(PROJECT) AH HA / Mathews Warehouse

[Teatownclown]

http://www.woody100.com/concerts.htm

Here.....we be here!  the show in LA sounds to me like something for broadcast or DVD release from the Nokia. Probably a lot of big names.

I wonder if the Brady show might be a dress rehearsal for the LA show or a totally different show?

[Jeff P]

http://www.woody100.com/concerts.htm

Here.....we be here!  the show in LA sounds to me like something for broadcast or DVD release from the Nokia. Probably a lot of big names.

I wonder if the Brady show might be a dress rehearsal for the LA show or a totally different show?

I don't know, but I'll tell you who should play this show: Wilco.  They love Woodie Guthrie and love playing Tulsa.

Too bad they'll be in Italy at the time... 

[carltonplace]

I noticed the parking and the landscaping were installed last week, anyone know the grand opening date?

[DTowner]

Anyone attend the AH HA grand opening this past Sunday?

Hardesty Art Center opens in Brady District
1 / 29Showing image 1 of 29By JAMES D. WATTS JR. World Scene Writer
Published: 12/17/2012  2:24 AM
Last Modified: 12/17/2012  12:07 PM

The adults who came out to Sunday's official public opening of the Hardesty Arts Center may have said all sorts of appreciative things as they wandered through the four floors of the newest addition to the Brady Arts District.

But it was the younger generation who seemed to be getting the most use - and the most enjoyment - from what the new home of the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa has to offer.

Many of them crowded into the second floor Family Lab, making use of the markers, pencils and crayons available to commit their personal - if sometimes unrecognizable - visions to paper.

Abby Hope Cotner was industriously working on making a rainbow on her piece of paper, while her sister, Emma Faith, proudly held up her own work for appraisal.

"I made a heart with lots of crazy stuff around it," she said, before uncapping a purple marker to add another color of "crazy stuff" to her masterpiece-in-the-making.

Other youngsters were transfixed by the site of Adam Hauck's installation titled "Armada," which no doubt to their eyes resembled a very orderly arrangement of gigantic candies.

And others enjoyed moving from work of art to work of art that make up the center's first exhibit, titled "Concept/OK: Art in Oklahoma," offering their enthusiastically voiced assessment of each piece.

That sort of direct, personal connection with the arts is the underlying principle of the Hardesty Arts Center, which the Arts and Humanities Council likes to call "AHHA."

"This building is all about art," said Robert Schaefer, of Selser Schaefer Architects, the firm that designed the center. "It's about bringing art to everyone in the community."

The AHHA contains exhibition space, studios and classrooms, a complete photography suite complete with dark room and studio, a wood shop, a media lab, library and spaces that artists can rent for specific projects.

It also contains office space for the Arts and Humanities Council, the AHHA staff, a gift shop and an office space to be shared by three statewide arts organizations: the Oklahoma Arts Council, the Oklahoma Arts Institute and the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, which organized the "Concept/OK: Art in Oklahoma" exhibit that will be on display through Feb. 16.

"We've been staying in the new hotel this weekend," said OVAC executive director Julia Kirt, referring to the recently opened Fairfield Inn and Suites, just a block away from the Hardesty Arts Center. "So we've been able to explore this whole neighborhood, and it's really amazing what has been happening in Tulsa in the last few years.

"What's really great," she added, "is that the arts are right in the middle of all that's going on."

The arts have been a major component to the revitalization of the Brady district, starting in the late 1980s when the Tulsa Center for Contemporary Art was established, and commercial galleries began moving into the area.

The neighborhood has grown to include the ONEOK Field ballpark, upscale residential facilities and an array of restaurants and clubs, but its identity as the city's "arts district" remains.

Ken Busby, executive director of the Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa, thanked the city and citizens of Tulsa, who passed the third-penny sales tax that funded the purchase of the land for the Hardesty center, as well as help from the Cherokee Nation and Bank of Oklahoma, which helped secure the new market tax credits that helped fund the construction costs.

Busby also praised the Arts and Humanities Council for raising all the money needed for the building and its fixtures before construction began.

John Everitt, former head of the Arts and Humanities Council, said, "This place really is a testament to how much Tulsa supports the arts. So many cities give only cursory support to the arts, but Tulsans really put forth the effort."

Todd Cotner, whose daughters were busy in the Family Lab, said he was curious about the building because his father had worked for the Hardesty family.

"What I like is the construction of the place, the materials used," he said. "It's really an interesting building."

Schaefer said the materials chosen for the center echo architectural elements within the Brady district - weathered steel panels and the exposed industrial concrete - to make this very new building appear as if it has been on this spot for years.

Tom Moore came down with his family from Raytown, Mo., to attend the opening.

"My daughter is the significant other of one of the artists," he said, indicting Jason Carron's installation of video screens titled "Don't Think About It."

"I've never been to Tulsa before," he said. "It seems like a beautiful town. We plan to stay a couple of days and explore some of the other things to see around here."

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20121217_272_A1_ULNSat768762

[carltonplace]

I was there along with hundreds of other Tulsans. The BD was hoping on a Sunday afternoon.

[Teatownclown]

Back in 2002, the Mathews was a pipe dream of a few bold thinkers. Congrats to Ken Busby and his staff.

Thank you Hardesty, Kaiser and Zarrow.

[DowntownDan]

I'm glad its in the neighborhood, but count me as one who hates the architecural design.  It looks incomplete.  I'm sure there is some wordy existential artistic explanation as to why it is a brilliant design that would go right over my head, but I just don't like it.  Steel grates covering the entire front?  Just ugly.  The pictures of the inside looked great though.

[rdj]

Is it actually done?

[sgrizzle]

Is it actually done?

The AH-HA is done and half of Matthews is done.

[TheArtist]

I love it lol.  That's a ringing endorsement for the look of a building if I ever heard one... "Is it done?"

[rdj]

I love it lol.  That's a ringing endorsement for the look of a building if I ever heard one... "Is it done?"

I didn't mean the exterior of the building.  I meant is the punch list actually done?  I was in there 3-4 weeks before it opened for a tour with Ken and it looked like it was no where close to being done.

[SXSW]

Has anyone heard of the Kravis Design Center?  Apparently it's located at 13th & Carthage, I wonder if this could somehow make a permanent home at AHHA or in the Arts District?  Apparently most of the pieces are loaned out to other museums.

In 2014, George Kravis established the Kravis Design Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma to house the 4,000 objects in his collection and to further his educational mission. The facility is 14,000 square feet of state of the art storage with a gallery space due to be complete in late 2016.

The Kravis Design Center focuses on international industrial design, covering a wide range of mass-produced objects of everyday life such as furniture, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, appliances, radios, and graphics. Highlights include Wells Coates's Ekco radio (1932); Alberto Meda's high-tech LightLight chair made from materials used in aeronautics (1987); Masanori Umeda's Ginza cabinet, whose shape references Japanese popular culture (1982); and Mathias Bengtsson's Slice armchair (1999), which comprises 388 sheets of laser-cut three-millimeter plywood glued together.

http://www.kravisdesigncenter.org/about-george-kravis-design-center