Norman Arts Opens Up Third Round of Artist Grants for Local Creatives

Norman Artist Grants
DUE BY 11:59 P.M. FRIDAY, JANUARY 5
DEADLINE EXTENDED! DUE BY 11:59 P.M. FRIDAY, JANUARY 19
Apply for Community Project | Creative Project | Education Grant

Norman Arts Council is back with a third round of grants of its new artist grant program to serve Norman-based artists and further our creative community. While the longstanding Norman Arts Grant Program has benefited local artists through its support of dozens of arts organizations around town, this furthers NAC’s commitment to directly benefit local artists in a variety of ways.

The program offers three grants of $1,000, each in a different category.

The categories include Community Project, Creative Project and Education.

• Community Project grants help artists initiate a community-based project that leads to artistic creation. Evaluation is based on quality, the community impact and overall concept.

• Creative Project grants support creation of new work or body of work. Evaluation is based on quality of creative opportunity, career building potential, and overall concept.

• Education grants support opportunities to participate in conferences, residencies or workshops that provide education and further one’s artistic practice. Evaluation is based on quality of educational opportunity, career building potential, and overall concept.

Artists can apply for all three grant opportunities in each cycle, but a maximum of one grant will be awarded to any artist in a given grant cycle.

Only artists who have resided in Norman for the past 12 months are eligible to apply for the Norman Arts Council Artist Grants. Applying artists must be at least 18 years old.

Questions may be directed to Programs & Development Manager Cher Duncan.

Oklahoma Artists to Brighten Up MAINSITE with Final Exhibition of 2023

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.

Norman Arts Celebrates Reaves Park's New Robot Friend with Public Art Dedication

Mechan 14 still under construction at Tyler FuQua Creation’s studio in Oregon

You are invited to join Norman Arts and the City of Norman for the dedication of Mechan 14 — a public artwork by Tyler FuQua Creations (TFC) —at 9 a.m. Tuesday, December 5 at Reaves Park, 2501 Jenkins Ave, Norman.

The towering robot creation will greet visitors to Reaves Park and become the latest, iconic piece in Norman’s burgeoning collection of public art. Mechan 14 is the sixth piece of public art made possible by the Norman Forward 1% for Art program, with more on the way in the months ahead.

A Request for Qualifications seeking artists to create the piece went live in August 2022 and garnered more than one hundred submissions from artists across the country and beyond. Three finalists were selected with TFC ultimately chosen to create the work that felt like the perfect fit for the use of the park.

TFC has created a number of robot sculptures (called Mechans) that dot the country and have also been seen at the likes of Burning Man.

For a unique spin and reflective of Reaves Park’s history of hosting youth baseball as well as the Medieval Fair each spring, Norman’s Mechan comes with special accessories that allows it to be transformed from a helmeted ballplayer holding a bat to an armored knight armed with a sword on a seasonal basis.

More about Tyler FuQua Creations

Spearheaded in 2007 by Tyler FuQua, TFC is made up of a handful of skilled and talented people from the Portland, Oregon area. Tyler, having gotten started by making giant puppets with what was lying around his house, had set his focus on building bigger and better things with each new creation. In addition to joining forces with Jason Hutchinson, a fellow creative builder, Tyler surrounded himself with a crew of amazingly creative and hardworking people that now make TFC way more than just a one man operation. They are always looking for new and exciting opportunities that push our creative abilities. 

Tickets on Sale Now for Area fiftyONE

Area fiftyONE

It’s going to be ART of this world

Greetings, Earthlings.

Norman Arts' annual arts party goes intergalactic with Area fiftyONE! MAINSITE Contemporary Art will be invaded by stellar art, drinks and bites while live music thumps from live DJs spinning all night.

Let loose and dress in your favorite space attire — be it ship commander, alien creature or any take on space and sci-fi that you desire — to immerse yourself and other guests in the extraterrestrial experience!

It'll be a cosmically good time, and all proceeds have an astronomical impact on Norman Arts Council's operations and programs like 2nd Friday Norman Art Walk, exhibitions at MAINSITE, arts education scholarships, artist grants, public art, grants to local arts organizations like Sooner Theatre, Norman Music Festival and Jazz In June ... and so much more!

Join Norman Arts Council from 7 to 11 p.m. on Saturday, March 23, 2024 at MAINSITE Contemporary Art, 122 E. Main, Norman by purchasing a ticket in advance of the party! Earlybirds can nab theirs for as little as $75, before prices go up to $100 on February 24 and $125 the week of the event. 

Must be 21+ to attend!

All Tickets include:

Premium Open Bar

Delicious food

Art auction + silent auction items

Live entertainment

Lots of other arts party fun and surprises!

Norman Arts to Dedicate Two Public Art Installations at City of Norman Development Center

All visitors entering the City of Norman’s new Development Center will receive immediate reminders of how arts and creativity sits at the center of our community identity with two new public art installations now adorning the corridor connecting the public to the lobby of the city hub.

The City of Norman and Norman Arts Council will celebrate “Circle of Inclusion,” 60 foot mural by Oklahoma artists Jose Scott and Tony Thunder, and the Gallery of Norman Artists — a rotating exhibition of Norman-based creatives — with a double dedication of the new Development Center fixtures at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, November 21 at the City of Norman Development Center, 225 N. Webster.

Both projects underwent public requests for submissions and qualifications, garnering dozens of qualified applicants that made for a challenging, but rewarding, selection process.

The hallway-spanning “Circle of Inclusion” mural by Scott and Thunder is chockfull of symbolism celebrating all facets of Norman life, geography, history and community. Details highlight our Norman’s Camp namesake, the University of Oklahoma, tribal ties, aviation industry, public art, Lake Thunderbird, city festivals and more.

It’s all united by inspiration from the quote “You deserve a circle of inclusion and influence, but it’s up to you to create it” by Richie Norton that informs the central Oklahoma outline and paintbrush, a fitting message to reinforce to those who are entering the center with plans to build and develop our city to do it in all the ways that have and continue to make Norman special.

The Gallery of Norman Artists will feature practicing Norman artists and Norman student talent on an alternating basis with two exhibitions per year. A call for student talent for another exhibition opening in May will come this winter.

The current slate of featured artists and works includes: Barbara Benton, Jordy Branam, Dennis Brigham, Lacy Jo Burgess-Cady, Adrienne Day, Jenny Dillon, Ginna Dowling, Jesse Edgar, Melinda Gonzales, Katy Hall, Julius, Darci Lenker, Maya R, Danny Sands, Chase Spivey, Gregg Standridge, Che Warton and Sereta Wilson.

Much of the art will be for sale and those interested in purchasing can find details in the hallway of the exhibition.