Candace’s viewing and funeral were quite lovely, and I think she looks very beautiful in the attire she is wearing. I very much loved hearing her family sing Amazing Grace in Cherokee on Sunday. I haven’t heard it sung in Cherokee since I was a teenager since I loved learning the Cherokee language as a kid, having gone to language classes then. I was very pleased to hear it again and witness it in person as an adult. I even studied it very early in undergraduate school. I am happy my sister Shelby was able to make it there to the funeral yesterday.
Everytime I think of Candace, I think of her when I first met her in the Fall of 2008 at the Nazarene Church in Youth Group at the age of sixteen. Chelsea Peary invited me to go to church with her and I continued going for a while after that first time. So, when I remember Candace, I remember her as a younger kid before she was a teenager, and I remember seeing her with her siblings and others there at that church. I always remembered her as being very sweet and I enjoyed being around her even then. I very much agreed with the pastor at the funeral when he said she had a nice smile. I always thought she had a very cute smile. I was absolutely delighted to see her again years later as she popped up one day having just started working at Taco Bueno and we got to work with each other before for a little while before I left in 2014. With my time with her there, I always thought she was a very good worker and I really appreciated her help and contribution when things got busy and hectic there. Which was often, unfortunately. I remember driving her home from work one day because she had to be home at a certain time, and we connected over the Cherokee culture and the Cherokee language, which she told me then that her family called her Candy Eater growing up. She asked me on that drive how to say it in Cherokee. She then gave a house tour when I dropped her off. Lol I very much loved that she embraced her heritage and enjoyed seeing her Tiktoks of her and kids singing in Cherokee over time.
I enjoyed being there during moments such as her wedding and baby showers outside of church, and I am really glad I was able to see her one last time at that very same Nazarene church fifteen years later. That’s so crazy to me thinking about it. There was no way I wasn’t going to see her one last time. I have always cared for her and the other kids that I attended Youth Group with, and the adults there. I am always delighted to see any of them at any point. I loved catching up with Brittany Book at the viewing Sunday and I am very thankful that Chelsea introduced me to the church and the people all those years ago. I am very appreciative that I got to cross paths with Candace when I did and that we got to be friends in this life time. And, of course, I got to see Ciera again after a while since we last saw each other.
This past week was my birthday week and I had a goal I wanted to meet this year, and that was to go and do things I have on my bucket list that I created. I started this last year in 2022 for my birthday and I had gone to places such as the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie museums, the Tulsa Botanical Gardens, I ate at Sisserous Caribbean Restaurant for the first time in downtown Tulsa, etc. I, of course, did not go do all of these activities in one day, but rather went to them throughout the week and I am glad I did that because I felt weirdly productive doing it. Since I have more time recently, I been wanting to meet goals that I have put into this bucket list just so that I can remind myself that I have done things I wanted to do and had met them. This is really the main major reason why I go to so many events like I do, to be able to experience I haven’t before while I can and still have the time. I digress. For the past week I had planned on going to seven places, but I ended up going to six. Four of these places are in Oklahoma City, so I had planned one day dedicated to solely doing that.
On Monday May 22nd, I went to the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art in the Tulsa/Jenks area. I actually didn’t know there was a Jewish art museum here in the area and I was excited to finally find out. I always been fascinated with Jewish culture for some reason, and come to find out that I do have Jewish ancestry on my mother’s side of the family, so I was excited to see what was there. There was a lot of reading involved, especially in the Holocaust section, so it does take time and attention to get through the museum. I felt like I learned more there about the Holocaust, even if it was just a little bit more, than I remember learning in school, especially about the rebellions by the Jewish in the ghettos. It was also explained in this section that the Jewish had regularly encountered discrimination throughout the centuries solely based on their practices, such as circumcision, and belief, even during the Roman times. Just because it was different from other cultures. Also, I have learned that the Jewish people were also blamed by some group of people for the start of World War I for the means of profiting off of it. It is so crazy how long they have been facing discrimination. I did remember learning about how disabled people were often experimented on first then exterminated, and I had never heard anybody or anything else talk about that since I learned that years ago. I had actually learned that in a docu- series I believe on Netflix, not in school. This museum does mention about that and how the Nazi party considered the disabled as useless and waste of space, and that’s so horrible. Of course, the Nazi party anyone that wasn’t Jewish, like gay people, people who were involved in the Masonic groups, the gypsies (informal name first the group), and anybody outside the ideal. I kind of knew about some of that, anyway, beforehand.
   My favorite stuff out of all of it is absolutely the stained glass art. I love stained glass art, I think it looks so cool with the variants of color involved. I also loved looking at the different Torahs they had displayed there. I never had the opportunity to actually see one in person. I thought it was interesting that there were a couple reasons, that I remember, why the Torah was read with a handheld device like in Bar/bat Mitzvahs, one of being that the the document is too sacred to physically touch with fingers. I also read that the paper or parchment that is used to create Torahs actually reacts chemically to something on our hands, and it tends to damage it in a way.
The museum, I felt like, was very informative. I have to warn anybody that if you are interested to visiting the museum, there are a lot of reading involved. I am so use to art museums and galleries that I am not accustomed to having to read a lot during a museum visit. That sounds sad, but that’s the truth. It will definitely take time to navigate through the museum.
I have been slacking on keeping up with posting due to exahustion from work and trying to be a functioning adult, but I am now getting around to it! Admittingly, this is running a month behind and I made sure to keep the program pamphlets for when I finally getting to posting this. I went to see Neave Trio at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center in downtown Tulsa on April 23rd and I have to admit that I have not previously heard of them beforehand. However, it does appear that they have been touring and making albums as group since 2010 and even been Grammy nominated previously before, so they have definitely made a name for themselves! I have been trying to find events to go to so that I can discover new things and I guess expand my cultural palate. I may have already explained that in one of my previous posts, but that is reasoniong behind me going around to so many different events; I just want to experience new things while I still can and have the time. I am always going to some kind of an event and I am almost always at the Tula Performing Art Center as of lately. According to the program pamplet provided, the word ‘neave’ in the name is Gaelic translating to ‘bright’ and ‘radiant.’
From what I understand from what the members of the group were saying in between performances is that they make sure to play compositions from women composers, both from the past and present, in order to celebrate and spread their music around so they get the recognition they deserve as composers. Also because composers historically have been male and female composers were more rare in the past. They played compositions such as Gabriela Lena Frank’s Four Folks (2012), Reena Esmail’s Trio (2019), and Ethel Smyth’s Trio in D Minor (1880). Frank, who is of both Lithuanian Jewish, Peruvian, and Chinese descent, is from Berkely, California started to create music a form of therapy growing up, as she is profoundly hearing-impaired, that explored her mixed heritage. Reena Esmail is from Chicago, Illinois and is of Indian descent, and her work attempts to bridge the two different musical and cultural worlds she is a part of. Ethel Smyth, it appears, was a successful composer during her time in London and is also well-known as a social activist and was involved inthe women’s suffrage movement. She wrote and dedicated a song to the movement titled The March of the Women and even spent time in prison for two months with other suffragettes for breaking windows of the home of an opposing minister. After that, she became a Dame Commander in the Order of the British empire and had friendships with other well-known people such as Virginia Woolf and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaihovsky. Furthermore, the program pamphlet also mentions that both Smyth and Woolf may have had a pretty close relationsip in that Smyth made romantic advances towards her, however, those advances had been rejected. I guess I will have to read up more on that. My favorite for sure out of the selections is Reena Esmail’s work just because it sounded pretty. I did try to find their work online through streaming platforms, but I was mostly unsuccessful, unfortunately. I would like to listen to their work more to get a better impression of them rather making a judgement after hearing them once. Just because you heard it already once doesn’t mean that your judgement of it is going to change later on or that perhaps maybe you were not probably in a state to fully appreciate it at that specific moment in time. That is my logic, anyway.
I would encourage everybody to go and see their performances if they are in your city or nearby. They are great musicians and seems like pretty nice people that care to celebrate women composers who they believe deserve the recognition.
On May 14th I went to see Tulsa Ballet’s 2023 Signature Series at Tulsa University’s Lorton Performance Center where they performed three modern works from well-known choregraphers. From what I understand, Tulsa Ballet does a signature series performance where they perform more modern works at the end of every season and this was my first time experiencing it. The performances include Within by choregrapher Katarzyna Kozielska, Cacti by choregrapher Alexander Ekman, and While You Were Gone by choregrapher Jennifer Weber. I will say in advance that Cacti was my favorite out of the selection of performances they did that night and I will expound on that in a little bit. While You Were Gone definitely comes in second for how I enjoyed it, but I have to admit that that is because I read the section about it in the program pamphlet after the performance, and so I have a greater appreciation of what it was all about because now I see it as moving than beforehand. I really should make sure to them before the performances actually happen because then it will make more sense to me. Mental note for next time.
The first performance, While You Were Gone, first started off with a light on a stand on the middle of the stage where it lit up, and with it lighting up first inspired the lone dancer that was on stage first to dance and then for the others to joined. The dancers had moved and danced with this light with one another, and it was obvious that this light is of some symbolic importance right away, but I could not at the time figure out why it was and what it represented. I really enjoyed the music they used by Nu Deco Ensemble which used songs from the group OutKast songs such as B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad) and The Whole World, and I was singing along to them because I love listening to their songs. I could tell that this is suppose to be very moving, but I was still confused as to what exactly was happening. Anyway, as I was looking at the program pamplet a couple nights ago, I finally came to know that the performance is inspired by the theater tradition of a ghostlight, which is “a single light left on in a theater on an empty stage to appease the ghosts of performers past who may haunt the theater if not given light to perform themselves after hours.” This performance is to imagine what would happen if the gohosts of the theater came back to put on a show and is also inspired by the ghostlights that were left on around the world for months during the recent pandemic. I absolutely love the concept of a ghostlight and how many theaters left a light during the pandemic, and I didn’t even know it! This is one of the coolest things I have every heard of! I think that is such a moving tradition and I can’t believe that I have never heard of that before. I wonder if other performing artists and companies aside from dancers who also have a tradition like that of their own. It is such as romantic concept. This piece, according to the program pamphlet, also fuses influences of ballet and hip hop together, hence the OutKast songs, and looking back at it now in my mind, I think it was done pretty well.
The second performance was Within by Kozielska and I do not know how I feel about it. I remember there being a lot of quick and sharp movements from the dancers a swell as quick paced and high pitched music. That makes it sound like it was dance music, but it is not. The music played in this performance was Michael Gordon’s Weather One. I did wonder if the dancers performing in that piece would get dizzy from how they were moving and dancing because there were a lot of twisting and it appeared as though there were kind of throwing their upper body quite a bit, as weird as that may sound. According to the choregrapher, the piece is based on her own personal life experiences and learning how to “dance in the rain,” by learning how to live in the moment and how to enjoy the journey of life. It was definitely abstract, for sure. It was by no means a bad performance, I at some point got overstimulated by some of the music used in it. It just was not for me and that is totally okay. At least I get to experience it and that’s good enough for me.
The third performance, Cacti, my favorite performance from that event, was also the strangest performance I have ever seen. I was trying to explain to my coworker after clocking off of work the next morning by referencing a common scene in television shows in the past (maybe even today’s shows, I don’t watch much television anymore) where people in the show would go to a performance that someone they know is in and is there to support said person. However, the performance itself is so weird, strange, and abstract that it is so perplexing to watch. That was my experience with this performance. I am happy to say that I experienced that for the very first time on May 14, 2023. Now, I am not necessarily sayng that in a negative way or to make fun of it (although I totally am), I am saying it because I did actually really enjoy it. I had so much fun trying to explain this to my coworker that next morning. I remember watching this as it was happening and how much it reminded me of a Surreatlist independent film I watched for an assignment in my Introduction to Film class when I was getting my bachelor degree because of how weird it was. The film I am thinking about, by the way, is called The Holy Mountain made in 1973 and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Surrealistic is probably not the best word to describe this performance, but more appropriately Dada-esque, for sure. The music played in this performance was Symphony in D Minor, “Death and the Maiden” IV by Franz Schubert; String Quartet in A major, Hob. III:24 IV; Allegro; Sonata No.V “Sitio” from Die sieben letzen Worte unseres Eriosers am Kreuze; Hob. XX:1b by Franz Joesph Haydn; and String Quartet No. 9 in C major, Op. 59 No. 3II. by Ludwig van Beethoven. The dancers danced with cacti (I presume fake ones, of course) and some of them tossed cacti to one another, then two rectangular lights on each side fo the stage with the word ‘cacti’ on it descended and then ascended as the dancers were doing their thing. The performance is very long, but it is very silly. A lot of silly dancing and breathwork involved throughout the whole thing. It ended with each dancer holding out these cacti in front of them and making scary, menacing faces to the audience as they slowly walked towards the front of the stage. It was all about the cacti. The choreapher Ekman, explains in the program pamphlet that it was created a few years ago for the Nederlands Dance Theater in the Hague and it is about how we view art and how we often feel the need to analyze and understand art. Also, it was inspired by comments his friends expressed about modern art and how they felt they didn’t understand it, and it tackles the discussion about art criticism. The choregrapher feels that it isn’t fair how someone (like an art critic) can make the ultimate descision as to whether or not a piece of work is good or not for everyone else, and not let people decide for themselves. I can definitely understand where he is coming from in a sense, because from going to art school myself, I had learned to understand that not everybody gets the same impression looking at the same art piece, and each person will have a different experience from the other. That does not mean that that piece is bad, wrong, or is invalid, it is just a fact of life. We do have the exact experience as everyone else and that is okay. Art in any form is not objective.
Anyway, that was by experience on that day. I’ll be back.
  I didn’t get to mention yet that I got to see the ballet Tchaikovsky: The Man Behind the Music on March 26th at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center. The performance, in the best way that I can describe in my own words, encapsulates the more personal side of Tchaikovsky in regards to his own love life – I guess you can say – and shows the emotional detriment he faced as he was restricted by his cultural environment and time to pursue a satisfactory relationship with another man. Additionally, it hints of the major influence his own mother had on his musical work later as a grown man, and how she acts as a sort of guide for the composer throughout the performance, which I find very interesting and sweet. The play commences with Tchaikovsky and his mother teaching him to play the violin where she unexpectedly becomes unwell and passes away; the play also ends with Tchaikovsky as a grown man in the throws of major distress accompanied with his passed on mother, who is seen caressing him , as well as his younger self as a boy next to him as he perceivably passes away. This is after committing himself to a woman who had more interest in him than he did in her by a long shot, but he felt as though he should follow the social customs of his time.Â
I know I’ve been telling people in my personal life that this was an intense performance, but that is honestly the best way that I can describe it; and it was intense in a good way, of course. It was intense, dramatic, and, I feel, a very moving performance. I very much enjoyed watching it and I am glad I went. The dancer who performed as Tchaikovsky, who I see is Arman Zazyan in the event pamphlet, did an awesome job in trying to embody so much emotionality of the composer, and I certainly feel like he fulfilled the role and character perfectly. Both Zazyan and Dongshoon Lee ( who plays the male love interest Josef Kotek) did such a good job portraying the romantic tension between both characters throught the performance. The customes the female dancers wore, I thought, were very pretty and I think they looked awesome in them. Especially the dressed with the intense glitter and shine to them.
What’s funny, though, about this is that when I had initially purchased my ticket for the last show two days prior, I had for some reason thought this was going to be another concert by the Tulsa Symphony. Who was of course there. I had looked at the name of the event, saw that the Tulsa Symphony was going to be there and thought, “Oh, it’s a Tchaikovsky concert!” I didn’t piece it all together until hours before the event as I was at a Theosophical Society meeting on Cherry Street. I accidentally went to a ballet. I am glad I accidentally stumbled upon this! If anybody else stumbles upon the chance to see this ballet, I would highly encourage it!
   I went to the Alluring: An Evening of Opera event at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center Saturday evening. I found this event online through the Center’s Facebook page, and I thought it looked interesting enough. This was a concert, not so much an opera, with Tulsa Symphony that also had two opera singers there.They all played and sang bits and pieces of different operas through the whole thing such as Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Carmen, Rigoletto, Paliacci, Cavalleria rusticana, La bohemia, Carousel, Susannah, and The Merry Window. The female opera singer is Sarah Coburn who is a soprano and the other is Stephen Powell who is a baritone. Apparently, they travel all over the country to sing, so I am assuming they are not necessarily from here. I may be wrong. The guest conductor for the Tulsa Symphony is Daniel Hedge and it looks like he’s a pretty accomplished conductor, having conducted other symphonies in other cities such as Oregon, Detroit, Seattle, Indianapolis, Colorado, San Diego, Columbus, and Phoenix. Amongst other things.     Funny thing is that I accidentally got to theater super early and I didnt know it until after I got there. I knew beforehand that there was going to be a pre-concert lecture with the guest conductor and I had thought it was scheduled at 6:15 when it was actually scheduled at 6:30, and I had gotten there around 5:40. I was literally the first person there when I got into theater. There were not many people at all when I gotten into the building and the door to the Mezzanine section was actually unlocked, so I just helped myself in. I was there before the ushers were and when they saw me they were asking me how I got in there. Jesus. I didn’t mean to do any of that.    Anyway, again, not a good photo. I definitely thought the female opera singer’s dress looked very pretty. It is such a nice glossy green and flowy dress.
I managed to go to Tulsa’s First Friday Art Crawl in the Tulsa Arts District of downtown Tulsa earlier this evening for March. I had missed January’s and February’s First Friday dates already due to exhaustion from other stuff I am handling in my personal life and I wanted to make sure to make it to this one. I managed to go and visit the 108 Contemporary gallery, the new location for Tulsa University’s Henry Zarrow Center of Arts and Education on Archer Street around the corner from it’s original location, the Living Arts gallery, as well as an art market that was held in the Tulsa Symphony building in the same area. I make sure and try to scope out what I can each time I come down there every month. I just want to talk about it not because I am reviewing it or making any judgements at all. I actively go to art exhibitions, like Philbrook Museum’s Rembrandt to Monet exhibition just this last week, or anything else for that matter. I very often visit these same galleries for First Friday every month to see what’s happening in the local art community. I just want to experience new things that I’ve never got to experience yet and I just want to share that experience, is all. I will make sure to credit the artists of the art pieces I am discussing here.
The exhibitions I mainly went to discuss visiting is the Works of Soveriegnty at Tulsa University’s new locationand the Champagne and Chocolate at the Living Arts gallery because the works that I liked more than others are currently in those shows. The Works of Sovereignty exhibition, as explained in the gallery, is to “examine the artistic and historical struggle for native sovereignty, re-examining the boundaries that have sought to limit this tribal authority, while also reinterpreting the very land itself.” I am attaching the photo of quotation to this blog. I love seeing art from Native American artists and it is often by favorite to see in galleries. I have a real soft spot for native art and Native American culture, especially that of the Cherokee tribe, in that I had read up on the history of the Cherokee tribe and even took classes when I was a teenager and in college to learn the language. I love going to powwows if ever I have the chance to and some of my best photography, I think, came from a Keetoowah powwow in Talequah, Oklahoma for the national Cherokee Holiday many years ago. I digress. My favorite for sure of this show is Photograph of Native Woman by Ryan Redcorn of the Osage tribe here in Oklahoma. I really love the multiple floral drapery seen over this lady’s shoulder and how it makes the image really beautiful with the combination of the blanket that she also has wrapped around her, and the contrasting of colors and patterns of all of it makes it all pop out. I think the photography is so nice and I think the lady looks so pretty with all that is happening, and it makes her look so dignified. The second piece that I really enjoyed are Running Shoes by Semurai Designs and Walela Knight, first of the Cherokee tribe and the latter of the Choctaw tribe. The third is Red Earth Sunset by Brittany Postoak of the Mvskoke tribe. I loved all the bead work in both of these works and how it is all so detailed in its patterns and the creativity of the idea of the running shoes. Plus the variation of the meaning of Seminole in it’s language. My favorite piece of the Champagne and Chocolate exhibition is Lost City by Dean Wyatt. I think it’s cool that Dean was able to create a very detailed but yet abstract representation of a city with simple techniques. I like how they detailed each section of the painting with color to illustrate and insinuate architectural structure or clouds in the sky, and I think the richness of color also makes it a strong piece.
This was my fun for the day today. I hope whoever reads this find the artwork nice and intersting, too, as I think it is. I have another event I am going to on Saturday night and I am hoping it will be very interesting and entertaining. That’s all from me right now.
I went to see the Robert Peterson, Alexander Hogue, and Monet to Rembrandt exhibitions at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Wednesday February 22, 2023. I was super excited to go to the Monet to Rembrandt exhibition because I knew there are going to be art from well-known artists there such as Titian, Bouguereau, El Greco, and Delacroix. Also Monet and Rembrandt, of course. I never had the opportunity to experience famous artwork from European artists from centuries ago, and I’ve only experienced the works of Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera. As far as majorly knowned artists goes. Thankfully when I went there, there were not a whole lot of people so I didn't have to worry as much about being in people's way. I say that one of the frustrating moments in going to a big exhibition, especially at museums like the Philbrook, is having to wait on other people to move out of the way or just being in crowded spaces in general because of the density of people that are there. I feel like I can't put my full attention on the art itself and that's why I very much dislike it. I very much enjoyed seeing Monet, Titian, El Greco artwork for the first time.
These photos are taken by myself Wednesday morning while visiting, hence my name on the bottom of each photo. The first photo is of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s ‘Return of Spring.’ The second is Monet’s ‘Small Country Farm at Bordighera.’ The third is Rembrandt’s ‘Portrait of Dirck van Os.’ The fourth is Titian’s ‘Portrait of a Man of the Cornaro Family with a Falcon.’ The last photo is Delacroix’s ‘The Entombment.’
As my first real blog on my website, I’ll share about attending the Rolston String Quartet concert at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma earlier today on February 19, 2023.
This was my first time attending a string quartet concert and I initially had no idea who these people were when I discovered that they were scheduled to play, but I thought it would be interesting to attend anyway and the tickets were cheap. I did end up enjoying the whole thing and I am glad that I went. They played a composition that involves actual yelling as a part of it. That was interesting. Lol I always try and branch myself out and experience new things and I picked this as my recent attempt. I am thinking to buy a ticket for what I believe is an opera event at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, as well.
Anyway, boring blog post but I wanted to try and be more involved on this platform in some way.
