Charles Martin's Blog, page 18

Cute is the new punk

MystiKawaii Kloud Kastle

A group exhibition curated by Jenna Bryan

Closing Reception: “Kick It and Create” Wednesday March 25, 8-11pm

Dope Chapel

115 S Crawford Ave, Norman

Kawaii (じゃない), “cute” – a Japanese aesthetic that is best embodied by Hello Kitty. This subculture is an invasion of pastel adornments, adorable keychains, stuffed animals, stickers and baby talk.

[image error]

Visitors at the opening night of MystiKawaii Kloud Kastle.

 The history of kawaii as a predominant Japanese sensibility is recent. It started with schoolgirls who used bubbly handwriting and infantilized speech as a code. These acts of mico-rebellion were banned by a sterile Japanese school system more concerned with neatness and perfection.

Kawaii is punk.

MystiKawaii Kloud Kastle, curated by artist Jenna Bryan, features thirteen artists who explore the kawaii through their work at Norman’s premier alternative art venue, Dope Chapel.

MystiKawaii is hot on the heels of Byran’s Spotlight project Kamisphere at Momentum OKC, which explored cute as a means of communication through hand-printed images of themed worlds and paper dolls with a build-your-own avatar interactive experience.

In MystiKawaii, Bryan explores the themes of kawaii through the lens of other creatives. Bryan invited artists and non-artists alike to create works that had a cute aesthetic.

[image error]

“Corndog Boy” by Steven Loggins, pen and ink, 2015

The show itself is a giant installation of cute. Fluffy purple and pink clouds by Laura McPheeters and Katherine Willard hang from the ceiling; the adorable-yet-creepy soft sculptures of Laurie Grace rise from the ground; artwork is scattered frenetically all over the walls, bordered by Christmas lights and chains of origami stars.

Two large murals flank the gallery, each featuring a kawaii “kloud kastle”. The first, by Jenna Bryan, is light and glittery, cotton-candy-like textures and colors to frame the large, white, floating castle made of clouds. The second mural, by Manda Shae Dickinson and Eric Piper, is dark and brooding, featuring a nightmarish horse and snakes in the bottom of the purple composition.

What doesn’t translate in the word “cute” is the supernatural and sexual tone associated with kawaii. The mystical, otherworldly and carnal aspects are explored by artists in this show.

“How the artists worked and interpreted the theme reflected their own personalities,” Bryan said. They, the artists and their work, are cute, warm, and fun; but, beneath this surface, raw dark themes often emerge.

Until now, Steven Loggins never referred to himself as an artist, but the curator thinks his drawings are “the best example of someone’s personality in their work.”

His blobby humans and animals doing both mundane and violent actions, invite us into a mythic surreality combining cute and danger.

[image error]

Allison Campbell (center) performs at the exhibition opening.

For the exhibition opening, March 13, attendees came dressed as cartoon characters or in schoolgirl outfits, “Lolita” dresses (another Japanese kawaii subculture),  kigurumi (an oversized animal hoodie), and anything remotely cute in between.

Taking this costume challenge to the extreme, artist Alli Campbell wrapped herself in glittery fabric and wore a cardboard box over her head at the opening. Her impromptu costume and subsequent performance confused and entertained exhibition-goers. Unable to understand her or clearly see her face, visitors were hesitant to approach Campbell as she continued dancing with friends and strangers, exploring awkwardness-as-cute.

The centerpiece of the show, Kawaii Sugiru, by Jenna Bryan, is also the inspiration for this exhibition. The screen-printed mask, reveals Bryan’s thesis: that cute, kawaii, an essential part of her personality and identity, is a diversion.

“Cute is not an emotion,” Bryan says “It takes the place of emotions. It becomes a spectacle. You can hide behind cute.”

The aesthetic of kawaii can be applied to anything. “We can inject innocence, a childlike quality, into something, anything, and it becomes more interesting to us. Even things that are creepy and sexual become approachable with kawaii,” Bryan said.

Because of this, kawaii has been quick to succeed in the western markets. The subculture’s obsessions with bright colors and fun mascots lend themselves well to commercialism.

[image error]

Center: “Kawaii Sugiru” by Jenna Bryan, papier mache and screen print, 2012
Right & Left: lithographs by ShiQuiang Tracy

But cute is cheeky, and cheeky is rebellion. Kawaii is not merely a commercial selling point.

The majority of the artwork at Dope Chapel is not necessarily hung neatly, but tacked on the walls, or clipped to a string around the gallery. Murals on cardboard lean against the wall. The lighting is sparse: a mixture of clip lights, string lighting and the fluorescent glow from the back room.

The DIY feel, mixed with the variety of punk music shows that occur at the venue through the duration of the exhibition, adds to the kawaii atmosphere.

From the outside, the kawaii overload could be seen as superficial. “It could look just like some shit from Juxtapoz,” one anonymous artist said in advance of the exhibition. “Where’s the content?” As it is highly marketable, the cute aesthetic can be a shortcut to an increase in sales.

To avoid the commercialism, Bryan deliberately chose a variety of artists, known and unknown, and focused on exhibiting work for its content.

“I could have just hawked my shirts,” she said. “Though some stuff was sold or sell-able, I really wanted the artwork to provoke.”

[image error]

A variety of works are on display at MystiKawaii Kloud Kastle, up through March 25 at Dope Chapel in Norman.

MystiKawaii’s punk playfulness is accentuated by the rawness in this chapel of all things “dope”. Dope Chapel frequently hosts exhibitions by international artists, but few shows fit the space’s identity as well as MystiKawaii with its ironic, subversive charm. Perhaps that’s why the show’s opening was such a success: the approachable nature of cute better introduced the community to this up-and-coming venue.

 

The Retrieval II – Choose Your Own Adventure

David watched through the air lock porthole as the retrieval claw pulled in the Wonderboy clone, Lima. He knew some of the powers of the clones from the countless movies, documentaries, and books. Many could fly, one had giant raven’s wings, another could read thoughts, and one was said to be powerless. The runt of the litter. But he couldn’t remember anything about Lima. He wasn’t a major player in the wars, just one of many clones to fight and fall during that terrible time.

He was unsettled by how alive the clone looked. The computer didn’t pick up any vitals, so the clone had been long dead, but that didn’t keep his instincts from firing warning flares in his mind.

“Your wife sent a message,” the onboard computer said, as if the spectacle of a superhero being plucked from deep space was as boring and routine as recycling his urine.

“Yeah?” David asked, his eyes still fixed on the dead body as the hull doors closed. “I’ll listen to it in a bit. Did it arrive just now?”

“Nope, about three days ago.”

“Three days?” David snapped, turning from the porthole and storming to the cockpit. “You’ve had a message from her for three days and you are just now telling me?”

“I don’t like her.”

“You don’t like my wife?”

“No.”

“The person whose personality you were made from?” David asked, sitting down in his pilot’s seat and punching on his communications monitor.

“What can I say? I think you settled.”

“Go to hell, Robin.”

“Love ya,” the computer cooed, then faded as an image of his wife, millions of light years away appeared on the monitor.

“Hey, baby, how is pirating going?” the real Robin asked.

“I’m not a pirate,” David muttered to himself.

“Things are good here. Everyone misses you. How is other me? Still being a crazy bitch?”

David chuckled, knowing the computer heard and would seethe.

“I imagine you are busy, so I don’t want to take much of your time. Just send me a message when you can. I miss your stupid face.”

David smirked and his heart did the little twist it always did when he realized how much distance separated him from home. He loved the life of a smuggler, he loved the money, he loved the danger, but he hated the space it created between him and his family. But jobs were scarce on Earth. The economy was dying as all the best and brightest went off-world to find fortune. It was a global brain drain that sucked him away from his family alongside the scientists, miners, techs, and mercenaries. It was hard on Robin, though she never let it show. The kids always looked at him differently when he came home. It would take days before they stopped treating him like a stranger. The traveling broke their hearts, he knew, and that was why this Wonderboy clone would mean everything. It would be an end to the salvage missions, to the weeks of picking through ghost ships, to only feeling contact with those he loved through strained and brave video messages sent across the universe like corked bottles amid the greatest and most desolate of all seas.

His breath was heavy and cold. He stood from the monitor, promising himself he would send back a message when he felt able. But not now.

He walked back to the cargo hold. Artificial atmosphere was pressuring inside. Radiation was being measured. Normal bodies would need to be bagged and stored to protect from contamination, but he had no idea what to expect of a Wonderboy.

“So, how is other me?” the computer asked. “Still a crazy bitch?”

“Call Robin a crazy bitch again and I will turn you back into Chewbacca.”

“Roger that,” the computer replied, followed by a subtle giggle. It brought a quick smile to his face. He hid it quick, but he knew the computer saw it. This is when the computer felt the most like Robin, pushing buttons in the way that only lovers can.

He looked into the air lock, seeing the body drifting down to the floor as artificial gravity eased on.

“You better make me rich.”

“He will, darling,” the computer said. “The cargo hold is safe. No radiation or other contaminants. Wanna get a closer look?”

“Yes.”

The air lock opened. David stepped through, approaching the body slowly as if it was a wild dog. He knelt down beside Lima.

“So, who are you going to sell him to?” the computer asked.

Two names came to mind. Both dangerous. Both lording over black market empires run out of the darkest, most savage stretches of the universe. Not the types that David liked to doing business with, but the only ones with the resources to buy a god. Oscar Willington controlled the only interstellar, black market trade route absolutely free from X-Verse and Regency intervention. Born from wealth and the deepest of blue bloods, Willington used his family’s influence to corrupt a chain of deep space colonies that would be converted from city-building to mining the lucrative, ultra-exotic narcotics and rare materials from within their planets’ cores. The other, Shahid Mamnoon, inherited his black market empire from a long line of energy barons. Mamnoon specialized in asteroid farming. The brutal process was among the most lethal careers in the history of man, but anyone who survived five missions retired into a life of opulence. Mamnoon survived twelve missions, which turned him into both a legend and a savage nihilist.

Neither men were to be trusted, but the same could be said of anyone with the money to buy a Wonderboy.

WHO DO YOU CHOOSE?

Oscar Willington          OR         Shahid Mamnoon
PREVIOUS

Yahoo Asked For My Response To My Letter …

A letter to a troubled teen who threatened my son’s high school went viral for whatever mystical reasons that make one post take off and other posts languish in obscurity. I wrote the letter quickly, not thinking it would garner more than a few hundred hits. The frenzied traffic that followed wrecked our publishing company’s website which, days later, is still hobbled and glitchy.

Journalists have been swarming my inbox and I’ve found that I am talking a lot about myself. A lot. Don’t get me wrong, I love talking about myself. I adore it. Since I was a child, I have interviewed myself about all of the amazing things I would surely do as an adult like battle space aliens and/or date Paula Abdul.

READ THE REST HERE!

Also, for what it’s worth, I am not digging a grave in the picture. I am digging up my collapsed drainage system.

.

Let’s Have A Party! A Hot Dog Suit May Or May Not Be Involved!

PROMISE OF A BRAND NEW DAY OR WHATNOT: Volume I

6:30-8:30 pm Friday, March 20

Bombs Away Art

3003A Paseo in Oklahoma City

It’s been a crazy week, but the good news is we get to wrap up the work week with the long-awaited book signing party for Clint Stone’s debut release of PROMISE OF A BRAND NEW DAY OR WHATNOT. The Literati crew will be on hand to talk, answer questions, and just generally enjoy the communal spirit of the wonderful Paseo Arts District. You should come too and check out our latest amazing thing that is now a part of this world.

Superhero Costumes: In response to J. Scott Campbell and Erik Larsen

To The Teen Who Planned To Kill My Son:

We found out Friday that you were planning on killing students at Edmond North. The details of your scheme are still not that clear, at least what’s been made public, but it seems you were hoping for a high body count. My son is a freshman at Edmond North. He doesn’t enjoy school either, but he is a bright young man with a beautiful smile and one of the sharpest comedic instincts I’ve ever seen. He tends to insulate himself from the world with his headphones and is obsessed with hip hop. I doubt you know each other since you are sixteen, so presumably a sophomore or maybe a junior. Odds are that you’ve never even crossed paths with my son. Perhaps he would have been safe had you carried out your plan.

But perhaps not.

It was the winter that made it so hard, wasn’t it? That’s when you sent the texts to your friends that led them to notify the authorities. It was those damn snow days. The winter always brings me down too, so it’s not just you. We all get tremendously sad sometimes.

We spent those snow days playing board games and sledding down the hills of our neighborhood. You spent your time researching bombs, even starting to assemble one. I wonder what you used. You might have even been at the same hardware store when we got our sled. I wonder if you went sledding too. Maybe we saw you. Maybe I would know you by sight, but probably not.

I have no idea what you are thinking right now. You are being held in a treatment facility, which I think is wise. Charges will be filed, but I am not sure that jail is the right place for you. I want to believe that you texted your friends because you wanted to be caught. You wanted to be stopped. Your friends are heroes. Maybe you felt yourself getting out of control and tipped your hand in hopes someone would stop you, which also makes you a bit of a hero. Maybe. I can’t say for sure since we’ve never spoken nor do I know anything of you aside from what can be found online. Maybe you are a bad person, but it seems you are just angry and desperate. That is understandable. High school is a tough place. It often made me angry and desperate too.

But then it ended and I went to college. Life got better in small measures until I finally reached a place in my life where I became happy and fulfilled. As impossible as it may seem now, you have a chance at that too. As does my son and all the other teenagers who are still alive because you were caught.

Listen to the therapists at the treatment facility. Whatever comes of this situation, please hold onto the hope that you could one day put the darkness behind you. Perhaps, years into the future, you will reach out to a teenager that feels the way you once did and you can help him avoid making horrible decisions with his life. Nothing is guaranteed to make us feel better, but helping other people comes pretty damn close.

Your path forward is going to be complicated and hard, but remember that you are not a killer. You were on a path to become a killer, but your own actions led to my son being alive today. Again, I have no idea if he would have even been in the same part of the building where you executed your plan. Edmond North is a massive complex. But he could have been. The point is irrelevant because you did not have a chance to kill him.

Instead of mourning, my son, his brother, and I are going to have a long, happy spring break. We are going to go climbing, play frisbee, go on a road trip, play board games and video games, discuss music production, and laugh about all the stupid things we always say to each other. He is a wonderful kid. I don’t know you, but I am certain that there is a part of you that is wonderful too. Not executing your plan allows me the freedom to wish the best for you. Had you killed someone, this letter would be much different. I may never meet you, but if I do, I hope that I am strong enough to thank you.

And if I meet your friends, I will be tempted to hug them, but probably won’t because that would make them uncomfortable just as hugging made me uncomfortable when I was a teenager.

I will spend a lot of time discussing this with my boys just as I am sure their mother has. I need to find Rudderless, a movie made in Oklahoma about a school shooting. It is a powerful film, but my boys haven’t seen it yet. We will then discuss the film. Maybe you should watch it too. It will help you imagine what the lives of your family would be like if you had successfully carried out the attack. Maybe not. Talk to your counselors. Trust them. They know more than I do.

But finally and most importantly, thank you. You reached out to your friends and they made the brave decision to ask for help. A tragedy was averted and, I hope, your life will now start the long journey of getting back to better.

The Retrieval – Choose Your Own Adventure

Finding a dead body in space was always a shock. David had scouted over two hundred ghost ships in his long career as a smuggler, but he’d never grown use to the way cadavers float in zero gravity like scorched, water-logged ragdolls abandoned in the ocean. Usually there were dozens scattered with the debris of a ship. Cargo containers, cooks, ping-pong paddles, flight officers, family pictures—life and all its accouterments expelled like trash from a tipped over garbage can.

But this dead body was alone and impossible. David found it 30,000 light years from the nearest human colony. There was no damaged Community Pod or cargo ship. No sign of the X-Verse or Regency space empires. No debris. Not even a dwarf planet or asteroid with a gravity low enough to allow the man to accidentally leap off its surface and into an eternal fall.

There were no clues as to how this dead man found himself surrounded by 5,000 light years of empty space.

“Retrieve?” a breathy female voice called.

“Hold on, Robin,” David replied to the onboard computer, named after his wife. The system was loaded with her voice and a few key personality traits to keep him from getting too lonely on his long trips across the universe. He suspected the ship also spied on him when he veered a bit too close to the more libertine solar systems.

A glitch of his Chaos Machine engine jumped David to within a hundred yards of the body. Even so close, David still almost jumped again without noticing the man. A lesser smuggler would have missed it, but David was always good about seeing the opportunities that others missed. Where there was a body, there was always a treasure.

The first thing to do when encountering a dead body was to discern its loyalty. Most deep space explorers or traders worked for either X-Verse or Regency, the two largest commercial empires in the universe that had claimed the largest swaths of territory. These were always the most lucrative finds, followed by dozens of other small competitors that were elbowing out their own meager domains. Then came the pilgrims, which sometimes yielded a little wealth, but were often just as poor as David. Finally came the other smugglers, caught by mercenaries working for the commercial empires and left to rot in space as a warning.

Open space was unregulated, so wars between the X-Verse, Regency, and the other traders were inevitable. This presented opportunities for anyone brash enough to sneak through blockades to claim treasure lost on the interstellar free market battlefields.

It just took the resolve to push aside the dead bodies in massive transports or within devastated colonies, then a ship fast enough to slip through the trade blockades. David was born with the resolve of a smuggler, but the ship was a lucky find that he’d stumbled across while running scotch whiskey to a dry planet in the Andromeda system.

He’d dubbed the ship The Bettie Page and emblazoned its hull with an image of a black-haired vixen in a leopard print bikini and eyes as fierce and hungry as the ship’s forward cannons. It was an early high-speed transport designed with a second generation Chaos Machine. It was also the first X-Verse ship capable of planetary and interstellar travel. The Bettie Page never saw service and was instead mothballed in an X-Verse warehouse until David took it upon himself to liberate the ship.

He spent two years modernizing all of the ship’s components. His wife said it looked like a brick with wings drawn on it by a drunken three-year-old. But when most smugglers were either dead or imprisoned in their first year, Bettie Page kept David alive, free, and thriving for over two decades. In that time, he’d seen the amazing and the horrific, yet never flinched. Never paused. If he was not certain about a salvage mission, he moved on and never looked back. Every trip into space was a gamble and he knew when to push away from the table.

As he examined the dead body, his instincts told him to run. Yet, he feathered the air jets to inch closer. The cadaver wore no space suit. His head was exposed, preserved. In fact, as David pulled his cargo transport ship closer to the floating body, the man’s face looked almost flush and alive like he was simply asleep. A little pale, but not the mangled, bloated, sun-scorched death he’d seen on so many other crewmen expelled out into open space through a ruptured hull.

“Seriously, are we going to retrieve him or not?” Robin snapped.

“Hold on, damnit!”

The Betty Paige rotated around the man, allowing David to get a better view. That is when David saw the cape. He trained his forward lights on the man, sweeping across the crimson costume, a burnt yellow “L” scrawled across his chest. He knew the image. All humans knew that image.

This was a Wonderboy. “Lima” if David remembered correctly. It had been centuries since the last Wonderboy clone died. There were always rumors, of course, but sensible adults discarded them as fantasy.

Yet, adrift in the middle of space was a dead superhero. This was the billion dollar find, the scavenger trip that every smuggler dreamed of. Instant wealth and fame. David began mentally thumbing through his list of eccentric trillionaires, searching for one crazy enough to pay for a Wonderboy cadavre, but not so crazy as to be dangerous.

“Come on. Retrieve, yes or no? Shit or get off the pot, David.”

“Retrieve it,” David grunted.

“Thank you! Jesus. Do you want me to bring it on board or just latch it to the hull?”

Dangerous cargo was never brought on board, but rather fixed onto the outside of the ship so it could be released in a moment’s notice, whether it became unstable or there was a chance of being boarded and searched by mercenaries.

He’d carried bodies inside the ship before, usually officers with families wealthy enough to pay a retrieval fee. he just quarantined the bodies in the hold for safekeeping.

But this was a Wonderboy. How do you smuggle a god?

 

WHAT DO YOU DO?
 
Bring on board          OR         Store against the outside hull?

 

My Phat Status: Moral High Ground

PREVIOUS/NEXT

Ralph Ellison Festival: The View From Here

From John Selvidge at the Ralph Ellison Festival: 

If we could choose, who would we have represent Oklahoma? A few adolescent idiots from Sigma Alpha Epsilon chanting racist garbage on a bus? Or can we aim higher than that? What if we looked within, examined our history and our resources, and gave voice to someone more worthy of expressing the best of what we might be or do? I’ll bet you can guess who I have in mind.

In the wake of Monday’s national headlines and all the shame and anger they’ve inspired around here, it helps to recognize that efforts are already underway in this direction. A little more than a week ago, I sat with several new friends inside the Oklahoma History Center as we enjoyed dinner and a multimedia extravaganza courtesy of the newly-minted Ralph Ellison Foundation‘s Gala event. Though a snowstorm raged outside and dissuaded a few folks from braving the streets to attend, those of us who did experienced a collective warmth and a sense of beginning something grand together. Fittingly enough, the snow began to melt the next day—the first of March, to be precise, Ralph Ellison’s 102nd birthday and a date that, as Mayor Mick Cornett proclaimed at the Gala celebration, would be known in Oklahoma City as “Ralph Ellison Day” from that moment on.

Dancers under the direction of OU Professor Derrick Minter performing at the Ralph Ellison Foundation’s Gala celebration.

Symbolic honors can be bestowed easily like that, with just a few words from a public official, or they can take more sustained effort, like the organization of last year’s multitude of Ellison Centennial activities including the installation of a portrait of Ellison into the Capitol’s portrait gallery and the academic symposium that drew Ellison scholars from all over the country. It’s been a gratifying experience for those of us who value Ellison’s work to have felt these waves of official recognition rising, cresting, breaking all around us this past year or so. For many of us, it’s almost like a long exiled traveler has finally been welcomed home.

Crowds mingle and examine the merchandise at the Festival’s book fair, hosted at the IAO Gallery and representing over a dozen local authors and small presses.

Locally, we may well be setting the stage for a more enlightened future in our city and our state when it comes to to understanding our difficult cultural heritage with regard to race, not to mention living up to our ideals. Engagement with Ralph Ellison’s work and legacy can help us do that, and celebrating him consistently as an Oklahoman native son has the potential to lift us up together, black folks and white folks and other folks alike, to the level of a conversation worth having. That’s the spirit in which several of us launched the first inaugural Ralph Ellison Festival that took place on Film Row just over a couple of weeks ago.

The idea for a festival dates back to conversations between Literati Press‘s Charles Martin and I, along with a few others, during our reading group that focused on Invisible Man about a year ago. I’d been deeply marked by Ellison’s book when I first read it as a teenager, but in exposing it to new readers I was awed by its capacity to still hit like a hammer despite having been written over 60 years ago. That most people in Oklahoma seemed only dimly aware of Ellison—much less the fact that our state and city had produced one of the most important American writers of the 20th century—seemed like a situation worth working to correct. And so, inspired by our reading and what we gained from hanging around the periphery of the Ellison Centennial Celebration, a few of us fantasized about finding a way to carry its momentum forward.

Poet Quraysh Ali Lansana reading from his work at the Festival kick-off event at Dunlap-Codding

Time passed, and we made some inquiries as we all worked on other projects, but it wasn’t until the debacle of Ferguson, Missouri around the end of last summer that we felt sufficiently galvanized to push the idea with gusto. To an almost chilling degree, Invisible Man had never seemed more relevant. Eventually, not long before Christmas, we got a green light from the Film Row District board to instill their February “Premiere” block-party event with whatever Ellison-themed programming we could devise. In the process of scrambling to plan, execute, and promote a worthwhile festival within just a couple of months, we reached out to fellow travelers like hip hop artist Gregory Jerome, painter Skip Hill, and Michael Owens, Executive Director of the Ralph Ellison Foundation. They essentially joined us as festival co-organizers, helping us develop an event that would hit on multiple artistic fronts. Along the way, we expanded our orbit to include poets like Quraysh Ali Lansana, Lauren Zuniga, and Candace Liger as well as many other artists from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines. A full list of festival participants can be found here.

Looking back on that Festival night, I’m impressed at what we were able to accomplish with limited resources and in so short a time. We had four solid musical acts on three different stages at the Paramount, paintings and sculpture displayed throughout our three venues, a book fair that assembled a diverse array of local writers and small publishers, an intimate poetry reading courtesy of Quraysh and then a more raucous one over drinks later that night when Gregory passed the mic around a group of about six poets before

Gregory Jerome and his band at The Paramount’s upstairs jazz lounge

rocking it himself with his impressive, Festival-closing live set. Not a bad first attempt,  considering the challenges we faced. I found magic moments of synergy in Gregory’s set, in the way Lauren Z. roused the Paramount’s crowd to consciousness, and in surprises like Candace’s exploration of the Louis Armstrong song that gave Ellison so much mileage in his prologue to Invisible Man. And what could be more gratifying to a festival organizer than to see a more-than-decent crowd assemble on a cold and foggy February night, a crowd that cut across demographic lines of young and old, black and white, academics, artists, professionals, working folks, hipsters (or what have you) and seemed to come from all over the city?

So, before shelving the ongoing project of this Festival for at least a little while, I obviously need to thank everyone who contributed their time, their work, their attendance, or even just their enthusiasm and moral support. After this modest first attempt at a Ralph Ellison Festival, we have the sense of an idea taking hold, of the beginnings of engagement, momentum, and of course visibility, that most important of Ellisonian themes. As the Ralph Ellison Foundation pursues its own work—and as our affiliation and partnership with that organization grows and deepens, as I hope it will—I’m convinced that we can expect great things to keep happening in Oklahoma City in the name of Ralph Ellison.

Featured artwork by Skip Hill

What could the future look like? In terms of the Festival’s growth, I’m eager to envision next year, which I’m happy to say several of us are already talking about. After what felt, from the inside, like a wild and rushed experiment this last time, we can certainly benefit from taking some time to talk together, to bring new voices and talent to the table, to consider what we might like to see and do next time, and to pursue the kinds of sponsorship and support that will let us garner the resources to put on a bigger and better Ralph Ellison Festival in 2016. Considering all the different angles from which people around here are approaching Ellison now and invoking his work—civic, academic, artistic, educational, political, and more—I already see on the horizon the potential for productive synergy between all of us.

William Faulkner famously wrote “the past is not dead. It’s not even past.” Enduring the persistence of sickening relics like that SAE chant at our state’s most visible center of higher learning suggests that Faulkner was right. But there’s more to that old story, of course: if we can identify and expose the sickness, we’re already on our way to finding an antidote. From my reading, I’m convinced that an antidote reveals itself in Ellison’s work. Maybe more importantly, I believe that it can be applied locally. As the man himself wrote, “the world is possibility if only you’ll discover it.” Despite a few challenges, that’s probably even true of Oklahoma.

We hope you’ll consider reading, working, and discovering with us. To join the conversation, or just to stay in the loop, please visit and “like” the Ralph Ellison Festival onour Facebook page, follow us on  Twitter,  email us at ralphellisonfestival@gmail.com, and encourage others to do the same. We’re eager to spread the word, hear your ideas, and expand the discussion.

To learn about and support the Ralph Ellison Foundation, please visit their site athttp://ralphellisonfoundation.org.  

PROMISE OF A BRAND NEW DAY OR WHATNOT: VOL 1 Preorder

Secure your elusive copy of issue one of PROMISE OF A BRAND NEW DAY OR WHATNOT: VOL 1 before the world runs out of the paper to print it. If you preorder, then you get a set of exclusive Clint Stone trading cards to aid in your exclusive quest to be the envy of your exclusive friends, but also to make the cool “BRRRRRVVV!” sound when lodged in the spokes of your exclusive bicycle. PREORDER HERE!

Once preordered, come out to our exclusive open to the public and all ages book signing at Bombs Away Art at 3003A Paseo on March 20 from 6:30-8:30 pm. Bring your friends and family, but ensure they know that it is exclusive so they should invite their friends and family too.