Bright Golden Haze: Reflections

12 locations across Oklahoma City

The Kirkpatrick Family Fund, one of the leading philanthropies providing support to nonprofit organizations in central Oklahoma, has funded a series of grants for Oklahoma City arts and cultural organizations collaborating with Oklahoma Contemporary to produce exhibitions and programs related to Bright Golden Haze. Oklahoma Contemporary's inaugural exhibition takes as its theme the role of light as a medium and an inspiration for contemporary artists, and grantee exhibitions/programs can interpret this curatorial framework in any number of ways.

Organizations participating in Bright Golden Haze: Reflections include:

Arts Council Oklahoma City
deadCenter Film
Myriad Botanical Gardens
National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum
Oklahoma City Ballet
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
Oklahoma City University School of Visual Art
Oklahoma History Center
Science Museum Oklahoma
Scissortail CDC and Oklahoma Latino Cultural Center
Scissortail Park
SixTwelve Community Center

Read about each of the projects below.

Arts Council Oklahoma City
September-November

Inspired by Oklahoma Contemporary’s inaugural exhibition, Bright Golden Haze, Arts Council Oklahoma City’s Spotlight Concert series will celebrate the “bright future” of OKC’s entertainment community with unforgettable live performances held on Oklahoma Contemporary's North Lawn. Free tickets can be reserved two weeks in advance of each show.

7 p.m. Sept. 17: Shortt Dog (R&B and funk)
7 p.m. Oct. 1: Steelwind (bluegrass)
7 p.m. Oct. 15: Sophia Massad (indie/alternative)
7 p.m. Oct. 29: Latin Mojo Band (Latin rhythm and dance) CANCELLED. This concert will be rescheduled at a later date.
7 p.m. Nov. 12: Charles Burton Band (jazz)

deadCenter Film
June 11-21 (online) / Late fall

To celebrate the opening of Oklahoma Contemporary’s new facility and inaugural Bright Golden Haze exhibition, deadCenter Film will partner with 20 high schools and technology centers in towns across Oklahoma to capture on film the most beautiful light in each town at different times of day. The video is currently planned to tour the towns of each participating school in the fall, where it will be projected onto a building of their choice. After the tour, the video will be released online.

The film was presented as part of the 2020 deadCenter Film Festival, which was presented virtually and featured the largest number of films in the history of the festival.

Myriad Gardens
Open now

Oklahoma artist Nathan Pratt’s installation will transform Myriad Gardens with nature’s most nostalgic glow – fireflies. This public art installation will tap into the innocence of childhood, allowing visitors of all ages to experience the magic of the summers of youth.

Drawing from the themes of Oklahoma Contemporary’s inaugural exhibition, Bright Golden Haze, the installation will evoke summer evenings when the world starts to change, lit by the flickering glow of fireflies. The mixed-media pieces will be illuminated with pulsing LED lights, constructed to complement nature during the day and illuminate the Gardens at night.

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
Open now

To celebrate Oklahoma Contemporary’s new facility, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum will present works by artists from around the world and Oklahoma, each providing a unique perspective on how environment, identity and perception are shaped through the medium of light.

The installation will consist of a series of murals by artist John Salame applied directly to the large windows of the Museum’s main entrance and gallery hall, depicting diverse landscapes of Oklahoma. These murals, commissioned by a local artist, will literally bring in the “bright golden haze” from the opening line of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! by using the sun itself as a medium.

Oklahoma City Ballet
Dates TBD | Oklahoma Contemporary
Main Building | Te Ata Theater

As one of the Kirkpatrick Family Fund-supported Bright Golden Haze: Reflections projects, Oklahoma City Ballet will present Elemental, an original ballet inspired by Oklahoma Contemporary’s opening exhibition, Bright Golden Haze. Choreographed by trainee program coordinator and recently retired professional dancer Amanda Herd-Popejoy, this premiere work will feature 15 members of the trainee program at Oklahoma City Ballet’s Yvonne Chouteau School and incorporate light into the dancers’ costumes.

The Art of Light | Oklahoma City Museum of Art
July 7-Sept. 27

In celebration of Oklahoma Contemporary’s inaugural exhibition, Bright Golden Haze, the Oklahoma City Museum of Art will present its own satellite exhibition, The Art of Light. Inspired by the exploration of light as a tool to create space, The Art of Light seeks to communicate the unique visual experiences provided by different forms of light when they are employed to achieve artistic ends.

The centerpiece of this exhibition is Barbara Astman’s Present Tense (2005-6), comprised of a set of flashlights whose lenses are masked by pictures of faces. The work projects floating, smiling faces onto darkened surfaces.

Additionally, the Museum will present Laser Drawing (1967) by Forrest Myers and Balthazar (1968) by Stanley Landsman. Laser Drawing, the first laser artwork ever created, was originally installed at the nightclub Max’s Kansas City in New York. Present Tense and Laser Drawing have never been shown at the Museum.

Light on the Horizon: A Selection of Works from the Christian Keesee Collection | Oklahoma City University School of Visual Arts
Curated by Julie Maguire
Open now

Oklahoma City University School of Visual Arts presents a selection of works from the collection of Christian Kessee, including Olafur Eliasson’s Shadow Projection Lamp, 2004, at the Nona Jean Hulsey Gallery inside the Norick Art Center on OCU’s campus.

An art educator will help students interpret the projection lamp and encourage children to create original artworks inspired by it.Students will learn about monochromatic color and discuss the use of light and dark in Eliasson’s work. They will then explore the concentric circle and symmetrical shapes, possibly using them in their own artwork.

The exhibition will also feature the video projection light installation Meadow Rhythms by Chad Mount, prints by Anish Kapoor and more.

Oklahoma History Center
June 15 - Aug. 15

The Friends of the Oklahoma History Center and the OHC exhibit team will create an outdoor installation to complement Oklahoma Contemporary’s Bright Golden Haze.

An interactive fabric maze, up to 600 linear feet of bright yellow fabric, will snake in and around a grassy area of the OHC grounds. Visitors will find three interactives: Two will emulate a candle carousel highlighting images from Oklahoma’s opening song, such as “cattle standin’ like statues” and “corn as high as an elephant’s eye.” The largest interactive will be a zoetrope, creating the illusion of movement through a rapid succession of static images that relate to the musical.

Science Museum Oklahoma
Aug. 15 - Dec. 31

Science Museum Oklahoma’s Prismatic Projections coincides with Oklahoma Contemporary’s inaugural Bright Golden Haze exhibition. This kaleidoscopic new experience takes a scientific approach to interpreting the beautiful colors we see in the sunrise.

The foundation of the experience involves capturing light and diffracting it onto a “canvas” for guests to investigate the resulting colorful spectrum. These rainbows of light are our guide for explaining the rich gold, orange and red tones in our unique Oklahoma sunrises — a beautiful “bright golden haze.”

Scissortail Community Development Corporation (partnering with the Latino Cultural Center) | Chrome and Gold
Dates TBD

There’s a bright golden haze on the barrio. Sparks fly as Kandy-painted and chromed-out lowriders scrape through the streets. In the wake of collective marginalization during the so-called “Zoot Suit Riots” of the 1940s, Mexican Americans responded by creating new ways of positively expressing themselves: Enter the lowrider.

At its core, the art of lowriders embodies a lifestyle focused on a sense of hope for the future – a bright and golden future, exemplified by the chrome and gold adorning the cars. Inspired by Oklahoma Contemporary’s Bright Golden Haze, this photography exhibition and related programming — including a lowrider competition and live art demonstrations on March 29 — will examine the multifaceted ways in which lowrider culture leverages light and highly reflective surfaces to give visual voice to the Mexican American experience.

Scissortail Park
Open Now

The Unexpected Us is a collaboration between Scissortail Park and artists Denise Duong and Gabriel Friedman. The installation will explore the magic of transformation, featuring a massive woven willow stick “hut” in the shape of a bird, with a golden pulsating light suspended within a willow orb at the center.

The installation will include a single entrance to the center, where a secondary woven willow sphere containing a golden LED light will be programmed to pulsate at the speed of a gentle heartbeat.

SixTwelve
Open Now

Artists Nathan Hendrix and Stephen Tyler’s low-voltage lighting installation will represent the colors of the Oklahoma sunset.

A grid-work of steel cable will attach at multiple anchor points on top of the west face of the SixTwelve building, spanning the adjacent lawn and terminating on steel poles along the existing fence line. The grid will incorporate pixel-controlled LEDs, programmed with static looks for special events or a mapped video display. At dusk, the work will emulate the colors and patterns of the surrounding sky as the sun sets and night takes hold.

Image: Denise Duong and Gabriel Friedman, The Unexpected Us in Scissortail Park, Oklahoma City.