook,

Cathleen Faubert, Eyakem Gulilat, Alexandra Knox and Romy Owens developed their projects from basic proposals

to extensive bodies of artwork.

Guest curator Raechell Smith helped them follow their paths of inquiry and thoughtfully invited them into making

their best. Partner venues [Artspace] at Untitled in Oklahoma City and the Hardesty Arts Center in Tulsa helped

introduced the artwork to the public and offered educational programs to connect audiences to the artwork.

The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC) provided the infrastructure with $12,000 commissions for each artist

along with comprehensive technical, logistical and marketing assistance. Since OVAC is presenting the third iteration

of the triennial Art 365 project, visibility for the artists and project are higher than ever. All the practical, and even

ample, support system aside, the artists had to bravely challenge themselves far beyond their previous work.

Each artist committed thoroughly, recognized the responsibility of opportunity and capitalized thoroughly on the

support offered. These artists pushed their artistic practices forward in ways they cannot go back. Even if they would

not want to be so sensational in describing the process, they cliffed out. Thanks to the artists for magnifying the

project and for including us in this risky, valuable process.

We owe much appreciation to the sponsors who made this endeavor possible, especially major donors National

Endowment for the Arts, Oklahoma Arts Council, George Kaiser Family Foundation, Jean Ann Fausser, Ad Astra

Foundation and Allied Arts.

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C U R A T O R S T A T E M E N T

RAECHELL SMITH // GUEST CURATOR, ART 365

CHIEF CURATOR & FOUNDING DIRECTOR // H&R BLOCK ARTSPACE AT THE KANSAS CITY ART INSTITUTE

This year’s Art 365 introduces us to new and exciting artwork created by five artists who set out to challenge the vision and

scope of their artistic practice in a dynamic partnership with the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC).

A journey undertaken can assume many forms and the scale of its encounters can be grand or small. For this project, each

artist has embarked on a unique, adventurous journey.

While four of the artists traveled to regions both near and far to gather images, experiences, knowledge, and materials for

the works presented in the exhibition, all of the artists have made new discoveries and gained fresh perspectives.

While one artist’s inner quest to define a purposeful, creative life has been graciously transformed into an immersive

space for others to experience quiet communion and contemplation, they each have expanded the edges of their artistic

and personal realms in courageous ways.

One remarkable and common theme present throughout the exhibition is a deep interest in place. The artists give shape

to questions that help us understand how place informs our personal and cultural identity and how we sometimes gain

from it a sense of belonging, an understanding of home or notions of a homeland.

In photography and installations, the artists explore personal, familial, natural and cultural histories and ecologies as

they consider the many ways we can survey and understand place - a particular landscape - and our connection to it.

Over the course of the past year, these five creative practices have shifted and expanded to include new and innovative

approaches to thinking and making work.

With direct support from OVAC, each project has been generously shaped by inspiration, extraordinary vision, opportunity,

conversation, and the shared knowledge of many. From all accounts, it has been a journey well taken.

Romy Owens, An Imagined Otherhood, Red, Yellow, Orange, Pink, Brown, Natural, And Green Wool; Steel, Wood, 120” x 120” x 120”

(Installation View at Artspace at Untitled Gallery)

Bryan Cook, Jackson Lake, Grand Teton National Park, Pigment Print On Aluminum, 48” x 48”

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B R Y A N C O O K

G I V E N AT U R E T I M E

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S T A T E M E N T + B I O G R A P H Y

Give Nature Time

Wilderness offers an alternative to life sold to us as “connected.” We are connected via

phones, internet, and television to marketing, tasks, and every fleeting thought of strangers

and friends alike, all demanding our time. Connected to everything, we are connected to

nothing in particular.

Solitude in nature encourages a discovery of what is necessary through a richness of

experience, not materials. It is an experience offered to all people, rich or poor, gay or

straight, man or woman, black or white; a true democratizing experience. I find and connect

to myself in the cool waters and broad vistas of America’s protected lands through a naked

engagement with the natural world that is the heritage of all humanity. Being alone in

nature demands that I confront the land and myself at our most base levels. There are

no phones, no lifelines, and no distractions. It forces a sense of immediacy, intimacy, and

sometimes helplessness. The isolation presents a challenge separate from the physical,

and I am still exploring what it means to me.

As that solitude tests, it nurtures, and my relationship with the land deepens. These photos

are my love song to the wilderness that has given me so much, a glimpse into the romance

I have with the land. It is an exchange I urge you to seek out and discover for yourself by

giving nature your most precious resource: time.

Additional funding for this project provided by the Mid-America Arts Alliance.

Bryan Cook is a photographer with an interest in the preservation of the natural world. By

hiking into and photographing remote wilderness areas, he brings attention to the pristine

landscapes that still exist. His artwork has been exhibited in several juried exhibitions,

including Concept/OK at the Hardesty Arts Center in Tulsa, OK; Momentum Tulsa at Living

Arts in Tulsa, OK; Photo Fest on Paseo in Oklahoma City; and he was awarded an honorable

mention at Momentum OKC. He attended the University of Oklahoma where he studied

philosophy and history of science.

bryancookphoto.com

BRYAN C OOK

ARTIST STATEMENT

BIOGR APHY

Bryan Cook, West Ridge, Going-To-The-Sun Mountain, Pigment Print On Aluminum, 48” x 48”

Bryan Cook, Snowstorm, Tyndall Gorge, Pigment Print On Aluminum, 48” x 48”

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LOUISE SIDDONS

When I asked Bryan Cook how his photographs fit into the history of landscape photography, he said, “the work connects, but it does something different, too.” 1 An analogous equivocation is present in the photographs themselves. There are contradictions in any photograph that depicts a pristine wilderness, of course. Photographers working in this genre often want to leave us with a sense of unmediated presence—but the photograph’s very existence is an ineradicable trace of a human incursion into a landscape that we prefer to imagine unpopulated and undisturbed.

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible…is a source of the sublime. - Edmund Burke, 1757 2

On the most basic level, Cook’s photographs engage with a long history of sublime landscapes: beautiful, alien, hostile, exciting—but also “uncomfortable, difficult.” This tradition solidified our expectations for natural grandeur: large, horizontal canvases that trap tiny figures in spectacular, exotic landscapes. Terror produced more intense emotional responses than beauty, and so it was encouraged. In front of Cook’s photographs, too, the idea is to “get uncomfortable”—he wants to take us “beyond pretty.”

His photographs embrace the sublime—but they also refuse it. Working in black and white, and in extraordinarily muted color, he rejects an obvious source of drama. Cook’s square format and high contrast likewise reject generic conventions. But it is in the emptiness of his landscapes that we see the most significant shift away from the eighteenth-century sublime. The people depicted in landscape paintings stood in for the viewer and provided scale—but in so doing they also marked class, race, nationality, gender, age, and more. They socialized the painted image and made it sociable. In Cook’s photographs, people are absent—except for the one behind the camera.

The least change in our point of view gives the whole a pictorial air. … A low degree of sublime is felt from the fact [… that] whilst the world is a spectacle, something in himself is stable.- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836 3

In his essay, “Nature,” Emerson argued for the wilderness as a place where we might discover the divine in ourselves. This profoundly human-centric understanding of nature is echoed in Cook’s photographs. It’s a solitary emphasis: no longer a stage set for human interaction, the landscape becomes a place where the individual is the stable center of a world which is determined entirely by the view from that center. Photography was ideal for emphasizing this contingent perspective. Solitary viewers became privileged bodies endowed with the sense of power and control that Emerson explicitly identified with the sublime. Over the course of the nineteenth century, landscape photographers developed conventions that minimized their presence, inviting their audiences to experience private moments of transcendence.

Cook’s photographs, on the other hand, emphatically present each view from his perspective. The large scale of the work contributes to this effect, as does the constantly shifting horizon line. By presenting us with the unexpected—

SU BL IM AT ION: T HE L A ND S C A P E P H O T O G R A P H Y OF BRYA N C O OK

1 // All quotes from a private conversation with Bryan Cook, 3/9/14.

2 // Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757.

3 // Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836.

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

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in the form of a featureless white expanse, for example, or a startlingly high-contrast mountainside—he reminds us that he, the photographer, is in control of the image. They become less ‘mountain’ and more ‘picture’ through these manipulations; as Cook says simply, “There’s something about black and white that makes it less of a documentation and more of an interpretive experience.”

Solitude is central to Cook’s images, but the sublimely stable man at the center of the photographs is always Cook himself. Not that it’s any more comfortable than Burke’s terrifying sublime: after his initial sense of catharsis, Cook found the forced isolation of the wilderness “overwhelming” (“I just stared at the ground”), and even now, he notes, “that’s always still waiting for me.” The perspective he offers us in each of these photographs—stark, empty, and aggressively silent—brings that disquiet to us, too.

There is, strictly speaking, neither unselfish conduct, nor a wholly disinterested point of view. Both are simply sublimations.- Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886 4

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“ ”Sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development.- Sigmund Freud, 1930 5

If the sublime immerses us in our sensual selves, sublimation transforms our desire into socially acceptable goals. “Who wouldn’t want to go?” Cook replies when I ask him, why those parks, in that weather? I argue that in fact the photographs—bleak and snowy—are far from enticing when considered as advertisements. So why does Cook repeatedly put himself—and, vicariously, us—into uncomfortable situations? He calls it a love affair; the objects of his love are the state and national parks that contain and literally define the wilderness. Famous for their natural beauty, parks were subject to rampant commercial exploitation in the nineteenth century, prompting regulation to protect them. “We should be proud of that opposite instinct,” Cook asserts.

The impulse is indeed a noble one, and yet historically it has stemmed from selfish goals. Those goals were informed by learned aesthetics of the landscape: visitors wanted to experience sublimely overwhelming natural forces in order to counter them with triumphantly solitary transcendence. Cook sublimates this desire within a populist rhetoric—he says he wants to celebrate the parks because they give all of us this opportunity for solitary encounters with some form of spiritual grace (what form, exactly? He’s unsure: “I’m still trying to figure out what that means”). But the photographs themselves are harsh and barren rather than inviting.

Cook’s photographs are shot through with the conviction that it isn’t actually the wilderness that needs saving. “I don’t have a lot of power,” he admits, and repeatedly comes back to the threat posed to, rather than by, humanity. “The environment will always be there,” he concludes, even if humanity doesn’t survive the changes it goes through. Cook’s final sublimation, then, is of his anxiety about the resilience of humanity itself. In front of his photographs, we are seduced and appalled at the same time—Cook’s sense of powerlessness seeps through his presentations of the sublime. Repeatedly, the photographs make it hard to see what they claim to be putting in front of us. They’re equivocal—and as I reflect upon our twenty-first-century relationship to the wilderness, I realize so are we.

Louise Siddons is Assistant Professor of American, Modern and Contemporary Art History in the Department of Art, Graphic Design and Art History at Oklahoma State University. Her research focuses on the history of printmaking and photography, with an emphasis on American modernism and marginalized subjectivity.

LEFTBryan Cook, Southern Sawatch Range, Pigment Print On Aluminum, 48” x 48”

OPPOSITE PAGEBryan Cook, Snowfield, Eastern Idaho, Pigment Print On Aluminum, 48” x 48”

4 // Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1886.

5 // Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 1930.

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Our conversation began in November 2012 with a studio visit and we’ve had incredibly rich conversations over the past 18 months as you’ve created this work and prepared for the exhibitions. What has been most meaningful and memorable for you about Art 365?

Art 365 has been a series of firsts for me, firsts for which I am grateful: first serious application process and artist statement, first studio visit, first grant, first curator relationship, first time working closely with fellow artists. The results have been incredibly rewarding.

With the financial support and an ongoing critical dialogue with the other artists and me as the project curator, what opportunity did this present to you as an artist and how did you approach the experience?

Making work is expensive so the financial support cannot be overlooked. It means time, it means resources, it means materials. That capability combined with the opportunity to work with you has meant no excuses. Get to work, and swing for the fences. Our initial dialogue focusing on formal visual elements in my previous work that merited further exploration provided a simple beginning to embark on what grew to become a dialogue between you and me, myself and the land, and in my own head, about why I seek such solitude in the places I do and why I am compelled to communicate that journey through photographs.

One of my first impressions was that each of the proposals for Art 365, including yours, revealed a deep interest in place and ar ticulated a desire to make new work that explored the idea of place in a way that moved beyond geographic scope – as a landscape, an ecosystem or as homeland, in relation to a sense of belonging or an experience of disconnection, as even as a reflection of personal or cultural identity. How has your initial investigation and perception of place evolved through this project and what discoveries have you made along the way?

Making photographs that “document” impressive landscapes is one thing, but creating images that reflect the ‘why’ I’m alone in the wilderness doing this is far more interesting to me and holds much more potential. There is a lot to be said for why our national parks and other protected spaces deser ve to be so.

They provide a wholly unique setting and so can provide a myriad of possibilities to ever yone. I am using these resources for one of their great original intended purposes: to explore self, my connection to others, and the experience I have when I’m alone in the wilderness. I do wonder why it is that I feel so much more comfor table dealing with those connections when I am so physically uncomfortable and emotionally challenged. I am exploring and challenging myself, in a Kur t Hahn manner perhaps, and I want to tr y to show the land from that perspective.

BRYA N C O OK IN C ON V ER S AT ION W I T H R A EC HEL L SMI T H

Bryan Cook, Give Nature Time, (Installation View at Artspace at Untitled Gallery), Pigment Prints On Aluminum, 48” x 48” Each

What have you discovered about the work through the experience of sharing it with viewers?

First, simply, working large has been fruitful. From a certain distance the work demands attention and it has a certain form. Upon closer inspection, more detail is revealed and each viewer able to bring his or her own experience and come away with their own meaning. At the same time, I have had numerous people use words like “difficult” or “stark” or simply “cold” to describe the work. Mission accomplished in that regard.

What are you most excited about going forward – whether it’s a continuation of this project in some way or a new idea to explore?

This same path continues on. I am not done with this line of questioning, and the entirety of the work I have made for this project has not been publically shown. I have stumbled upon too many questions and answers to walk away now.

Removing myself from a world where I am pressured to be productive and responsive and attentive and available to all manner of input, request, and demand and putting myself in a place where I can think and reflect - about life and death, being and nature - and bringing back whatever I learn.

Cathleen Faubert, Exhausted Magnolia, Pigment ink print, 11” x 17”

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C A T H L E E N F A U B E R T

A C C O R D S & D I S C O R D S

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Accords & Discords

The vital act of drawing breath enables an experience of scent. As an artist, I take pleasure

in observations made with my nose and the exploration of how a few molecules can shift

perception. Accords & Discords considers an evolving understanding of the senses, a human

relationship to shifting ecologies, and the ability to psychologically locate ourselves in an

increasingly indoor world. Aromatic materials, alchemical possibilities and cultural symbolism

are central to the work.

The handcrafted fragrances reference place, and potential places, within the boundaries of

the state of Oklahoma. Using the process of steam distillation, organic matter is condensed

from local botanicals gathered from Oklahoma’s natural environment. Collecting material

from our inhabited terrain offers me a present connection to the past, the future, and the

cyclical nature of a year.

In addition to oil and fragrant water pulled from the landscape, aroma chemicals are used

to reinforce subtle characteristics inherent to the odor profiles of a particular space. Due to

the volatility of molecules, the notes of the fragrance will evolve and revel themselves over a

period of time.

Rather than relying purely on vision, this exhibition showcases scent, allowing ‘viewers’

personal, internalized images of their perceived impression of the work. The project utilizes

our sense of smell as a language to access ideas, expectations and projections about locations.

Perhaps most importantly, the work offers an opportunity to get lost in the unknown.

Cathleen Faubert is an Assistant Professor of Art, Technology & Culture at the University of

Oklahoma. She earned her MFA in Studio Art from Tufts University and her BA in Art and Art

History from The University of Rhode Island. Faubert has exhibited work at Mehlerhaus cul-

tural museum in Austria, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Science Museum Oklahoma,

as well as varied exhibitions across the country. She will continue her exploration of scent

and it’s role in the visual arts while participating in the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory artist in

residence program in June 2014.

cathleenfaubert.com

CATHLEEN FAUBERT

ARTIST STATEMENT

BIOGR APHY

TOP // Cathleen Faubert, Studio Laboratory Detail #1 (Left), Pigment Ink Print, 24” x 36”, Strange Yellow Light (Right), Fragrance (Installation View)

BOTTOM LEFT // Cathleen Faubert, Studio Laboratory Detail #2, Pigment Ink Print, 24” x 36”

BOTTOM RIGHT // Cathleen Faubert, Steam Distillery, Pigment Ink Print, 11” x 17”

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F R A G R A N C E S

Inspired by the conditions before a storm, this scent is constructed with the dangers of Oklahoma in mind.

Crushed Insects, Tornadic Rain, Sericea Lespedeza “Chinese Bush Clover” (invasive plant which threatens tallgrass prairie preservation), Hawthorn (bringing this May blossom into the house portends death), 1.5” Hail, Dental Antiseptic

Based on restorative powers of prescribed burning in conjunction with the natural resources found beneath the soil, this fragrance considers both consumption and conservation.

Birch Tar, Charred Bluestem Grasses, Petroleum, Synthetic Rubber, Smoked Meat, Vanilla

This scent suggests an imagined understanding of an olfactory sensation, as it would exist in the changing atmospheric conditions of the space above Oklahoma. Troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere where the weather and clouds, which we typically experience, are generated and contained.

Ozone, Ambergris, Frozen Rain, Opopanax, Hedione, Icicles (collected on winter solstice)

This scent centers on Southern Magnolia, or Magnolia Grandiflora, as it highlights the abundance of this fragrant and hardy evergreen within the state. The magnolia tree is emblematic of the south, and for me represents something of Oklahoma’s intersection with a variety of regional identities.

Rosewood, Rhododendron Leaf, Little Dixie Soil, Magnolia, Sweet Tarts, Ivy, Ambrette Seed

Sassafras, Longhorn Mountain Cedar, First Snow, Sage, Tobacco, Frankincense, Myrrh, Orange Blossom, Dogbane

This fragrance refers to Oklahoma’s panhandle and its role as a last remnant of empire. Indicative of the romance and possibility of places unknown, and undiscovered, this border region at the center of the United States became a “last piece” of the western notion of unassigned territory.

Hay, Oakmoss, Rabbit Brush, Cholla (thorny, hardy shrub extremely resistant to severe conditions), Bison Fur, Pinyon Pine, Labdanum, Dust, Dry Woods

Considering an interior extending into the exterior, this scent recalls the safety, the domestic comfort and the possibilities of leisure that the intimacy of private, outdoor space can afford.

Geranium, Mint, Fresh Cut Grass, Dryer Sheets, Tomato Stem, Raspberry, Honeysuckle, Rotted Fence Wood, Lemon Thyme, Half-eaten Birthday Cake, Evergreen Hedge

STRANGE YELLOW LIGHT

Scent Notes

PRAIRIE FIRE

Scent Notes

TROPOSHERE

Scent Notes

GRANDIFLORA

Scent Notes

SACRED SPACE

Scent Notes

NO MAN’S LAND

Scent Notes

BACKYARD

Scent Notes

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP // Cathleen Faubert, Accords & Discords (Installation View), Fragrances

OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM // Cathleen Faubert, Accords & Discords (Installation View), Cabinet Detail

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CORY IMIG

Becoming familiar with a place takes time. Fully adjusting to new surroundings is a process; it must be experienced time and time again. Slowly, that place will start to become recognizable. And after a while it begins to feel like home. The memories of that place start to layer and build upon themselves, some get forgotten and for one reason or another others stick around. This familiarity occurs when the smells, sights, tastes, sounds and textures are things that have been experienced before.

Senses are used as tools to help us understand and gather information about our immediate surroundings. Smell is said to be the most powerful memory trigger. One of the reasons that occurs is because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain’s limbic system, which has a great deal to do with the formation of memories. For scent to trigger memory one must create the memories for the scent to activate. Cathleen Faubert’s Accords and Discords captures the essence of place, through close examination and meticulous observation of the Oklahoman landscape. She has embraced her new Midwestern home by creating a series of scents. These smells form a snapshot of life in Oklahoma today and in doing so have allowed Faubert to become familiar with her present home.

Most of the smells Faubert has chosen to emulate are not rare or exotic, but everyday fragrances one might encounter during their day-to-day life. They are smells Oklahomans have stumbled across daily, such as Grandiflora, a scent highlighting the abundance of Southern Magnolia in the state, or Strange Yellow Light, a fragrance inspired by the conditions before a storm. Bottling these smells, removing them from their natural context, creates a dichotomy between the experience of the thing and the smell of it. Removing the setting of where the smell came from adds a mysterious and elusive element. One can choose to ignore Faubert’s descriptive labels and let the smell take control and activate various memories.

Similar to how our sense of smell is tied to memory, the narrative woven into Faubert’s scent descriptions remind us of past experiences. The location titles of the scents are left open-ended; allowing the viewer to enter the work without feeling like this is a unique experience that only the artist can relate to. In the scent notes Faubert becomes more descriptive. For example, her scent Backyard combines common elements you would find in a Midwestern backyard: geranium, mint, fresh cut grass, dryer sheets, tomato stem, raspberry, honeysuckle, rotted fence wood, lemon thyme, half-eaten birthday cake, and evergreen hedge. These smells are directly tied to Oklahoma but they are also relatable enough for any Midwesterner to feel at home.

Along with the seven scents, Accords and Discords also consists of a series of photographs, gas chromatography charts, and a tall glass cabinet filled with small bottles of scent material. The eleven photographs in the exhibition are documents of Faubert’s process. Several of the photographs are taken in her studio documenting the distillation process, such as in Studio Laboratory Detail #1. The photograph illustrating her typical setup contains a glass tabletop essential oil steam distillery, numerous small clear bottles with white labels, and a handful of test tubes. It is questionable whether Faubert is working in a chemistry lab or in her art studio. Accompanying the three images of Faubert’s studio are, Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Broad Lane, Summer 2013 and Field, South of Purcell, which not only act as beautiful photographs of the Oklahoman landscape, but also document the locations Faubert

T H E S C I E N C E O F M A K I N G A P L A C E A H O M E

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP // Cathleen Faubert, Extracted Oil, Pigment Ink Print, 17” x 24”

OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM // Cathleen Faubert, Broad Lane, Summer 2013, Pigment Ink Print, 11” x 17”


visited to mine for scent material. Her intensive research of osmology - the study of odors - and olfactory processes becomes apparent in the last two photographs, University of Oklahoma Mass Spectrometry Facility, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and Dr. Steven Foster at the Stephenson Life Sciences Research Center. These photographs are both taken in science laboratories that Faubert worked with. With the help of Dr. Steven Foster at the University of Oklahoma she was able to break down the substances and their specific amounts in each of the scents creating the gas chromatography charts. The process, content and exhibition layout are minimal, organized and exact; much like how a scientist would keep their laboratory.

Even though these scents are heavily based on science, Faubert’s sense of humor prevails. The scent notes, or description of the ingredients of each scent, are very specific. The hail used in Strange Yellow Light is not just any hail, it is “1.5 inch hail” and the icicles used to make Troposphere are specifically “Icicles (collected on winter solstice).” Describing the materials so precisely creates a humorous narrative and invites her viewers into a playful and at times imaginary space. She asks her viewers to stretch their concept of reality and think differently about Oklahoma. For example, the scent Troposphere is what Faubert imagines the space above Oklahoma to smell like and No Man’s Land refers to the panhandle, a border region at the center of the United States, which remained unassigned territory until 1890. Faubert’s poetic descriptions of scent materials and playful use of location turn what could be a simple catalog of smells into a fun and interesting narrative, laying the foundation for viewers to build stories out of everyday experiences.

The smells included in this collection are not always necessarily nice or pleasant smelling. The base, middle and top notes take the viewer on an olfactory journey through ingredients comparable to what you would find in an alchemists’ pantry. Crushed insects, synthetic rubber, half-eaten birthday cake, tobacco, ozone, frozen rain and sweet tarts are only a small sample of the ingredients collected and distilled to make each of these scents. Faubert’s version of Oklahoma, a portrait through smell instead of image, leaves space for the viewer to invent his or her own visual experience. Through Faubert’s original question, “What does Oklahoma smell like?” she has created an answer that allows viewers to enter the work less through the lens of reality and more through their imagination. As with any successful artwork, her work asks more questions than it answers. Her narrative descriptions and poetic use of smell create new imagined locations and relate directly to the Oklahoman landscape they originated in.

Cory Imig is a visual artist, curator, and educator currently working in Kansas City, MO. Imig along with four others is a founding member of the curatorial collaborative, PLUG Projects. Currently, she is a lecturer in the Fiber department at the Kansas City Art Institute and Program Coordinator for Artist INC.

ABOVE // Cathleen Faubert, Accords & Discords (Installation View), Cabinet

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Gas chromatography is an analytical chemical method for separating chemical substances. A moving gas stream through a tube packed with a finely divided solid carries the sample material, in this case fragrance. Because of their chemical characteristics, the substances are held back differently by the material in the tube so that they leave the apparatus one after the other. A detector at the end of the tube is used to distinguish the individual substances. This system emulates the function of the human nose.

With the help of Dr. Steven Foster at the University of Oklahoma’s Mass Spectrometry Facility, fragrance materials used in the show have been mapped to create a scent histogram. A special thank you to Dr. Foster who generously worked on this aspect of this project.

G A S C H R O M A T O G R A P H Y C H A R T S

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With the financial support and an ongoing critical dialogue with the other artists and a project curator, what opportunity did this present to you as an artist and how did you approach the experience?

Without OVAC’s support I would not have been able to make this work at this time. The Art 365 grant really gave me a chance to jump into completely new methods of making and to start a new chapter in my artwork. The Sensorium show at MIT in 2006 was my first experience with art highlighting non-visual senses. I began investigating scent as a research project in 2010. That interest turned into my project for Art 365, opening the gates to further investigation and actual scent production. OVAC’s financial support has been crucial for my ability to develop my art practice in this new sensory way. Raechell’s curatorial support has been instrumental in opening new ways of thinking about the evolution of my art practice.

Cathleen, how were you able to use the research time you had to develop the project to engage others to help develop and create the work?

Many photographers use their camera as a passport for meeting new people and discovering new places. Although I love looking at photographs of “strangers” I often find it uncomfortable to make images of others. This project has allowed the making of camera-less photographs using a non-visual sense. Without the camera I feel free to interact with others, having an excuse to engage with specialists and professionals in their fields and I don’t feel shy about pointing a lens at them.

In this way I have spoken with Marilyn Stewart from Wild Things Nursery at the Norman Farmers Market about Oklahoma’s fragrant native plants. From our conversation I was able to distill specific plants or mimic their aroma. I worked with Julia Zangrilli, a self-taught perfumer, who taught me about individual fragrance materials and gave me advice on how to research and create my own scents. Mary Jo Watson, the University of Oklahoma’s premier Native Art Historian, pointed me in the direction of sacred places in the state. Bob Hamilton, the director of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, met with me and toured me around the reserve, giving me permission to harvest botanicals.

Dr. Steven Foster at OU’s Chemistry Laboratory has been my most important collaboration. Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry is a method of visualizing and revealing all of the components in a fragrance. This data visualization technique is commonly used in the fragrance industry. Dr. Foster used samples of my distillations from around the state of Oklahoma, not the final blends, but the raw botanical waters or oils from the steam distillation process. He created the colorful “maps” showing the final outcome of molecular compounds present in the samples. In relation to digital photography, I think of these as histograms, mapping all of the tones in the image.

CATHLEEN FAUBERT IN C ONVERSATION WITH R AECHELL SMITH

Cathleen Faubert, Accords & Discords (Installation View at Artspace at Untitled Gallery)

What have you come to realize about trying to understand place through the sense of smell?

I don’t have memories of Oklahoma, so the impetus for this project was more about exploring, gathering and learning. Scent is connected to the limbic brain, which is also connected to our pleasure center. Experiencing a fragrance (or a moment that includes a fragrance) is so personal and can lift us up with pleasure or ground us to earth with cautious repulsion. Objective and subjective viewpoints become important to the conversation with consideration towards science, pseudo-science and art making.

Observation of details can be crucial. Impressions are normally taken in with the eyes. I am interested in testing myself, and others, to consider seeing with our noses. The idea of an internal image created when taking in a fragrance is fascinating and I would like to continue working in a way that engages people in similar experiences.

Was it helpful to start the project by considering eco-regions?

Travel to locations in different parts of the state to include different eco-regions was important and interesting to me. I did not travel to every place I intended, so my own research filled in the gaps, supported by my own perceptions and imaginings around ideas of these places. I began to think about how place was coming to me or changing around me. The outcome is less about exotic tourist sites and more about different types of places.

This was a journey for me in terms of exploring materials and learning connections as well as a journey of understanding a land and how to locate myself.

Eyakem Gulilat, Untitled (7): From the 11:00 am Series, Archival Inkjet Print, 28” x 32”

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E Y A K E M G U L I L A T

11: 0 0 A M

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11:00 am

Religious belief has shaped the formation of America since the early European settlers

arrived seeking religious freedom. Today American churches are a symbolic monument

marking this Exodus story which continues to inform political, social, and economic

systems. Situated in the Bible Belt, Oklahoma plays a significant role in this story.

11:00 am is an aerial photographic documentation of church services in Oklahoma City,

Tulsa, and the surrounding towns on Sunday mornings between the hour of 10:30 and

11:30 a.m. From ground level, steeples intend to carry one’s gaze towards the heavens.

Similarly, religious worship has been depicted as hands raised or eyes looking towards

the sky. The aerial view, however, allows me to see all churches on an equal plane while

looking back towards the gaze of the faithful. As we look back, what do these church

buildings tell us about ourselves? What is the relationship between these monuments and

the surrounding neighborhoods? What patterns begin to occur and what shifts across time

are evident?

Observing the racial, political and socioeconomic relationship within and around churches,

I recall Martin Luther King, Jr.’s statement “…at 11 o’clock on Sunday morning…we stand

in the most segregated hour of America,” and I wonder how this statement might apply to

the religious landscape of Oklahoma today.

sunday11am.com

Eyakem Guililat earned an MFA in Media Art/Photography from the University of Oklahoma

and a BAS in Photojournalism and Art from Abilene Christian University. He created a

new project exploring stories about the Tulsa Race Riots as the first artist in residence

at the Hardesty Arts Center, Tulsa, OK last spring. He received the Oklahoma Visual

Arts Fellowship and has served as an Artist in Residence at The Center for Photography,

Woodstock, NY.

eyakem.com

EYAKEM GULIL AT

ARTIST STATEMENT

BIOGR APHY

TOP // Eyakem Gulilat, Untitled (3): From the 11:00 am Series, Archival Inkjet Print, 28” x 32”

BOTTOM LEFT // Eyakem Gulilat, Untitled (8): From the 11:00 am Series, Archival Inkjet Print, 28” x 32”

BOTTOM RIGHT // Eyakem Gulilat, Untitled (9): From the 11:00 am Series, Archival Inkjet Print, 28” x 32”

TOP LEFT // Eyakem Gulilat, Untitled (1): From the 11:00 am Series, Archival Inkjet Print, 28” x 32”

TOP RIGHT // Eyakem Gulilat, Untitled (4): From the 11:00 am Series, Archival Inkjet Print, 28” x 32”

BOTTOM // Eyakem Gulilat, Untitled (11): From the 11:00 am Series, Archival Inkjet Print, 28” x 32”

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TIFFANY BARBER

Visually, there is nothing spectacular about the thirteen untitled prints, selected from photographer Eyakem Gulilat’s larger ongoing 11:00 am series. One after another, the prints appear formulaic. There is no apparent order to them, no logic aside from their repeated forms. Each one features a church structure situated in its surrounding landscape, an adjacent parking lot – paved or unpaved – and all are shot from above. In these aerial photographs of Sunday morning Christian church services in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and surrounding towns, the repetition is almost compulsive. But the surface nature of these seemingly banal images is not lost on viewers. Indeed, upon first encounter with Gulilat’s 11:00 am series, it is difficult to see anything other than a church roof that obscures much of what it covers and contains. However, the specificity of each site is revealed in each photograph’s subtle differences, animating questions about the complex relation between politics and culture that Gulilat aims to document.

In one of the thirteen images, a quaint single-building sanctuary is nestled among a grove of thick trees while in a second photograph an expansive multiplex, or “mega-church,” stretches across acres of land. In another image in the series, a shotgun-style church building sits on a grassy corner lot near the intersection of two rural, single-lane streets. In a fourth photograph, a sprawling complex with a jutting spire that imitates a Neo-Gothic architectural style reaching toward the sky punctuates an otherwise flat landscape. Also located on a corner lot next to a cemetery, a near-empty parking lot, and a residential area all dwarfed by aerial perspective, the large-scale stone building is the focal point of the image. The adjacent cemetery plots and the circular path that cuts through them, the spire and columns of the church’s facade along with the vertical and horizontal lines of the stained glass windows, and the marked parking spots lead viewers’ eyes back to the cathedral. The competing yet integrated spatial patterns present in these images resonate with the grids used in city planning efforts, a process that is of great interest to Gulilat. With 11:00 am Gulilat asks, “How does a city grow? Does growth come from people, investors, or a combination of interactions and interests?” In addition to these questions, the layers concealed in the photographs, much like the happenings concealed by the roofs and walls of each pictured church, unfold outside of the work when considering the discourses of history, race, region, and class embedded in Gulilat’s practice.

Gulilat’s conceptual approach to 11:00 am began with a quote: “eleven o’clock on Sunday morning [. . .] is the most segregated hour of America.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. first introduced a version of this line in Stride to Freedom (1958), his account of the Montgomery bus boycott, the first successful large-scale application of nonviolent resistance in America. King was known to reuse phrases, and this line and its variations represent King’s attempt to encourage Christian church institutions in America to take the lead in social reform, to solve “the race problem.” For Gulilat, King’s quote relates to Oklahoma, often referred to as “the heart of the Bible Belt.” According to the artist’s statement for 11:00 am, “Religious belief has shaped the formation of America since the early European settlers arrived seeking religious freedom. Today American churches are a symbolic monument marking this Exodus story, which continues to inform political, social, and economic systems. Situated in the Bible Belt, Oklahoma plays a significant role in this story.” Specifically, Gulilat considers how segregation operates by way of church congregations and city planning, in photographic terms.

A V IE W FROM T HE T OP: E YA K EM G U L IL AT ’S 11: 0 0 A M SER IE S


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The relation between racial and ethnic difference and practices of faith is a concern that hits close to home for Gulilat. Born in Ethiopia, when Gulilat was young his parents converted to Evangelical Christianity, a religious minority in the country at the time. Distanced from tribal rituals, Gulilat used this sense of displacement along with subsequent migrations to Kenya and the United States to explore the performative nature of identity while studying photography in college and graduate school. An early body of work captures the artist’s obsession with place and identity formation. In a series of candid portraits titled The Promised Land, the artist’s first complete body of work, Gulilat explores the relationship between the African American and Mennonite residents of the historic black township of Boley, Oklahoma. Boley was founded in 1903 by African Americans seeking to govern themselves whereas Mennonites settled in the town in 1977 after fleeing Mexico during a time of political unrest. Both cultures have a long, rich history with the town yet they rarely interact with one another. With the simplicity of rural life as a backdrop, The Promised Land thematically engages issues of identity and belonging through the lens of ‘promise’ and ‘possibility’ – terms at the proverbial foundation of America’s national identity. The artist’s use of a snapshot aesthetic makes viewers question whether or not the scenes are staged, further highlighting how identity is performed and constructed alongside Boley’s fractured religious and racial landscapes.

Gulilat continued to explore expressions of identity in his second body of work, Ethiopian-American, an ethnographic study of the Ethiopian Diaspora in America. Gulilat takes the hyphenated status of the series title seriously by examining how a sample of Ethiopians living in the United States performs mainstream Western and American archetypes of blackness. For his next series, Collaborative Self, the artist produced a series of triptychs that bridge opposing political ideologies, religious affiliations, and landscapes across each image’s three frames. Gulilat again extends his study of identity expression in a later series titled Mother’s Prayer, employing reenactment and staged photography to mine the recesses of his own psyche. Wearing traditional Ethiopian dress, the artist as subject reenacts childhood memories of Ethiopia in still and moving images. Site Unseen, a more recent body of work exhibited at the Hardesty Arts Center in downtown Tulsa, captures the present-day landscape and residents of North Tulsa. A visually poetic response to the lingering and often overlooked effects of the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921, Site Unseen includes a panorama of sites no longer populated by buildings or people, found images and objects, and portraits of current inhabitants.

Unlike previous bodies of work, the majority of the photographs in 11:00 am are without figures, a remarkable absence when considering Gulilat’s earlier works of portraiture. Moving away from the figurative allows the artist to temporarily step outside of a politics of vision, a scopic regime that conditions how we see identity difference – racial, gender, class, religious, and so on. And although the church structures are placed “on an equal plane” as the artist describes, Gulilat highlights what is at once present yet hidden rather than relativizing the disparate sites. At the same time, however, the bird’s-eye-view – or God’s-eye-view – reinforces the artist’s subject position and singular vision; he holds the camera, the power to see from above. Following his previous works, Gulilat’s own processes of self-making and place-making, personal yet removed, are at the heart of 11:00 am. With projects like 11:00 am, Site Unseen, and even his early portraiture work, Gulilat frames productive collisions between persons and landscapes while addressing his own subjectivity.

Tiffany E. Barber is pursuing a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester where her research interests center on contemporary black art, identity performance, and expressions of post/blackness and afrofuturism. Her writings on art and visual culture have appeared in Beautiful/Decay Magazine, Art Focus Oklahoma, THE Magazine Los Angeles, CAA reviews, and Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism as well as various online journals and blogs.

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP // Eyakem Gulilat, Untitled (2): From the 11:00 am Series, Archival Inkjet Print, 28” x 32”

OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM // Eyakem Gulilat, Untitled (6): From the 11:00 am Series, Archival Inkjet Print, 28” x 32”

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What has been most meaningful and memorable for you about Art 365?

I could not have completed this project without the support of OVAC’s Art 365. I have a tendency of embarking on large projects requiring large amounts of time and resources. For this reason, I tend to get discouraged and leave projects unfinished. The financial and curatorial help from Art 365 made this project more manageable for me. The most expensive part of my project was renting a plane and helicopter to take aerial photographs; the support from Art 365 made this possible. Also, having conversations with Raechell helped me define the project’s focus and keep me accountable, while having a scheduled exhibition at the end of the proposal really helped keep me motivated to stick with the project for the duration of the year.

My calling as an artist and my pursuit of art making has been validated through Art 365. This project has helped me season my craft, my ability to think critically and to speak about my own work. For example, I was able to have an artist talk and panel discussions, through which I learned how to hone in on a new skill set of engaging and interacting with the community. I am more equipped to engage others with my art practice and to compete with other artists outside of the state.

With the extra support, were you willing to take risks that would have been more difficult on your own?

The financial support allowed me to take risks I would not have otherwise taken. With a fear of heights, this project was definitely one of the biggest risks I have ever taken. Because I was committed through the expectation of Art 365 in having this show, I was able to move beyond my fears and actually have a very freeing experience.

This project explores your curiosity about religious architecture. What do these aerial photographs reveal about Oklahoma? Does this project create a meaningful way to explore the issue of race?

I have observed that not every church has the same set time for worship. With this in mind, the churches that were heavily populated from the hours of 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. tended to be large or mega churches. With their flat corrugated metal roofs, these churches could be mistaken for other structures such as a super market. Some of the cathedrals and older churches appear to be vacant with few cars in their parking lots. I continue to question, what is the demography of these churches?

When I adopted the quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. about Sunday 11 a.m. being the most segregated hour, I was not only talking about race, but also thinking about our own ideological differences whether they are denominational, socio-economic, or political. From the photographs we can clearly see some of these differences.

In order to fully talk about race, socio-economical structure, politics, etc. I am required to do more than simply take aerial photographs. I must interact with the churches and church leaders.

E YAKEM GULIL AT IN C ONVERSATION WITH R AEC HELL SMITH

Eyakem Gulilat, Untitled (12): From the 11:00 am Series, Archival Inkjet Print, 28” x 32”


This project presented familiar structures completely differently simply by presenting them from an aerial point of view. My interaction with the viewers is often initiated by their desire to identify where the images were captured. To some of the viewers the work sparked an emotional response based on memories from their childhood of either growing up in the neighborhoods adjacent to the churches or having attended the schools associated with some of the churches. These memories allowed viewers to connect emotionally with the work.

I was also amazed how with limited information the audience was able to interpret the work, particularly picking up on the idea of God’s view which was one idea I was trying to get across through these images. I have also learned the complex nature of the work, for example how does a city declare a space sacred and how do I enter into that space to photograph it while connecting with various church leaders?

What are you most excited about going forward – whether it’s a continuation of this project in some way or a new idea to explore?

As I continue this project, I am most excited about photographing the interior space of churches and consider how these church spaces influence spirituality. I hope to make it more than documentation by embodying the spirituality of the space, and through this to question my own spirituality and how I might be influenced by various interior spaces of worship. I am also looking forward to the conversations I will be having with various church leaders about their own spaces.

Alexandra Knox, Exodus (Installation View at Artspace at Untitled Gallery), Flour, Salt, Yeast, Water, PlexiglasRecorded Voice (personalized script and The Mighty Dnieper by Taras Shevchenko), Dimensions Variable

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A L E X A N D R A K N O X

E X O D U S

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Exodus

As an American female of Ukrainian descent, I am interested in the disconnect that exists

between my psychological and cultural identities. After recently traveling to Ukraine for

the first time, an unexpected feeling of loss and confusion altered how I perceive my role

within my heritage. Although my distant relatives who reside in the motherland accepted me

lovingly, I could not help but feel estranged; a severe language barrier excluded me from

many conversations and interactions, widening the gap that I was attempting to bridge.

Exodus explores themes of language and place and the effects they have on identity. By

combining audio from three different generations, spoken in English and Ukrainian by my

mother, aunt and myself, I am allowing the viewer to share the experience of the language

barrier that I experienced while overseas. The three pillars, which represent the cities I

visited, Kiev, Kaniv and Tahancha, are placed to scale relative to their geographic location.

Contained within each pillar is a loaf of bread with a mold of salt, symbolic of the hospitality

and friendship offered by my family abroad.

After returning from my visit to Ukraine, I felt disconnected from a heritage with which I

had always identified. The sense of displacement can be seen in the compartmentalization

of the pillars, and while the audio represents the language hurdle and dissipation over

three generations, conversely, it unifies the installation. I sense a faint unification through

blood to this culture; perhaps then, blood and lineage can still surmount language and

place as true identity.

Alexandra Knox earned an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Oklahoma and a BFA

in Studio Art from East Carolina University. She is currently an Instructor of Art at East

Central University in Ada, OK. She received the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s Momentum

Spotlight award and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art Oscar Jacobson Award.

alexandranadiaknox.com

Hear the audio that accompanies this project at alexandranadiaknox.com.

ALEX ANDR A KNOX

ARTIST STATEMENT

BIOGR APHY

TOP // Alexandra Knox, Exodus (Installation View), Flour Detail, Dimensions Variable

BOTTOM LEFT // Alexandra Knox, Exodus (Installation View), Bread Detail, Dimensions Variable

BOTTOM RIGHT // Alexandra Knox, Exodus (Development Shot), Kneading Dough

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THERESA BEMBNISTER

Flour, yeast, salt. Three ingredients required for baking bread — and for artist Alexandra Knox’s latest project.

A sculptor by training, Knox spent July 2013 in her Norman, Oklahoma kitchen, oven blazing as she kneaded, molded and baked concoctions of flour, yeast and salt (with water). Her intricately twisted loaves were a kinetic form of thinking, a way to process the experiences that had led her to Exodus, her multimedia Art 365 installation.

The month prior to her baking spree, Knox flew to Ukraine to meet members of the family her grandmother, Nadia Romanczuk, had left behind as an immigrant to the United States. It was her first visit to the country, and as she traced her grandmother’s exodus in reverse, she met distant family members. They welcomed Knox into their homes with loaves of bread and with salt, symbols of hospitality in Eastern Europe.

Knox uses her artwork, primarily performance and installation, to explore her identity as a third-generation Ukrainian American. Many of her works over the past five years — such as A Refusal to Forget, a performance enacted in 2012 as part of OVAC’s Momentum exhibition — have involved food. With its complex mix of emotional, sensory and cultural weight, Ukrainian cuisine has given the artist one of the clearest views of her lineage. The country endured a famine in 1932 and 1933, during which an estimated 7.5 million Ukrainians perished from a starvation premeditated by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

In A Refusal to Forget, Knox kneeled on a low pedestal and grated 100 beets by hand in the gallery. The juice of the beets, a vegetable common to the Ukrainian diet, stained Knox’s hands crimson as she worked, powerfully evoking blood kinship.

As the grandchild of a woman who fled to the United States, Knox fits the category of third-generation immigrant. In his 1938 essay “The Problem of the Third Generation Immigrant,” social historian Marcus Lee Hansen argues that third-generation European immigrants sought to recover the heritage and customs of their families’ Old World identity, elements lost during first- and second-generation immigrants’ assimilation. With the third generation, Hansen writes, both assimilation and retention of ethnic identity were part of the ongoing process of adapting to the New World.

What happens when the movement of the immigration process is reversed? What happens when a third-generation immigrant—one who, although geographically, linguistically and socially removed from her heritage, returns to the Old World in an attempt to strengthen her cultural identity?

Knox attempts to answer those questions. Through cooking, her artistic practice and even her tattoos, symbols of Ukrainian American pride permanently adorning her body, she strives to uncover ties to her family’s heritage.

Her first trip to her ancestral home did not go as she had planned. Though Knox was greeted warmly by her relatives, she felt distanced, in part because she didn’t speak the language. The hours that Knox had devoted

A L E X A N D R A K N O X A N D T H E P R O B L E M O F T H E T H I R D G E N E R A T I O N I M M I G R A N T

OPPOSITE PAGE // Alexandra Knox, Exodus (Installation View), Flour, Salt, Yeast, Water, PlexiglasRecorded Voice (personalized script and The Mighty Dnieper by Taras Shevchenko), Dimensions Variable


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to Pimsleur language lessons during her work commute had done little to prepare her for typical dinnertime chatter. Knox’s mother, Luba, who is fluent in Ukrainian, accompanied the artist on the trip, but she could not communicate with Russian speakers whom the two encountered outside their family members’ homes.

Discouraged, Knox cut her trip short and returned home to think. And to bake.

Bread became the basis for the Art 365 installation. Knox placed handmade circular loaves, wrapped in rushnyk — colorful woven cloths traditionally used in Ukranian rituals — in Plexiglas vitrines at the base of three pillars. These simple, spare forms, their arrangement within the gallery, and the materials used to create them all relate to Knox’s experience of alienation from, or connection to, her heritage. Underscoring these relationships is an audio loop that plays in the background.

The pillars represent the three Ukrainian cities important to Knox’s grandmother’s life: Tahancha, where she was born and raised; Kaniv, where she studied; and Kiev, where she visited friends. Ranging from seven to eight feet tall, the height of each rectangular structure corresponds to the population of the city it represents. Knox has determined the pillars’ placement in the gallery based on the cities’ geographical locations. The pillars consist of six sections—a steel base, three MDF rectangles, and two Plexiglas vitrines. Knox has filled each top vitrine with one of the three major ingredients for bread—salt, yeast or flour.

For the audio, Knox has mixed background noise of her European family in conversation at the dinner table with recorded scripts read in English and Ukrainian. Knox’s aunt Vera, who immigrated to the United States as a child, reads “The Mighty Dnieper” by Taras Shevchenko. The artist’s grandmother asked her children to recite this poem in order to practice their Ukrainian. Knox and her mother, Luba, read the same text in English and Ukrainian, respectively: a quote from her grandmother’s statement renouncing her Soviet citizenship, a bread recipe, and the distance between the three towns represented by the pillars.

Much of the symbolism guiding Knox’s formal decision-making will not be apparent to viewers, the meaning lost in translation. But Knox’s materials, combined with the installation’s sound, convey the competing feelings of connection and alienation that she experienced during her travels to Ukraine. The cool, impersonal feeling of the Plexi and the MDF, the segmented forms of the pillars, and the dustlike ingredients filling the vitrines contrast sharply with the rounded loaves and woven textiles near the base of each pillar. These cozy, handmade objects stick out among the anonymously fabricated pillars.

This sense of comfort is only temporary—as time passes, the loaves mold. The feeling of pleasant welcome recedes into an inevitable deterioration.

Does this decay reflect the artist’s feelings toward her heritage? Maybe. Perhaps the molding loaves of bread—these decomposing signs of hospitality—represent change rather than dissolution. Knox’s trip “home” caused a drastic shift in her identity, and for the artist, Exodus is the start of understanding that evolution.

Theresa Bembnister is associate curator at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University. She was a 2012 Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellow.

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP + BOTTOM // Alexandra Knox making bread in her kitchen, as part of the development of her Exodus project.

THIS PAGE // Alexandra Knox (second from left) at the dinner table with family members in Ukraine.

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With the financial support and an ongoing critical dialogue with the other artists and me as the project curator, what opportunity did this present to you as an artist and how did you approach the experience?

This opportunity has proven to be the most supportive endeavor I have experienced in my artistic career thus far, both financially and critically. This body of work required that I travel overseas in order to research the themes that coincided with my concepts. Additionally, I would have never been able to use certain materials in this work, such as Plexiglas, which is a tedious and relentless material. I was able to outsource the production to a master craftsman so that it was certain it would come back clean and structurally sound. Critically, this has been a unique experience because the support, positive reinforcement and assurance were always present. Questions were posed to me that were often times rhetorical, allowing me to contemplate these queries at my own pace and therefore coming to sensible conclusions that just “felt right”. Although stressful and overwhelming at times, the experience as a whole, in retrospect, has been extremely organic.

One of my first impressions was that each of the proposals for Art 365, including yours, revealed a deep interest in place and articulated a desire to make new work that explored the idea of place in a way that moved beyond geographic scope – as a landscape, an ecosystem or as homeland, in relation to a sense of belonging or an experience of disconnection, or even as a reflection of personal or cultural identity. Alex, how has your experience of the Ukraine altered your perception of homeland and your own connection to this place; what was most unexpected/surprising about going there and trying to make work from that experience? Do you want to speak about the role of language?

I have been asked, “What were you expecting to find in Ukraine?” and my answer has always been, “I didn’t know what I would find”. When I think about it now, I was actually expecting a connection, an acceptance. I had preconceived notions about how I fit into the Ukrainian culture, about what my role was. I felt as though I was contributing to that culture from America by just identifying as Ukrainian, specifically through cuisine, educating myself on the country’s history, by making an entire body of work prior to this about Ukraine. On the contrary, that was not the case. The language barrier was too strong, and too much of a gap for me to bridge in order to feel that connection for which I was searching. What this whole experience has taught me is that language is the strongest and most unique portrayal of any culture. If a language is dead, then that culture is most likely non-existent. It’s strange because I feel like I have known this; but perhaps, after experiencing this disconnection with a culture, and especially one that I yearn to be part of, it had a negative effect on my psyche and how I view my cultural identity. I think what was most surprising about traveling to the “motherland” and trying to create work from it was that I literally had nothing to work from. “Nothing” meaning a lack of a connection, or what I had anticipated. I was forced to focus on the lack thereof in order to make something of it, which had proven to be difficult. I was compelled to really consider and think deeply about my experiences there, whether I viewed them as positive or negative, integral or arbitrary. It was a very uncomfortable frame of mind to be in, but I also think it contributed to a strong representation of those ideas and experiences.

ALE X ANDR A KNOX IN C ONVERSATION WITH R AEC HELL SMITH

Alexandra Knox, Exodus (Installation View at Artspace at Untitled Gallery), Flour, Salt, Yeast, Water, PlexiglasRecorded Voice (personalized script and The Mighty Dnieper by Taras Shevchenko), Dimensions Variable


After showing Exodus, viewers that were able to experience the piece approached me with similar stories to mine, the sense of wanting to belong to a heritage, but not knowing how. I’ve had several descendants of Ukrainians speak to me as well, and spoke mostly about Ukrainian dishes their mothers or Babas (grandmother) used to make, but uneducated in the realm of the language itself, and how they wish they had learned it before their elders passed away. It’s refreshing to hear these comments, because it lets me know I’m not alone in the struggle to place where I’m from, or where I belong. I really feel like my work was successful in this sense, and was pleased to hear other peoples’ experiences abroad in their search for familial ties and identity.



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R O M Y O W E N S

A N I M A G I N E D O T H E R H O O D

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An Imagined Otherhood

Shhh. Try to be still. Just for a moment. Quiet your mind of regret, worry, fear. Set aside

the schedule, errands, cleaning. Whatever thoughts are racing through your mind, try to

hush them. Allow color and calm to envelop you. Then you can go back.

I daydreamed this sanctuary. This room exists in an alternative universe as a bedroom. But

here, where we are, it is a communal haven, created out of knitted wool and introspection:

a refuge, a respite, a security blanket on steroids.

An Imagined Otherhood is a mediator that strengthens relations between you and

possibility. Whether that is your fantasy about the possibilities of the past or your

determination about the possibilities of the future is not for me to say. My optimistic

nature wants only for you to find comfort in your choices.

Transformation is at the heart of knitting, as line becomes surface and surface becomes

form. As I seek to find satisfaction with my own form, I find that like knitting, I can unravel

and reform indefinitely, as we live in a world of unlimited possibilities.

While you retreat, I hope you find solace in the knowledge that while we may each find

loneness, we are not alone. Like these knit walls, we share interconnectedness. The

choices we make define and refine our relationships.

Additional funding for this project provided by the Mid-America Arts Alliance and Paseo FEAST.

Romy Owens earned an MA in Photography from Oklahoma City University and a BA in

Media Communication from Webster University, St. Louis. Last year, she was selected as

the first Artist in Residence at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel in Oklahoma City and featured as a

Focus artist in the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s Concept/OK exhibition.

romyowens.com

ROMY OWENS

ARTIST STATEMENT

BIOGR APHY

Romy Owens, An Imagined Otherhood (Inside), Red, Yellow, Orange, Pink, Brown, Natural, And Green Wool; Steel, Wood, 120” x 120” x 120”

Romy Owens, An Imagined Otherhood (Detail)

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ALISON HEARST

In an increasingly fast-paced world, moments to pause and reflect are fewer and farther between. While media and news blasts fill our environment with a digital pastiche of moving images, Romy Owens’ sculptural installation, An Imagined Otherhood, 2014, refreshingly counters this busy and image-laden contemporary world and suggests the need to decelerate. Moreover, the work is a utopian sanctuary intended to foster escapism and meaningful human connections, while underscoring the introspective facets of experience. The installation is a sharply square room that measures 10 by 10 feet; it is comprised of four walls, a doorway, and a vertical entry panel. Inside the space are two curved, body hugging wooden chairs that face each other and openly invite a moment of quiet or one-on-one conversation. Owens’ environment only mirrors a traditional room in its form, as the walls are made of forty-four hand-knitted vertical panels that are suspended from the ceiling. The soft panels are sutured together and consist of amber yellow, violet, white, and green blocks of color. As installed at [Artspace] at Untitled gallery, the varying lengths of the knitted segments overlap as they neatly spill onto and drape the floor, creating an unexpected textural pattern only visible from within the space. The room is private, colorful yet simple, and devoid of imagery. Owens’ process and product circumvent the hectic aspects of modern culture, while demonstrating the transformative power of time, light, and space.

An Imagined Otherhood relates to the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s atmospheric environments that disorient the viewer and facilitate momentary diversion. Eliasson’s illusionistic installations often use commercial materials, such as lights and metal, which are transformed into immersive geometric configurations. Like Eliasson, Owens’ installation uses a commonly found resource, yarn, in an unlikely manner; what results is an enclosed space that temporarily suppresses the outside world. From inside An Imagined Otherhood, the glow of the sunlight from an adjacent gallery window brightens the mostly yellow and violet yarn walls, which parallels the visual effects of stained glass and casts a sunny glow on those inside. Changes in light alter the intensity of the colored yarn and further solicits one’s time to be spent witnessing these optical shifts. Owens’ knitted work is visceral, and overwhelms the sense of sight and the desire to touch. The interplay between fabric and light also relates to some of Robert Irwin’s light-and-space installations, including Scrim veil—Black rectangle—Natural light, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1977, although his use of found scrim fabric reflects minimalism’s proclivity for industrial materials over traditional artist materials in order to eliminate the artist’s hand in the work. The craft tradition employed by Owens also counters customary art media, yet it accentuates the artist’s laborious involvement in producing the installation. Owens’ practice of knitting also defies an era where the digital has surpassed the analog; however, today’s increased accessibility to manufactured goods of all kinds has caused the handmade and the personal to have new value and importance.

While An Imagined Otherhood carves out a space for solitude, contemplation, and encourages the need to slow down, the work maintains a highly personal and confessional constituent. Moreover, Owens’ installation is a meditative experience not only for the viewer, but also for the artist in its creation. Owens is best known for her abstract photographs that are stitched together and often take the form of encompassing tableaux and environments. Sometimes out-of-view to the viewer, the backs of the photographs always contain handwritten notes of what the artist was doing at the time she was sewing her photographic quilts together. Like her

A R O O M O F O N E ’ S O W N


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photography, An Imagined Otherhood is abstract, devoid of recognizable images and events, yet full of personal associations. Each knitted panel represents a year of the artist’s life and archives personal events in an abstract, multi-colored chronology. For example, white signifies mourning or trauma, while red-violet symbolizes the love-filled moments of her life. Like a novel or diary, Owens’ personal narrative can be read from within the private environment she has created. The artist learned how to knit specifically for this project, and spent a total of 1,106 hours, over the course of eight months, knitting the panels comprising the installation; 372 skeins of yarn were used, and there are 664,832 individual knits. If drawn out, the amount of yarn used would total 19 miles and 40 yards. Owens’ chronicling of the yarn used and her time spent knitting is akin to the life events recorded in the finished work. This diaristic approach to artmaking is confessional and personal, and adds layers to the work regarding process and the passing of time.

Owens’ work can also be read from a feminist perspective. Like the author Virginia Woolf, Owens has literally created “a room of one’s own”—a personal and private space specifically carved out within a larger structure. Woolf believed women could only write if given the personal liberty of a private room to work, the money to afford such a refuge, and the same educational opportunities as men. Akin to Woolf’s stance on women’s education, Owens was moved and motivated by the 2013 documentary film, Girl Rising, which campaigns for equality in education for girls across the globe. The South Asian colors seen in the film are reflected in Owens’ space as a way to honor these girls’ stories and experiences. The artist’s use of yarn also defies the preconceived uses and associations of the traditionally female craft-based activity, as Owens builds a large and encompassing structure rather than a personal accoutrement such as a scarf or blanket, for example. As the title, An Imagined Otherhood, also implies, the work initially came out of Owens’ exploration of motherhood and choosing the option to not become one herself. While the finished space is meant to be a nurturing environment for her audience, this sentiment is closely tied to the caring roles of mothers and how this primal intuition can be harnessed in ways other than rearing children. As the artist has stated on the intertwined topic of motherhood and her project, “instead of being about what I never did, the project became focused on what I do, which is nurture.” 1

Owens’ materials retain a familiar and comforting quality, ultimately making the finished work a gesture that is equally about the viewer’s experience as the artist’s inclination to nurture. While many references come into play in An Imagined Otherhood, and, although sometimes personal, Owens is ultimately forging a communal space for personal and public relationships to occur. In her own community, Owens also felt that she had a “responsibility of opportunity,” and thus she pushed the prior boundaries of her artistic practice in order to deliver something that is overtly intended for her audience’s benefit. Furthermore, An Imagined Otherhood is a softly structured space of Zen tranquility and cultivation—a room of one’s own for both the viewer and the artist.

Alison Hearst is Assistant Curator of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Hearst was the assistant curator of the recent exhibition México Inside Out: Themes in Art Since 1990. She also organized a solo project at the Modern with artist Fred Tomaselli, and she is working on an upcoming project with Jules de Balincourt. Hearst has a bachelor of fine arts degree in art history from the University of North Texas and a master’s degree in art history from Texas Christian University.

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP + BOTTOM // Romy Owens, An Imagined Otherhood (Inside Detail)

1 // Romy Owens, quoted in Kirsten Olds, “Art 365: Romy Owens,” Art Focus Oklahoma vol. 25, no. 8 (September/October 2013): 5.

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What does it mean to you to have been selected for Art 365?

Aside from the honor? I feel that Art 365 is an opportunity that brings with it great responsibility. To be chosen as one of the five, I felt challenged to make work that not only stretched my own practice and capabilities, but also to make something that I, you, the other artists, and OVAC would be proud to have in the exhibition, and to produce art that contributed to the conversation that extends past Oklahoma’s community.

What does this program do to support the artistic community in Oklahoma?

It’s a significant voice in a conversation that feels very limited at times, about artistic practices in the state. I hope Art 365 empowers the community to know what is possible for artists and move towards creating more opportunities.

How is this significant in an artist’s career in this region?

Hi artist, I believe in what you do and I want to help you take your practice to a new level. yeah... that is significant.

What might it mean for your own career and the development of your work?

I hope I am able to move forward with an improved skill set when it comes to making my own work - writing proposals, developing ideas, etc. - but I also hope I am better equipped to advocate for and with my oklahoma peers that we all continue to elevate the conversation.

Were you able to work differently?

Yes! Different media, different scale, different experience, different production timeline. I had never worked on a project/exhibition for a year.

Did this make it possible for you to make work that would have been impossible to create without this support?

Yes. I could not have made it without the financial support. Absolutely no way. And I wouldn’t have pushed myself to evolve the idea without the curatorial support.

ROM Y OW EN S IN C ON V ER S AT ION W I T H R A EC HEL L SMI T H

Romy Owens, An Imagined Otherhood (Inside View From Above)

Were you willing to take risks that would have been more difficult on your own?

Yes. And thank you.

Romy, how has the original idea of creating a “room” that explored your own personal life choices transformed into creating a space which generously allows for others to have a private or shared experience about self and/or community?

For me, I think the room still does both. It is amazing that others can have private and/or shared experience in a room created while I contemplated my own life choices. Encouraging the audience to explore their own choices is born out of my experience of doing that and my realization that of course I would want to create a similar experience for others. Safe quiet spaces are nice.

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The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC) helps artists realize their potential through education, exposure and funding. A 25-year old nonprofit, OVAC works statewide to support visual artists and their power to enrich communities.

ovac-ok.org

Jean Ann Fausser, Tulsa, PresidentRenée Porter, Norman, Vice PresidentMargo Shultes von Schlageter, MD, Edmond, TreasurerSusan Beaty, Oklahoma City, Secretary

Bob Curtis, Oklahoma CityGina Ellis, Oklahoma CityHillary Farrell, Oklahoma CityTiti Fitzsimmons, MD, Oklahoma CityJoey Frisillo, Sand SpringsSusan Green, TulsaJanet Shipley Hawks, TulsaMichael Hoffner, Oklahoma CityKristin Huffaker, Oklahoma CityStephen Kovash, Oklahoma CitySuzanne Mitchell, Oklahoma CityCarl Shortt, Oklahoma CityChristian Trimble, EdmondEric Wright, El RenoDean Wyatt, Owasso

730 W. Wilshire, Ste 104Oklahoma City, OK 73116P: 405.879.2400ovac-ok.org

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O V A C I N F O R M A T I O N

Bryan Cook, Give Nature Time (center), Eyakem Gulilat, 11:00 am (right), (Installation View at Artspace at Untitled Gallery)



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[Artspace] at Untitled is a contemporary art center designed to stimulate creative thought and new ideas through the presentation of exhibits focusing on national and international artists. As a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, Untitled is committed to providing free public access to its programs, performances, and publications, and to engaging the community in collaborative outreach efforts.

artspaceatuntitled.org

Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa seeks to make the arts accessible to all of Tulsa’s diverse populations. Diverse education programs advance its mission to inspire creativity, foster appreciation, promote lifelong learning, enhance the quality of individual lives, and contribute economic vitality to the greater community.

ahhatulsa.org

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Copyright© 2014 Oklahoma Visual Arts CoalitionAll rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a review.

Printed in the United States of America.

Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition730 W. Wilshire, Ste 104Oklahoma City, OK 73116405.879.2400ovac-ok.org

DESIGN // Dylan Bradway

PHOTO CREDITS // The Artists, Kelsey Karper

C A T A L O G C R E D I T S

OK L A HOM A V I S UA L A R T S C O A L I T ION // O VA C- OK .OR G

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Art 365 - 2014 - Exhibition Catalog

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