LIVING WITH ART BLOG

JRB Art at The Elms 

It’s Spring!

Presenting:

Tom Toperzer, Todd Stewart, Haley Prestifilippo and Jason Cytacki

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma – JRB Art at The Elms invites you on a springtime adventure presenting four solo exhibitions featuring four artists with strong connections to the University of Oklahoma: Tom Toperzer, Todd Stewart, Haley Prestifilippo and Jason Cytacki. The exhibitions open with an evening reception from 6:00 – 10:00 p.m. on Friday, March 3rd, during the Paseo’s First Friday Gallery Walk and continue through Sunday, March 26th.

Longtime art museum director, curator, and artist, Tom Toperzer will exhibit his colorful non-objective abstract paintings. “I make work which will bring the viewer into a purely aesthetic experience.  The paintings I make are not abstractions of something else, they are non-objective abstractions.  They are merely a combination of mixed mediums I apply and arrange on canvas or panel.”

Todd Stewart began his career as photographer more than twenty-five years ago, working for advertising and design clients in Columbus, Ohio and Atlanta, Georgia. As an artist and educator, his research and creative concerns center on the cultural landscape and focus particularly on intersections of history, myth, time, and perception. In recent years Stewart’s practice has increasingly become interdisciplinary in nature, utilizing a diverse set of strategies and media for both active observation and representation. Stewart’s exhibition brings a captivating look at structures, objects, and landscapes exploring the relationship between nature and culture. 

Nationally and internationally exhibited artist Jason Cytacki, lives and works in Norman, Oklahoma. Jason has received numerous grants and fellowships, including the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s Artist Fellowship in 2015, a Presidential International Travel Fellowship in 2015, and a Junior Faculty Fellowship from the University of Oklahoma in 2012. Jason’s states, “My works oscillate between two poles of contemporary cultural consciousness: the push and pull between a longing for an idealized past and the promise of a bright future through technology and innovation.” His works call to mind the secret lairs and hidden places often found in childhood stories of adventure with laboratories, bizarre machines, and winding paths of exploration.

A native of Augusta, GA, Haley Prestifilippo’s detailed graphite works deal with themes of creation, decay, and interdependence. She earned her BFA in 2009 from the University of Notre Dame and her MA the following year from Eastern Illinois University.   Since moving to Norman in 2011, she has exhibited throughout Oklahoma and the US; currently, she teaches classes for all ages at the Firehouse Arts Center in Norman. “In my drawings, the images often collapse into themselves while simultaneously expanding. Living creatures are fused together through some external, often organic force in an instant of transient mortality and uncertainty,” says Haley.

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JRB Art at The Elms presents a diverse roster of emerging, established, and internationally exhibited artists who create in a wide range of media including: paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, glass, fine crafts, functional objects, fiber art and photographs. This 8,000 square foot award-winning gallery in Oklahoma City’s Paseo Arts District changes its exhibits monthly in a gracious environment that fosters a dialogue between the arts and the larger community while providing quality art for first time buyers as well as individual, corporate and museum collections.