ArtHouse Tulsa: "Surreal-East"
May 3, 2025
Elevate East / Hannah Hall
Hit 21st Street and head east, past the ghost of Sears, past Nathan Hale High School and Viet Huong, past Golden Corral and El Chico. Take a left just past the Cherokee Shopping Center and you’ll find yourself at Elevate East, a complex on the east side of Garnett that’s become a hub for all sorts of activity in what I’m prepared to argue is the coolest area of the city: East Tulsa.
Pulling up to the complex’s Hannah Hall last Saturday for ArtHouse Tulsa’s “Surreal-East” show, I spotted huge paintings by VNICE and other local artists standing in the grass, facing the traffic. Across the street, long-skirted ladies held “NEED PRAYER?” signs out at drivers from the other direction, as a preacher yelled into a mic from a makeshift stage. (This faith mission didn’t appear to be directed at the ArtHouse show or its attendees; it was just a thing that was happening on Garnett on a Saturday afternoon.) Spread out on the lawn outside the exhibit hall, kids and grown-ups relaxed around picnic tables and a DJ booth, with a MASA food truck stationed at the edge and muralists painting under the trees.
Hannah Hall itself is a big room that looks exactly like what it is: a former banquet hall, like the ones set up next to many little churches for post-Sunday-service potlucks and bingo. Walking in past the bright yellow office door of El Centro New Sanctuary Empowerment Center, I passed a big group of Hmong Tulsans coming out of a Hmong fashion show practice in one of the other buildings.
There was as much going on in “Surreal-East” as in the surrounding environment—including the killer pun of its title. As usual with ArtHouse Tulsa shows, it was a one-day-only affair, but the creative engines that generated it are going strong all year long. ArtHouse’s co-founder Rogelio Esparza is an award-winning photographer who has lived in East Tulsa for more than two decades; its other co-founder, Allison Ward, is a multidisciplinary artist and probably my favorite curator in Tulsa. Since 2019 they’ve produced many group shows together as ArtHouse Tulsa, most in literal homes across the city. Now they have a permanent home, their first ever, at Elevate East, and they’ve wasted no time in using it to the fullest.
One of the boldest elements of ArtHouse Tulsa’s curation through the years has been their disregard for distinctions between well-known, career-established artists and less-known, emerging ones. Creative brilliance crosses all spectrums. A strong theme pulls many worlds together, and curatorial excellence lies in letting those worlds talk to each other freely.
Supported by the Tulsa Global District, “Surreal-East” brought 18 artists into conversation around the uncanny, the off-kilter, and the unexpected, re-organizing reality in a way that brought out its dark and bright edges. Trauma was in the room with us; so was healing, humor, pleasure, dream-vibes, and not a few instances of blood-red rage. The show elevated the strangeness and beauty of what happens when we let go of preconceived boundaries—including those between artists, histories, and geographies.