MAINSITE will host two exciting exhibitions in the space to kick off the new year. One half of the space will showcase Water and Land, a collection of watercolors and prints from Oklahoma artist Katherine Liontas-Warren. The other will come alive with Visual Poetry on the Page: With, Within, and Without the Word, a group exhibition of visual poets from across the globe, organized and curated by Crag Hill.

The space will open to the public on Wednesday, January 13, with the exhibition set to run through Saturday, February 13. A digital premiere and opening reception will take place at 6 p.m. Friday, January 8 as a part of the Virtual 2nd Friday Norman broadcast hosted that evening on the 2nd Friday Norman Art Walk Facebook page.

Both the exhibition and digital premiere will be free and open to the public. Masks are required of all visitors to the gallery. The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, weekly.

Water and Land is a collection of recent works by Liontas-Warren centered on the passages, time and motion, and the symbolism water and land have come to represent in those concepts.

“Water represents my desire to return to my birth state and meditatively embrace the powerful waves of the sea, which capture my heart and spirit, while the land is an anchor, describing my surroundings at a certain time and moment in my life,” Liontas-Warren said in her artist statement for the exhibition. “As I embrace both water and land in an intimate and curious way, I realize that my life is constantly in motion and that the aging process is a normal ascension into another chapter of my life.”

Liontas-Warren is an accomplished artist and resident of Oklahoma since 1984. A professor of art at Cameron University, she was awarded the Oklahoma Governor’s Art and Education Award in 2014, recipient of the Bhattacharya Research Excellence Award, a member of the Cameron University Faculty Hall of Fame and winner of the Artist of the Year distinction by the Paseo Art Association.

She has exhibited in over 450 shows throughout the United States and abroad. The Museum of Texas Tech University recently acquired 90 works by Liontas-Warren for the Artist Printmaker Research Collection.

Visual Poetry on the Page: With, Within, and Without the Word explores a movement that asks viewers to read the works as visual art. Unlike concrete, written poems, a visual poem “typically includes many other elements than alphabetic text,” including any number of mediums or artist manipulation, including painting, photos, digital manipulation or any other means to “obliterate the boundary between visual arts and literature.”

“Visual poetry is what we can see,” organizer Crag Hill said in his curator statement. “It can be what we see when we see within, behind, and beyond words, when we see through parts of words, through and with letters, parts of letters, the ineffable marks we make on and in spaces we inhabit and aspire to live with and for.”

The exhibition includes dozens of works by a number of visual poets from across the world, including Rosaire Appel, Bill DiMichele, Scott Helmes, Dona Mayoora, Stephen Nelson, Robin Tomens and more.