Community Calendar

Oklahoma City University’s Norick Art Center hosts the exhibit “Domestic Inquiries” featuring the photography of Sam Charboneau Feb. 23 through Aug. 12, with an artist talk at 6 p.m. March 24.

Sam Charboneau pulls inspiration from stop-motion animators, building puppets and sets to bring her serious yet lighthearted dreams into reality. As a self-taught artist, she uses the traditional methods of trial and error, evolving her sets along the way.

Patrons can visit the exhibit Mondays through Fridays from 9 am to 5 pm.

The Norick Art Center at Oklahoma City University hosts an exhibit from a collaborative visual art group called Creaturealm Oklahoma. Each member of the group brings diverse disciplines making for an immersive art exhibit. The exhibit runs from April 8-May 27 with an opening event from 5 to 7 p.m. on April 14. The exhibit can be found in the art center’s Nona Jean Hulsey Gallery, 1608 NW 26th Street.

Toddlers and preschoolers explore science through hands-on, come-and-go activities that can be easily replicated with everyday items found at home. Early Explorers is perfect for young scientists with short attention spans.

Traveling from Aspen Art Museum, the exhibition Nature, Sweet Nature, by renowned artist Maren Hassinger, has been reconfigured to respond to the grounds of Oklahoma Contemporary. Nature, Sweet Nature is comprised of two installations constructed with galvanized wire rope. Garden and Paradise Regained will each stand in rows at relative human scale; one near the entrance to the art center and the other within the Sculpture Garden. Garden's uncoiled ends fan out like tall ornamental grass while Paradise Regained is comprised of lengths of industrial rope leaning in a single direction. The movement evoked by the slightly curving lines creates a kinetic effect. Rendering the metal malleable, Hassinger references the movement of reeds, grass and the wind itself. In particular, the dance of shadows cast on the ground by the curved lines of Paradise Regained will track the movement of time through the course of the day and over the year that it will be installed at Oklahoma Contemporary. The accessibility of the Sculpture Garden to visitors entering the building provides a space for what Hassinger underscores as “our tenuous relationship to nature,” connecting each viewer to what might be fragile or responsive in the interdependent nature of our ecosystem. Image: Maren Hassinger, Garden, 2020. Wire rope and concrete (144 units), 61.5 inches tall. © Maren Hassinger. Photo by Simon Klein, courtesy Aspen Art Museum.

Commissioned specifically for Campbell Art Park, Shaved Portions is among the most recent additions to Booker’s body of work marked by her distinct ability to radically transform her signature material — salvaged rubber tires — into an incredible array of biomorphic sculptures. Booker slices, twists, weaves and rivets her medium into radically new forms and textures, which easily withstand outdoor environments. For the artist, the varied tones of the rubber parallels human diversity, while the tire treads suggest images as varied as African scarification and textile designs. Repurposed from cast-off industrial scraps that would otherwise have remained symbols of urban blight or measures of wanton waste, Shaved Portions is a monumental work standing sentinel atop Automobile Alley, which was originally lined with car dealerships. Image: Chakaia Booker, Manipulating Fractions, 2004.

Off the Wall features three Oklahoma-based artists — Sarah Ahmad, romy owens and Marium Rana — who create large-scale works that come in stunning and unexpected forms. These artists work in fiber, textiles and mixed media, using techniques that range from sewing and quilting to the intricate application of paint and the exploration of cutting-edge technology.

Ahmad, owens and Rana have transformed the Mary Leflore Clements Oklahoma Gallery with immersive and interactive installations. Rather than being confined to the walls, their artworks extend into the air and explore the physical, vertical volume of the gallery.

Image: Marium Rana, Awaiting Arrival, 2022. Photo by Ann Sherman.

Focusing on the artist’s body of work over the last 20 years, John Newsom: Nature's Course presents large-scale, richly textured, oil on canvas paintings of flora and fauna. The exhibition will include the brand-new, 9 x 18 foot Nature’s Course and Homecoming, another new painting referencing Oklahoma. Newsom’s work layers and combines elements of Abstract Expressionism, minimalist geometric shapes and hyperrealistic representations of animals to create complex allegories of the natural world. The mid-career retrospective of the Oklahoma-raised and New York-based artist runs March 24 to Aug. 15. Image: John Newsom, Love Flies In, 2005. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Oklahoma City University’s Norick Art Center hosts the exhibit “Domestic Inquiries” featuring the photography of Sam Charboneau Feb. 23 through Aug. 12, with an artist talk at 6 p.m. March 24.

Sam Charboneau pulls inspiration from stop-motion animators, building puppets and sets to bring her serious yet lighthearted dreams into reality. As a self-taught artist, she uses the traditional methods of trial and error, evolving her sets along the way.

Patrons can visit the exhibit Mondays through Fridays from 9 am to 5 pm.

The Norick Art Center at Oklahoma City University hosts an exhibit from a collaborative visual art group called Creaturealm Oklahoma. Each member of the group brings diverse disciplines making for an immersive art exhibit. The exhibit runs from April 8-May 27 with an opening event from 5 to 7 p.m. on April 14. The exhibit can be found in the art center’s Nona Jean Hulsey Gallery, 1608 NW 26th Street.

Traveling from Aspen Art Museum, the exhibition Nature, Sweet Nature, by renowned artist Maren Hassinger, has been reconfigured to respond to the grounds of Oklahoma Contemporary. Nature, Sweet Nature is comprised of two installations constructed with galvanized wire rope. Garden and Paradise Regained will each stand in rows at relative human scale; one near the entrance to the art center and the other within the Sculpture Garden. Garden's uncoiled ends fan out like tall ornamental grass while Paradise Regained is comprised of lengths of industrial rope leaning in a single direction. The movement evoked by the slightly curving lines creates a kinetic effect. Rendering the metal malleable, Hassinger references the movement of reeds, grass and the wind itself. In particular, the dance of shadows cast on the ground by the curved lines of Paradise Regained will track the movement of time through the course of the day and over the year that it will be installed at Oklahoma Contemporary. The accessibility of the Sculpture Garden to visitors entering the building provides a space for what Hassinger underscores as “our tenuous relationship to nature,” connecting each viewer to what might be fragile or responsive in the interdependent nature of our ecosystem. Image: Maren Hassinger, Garden, 2020. Wire rope and concrete (144 units), 61.5 inches tall. © Maren Hassinger. Photo by Simon Klein, courtesy Aspen Art Museum.