The Depot is Back on Track

After months of re-construction and major repairs to the historic 1909 Santa Fe Depot, 200 S. Jones, a Grand Re-Opening Celebration will be held to show off the beautiful results of the work and the fact that The Depot is now fully “Back on Track” with its programs. 

"The staff, board, and patrons of The Depot are extremely grateful for the hard work of the City of Norman, and the Parks & Recreation Department to make sure this historic building is here for our city to enjoy for another 120 years." says Executive Director Shari Jackson. “Come celebrate with us during the Art Walk from 6 to 9 pm on Friday, July 14. There will be lots of exciting things going on at the Depot!”

An opening reception for “Variations on Themes,” paintings by Norman's own Dr. Jim Cobb, will be held concurrently with the “Back on Track” Celebration. There will be complementary light appetizers and libations provided by Norman's 405 Brewing Company and Native Spirits Winery throughout the evening. Live music will be provided by members of SWAN (Songwriters Association of Norman) in the portico.

A Fundraising Raffle will be held to raise money to upgrade gallery lighting and stages with five great packages offered. Tickets are $10 for one, $25 for three, $50 for eight, $100 for 20. Tickets will be sold throughout the evening. All persons who purchase raffle tickets for raffle items listed below will also be eligible for a drawing for an Amtrak voucher for a round trip to Fort Worth for two. Drawing for all raffle packages winners will begin at 8:30 pm July 14.  Must be present to win.Raffle packages include:

*A pastel portrait by Mitsuno Reedy (head and shoulders) of one individual. The finished portrait will be approximately 12” x 16” unframed. Value: $850.

*Artist Brad Price will teach a half day (four hour) private workshop for one person. The winner will be able to complete their own painting in the workshop time allowed and to keep Brad's unframed 11”x14” workshop demo painting. Value: $1200. 

*Private concert by Annie Oakley—sound provided. Concert may be a “house concert” or may be hosted at the Depot with advance reservation of space. Value: $600.

*Depot Merchandise Package and set of CD's by artists who have performed at The Depot. Depot Merchandise package includes quirky, vintage inspired Depot items by local photographer and maker Lindsay Harkness paired with a small watercolor of our historic building. In addition, winner will receive a treasure trove of CD’s by over a dozen musicians who have taken the Depot stage through the years. Value: $300                                                                                                                                                               

There will also be Depot memorabilia for sale including original bricks in a fabric Depot shopping bag for $5 and/or four original depot windows for $150 each. Buy a piece of Santa Fe Depot history!

The Depot is a non-profit arts organization with a mission to create and present excellent and innovative fine arts programs for the enrichment and education of our community. Depot programs include Summer Breeze Concerts in Lions Park, The Depot Gallery, Winter Wind/Jazz and Whistle Stop Concerts and Second Sunday Poetry Readings in the Depot. The Depot is also available to rent for private events and hosts AMTRAK customers each morning.

"We take great pride in the opportunity to serve our community with programs we create in this building, which is on the Register of Historic Places, and in serving as its caretakers so the community can enjoy her." Director Jackson says. To learn more about The Depot visit www.normandepot.org or phone 405 307-9320.

Established Midwest Artist to Create New Large-Scale Work for New East Norman Library

As part of the Norman Forward 1% for Art program, the Norman Arts Council is pleased to announce the selection of artist James Johnson to create a large-scale public sculpture for installation at the Norman Public Library East Branch. Located at 3001 E. Alameda Street, the library is currently under construction.

The new Norman Public Library East Branch will have a collection of 20,000+ items and will feature 12,500 square feet of highly flexible space that will support a mobile service approach, new education models, collaborative learning, information sharing and digital literacy.

The 1% for Art project team encouraged artwork that would complement the beauty of the site and the architecture of the building, expressing a spirit of wonderment, curiosity and learning inherent to all libraries. Johnson’s proposed sculpture hit all those marks, taking cues from the natural environment of the site and the building itself.

Though not seen in the photos of the artist’s model, the final sculpture will be made of Corten steel, the same material being utilized on the façade of the Library building. The artwork will be 14 feet tall and weigh approximately 3,000 pounds, making it clearly visible to street traffic and visitors alike. The sculpture will also be positioned so that during the Solstice, the sun will shine through the sculpture and onto the building.

Johnson is well-versed in creating large scale public art works, having completed numerous works currently on permanent and temporary exhibition in Kansas, Illinois, Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri and Iowa. He is inspired by ancient cultures, especially that of the Mayan and Inca, as a means to communicate lifestyle and culture. With a career spanning over 40 years, the sculptor has taught in colleges across the Midwest when not working on his own craft.

“As a sculptor, I have always been concerned with creating works of art that cause the viewer to pause and reflect upon their surrounding and, in doing so, become more aware of the environment that they are passing through,” Johnson said. “Equally important has been my use of the arch as a means of transforming the viewer from a place and time of activity to one of calm and reflection.”

The $30,000 project sought artists through an open call for requests for qualifications this past fall, attracting 125 applicants from across the country and world. A selection panel composed of a City of Norman designee, Public Arts Board member, Norman Arts Council board member, Ad Hoc Committee member, the designer/architect of the complex, a stakeholder in the project, arts expert and at large community members deliberated over artist qualifications.

The panel selected three finalists — hailing from Illinois, New Mexico and Norman, OK — who each created tailored design proposals inspired by the plans for the complex, as well as the history and culture of Norman. Johnson’s was selected from the three proposals, and the plans are for the sculpture to be complete and dedicated with the library’s targeted mid-May 2018 opening date.

On April 12, 2016, the City of Norman contracted with the Norman Arts Council to administer the 1% for Art program designated for Norman Forward projects. Norman Arts Council’s administrative role includes project development, refining a selection process (including the assembly of balanced selection panels), executing and installing the selected works through coordination between the City and artists and public engagement and education. Debby Williams, who served in similar capacity as director of the Oklahoma Art in Public Places Division for nearly a decade, was selected to manage the 1% for Art program.

James Johnson’s work is the one of many public art projects that will populate Norman through the Norman Forward 1% for Art program. Mark Aeling’s SPLASH will be ready to install upon completion of the Westwood Family Aquatic Center later this year. A new request for qualifications for the proposed new Central Branch of the Norman Public Library will be announced in the coming months. 

One of James Johnson's past projects.

Cultural Connections: Norman In Clermont-Ferrand Curatorial Statement

CULTURAL CONNECTIONS: NORMAN IN CLERMONT-FERRAND 
TEXTURES.  

In the United States, when 9/11 happened, everything changed…Everyone says that…It has become cliché…But everything changed. It just did. And for us – France and the US – partners through two Revolutions and two World Wars – everything changed. We were strained and stressed and a relationship that was forged over nearly 250 years was threatened by fear.

Then came Charlie Hebdo, then November 2015 in Paris, and 2016 Bastille Day in Nice. Terrorism has shaken us both and we are, as we started, once again commrades in freedom and democracy. We need each other, as we always have.

And that brings us to this:  Norman, Oklahoma in Clermont-Ferrand, France – “jumelage” – we are twinned – we are sisters, united by our commonalities and treasured for our differences.

With Cultural Connections, the Norman Arts Council works to build relationships, learning, and understanding through the exchange of ideas, culture, art, and people. We are diplomats and we are ensuring that the special relationship between our two towns and two countries (and with our sister cities around the world) continues to forge us into a global community.

In this exhibit, Cultural Connections: Norman in Clermont-Ferrand, you see the works of three Norman, Oklahoma artists. Jason Cytacki, Ginna Dowling, and Daren Kendall were chosen from many submitted proposals by a joint selection panel of representatives of each community. In September of this year, three Clermont-Ferrand artists: Hervé Brehiér, Cecile Gambini, and Annemarie Rognon will travel to Norman to complete the exchange.

We arrived in France to seek out something familiar, something to which we can all relate. Each artist, with their individual perspectives, has created site-specific installations that speak to their observations of this initially unfamiliar place. As they have worked, a fog began to lift, and we see that we are, in the end, not at all that different…

There was the waiter at breakfast – so excited to learn we were from the US that he proclaimed he would return home with us when his shift ended.

There was Christoff, who, one late night at a local bar, imprinted on us (well, on Jason, specifically). He had returned from California that morning and was longing for more connections from his sister country across the Atlantic.

There was the French election, which was eerily reflective of the recent US Election. We watched from the living room of one of our Clermontoise friends.

There was the familiar crowd at a sporting event that gripped the nation. Life comes to a blissful halt as strangers gather to drink beer out of plastic cups and hug one another when the home team goals and lament when they, once again, fail to achieve the long-fought-for victory.

Each of the three installations in Cultural Connections examines the textures of this place (Clermont-Ferrand) and this space (Chapelle de l’Oratoire). We are exploring the Physical, Social and Elemental textures of Clermont-Ferrand. We hope you enjoy our views of your place and we thank you for having us as your guests.

Erinn Gavaghan
Curator and
Executive Director, Norman Arts Council

Cultural Connections: Norman in Clermont-Ferrand Featured Artist Daren Kendall

Cultural Connections: Norman in Clermont-Ferrand, France debuts on Friday, May 19 as a part of Les Arts En Balade, helping us further the bonds between us and our sister city through culture and art. Here’s a preview of Daren Kendall’s work that will be showcased as part of the exhibition. 

Daren Kendall
Jai Pris les Armes Pour la Liberté de Tous (I Took up Arms For the Freedom of All) 

Concrete, steel, wood, glass, vulcanized rubber, Volvic lava stone and mineral water, piano wire,  amplifiers, contact microphones, photographs, and plastic.

Texture – Elemental

Daren Kendall’s work in the Chapelle de l’Oratoire gives form to the underlying ideas and beliefs that are central to our understanding of liberty and freedom in both France and the US. Inspired by the Vercingetorix statue at the center of Clermont-Ferrand, he initially found an interesting correlation in the gesture of the Gallic warrior and that of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, both created by Auguste Bartholdi. These monumental figures symbolize the quest for liberty and freedom in both France and the US, each posed with one arm extended to declare foundational virtues of individual freedom and independence. This led to further consider the connection between Clermont-Ferrand and Norman as sister cities. The figure of “the seed sower” at the University of Oklahoma is centrally located on campus and garnered as an icon of institutional identity. Created by local sculptor Paul Moore, the bronze figure is symbolic of another kind of liberty, specific to American expansion and manifest destiny. Both the allegorical sower and the historical warrior are reflective of the social function of public sculpture as an expression of cultural identity. Kendall’s work draws from the two monuments to explore their relationship to one another and envisions a sentient machine for the production of liberty and freedom.

The warrior and the seed sower extend their arms in two different directions, one toward the sky above and the other toward the earth below. Each figure is crafted in a frozen forward motion, one to plant life into the ground the other to conquer and overcome foe. In dialogue with each other a kind of corporeal dialectic begins to emerge. Two bodies in gestural opposition, in physical contrast, seem to pursue a similar goal, a utopic ending. They each embody the beliefs of freedom and expansion, beliefs elemental to their identity and to survive. These solitary figures are romantic ideals. Self-determined, they work independently without notions of collaboration and community.

“I am interested in the two figures as a means to question the ideological underpinnings that celebrate the heroic archetypes in the Western canon of sculpture,” said Kendall.  “I like the idea of the warrior and the seed sower in conversation, or perhaps working together to reach a common goal. I created an instrument, a sculpture, and a stage, to articulate this idea. The Chapelle de l’Oratoire has become the site to envision a new mythology.”

Two black vertical forms signify two sentient bodies. Eye-shaped slits run vertically up each column and reveal scenes of Clermont-Ferrand as a documentation of the artist’s personal memory. At the base of the column sound is transmitted through a concealed opening. In effect, a closed mouth to transmit the sound of humming. A single piano wire tethers each of the forms to the wall of the site, offering a context and the necessary tension to resonate with sound. Each figure is wrapped in a tight black plastic skin. Bound as if to protect the body from heightened sensation. At the core of each body an image of a human figure is revealed through a hole, one pointing up, the other pointing down toward the ground. Each column mimics the gesture with a length of steel rebar above. On the floor two horizontal concrete columns lead toward a central point. Each foundation is lined with strips of salvaged rubber like tires along a road. These are remnants of a vehicle, a system, and a desire to explore and conquer new territory, by car. A tube of steel conduit rides above the concrete and tires. One end attached to a piano wire, each with it’s own actuator, and at the other end a microphone. Vibration is transported from one end to the other like an electrical circuit or pipeline for transmission. At the center of it all a pile of volvic stone holds a glass of water – half-empty, half-full. Together, the system creates an instrument to activate the two bodies, as well as a site for visitors to move through and create their own sounds.

The result of the instrumental bodies, is that these fabricated beings have a life of their own. Occasionally, when it is very quiet in the Chapelle, one of them will softly begin to hum. Perhaps from some vibration in the earth, undetected by humans? Or maybe a fly brushed by a wire? Whatever the cause, the being serves to remind us of how uncontrolled technology can be. We can create it, but we cannot always control it. While the assistance of technology can offer a freedom to humans, it can also be our doom. This idea is related in the half full/half empty wine glass at the core of the installation.

Through this installation, Kendall has explored the 4 textural elements that make up the identity of Clermont-Ferrand and represent the four elements of the world: The local Volvic Water (water), Volvic Formations (fire), the tire industry (Earth), and Vibrations (wind).

The artist invites the viewer to experiment with the machine. Vibrations will cause differing hums to emanate. A gentle tap on the piano wire or the rebar arms, a light drumming on the vertical columns. 

Cultural Connections: Norman in Clermont-Ferrand Featured Artist Jason Cytacki

Cultural Connections: Norman in Clermont-Ferrand, France debuts on Friday, May 19 as a part of Les Arts En Balade, helping us further the bonds between us and our sister city through culture and art. Here’s a preview of Jason Cytacki’s work that will be showcased as part of the exhibition. 

Jason Cytacki
As yet untitled 

Graphite and ink on drafting film

Texture : Physical

Jason Cytacki’s work directly communicates with the space and directly represents the place. His graphite and ink drawing on semi-transparent drafting films overlay not only each other, but the raw walls of the space giving an illusion that these images are emerging from the walls of the Chapelle, thus allowing the physical texture of both place (Clermont-Ferrand) and space (Chapelle de l’Oratoire) to inform his work.

Cytacki is dissecting Clermont-Ferrand. As an “outsider” visiting this place, he found himself drawn more naturally to the exteriors of the city. Decorative elements over windows and doors, sewer pipes, cobblestones, these details are his personal reflections of the cultural identity of this place.

The Clermont-Ferrand drawings while like in style, contrast in subject with the work he brought with him from Norman. The Norman details from “home” are interior spaces, details of wood moldings, fabric window coverings, and upholstered furniture. They are images that exude homey-ness and comfort.

The similarities between the images of Clermont-Ferrand and Norman are that this installation reflects the literal background of what identifies each place. The subject of each drawing, in reality, likely fades into the background of everyday life.  However, here, in the Chapelle, they are given center stage. The result is a serene and delicate reminder of the cultural identity of our places. While our communities were formed hundreds of years apart and architectural and design details are diverse, side-by-side, in this installation, we are together nostalgic when looking at the textures that define “home.”

Cytacki’s artistic practice was challenged in a rewarding way here in Clermont-Ferrand. His regular process involves a controlled manner of working through sketches and design and ultimately creating a weel-crafted plan for a project. He finds his work more improvisational here, having to make decisions and adapting through the process. The challenges of hanging work on a wall that could not be directly attached to has forced a creative problem solving aspect of his work that has been highly satisfying to the overall experience of working in Clermont-Ferrand. What started as problem, ended up being one of Cytacki’s favorite aspects of the installation and pushed the project into a more interesting direction.