Five cool things we saw on the Paseo
My sons and I braved the bitter north wind tonight to stroll the Paseo Arts District during the monthly Paseo Gallery Walk. After making our usual first stop at Sauced for a slice of New York-style pizza, we hit some of the galleries. We only made it part of the way down one side of the street since it was too cold to go too far, but here’s the highlights we spotted:
1. New gallery: Four artists who work out of Casa Rosa studios — oil painters Lyn Kopta, Jill Brett, Maricel Kuhn and Rema Imes — have opened a new gallery called Mariposa on Paseo, 3003A Paseo. They were celebrating their grand opening and first day in business tonight, but they are planning an even grander opening during the April gallery walk, when hopefully the weather will be more cooperative.
Between the four proprietors and this month’s featured artist, Guthrie painter Will Hurd, the walls of the small, elegant space were lined with beautiful oils, including some particularly grand landscapes.
2. “Just Jack”: The artists at In Your Eye Studio and Gallery outdid themselves paying tribute to the late Jack Hill, a longtime Paseo painter and member of the gallery, who died in January. The other 11 gallery artists took down their works so that the walls were crammed with a vast collection of Hill’s paintings. A grouping of his interesting pottery was placed on a table in the center of the gallery’s main room, and a cheerfully patterned quilt Hill made was draped over the front railing.
From the relatively drab (for Hill, anyway) beginner oil paintings to the free-wheeling, vividly colored landscapes to his latest neon-hued abstracted plant life paintings, the retrospective showcases his continually changing style.
The gallery artists included many fun touches Hill would have appreciated, including a computer slideshow of Hill and his friends, name tags that identified all of them as “Jack Hill’s favorite IYE (In Your Eye) Artist” and pieces of paper with some of Hill’s snappy quotes dangling from the ceiling. (Among the quotes: “If you’re not going to buy a painting, you need to get out of here” and “Life is for the Living.) It’s a fun, touching and eye-catching show, and several of Hill’s family members attended tonight’s opening reception.
3. D.J. Lafon: If you haven’t seen a show of Oklahoma art icon D.J. Lafon’s striking paintings of figures with oversized heads and abstracted backgrounds, you need to remedy that ASAP. JRB Art at the Elms is showing several of his off-kilter acrylics, and even better in my estimate, some of his small bronze sculptures. The spiky chicken sculpture was the favorite of my son Chris and I.
Other highlights at JRB: Elizabeth Hahn’s gorgeously vibrant tropical fish paintings, Michi Susan’s intricate mixed-media works in the gallery’s kitchen area, luminous glass vessels by Randi Solin and Jeff Littlejohn’s full-size mixed-media sculpture “One of Those Days,” which portrays a suited businessman spilling his coffee and briefcase.
4. Young potter: Dakota Wolf, 20, has been showing his pottery at Adelante! Gallery, which his mom, Cynthia, co-owns for the past couple of years. I noticed in tonight’s display of smaller vessels in black and white, reds and earth tones, blues and greens, that the younger Wolf’s skills seem to be growing. His forms seem to be more precise, the lines more interesting. Chris bought one of the most intriguing pieces, a swirling corked bottle in red, black and tan.
5. Making beautiful music: Lukas Wronski, a Polish resident currently making a lengthy visit to friends in Guthrie, was providing live music inside Mariposa (along with Bill Merickel of Guthrie, who was playing a walnut wood American Indian flute). Wronski was playing on a violin that he made himself. The lovely instrument is called the Spirit of Oklahoma; the artist crafted it in honor of last year’s Oklahoma Centennial.
The Paseo Gallery Walk continues from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday. It will be Sneak-a-Peak Saturday, when visitors can watch the artists work and see live art demonstrations. Hopefully, the weather will be more hospitable.
- BAM
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