In the words of singer-songwriter Terry Allen, Oklahoma City will soon have the chance to see “significant piles and influential heaps of art work” hauled in from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Truckload of Art, an exhibit inspired by Allen’s song of the same name, opens Friday at JRB Art at the Elms, 2810 N. Walker Ave. Following an opening reception 6-9 p.m., the artworks will be on display through Oct. 27. Artist Elizabeth Hahn, Truckload’s curator, said she got the idea for a freight-themed exhibition on the road between Oklahoma and New Mexico.
“I was driving back to Santa Fe in a truck, having just delivered my art, just thinking of that song and how that would be a fun thing,” Hahn said. “A lot of Oklahoma artists left Oklahoma for other places, and my idea was to wrangle them up and bring them back to Oklahoma so people could see what they’re doing now. That was the original premise, but it turned out that everybody I had in mind couldn’t do it. … It turned out to be more eclectic.”
In Allen’s song, a group of New York City artists decide to load “a big, spanking-new, white, shiny, chrome-plated cabover Peterbilt” with some of the East Coast’s most impressive creative works in order to ”cajole, humble and humiliate” their Los Angeles peers and “show those snotty surfer upstarts a thing or two about the Big Apple.” But the plan fails catastrophically.
“There’s a big accident and it catches fire, and it’s all burned up, but it’s very funny,” Hahn said. “It’s supposed to be just kind of a conceited bunch of people that are shown their comeuppance. So that was the funny part about it.”
As Allen puts it, “A truckload of art is burning near the highway. Precious objects are scattered all over the ground. And it’s a terrible sight if a person were to see it, but there weren’t nobody around. … The smoke could be seen for miles all around, but nobody knows what it means.”
Not everyone Hahn discussed the show with had heard the song.
“I got a CD, and I took it to the gallery so they could listen to it and understand what the heck I was talking about,” Hahn said.
‘Three escapees’
While Hahn’s original plan to pack the exhibition with the works of Oklahoma ex-pats didn’t completely pan out, the show does feature former Oklahomans Michael Freed and Sallyann Milam Paschall along with Hahn, who received a master of fine arts degree from University of Oklahoma (OU) and worked as the director of ArtsPlace gallery in downtown Oklahoma City in the 1980s.
“We’re the three escapees that are in the show coming back, and the others are just people I really like,” Hahn said. “I realized they don’t all have to be from Oklahoma. Of course I’m going to throw myself into it because I did all the work.”
Freed, who has been working as an artist in Santa Fe since 1995, has a BFA in painting from OU. His works include charcoal drawings, mixed-media paintings and large, outdoor sculptures.
Paschall studied painting and sculpture at OU and eventually earned degrees in art, anthropology and geology and worked at a NASA laboratory in New Mexico.
“Patterns and marks and subtle happenings are the driver in my nonobjective work,” said Paschall in her artist’s statement. “As both a scientist and an artist, when the two sides of my brain work together, I can feel it. And the magic happens.”
Hahn said all the artists who relocated from Oklahoma to New Mexico have at least one similarity in their backgrounds.
“I just know that we all managed to do it when we lived in Oklahoma, which can be a semi-thankless task,” Hahn said, “but I always loved being in Oklahoma. Though I’ve been gone for 30 years, I come back all the time, and we’re just dedicated to what we do. We did it whether it was really appreciated or not, and now we’re kind of out here, and it’s an easier place to be an artist. You can say you’re an artist, and people say, ‘Oh that’s what they do,’ instead of ‘Are they homeless or delusional?’”
Abstract painter and collage artist Caroline Farris, who also earned an MFA from OU and taught art at Oklahoma City Community College for 25 years, still lives in Oklahoma, but Hahn said that many of the artists whose creations she’s bringing in from Santa Fe have no counterparts in the Sooner State.
“Max Lehman’s work in ceramics, there’s nothing like that there for sure,” Hahn said, “and Charlie Miner is a very well-known glass artist here that does cast glass, and he has a piece that I think is really going to be different from what I’ve seen in Oklahoma City for sure. So that’s going to be very fun.”
Lehman was born in Kentucky and lived in Arizona, where he was a member of Phoenix’s influential Movimiento Artistico Del Rio Salado multicultural arts cooperative before moving to New Mexico. His painted ceramic works draw inspiration from Mayan, Aztec and other indigenous iconography as well as punk rock and urban graffiti. Miner studied at Pilchuck Glass School and founded New Mexico’s Tesuque Glassworks in 1975. Many of his works are created through a process informed by bronze casting, which creates singular pieces with stonelike textures.
The other artists included in the exhibition are glassblower Terry Baker and found object sculptor Geoffrey Gorman.
That’s assuming, of course, all the art in the exhibit makes the journey safely. Hahn said she hopes to avoid the fiery end suffered by the fictional masterpieces in the song that inspired the show.
“We’re going to put it in the truck and drive to Oklahoma and hopefully have a better fate,” Hahn said, laughing. “But anyway, we’re insured.”
JRB is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and by appointment. Call 405-528-6336 or visit jrbartgallery.com.
This article appears in Lo to Hi.