LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

As predictable as it seems each time I write this section, so far I haven’t been able to resist the seasonal reflection that a quarterly magazine inevitably inspires. Like everyone, I said no prayers for this summer’s gnarly heatwave to linger longer, but I’m surprised at how much I’m already leaning into autumn— relishing the bookish back-to-school vibe and making notes on a project or two that, when the winds blow colder, will hopefully keep me occupied well enough indoors. To everything, there is a season.

Because none of us—like the best works of art—are just simply one thing. I recently had a conversation with a friend who bemoaned that art in Oklahoma is so often understood as exclusively high art, whatever that might mean anymore. So I’m very pleased that this issue of Art Focus casts such a wide net, recognizing artists working well outside the state’s mainstream art institutions, and also places a strong emphasis on craft art, itself too often framed in déclassé opposition to so-called fine art.

Just as the upcoming Oklahoma Visionaries show at Liggett studios (p. 18) has become a beacon for “outside” or “visionary” artists hungry for exhibition opportunities around the state, so should Inclusion in Art’s High Craft (p. 6) further elevate artists of color who work in a craft medium and thus may have been, historically, doubly undervalued. Similarly, Jaime Misenheimer and the relatively “outside” artists and background actors of Tulsa Artists’ Coalition’s Flower Moon Art Show (p. 22) open a zone for both aesthetic play and urgent historical reckoning to mark the release of one of the decade’s most anticipated films.

With the Leon Polk Smith retrospective at the OSU Museum of Art (p. 10) and Shin-hee Chin’s Entangled Harmony at 108|Contemporary in Tulsa (p. 14), we can observe two masters at work, the former’s hard-edge abstraction leading the dialogue with design trends of his time and the latter’s articulation of craft weaving the world together, inside and out, in a dynamic warp and woof of embodied ideas. It’s this level of complexity that invites us in, that lets us know there’s room for everyone.

I hope you enjoy reading.

- John Selvidge

JOHN SELVIDGE is an award-winning screenwriter who works for a humanitarian nonprofit organization in Oklahoma City while maintaining freelance and creative projects on the side. He was selected for OVAC’s Oklahoma Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship in 2018.