While anyone can put paint on a canvas, creating real art, art with soul, requires passion.
The drive to create should be encouraged, especially in younger artists – that’s why for the past 15 years, the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition has featured exceptional work made by Oklahomans under 30 at Momentum. The annual exhibition and music-enhanced event gives participants experience and new audiences, while the public engages with fresh perspectives in a multitude of media.
Guest curators Trent Lawson and Catherine Shotick narrowed hundreds of submissions down to the best-of-the-best artwork. In late 2015, three artists received Momentum Spotlight awards of $2,000 to fund the creation of new artistic projects just for this event, as well as three months of oversight from Lawson and Shotick, who provide guidance and help them refine their projects.
The Spotlight Artists
Haley Prestifilippo (Norman) Used to working on a small scale, she will expand her horizons by creating large-scale, dreamlike narrative drawings in a collection called “Before It Disappears.”
Klair Larason (Oklahoma City) In “A Boundary of Man, Animal and Intervention,” Larason will explore man’s relationship with the environment and mitigate issues of identity and place by gilding the foil from gum wrappers to articulated animal skeletons.
Gloria Shows (Oklahoma City) Light projections of poppies and cherry blossoms are harnessed to bring the internal environment outward in Shows’ “A Reflection of Inscape.”
The event begins on Friday, March 4 with Downtempo, a more mellow evening with music by HARPA, Limber Limbs and Sativa Prophets. Saturday is Full Speed, offering a louder and faster-paced experience with music by Costello and Pearl Earl.
Free gallery hours follow the opening weekend from 2-7 p.m. March 6 and 7, and the Spotlight artists will give brief talks about their projects at a closing reception at 6 p.m. Monday. After that, this event will be complete, and the cycle of creative inspiration will begin again. Momentum never stops.
