First Fridays at Tulsa Artist Fellowship x October 2025

On First Friday, October 3, join us for the kickoff of Open House weekend, an evening of open studios, exhibitions, performances, and community as we come together to experience the vibrant creative spirit of Tulsa’s Arts District.

Tulsa Artist Fellowship is proud to partner with the Cherokee Art Market for the third installment of our special First Fridays series. Meet featured artists Lisa Rutherford and Janae Grass alongside hands-on activities.

At Flagship, the exhibition Le’Andra LeSeur: Monument Eternal opens. LeSeur dissects the ways that monuments erected to commemorate racist legacies have altered the mental psyche of Black communities. Through video, sculpture, photography, and sound, the project builds an embodied archive of presence where absence has long prevailed.

Join artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh for Art as Witness, a multimedia conversation on race, gender, and community in Tulsa in the Fellowship’s Archer building project space. Tatyana will share images and video from her socially engaged art practice, along with her goals and questions for Tulsa. This event invites the public into both reflection and participation by having a community dialogue where attendees will be asked: What is kept quiet in Tulsa that needs to be said out loud? How do you experience race and gender in your everyday life? There will be an opportunity for community portraits, where participants can be photographed by Tatyana or write statements to express their experiences.

At the studios, experience artworks by Los Angeles-based artists Cedric Mitchell, exhibiting new blown glassworks, alongside a poster installation by Ernesto Yerena. Mitchell returns to his home city with a presentation of irreverent objects in bold colors, playful geometry, and clean craftsmanship rooted in Afro Post-Modernism. Fueled by his cross-national upbringing, Yerena’s art practice reflects his observations of the views and interactions between the Mexican communities living on both sides of the United States-Mexico border.

Rehab El Sadek shares a striking sculpture series, Re: Collection, that preserves personal and collective memory. Drawing on the ancient Egyptian practices of her ancestors, El Sadek wraps her sculptural forms in gauze and natural pigments, safeguarding both the object and the story. This tapestry of memory honors landscapes and experiences that shaped her journey before and after immigrating to the United States.

On the roof terrace, the celebration continues with VM Dome Lab 3.0 by Franky Cruz. The Dome Lab functions as both an immersive sculpture and a living butterfly garden, open for drop-in exploration and scheduled programs, including talks on pollinator ecology, conservation, and metamorphosis, as well as sound activations. This project extends the artist’s Vivarium Meconium Laboratory practice, raising butterflies from egg to chrysalis as a metaphor for transformation, resilience, and ecological interdependence.

Explore works-in-progress throughout the Tulsa Artist Fellow studios. Take Control Initiative will provide resources, swag, and emergency kits to community members. Enjoy early-autumn bites by Que Gusto, and refreshing pours from our friends at Heirloom Rustic Ales.

We look forward to welcoming you.

Programming at all Tulsa Artist Fellowship locations:

Tulsa Artist Fellowship Studios, 109 MLK Jr. Blvd.

Tulsa Artist Fellowship Flagship, 112 N. Boston Ave.

Tulsa Artist Fellowship Project Space, 205 E Archer St.

Tulsa Artist Fellowship’s third annual Open House, taking place from October 3-5, 2025, embodies our commitment to nurturing Tulsa and its visionary artistic practitioners. Programs foster interconnectedness through community care and collaboration.

For more information and the full schedule, visit tulsaartistfellowship.org/open-house.