Christa Blackwood is a photo, text and installation artist working with themes related to identity, gender, history, and popular culture.The Oklahoma native developed her visual voice while a student at New York University, when she began producing street art such as the poster, Butcherknives (1991), a work that addressed issues of sexual violence...

Feeling blue? Our artists have got you covered! And while you're here, check out our current exhibition featuring: Brett Weston, Catherine Adams, Allen Birnbach, and Christa Blackwood!

A reminder to visit the gallery! Catherine Adams' amazing works from her series "The Acute Charm of Ruin & Development: Havana Cuba," is currently being featured in our show "Photography and Place: Fragments of the World!"

·  Brett Weston was born in 1911 and died in 1993. Photography was his passion for almost seventy years.

·  In 1925 Edward Weston removed the 13 year old Brett from school and took him on a photography trip to Mexico.

·  Brett was thought to be a child prodigy of photography. When he was 17 he was included in the now famous Film und Foto photography exhibition in Germany.

Born and educated in Thehran, Iran, Behnaz Sohrabian discovered her love of art, freedom and creative expression as a small child, developed a passion for painting and began her professional art career at the age of 10. Behnaz has earned a B.S. in Applied Chemistry, a B.A. in Painting and a Master of Arts in Art Studies. After completing her Master's Degree, she immigrated to the United States in 2010 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2017. 

"My aim is to paint simply. Apply easy brush strokes. Emphasize light and shadow and the dynamics between the subject and background."

This month JRB Art at The Elms is featuring the bronze sculptures of Paul Moore and David Phelps, both of whom currently live and work in Oklahoma. Paul's work is influenced by the history of the Great American West and his Native American Heritage. David's work is strongly tied to his memories, experiences, and feelings from having grown up on a family farm in Robert's Island, California. The following works selected by the Gallery are strong examples of each artist's skill and aesthetic.

· The word photography began being used in the 1830s.

· Nicephore Niepce invented what became the modern photographic process in 1826/27. He and Louis Daguerre worked together in person and via correspondence to improve the process. After Niepce’s death, Daguerre was able to reduce the exposure time from 8 hours to 30 minutes and the daguerreotype was born in 1837.

· From the beginning photography was compared with painting. Some even feeling it would lead to the death of painting. Later painters realized they could use photography to enhance their own practices.

The Caroline Bartlett Collection of fine jewelry includes her trademark “Toursades” which are necklaces containing multiple strands of high-quality genuine pearls and/or gemstones with gold or silver beads. Included also are long strands of pearls from which may be suspended hand-carved medallions or gemstone pendants, along with multi-strand bracelets for the wrist or ankle, earrings and rings.

Since the inception of photography in the first half of the nineteenth century there has been the perception that photographs are a faithful record of their subject matter. This idea seems to be even more deeply ceded when it is a place. When people are involved, there is an instinctive knowledge that they could be acting or “putting on a face” for the camera. Photographs have shaped our perception of the world. There are places we will know only through photographic representation. Places we will never see with our own eyes. We then rely on the photographer’s eye and their experience of the place they are documenting. The time of day a photographer shoots a specific place, the scene they choose to photograph whether the intent is to show an abstraction of a particular spot, these all factor into what the viewer sees as a specific place.

This show has been organized by New York Based Curator, Julie Maguire, Director of the Brett Weston Archives and will be on display until August 31, 2020.

Represented at international art fairs such as Art Miami’s Scope and Aqua Fairs, Art Basel, Red Dot London, and Hong Kong Contemporary, Michele Mikesell exhibits her dense, tactile paintings throughout the United States and across Europe and Asia. Using strippers, chisels, razor blades and solvents, Mikesell treats paint as color and matter, killing the idealized beauty of an expected image in order to revive it and create something arresting. Through this active participation with the surface of a painting, she generates a contradiction between worn paint and pristine image or surface. Mikesell received her MFA from the University of Oklahoma. She lives and works in South Dallas and Spain.

Please note that the gallery will be closed today, July 4th, for the holiday. We will reopen on Tuesday, July 7th. Have a fun, safe weekend!