With respective histories swirled with art, toys and everything between, Ander Cardinale and Kevin Stark will bring their playful creative perspectives to MAINSITE Contemporary Art with two solo exhibitions — with some thematic ties — for the final exhibition at the gallery in 2023.
Welcome to My Dreams by Ander Cardinale and Welcome to My Reality by Kevin Stark will fill the main gallery space while Print(“Hello Wordle”) by Tess Elliott is shown in the back Library Gallery room. All three exhibitions will run at the gallery from December 8, 2023 through February 9, 2024 with an opening reception set for 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, December 8.
Another artist reception will take place from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday, January 12 with the closing scheduled for 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, February 9. All receptions are a part of the 2nd Friday Norman Art Walk.
The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday (though MAINSITE will close from December 23, 2023 through January 3, 2024 for the holiday). All receptions and gallery hours are free and open to the public.
Ander Cardinale with his toy creations. Photograph by Shevaun Williams.
Cardinale’s Welcome to My Dreams finds the toy artist showcasing pieces that celebrate beauty, love, diversity, magic and dreams. His work is inspired by his own experiences and childhood toys, and while celebrating their color and whimsy, also challenging and exploring dominant narratives against the LGBTQ+ community.
Cardinale began making toys with traditional clay sculpting skills, but has recently branched out into different mediums and techniques, including 3D software and printing to make more complex figures with more intricate details.
He was born in Mexico City in 1984. He began working with toys at a young age and his talent was quickly recognized by his family and teachers. He studied architecture in Puebla, Mexico and after graduating he began exploring the world while he was working for the Walt Disney Company in Orlando and Paris. In 2015, he moved to Oklahoma to live with the love of his life. He currently works as the Community Arts Manager for Norman Arts.
His work has been featured in a variety of venues in Norman, Oklahoma, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in the Art of Toys Museum in Sacramento, California, and in Disney’s D23 Expo 2019 in Anaheim, California. He is currently working on a series of toys representing the importance of love, dreams, diversity, and inclusion.
Kevin Stark, Salmon Chevy, Ivory Keyes, Jett Black and Red Kittens
Born and raised in the small town of Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, Kevin Stark has created art his entire life. At the age of fifteen he began working at an Ad Agency and by the age of eighteen he was the head of the art department. At OU he expanded his interests and worked to achieve skills in many different styles and mediums. These skills led him to jobs as a toy designer, a comic book artist, a billboard artist, a portrait painter and many other art related projects for clients in Hollywood and around the world.
Stark has been a professional artist most of his life and in the 1980’s moved back to his hometown and opened his studio and gallery, Stark Art. From there he has produced many works of art and sometimes, because of his interest in Performance Art, he dreams up different artist “personas” in order to create works in totally different styles and subject matter.
Though these works Welcome to My Reality are all created by Kevin Stark, you will see Pop Art by “Red Kittens,” bird paintings by “Ivory Keyes,” abstract storm paintings by “Jett Black,” graphic poster style paintings by “Salmon Chevy,” and finally classical, yet contemporary portraits under Kevin Stark’s own name.
Stark says of the exhibition, “Apologies in advance for any confusion that this shit might cause.”
Stark will host a number of artist talks throughout the duration of the exhibition. All will be free at MAINSITE and open to anyone to attend.
7 p.m. Thursday, December 21: Kevin Stark: Welcome to my Reality
7 p.m. Friday, January 19: Red Kittens: The Art of Cats
7 p.m. Friday, January 26: Salmon Chevy: Can’t Speak? Make Art!
7 p.m. Tuesday, January 30: Jett Black: Storms at Night
7 p.m. Thursday, February 1: Ivory Keyes: Bird Spirits
Monoprint by Tess Elliot
Tess Elliot makes images, objects, film, animation, installations, and interactive experiences, using both traditional media and emerging technologies. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including at Aggregate Space Gallery in Oakland, CA, the Ann Arbor Film Festival in Ann Arbor, MI, Vinegar Contemporary in Birmingham, AL, Oklahoma Contemporary in Oklahoma City, OK, Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL, and MOTOR in Los Angeles, CA, among others. She earned her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in 2008 and completed an MFA in Art & Technology at the Ohio State University in 2017. Tess lives and works between Norman, OK, Queens, NY, and currently Santa Cruz, CA. She is Associate Professor of Art, Technology, & Culture at OU’s School of Visual Arts.
Print(“Hello Wordle”) presents a series of monoprints depicting screenshots of a very trivial digital product, the viral online game Wordle. The five-letter entries in sequence usually make no sense, however highly poetic phrases can emerge by chance. This exhibition celebrates some serendipitously vivid verse happened upon through a casual, low-stakes collaboration between code and human. The poems parody our current interactions with and conversations about authorship regarding AI by inverting our roles, and explore language, meaning, and psychology.