Pink primroses are popping. Dogwoods are blooming. Red clover is rising. What's coming to Tulsa galleries this month is just as full of life, and way easier on the allergies. Here's your guide to what's on view in April, including all your stops for First Friday, April 3.
New Stuff
“Hell or High Water” by Michelle Mikesell and “Almost Animal” by Shawn Smith
M.A. Doran Gallery, 3509 S. Peoria
April 2-May 1
In two new exhibits on Brookside, Michelle Mikesell examines idioms and phrases that are used in various countries in her paintings, while Shawn Smith explores the intersection of the digital world and reality in his sculptures.
"GROWN FROM THIS THREADBARE GROUND" by Sally Garner: Closing Reception
Phillips Theological Seminary, 901 N Mingo Rd.
April 2 at 5pm
Local fiber artist Sally C. Garner's community weaving project and soft sculpture exhibition, Grown From This Threadbare Ground, closes with a collaborative installation that explores our relationship with nature and the environment.
First Friday Art Crawl ft. “Rhythm & Verse” with Claire Collins, Written Quincey, Kode Ransom, Madame Zeroni, and KNIPPLE
Guthrie Green, 111 E Reconciliation Way
April 3 at 6pm
April's First Friday Art Crawl at Guthrie Green features "Rhythm & Verse"—bringing together local poets and musicians for a collaborative performance built on improvisation, rhythm, and voice—and the first outdoor vendor market of the year.
Stay in touch
Sign up for The Talegate, our free newsletter<br>Fresh Tulsa stories delivered every Tuesday and Friday
First Friday at 101 Archer ft. Artist Talk with Anitra Lavanhar and TU Jazz Combo
101 Archer, 101 E. Archer
April 3 at 5pm
"Envisioning Tomorrow" is a Tulsa-based portrait series shaped by photographer Anitra Lavanhar's concern over fear and division in her community. While the dominant narrative insists the future is bleak and unchangeable, this work challenges that assumption by inviting diverse portrait subjects to imagine the future they want to create. On First Friday, hear a talk by the artist alongside music from TU's jazz combo, Focus.
Tulsa Artist Fellowship: April First Friday
Tulsa Artist Fellowship, 109 E. MLK Jr Blvd.
April 3 at 6pm
On April 3, experience Futuro Imperfecto, presented in partnership with The Hulett Collection, featuring Tulsa Artist Fellow Miguel Braceli. For more than a decade, Braceli has created performances, installations, photography, and video that examine the political and social conditions shaping life in Venezuela and the United States. Through poetic interventions in public space, his work gives tangible form to the forces shaping our “imperfect future.” Throughout the evening, visitors are invited to meet artists and learn about their processes firsthand. Complimentary beverages will be provided by Heirloom Rustic Ales, with live mixes by DJ Xavier.
“Celestial Waters” by Tessa Richardson
Tulsa Artists’ Coalition, 9 E Reconciliation Way
April 3-25
Tessa Richardson draws on her Anglo-Indian heritage and a multidisciplinary background spanning conceptual art, video installation, and ceramics to create forms that move fluidly between the intimate and the infinite. "Celestial Waters" invites viewers to consider life as an ongoing transformation of matter: from water to organism, from elemental particles to consciousness. Grounded in material presence yet expansive in scope, Richardson’s work offers a meditation on becoming, continuity, and our cosmic origins.
“Entangled Ecologies” by Shawn Smith
108|Contemporary, 108 Reconciliation Way
April 3-May 23
"Entangled Ecologies" investigates how systems—ecological, technological, and cultural—intersect and reshape one another. Exploring how we increasingly experience nature as something distant—flattened on screens, abstracted into data, and reduced to visual information—Smith responds to this disconnection by creating sculptural forms that reintroduce physical presence, material labor, and multisensory engagement.
“Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides?” by Kenneth Reams and Isabelle Watson Reams
Living Arts of Tulsa, 307 E Reconciliation Way
April 3-May 23
Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides is an exhibition rooted in Kenny Reams’s lived experience on death row for 31 years. Co-created with his wife and artistic collaborator, Isabelle, the work explores the history and inhumanity of the death penalty in America.
“Spring Euphoria” Group Show
Royce Myers Gallery, 1706 S. Boston Ave.
April 3 at 5pm
Just up the street from Tina's, this iconic Tulsa gallery presents 15 artists' reflections on the word "euphoria": An intense, overwhelming feeling of pleasure, happiness, and well-being.
Gallery Opening: Anthony Corraro
Dennis R. Neill Equality Center, 621 E 4th St.
April 3 at 6pm
“Flesh & Flame” by Sydney McLeod
Positive Space Tulsa, 1324 E. 3rd St.
April 4-25
"Flesh & Flame" is a drawing-based installation that uses charcoal, poetry, and dark charcoal voids to evoke the integration of mind and body. A monolithic figurative drawing, relying on reductive mark making and deep blacks, creates a lush and immersive surface to anchor into the physicality of the body, while the surrounding poetry digs into the emotional complexity of reconnecting with that physicality. The installation will confront the body as both person and object outside of the technosphere of media. The concept is deeply rooted in coming to terms with a body haunted by chronic pain and fatigue.
Coming Up
"Where Flowers Bloom" curated by Cindy Erickson
Contemporary Arts of Tulsa (formerly Liggett Studio), 314 S. Kenosha
April 10-30
No traditional still-lifes here. This group show brings unexpected florals, unusual media, and surprising approaches to everyday blooms.
"Fragmented Landscapes" by Caty Smith
ROOMS Annex, 1521 S Main St.
April 10-April 24
"Fragmented Landscapes" is a new body of mixed media work that explores how memory and place shape the landscapes we carry within us. Combining alternative photographic processes, collage, and sculptural forms, the work draws from an evolving archive of photographs and collected fragments from travel and everyday life. Landscapes, figures, and textures are assembled into quiet acts of material reconstruction, connecting past and present. The exhibition invites viewers to slow down and consider how identity forms through the places and people that stay with us, and how the past surfaces through image and experience.
"SCAPES 2015-2026" by Douglas Shaw Elder
WOMPA, 3306 Charles Page Blvd.
April 10-May 10
BLOOM on BLVD
WOMPA, 3306 Charles Page Blvd.
April 11 at 4pm
Bloom on BLVD returns for its second year as a one-day indoor/outdoor music and arts experience in Tulsa. This is the fifth independently produced festival from Haus of Kitt, focused on bringing people together through music, art, and immersive environments.
"I Talk With My Hands" by Regina Dao
Addis Ceramics, 2212 E. Admiral Blvd.
April 16 at 5 p.m., 6 p.m., and 7 p.m.
Regina Dao will lead a hands-on lesson in the art of pinch pots. Participants will learn to shape raw clay into functional vessels using only their hands—an intimate, ancient technique that mirrors the flow of conversation. Guests are encouraged to bring someone they’d like to converse with over tea and clay to foster room to deepen relationships and understanding while bringing meaning to memory.
"I’m Good. How Are You?" by Zach Litwack
Belafonte, 306 S. Phoenix Ave.
April 17-May 15
"I'm Good. How Are You?" will feature 10 new mixed-media art works by visual artist Zach Litwack. The show uses darkly humorous collage pieces to explore the role that toxic positivity plays in modern American culture.
