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PrintArtist closeup - Linda Clark
Catching up with the new administrative director of Living Arts of Tulsa.
Nothing is roundabout with Linda Clark. This woman means business, and that is just what Living Arts hired her to do.
If you know Living Arts at all, you know the gallery is always abuzz with the hubbub of the next show or project.
During our interview, people walked in and out of her office talking with Artistic Director Steve Liggett or gathering supplies scattered on the far side of her workspace, but Clark’s focus never strayed from me. Only the vibration of her cell phone interrupted us.
“I set my phone alarm to remind me to Twitter,” she says, smiling and shrugging.
This small act tells me she makes plans and lays the groundwork to succeed.
Hired in April as administrative director, Clark describes her role at the gallery as complementary to Liggett’s.
“We’re very good yin and yang because we have different communication styles,” she says. “He’s visual arts. I’m performing arts.”
Formerly the business and grants manager for the Tulsa Glassblowing Studio, Clark took pride in building up the Brady District’s First Friday Art Crawl. This experience, combined with her Master of Arts Administration from Goucher College in Maryland, her musical theater and dance background and her years of volunteer work at Living Arts, won her the job. She’ll narrow in on tasks such as communications and grants management.
“I think there needs to be more diversity in Tulsa arts, and that is what we do at this organization,” Clark says.
Clearly committed to Living Arts’ mission of exploring and developing new creative art forms, Clark has a solid past in building art initiatives in our community and an eye for the strengths of fellow art lovers.
“Tulsa is really starting to bloom with its art environment,” she says.
Undoubtedly this is because of people like her.
This Month's Art Events
An Artist’s Pilgrimage: David Roberts’ Lithographs of Egypt and the Holy Land
Roberts’ works represent a time when artists were the ones who could illuminate the visual mysteries of faraway lands. Their drawings were the photographs of today.
One of the first independent and professional British artists to experience the Orient firsthand, Roberts toured Egypt, Nubia and the Holy Land in the late 1830s, sketching monuments, architecture and people.
Upon his return, his drawings were published as 248 lithographs and colored by hand. After more than 160 years, his paintings are still the most beloved and popular illustrations of Egypt and the Holy Land. Go see them!
Runs June 7 through Aug. 23. Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art, Brodsky Fine Arts Gallery and Second Floor Special Exhibition Gallery, 2021 E. 71st St., 492-1818, www.jewishmuseum.net
Marital Carnage: Sculpture by Kara McCleary
“While making these pieces, I work out the frustrations in my personal life,” Broken Arrow artist Kara McCleary says of the creation of her paper sculptures. “It was not until I started working in three dimensions that I really found the true expression of my heart.”
If art is therapeutic for the artist and cathartic for the viewer, looking at McCleary’s art sounds like an excellent experience. See if your frustrations disappear while studying her works.
July 10–31; opening reception, 6–9 p.m., July 10. Tulsa Artists’ Coalition Gallery, E. Brady Ave., 592-0041, www.tacgallery.org
