My early-2025 plea for "more art with teeth" is being answered! Artists in Tulsa are digging all the way in right now with work that's deeply engaged with life. Here's our guide to November's art shows, plus a few opportunities to purchase art for the holidays without supporting corporate stooge operations. —Alicia Chesser
First Friday Openings
“LEAD & COAL: A SOUNDING” by NNN Cook, Nokosee Fields, Gavin Kroeber, Josh Levi, and Aaron Owens
November 7, 7-8:30pm
Tulsa Artist Fellowship Project Space, 205 E. Archer St.
Gavin Kroeber is one of the newest cohort of Tulsa Artist Fellows, a multidisciplinary adventurer who uses visual art, urban theory, and performance to uncover the cultural dynamics of power. His current project digs into post-industrial Ozark mining landscapes that turned lead and coal into instruments of the 19th century war machine. In this First Friday performance, Kroeber and four colleagues share their "soundings" from these sites, along with video and a limited-edition vinyl of recordings from the field with titles like "Subterranean Coalification; Deep Time Plant Decay" and "To Be Unaware of How Far You Can Fall; Pre-Electricity Lead Mining," performed on instruments that range from synthesizers to an ocarina to a bowed towel rack.
Tulsa Artist Fellowship Open Studios, ft. Cedric Mitchell, Franky Cruz, and more
November 7, 6pm
Tulsa Artist Fellowship, 109 MLK Jr. Blvd.
This month, TAF's open studios feature glassblower Cedric Mitchell, who returns to Tulsa with a new collection of Afro Post-Modernist blown glass wonders created at the Tacoma Museum of Glass, alongside a poster installation by Ernesto Yemena exploring the views and interactions between the Mexican communities living on both sides of the United States-Mexico border. Take your complementary Que Gusto bites and Heirloom beer to the rooftop to check out Franky Cruz's VM Dome Lab: an immersive sculpture and a living butterfly garden.
“Facing Solitude” by Lauryl Eddlemon
November 7, 6pm
TAC Gallery, 9 Reconciliation Way
Through November 29
A transplant to Tulsa from Texas, Lauryl Eddlemon is a painter influenced by the folk art and color palette of the Southwest. Her work in this show explores the paradox of solitude in an overstimulated world, with “alone-ness” not as a state of lack, but as a source of strength and serenity.
Coming Up
"Immersion: Along The Cimarron" by Liz Dueck with sound by Joseph Mohmed
Opens November 15, 1-5pm
The Bird House
Liz Dueck—Tulsa-based nature artist, educator, and trail guide—is expanding her range in this installation at the tiny-but-intrepid Bird House. Art made from earth pigments, campfire charcoal, clay, and gathered materials from the Cimarron River's banks holds space with “Along the Cimarron,” a soundtrack by OKC-based producer/composer/percussionist Joseph Mohmed that weaves field recordings from the river with classical composition. BYO blanket and prepare to get cozy.
Ongoing Exhibits
"From the Heart: Expressions of Indigenous Joy" by Four Mothers Collective
Positive Space Tulsa
Through November 29
Last year's exhibit at Positive Space by Four Mothers Collective was a powerful reflection on tradition. The Collective returns this year with "From the Heart: Expressions of Indigenous Joy," co-curated by Carly Treece and Jessi Sands, in which 26 artists consider Indigenous resilience, connection, and the boundless power of joy. In a world that too often seeks to define Indigenous existence through struggle, this exhibition shifts the narrative, honoring joy as an act of resistance, a testament to survival, and a reclamation of self. Events around the exhibit include an Artist Talk (November 7), an Artisan Market + Community Meal by Autumn Star Catering (November 8), and a ceramics workshop with Jessi Sands (November 15).
“Subterfuge” by Clayton Keyes
108 Contemporary
Through November 22
From his Kendall-Whittier studio, ceramicist Clayton Keyes is creating some of the most wonderfully strange, eerily compelling, and provocative sculptural works you can lay eyes on in this city. In this solo show, he examines environmental legacy and institutional oppression in pieces that use gesture, posture, and emotional tension to create narratives that are both unsettling and alluring.
“Monument Eternal” by Le’Andra LeSeur
Tulsa Artist Fellowship Flagship
Through January 10
Monument Eternal began as the artist’s personal reckoning with Stone Mountain, Georgia—the site of the Ku Klux Klan’s 1915 resurgence—through video, sculpture, photography, and sound. Her investigation into American landscapes where racial terror has taken root, and where its memory remains unmarked or distorted, continues now in Oklahoma through her fellowship.
The iteration of Monument Eternal you’ll see at the Flagship shifts focus to the 1911 lynching of Laura Nelson and her son, LD Nelson, in Okemah, Oklahoma. With no official marker on the site of their lynching, what remains is an online image: gruesome, persistent, and dehumanizing. Through five new sculptural and photographic works, LeSeur creates alternative memorials where quietude and refusal are intentional.
“My practice continuously considers ways in which art can transform violence into something beyond,” LeSeur writes in her artist statement. “Monument Eternal transforms memories of violence, remnants of violence, and even physical embodiments of violence into transcendences.”
Día de los Muertos Altar Exhibition
Living Arts of Tulsa
Through November
An ofrenda is an offering in honor of those who have died—a creative act celebrating people who, one way or another, gave us life. The ofrendas at Living Arts stay up for a few more weeks, post-Día de los Muertos. It's a genuine healing experience to stop in and spend some time with them.
“Margaret Roach Wheeler: A Retrospective”
101 Archer
Through December 19
Native fashion returns to 101 Archer with this retrospective show featuring handwoven works by internationally recognized Chickasaw-Choctaw weaver Margaret Roach Wheeler. These jaw-dropping pieces honor centuries of tradition and craftsmanship handed down through generations of Indigenous makers, including Wheeler's great-great-grandmother, Mahota.
“Art About Town”
101 Archer
Through December 13
The Alpha Rho Tau Civic Art Collective was founded in 1930—not a bad run for an arts organization around here. In this show, its member artists take on buildings and landscapes in the Tulsa metropolis and other Oklahoma towns.
Let Us Help You Not Buy Art Gifts At Target This Holiday Season
Art Market After Dark
Guthrie Green
November 7
Shop 108
108 Contemporary
Ongoing
Objets d'Art Holiday Sale
Liggett Studio
November 14-16
Holiday Print Event
November 21-22
Carson House
