Living Arts show presents new work from three artists

It sounds a bit like a circus coming to town: a wire act, a collection of people with unusual physical qualities, things that look just odd enough to make you stop and give them a second glance.

Actually, it is the work of three artists with Oklahoma ties that Living Arts of Tulsa is presenting in two separate exhibits opening Thursday.

The Myers Gallery of the Living Arts Space, 308 S. Kenosha Ave., will display "Curio: Cabinet of Curiosities," made up of the paintings of Norman artist Ruth Ann Borum and ceramic works by Jelena Stojanovic, a New York state resident who studied at the University of Central Oklahoma.

At the Liggett Studio, 314 S. Kenosha Ave., will be "Whimsey: Drawings in Wire" by Norman artist Asia Scudder.

Both shows will open with receptions for the artists from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, and the artists of "Curio" will give a gallery talk at 6:30 p.m. The two shows will remain on display through Dec. 27.

Borum's paintings tend to feature female figures presented in a way that she calls "the beautiful grotesque" -- oddly shaped heads, elongated necks, double eyes, bizarre headpieces that seem to have grown out of the subject's skull instead of being placed atop it.

"I work to build tolerance for things that seem alien," Borum writes in her artist's statement. "If there is a place in the world where the

Stojanovic points to artists such as Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt and "their masterful simplification and distorted reshaping of the human body" as primary inspiration for her ceramic pieces. Her pieces are functional, yet also "an abstraction . . . I bring life to my pottery by interrupting the symmetry of the wheel-thrown form . . . giving it a sinuous, flowing look."

Scudder's work has been chosen three times for the biennial VisionMakers show, sponsored by the Oklahoma Visual Art Coalition, and in 2001 was selected to be part of the Venice Biennale, one of the world's most prestigious art events.

She grew up in an artistic environment -- her great-aunts were Claribell and Etta Cone, whose collection of Modernist paintings is one of the cornerstones of the Baltimore Museum of Art's holdings.

Scudder began to work with wire when she wanted to see the drawings of animals she had been making in three dimensions. But soon her work evolved from representations of wildlife to becoming "more abstract, fluid and whimsical representations of the human experience."

For more information, call Living Arts of Tulsa at 585-1234, or go online to www.tulsaworld.com/livingarts.