Take a short drive west of downtown, past Crosbie Heights and Charles Page Studios and Gilcrease Museum, and pretty soon you find yourself amongst deer and dirt roads—what Lisa Regan calls “wild Oklahoma world.” She’s drawn to spots like this, on the outskirts of what’s cool, and what’s cool tends to follow right behind her. Many years ago Regan bought the property across from Leon Russell’s Church Studio when nobody in particular wanted to be there, and turned it into the bustling, colorful home of the original Garden Deva. “I bought it when it was cheap and sold it for a lot of money, and it’s the same here,” she said. “I’m not afraid of real estate, that’s for sure.”
A bright blue building on the south side of Edison marks Regan’s latest outpost, Edison Studios, home to an assortment of artists sharing gallery and studio space. Once a John Deere tractor showroom, then a gas station in the 1940s and ‘50s, then a car repair shop, the nearly century-old space got an infusion of new energy when Regan bought it back in 2017. Now she rents out its bays and studios to local creatives, lives and works there herself (she’s an expert metalsmith and painter), and plans to convert part of the building into an AirBnB.
“It’s the best house I’ve ever lived in,” she said. “I found 12 morels in my backyard the other day! It’s like Tulsa in 1978 over here. It feels sustaining.”
When I walked up for a visit one Saturday afternoon, an art market was in full swing. Out front: a bright yellow Honduran food truck and a pink-haired mannequin lounging by a DJ table. Out back: the painter Zac Heimdale working out some new ideas across from a larger-than-life-sized canvas, his studio’s garage door open to the yard. In between: a multigenerational crowd of Tulsa artists selling their wares, from jewelry to tote bags to ceramics, plus dozens of paintings on display inside and browsers from every corner of the community. (A favorite touch: the vintage cigarette machine.)
It’s a whole Tulsa mood. How does this eclectic space fit into the city’s bigger art landscape? “I don’t know if it fits in or not! I’m just doing it,” Regan laughed. “What I like to do is offer people inexpensive space to work. That's my goal. It benefits me because then I have the energy of these people here”—she gestured to the panorama of artists gathered outside—”and they're helping pay the gas bill, too. When I started out, I had to work in my basement. If I can help somebody who's in their twenties have a great space that makes them feel good to come to work, that's so fulfilling. I love that entrepreneurial spirit.”
Regan describes Edison Studios as “low tech and high vibes”—in other words, there’s a ton of great stuff going on there (for instance, a Women + Weed group painting event last fall) but you might not find out about it through social media channels, since she plans to spend much of the year traveling and more or less letting the studio run itself.
“We keep it easy, really easy,” Regan said. “If there's any drama, it usually weeds itself out around here, because it's obvious that that's not what we're doing. There's not a lot of ego. You know how artists are. It's like one minute we’re all just ‘everything I do is shit.’ The next minute it's like, ‘Oh my God, I sold three paintings!’ Right? It keeps you humble.”
