"Invisible Voices"
through January 27
Positive Space Tulsa
Not many things around here move me as much as a packed house at an art show opening. When the community shows up for an artist, it’s not just friends being supportive (even in a city where everybody’s about three degrees of separation from everybody else). It’s a statement of trust in that artist’s vision. In the case of "Invisible Voices," the current exhibit at Positive Space Tulsa by ceramicist Amy Sanders de Melo, that trust was paid back many-fold.
During the hour I spent at this small gallery last Saturday evening, the crowd grew and grew until all of us were doing a half-awkward, fully-charming dance to be able to move around the room together—and to keep from jostling any of the pieces on view. The vibe in the space was cheerful and celebratory, but when I looked at people’s faces as they stood in front of each work in "Invisible Voices," I saw something else underneath: attention, connection, and respect.
Sanders de Melo is a Colombian-American artist and educator, a member of Tulsa’s Red Heat Ceramics studio, and a person with vision and hearing loss. "Invisible Voices" is an ongoing project for her, one that’s growing broader and deeper even as the guiding principle of the work stays steadfastly simple. In this iteration, supported by the Artists Creative Fund, Sanders de Melo invited community members to write first-hand stories of their experiences on the margins of American society, then translated those stories into Braille text which she embedded in gold into ceramic vessels of many shapes, shades, and sizes, each piece representing the “voice” that’s giving its story to the work.
Rendering The Invisible Visible