The Pickup's Culture coverage is brought to you by Tulsa Artists' Coalition Gallery, 40 Years of Empowering Tulsa Artists. Visit TAC Gallery to see American Highway Revisited by VC Torneden and Melinda Harvey Green, June 5 – 27, 2026.
Offline markets. House concerts. Writing groups. Self-produced theatre. DIY creativity is surging in Tulsa right now. When resources are limited, artists find a way—and some, like Shayna Brewer of Hidden Creatives, are working to create spaces for those artists to be found.
You’ll find plenty of art in galleries across Tulsa, but being in a gallery isn’t what defines something as art, or an artist as worthy. Not every artist has access to a spot on a gallery wall, much less in a museum; not every Tulsan finds access to those places easy, either.
Enter the art studio tour, a model that’s big in other cities but scarce around here. Instead of asking people to come to a centralized spot like the Arts District to show and see art, these studio tour rambles let the art be where (and what) it is and invite us to meet it there. As Hyperallergic reported about New York’s annual Bushwick Open Studios event, now in its 20th year, “Discovering something beautiful while exploring a corner of the art world that you don’t normally see remains the central appeal of an open studios event.”
Brewer experienced Bushwick Open Studios first-hand when she lived in New York, and enjoyed a similar citywide studio tour in Austin before moving to Tulsa in 2022. “When I came here,” she said, “I was like, Tulsa seems like the kind of place that will have one, right? But when I looked them up, it was like more curated art tours. I understand the place for those, because some people, when they go, they want to know they're going to see established artists. But I want something where everybody can feel special and have the opportunity to be seen. And so I was like, that feels like a gap that Tulsa hasn't filled yet, so maybe I can fill that gap.”
Inspired by local creative initiatives like Saturday Scribe and the Artist Council, Brewer has launched the Hidden Creatives Studio Tour, which offers an adventure of discovery featuring 67 local artists showing work in home studios and host venues (from Frequency Lounge and Origin Coffee to John’s Berryhill Food Market). Over two days and 12 stops, the tour’s focus is on emerging artists who might not have had a chance to show their work in person before, in mediums ranging from pastels and fused glass to paintings and performances, including a whole musical lineup at the Tulsa Clubhouse.
“I've met a lot of artists [in Tulsa] and I haven't seen their artwork [in galleries] and I'm like, they're fantastic,” Brewer said. “Why aren't they being shown? Nobody has to prove that they're a good artist to me. They just register. And then I do the work where I put their bios up, I put their socials up, I make sure people know where to go to see them.
“I want people to be comfortable,” she continued. “If you're new at art, that's okay. There are a lot of people who are still going to like what you're doing. There's always an audience for the type of stuff you do, but if you're not given the opportunity to show it off, you never know.”
Brewer is an artist herself, making paintings that focus on neurodivergence, female sexuality, and mental health. Born in Alaska, she got a degree in computer art from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks before packing up and moving to Brooklyn. “I was so excited to do something completely different,” she said. She sold jewelry at Macy’s and worked at Lowe’s, eventually continuing her art education at the Pratt Institute.
Along the way she’s built a wide-ranging art career that turns out to be great preparation for the kind of work it takes to organize an event like Hidden Creatives—notably a stint at BuzzFeed, where she was part of a team doing animations and comics and listicles on a tight turnaround. “Those skills have really helped me with promoting this project because I've had to film people one day and then, when I have a little bit of extra time, edit it really fast so that I can push it on the socials to get the word out there,” she said.
One reason art studio tours are so rare is that they’re incredibly intensive on the back end. With assists from a broad spectrum of Tulsa’s creatives, Brewer has gone the extra mile to make sure these emerging artists have what they need. As part of the process, Hidden Creatives provides an array of creative support: dedicated landing pages for each artist, maps and yard signs, printing resources, slides that show different ways to set up a studio, suggestions for lower-priced inventory like stickers and prints, help with labels and descriptions, videos about how to hang artwork, and social media assets to make it as easy as possible for artists to share about their work in the tour.
That’s a lot of support for the small registration fee—$25 for solo artists and $15 for venues hosting multiple artists—and it means that artists are walking away not just with a one-time art opening but with sustainable skills to take with them. Artists who’ve gone through MFA programs or had experience with showing work may already have learned those skills. For those who haven’t, being walked through the process can mean the difference between getting out there and giving up because the “how” is too daunting.
“I just started thinking of it as a UX problem, in a way,” Brewer said, “where the moment a user hits a snag, instead of being annoyed by it, [asking] ‘how can I change this to help this person so they have a better experience and so they don't get discouraged’? If it doesn't work for the people you're serving, then it's not gonna work.”
The same principle goes for Hidden Creatives: instead of being annoyed that the art scene isn’t serving everyone, Brewer has found a way to adapt that scene with more inclusivity and ease-of-use, helping build sustainability into emerging artists’ lives as well as into the studio tour project as a whole.
And if a gallerist happens to join the tour and discovers a new artist whose work they want to show? Fabulous. In the meantime, a $16.28 pass means direct-to-artist support and a chance to get up close and personal with the hidden creativity that’s cooking throughout the city.
“Some people are going to be very baby beginning artists,” Brewer said. “Some people are going to be classically trained in many different media, and that's totally fine. And, you know, sometimes I really do like emerging artists’ work a little bit more because it's very raw and honest, and it hasn't been filtered by academia telling you what you should paint or draw to get sales. So I'm hoping people come in with open hearts and minds and enjoy everybody's work that they get to see.”
