Art 365, a new exhibition from the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC), offered six Oklahoma artists a year and $10,000 to hone their unique approaches to art and to develop a body of work that expresses their identities as artists. Their year of work has resulted in an exhibition whose format is unparalleled. To capture the artists and curator as they worked through the creative process, OVAC commissioned a documentary film by the producing/directing team of Melissa Scaramucci and Cacky Poarch of Crazy Diamond Productions. The Art 365 film is a feature length documentary focusing on this year in the lives of the Oklahoma artists selected for the Art 365 project. Artists featured in the exhibit and film are Sarah Atlee, Norman; Betsy Barnum, Edmond; Joseph Daun, OKC; Ashley Griffith, OKC; Liz Roth, Stillwater; and Darshan Phillips and Aaron Whisner, Tulsa, working collaboratively as Live4This.
“The opportunity to document the artistic process was a once in a lifetime experience,” said Melissa Scaramucci of Crazy Diamond Productions. “Capturing the spark of inspiration and the serious knowledge and skills required to realize the dreams of artists was a challenge that we were thrilled to undertake.”
The Art 365 Film will be screened July 3 at 7:30 pm at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art’s Noble Theatre, 415 Couch Dr. Admission to the film is $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and students and $5 for Museum members. Audience members are invited to stay afterward for a Q&A session with the Art 365 artists and filmmakers.
Each of the artists worked individually with curator Diane Barber and used the opportunity to focus intensely on progressing their bodies of art work. The artists represent a diverse cross section of art in Oklahoma, with painting, printmaking, mixed media and interactive sculpture all represented. Ashley Griffith, for example, created detailed grids of photographic images, one of which is a documentation of her life for 365 days. Betsy Barnum used a series of prints and paintings to document the growth and changes that took place in her life over the year. Sarah Atlee’s project is called Normal, OK, and includes portraits of fictional people inspired by the names of places in Oklahoma. Joseph Daun used consumer products to create functional and interactive large-scale sculptures that explore the ideas of drive and ambition. Darshan Phillips and Aaron Whisner (working collaboratively as Live4This) worked on wall-size paintings meant to trigger memories of childhood, ranging from freedom to the possibilities of play and fun. Liz Roth’s project is entitled America 101 and includes 100 small oil paintings of typical but not iconic images from all 50 states, juxtaposed with a bill-board sized painting of an iconic American commodity.
Diane Barber, Co-Executive Director and Visual Arts Curator for DiverseWorks in Houston, curated the exhibition. Art 365 is funded in part by the Oklahoma Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Oklahoma Arts Council, Allied Arts, Kirkpatrick Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Jean Ann Fausser.
For more information about Art 365, please visit www.Art365.org.
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