SXSW | Tulsa Creative Engine
Austin, Texas | March 2023
Getting the opportunity to travel because of my artwork was a big “wow” moment for me. In March 2023, I had the opportunity to travel to Austin, Texas with Tulsa Creative Engine during SXSW and contribute to a couple of creative projects alongside other Tulsa artists.
What made this experience especially interesting was how different the projects were from one another. One explored photography, drawing, public participation, and the idea of giving up creative control. The other brought together 3D design, sculpture, projection mapping, and digital art.
Both came from previous collaborations and ideas we had already been experimenting with back in Tulsa. SXSW gave us an opportunity to take those ideas somewhere new.
Interactive Live Painting | Collaboration with Rogelio Esparza
12' × 8' | Acrylic and marker on wheat-pasted photography
The concept for this installation grew out of an earlier collaboration I had done with Rogelio Esparza, a Mexican-born Oklahoma photographer and visual artist whose work explores identity, culture, and the experience of finding confidence within different environments.
Rogelio had previously invited me to create artwork directly over some of his photography prints, combining his photographic work with my approach to drawing, painting, and mark-making.
At first, creating over someone else’s finished photography felt strange and definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone. There is a certain discomfort that comes with making a mark over another artist’s work, but there is also something interesting and satisfying about seeing a completely new piece emerge from the combination.
Tulsa Creative Engine liked what came out of that earlier collaboration and wanted to expand the idea into something interactive for SXSW.
For the installation, Rogelio wheat-pasted a selection of his photography onto a 12 by 8 foot surface, including photographs featuring musician Sturgill Simpson that had been featured in Rolling Stone. I then began adding my own artwork over the images.
I had the idea of creating simplified self-portrait sketches in marker, with Rogelio represented on one side and myself on the other. From there, we opened the artwork up to everyone else.
Attendees were invited to grab markers, tag the piece, draw, write, and leave their own marks over what we had created. As more people participated, the artwork continued to change.
That was probably the most interesting part of the project for me. The concept reminded me of something that naturally happens in street art and graffiti, where artists paint, tag, and sometimes go over one another’s work. Here, that same idea had been taken from the streets and placed into a more controlled setting where people were actually encouraged to participate.
There was still that feeling of discomfort when someone made a mark over something you had just created, but that was also part of what made the concept interesting. You had to give up some control and allow the piece to become something else.
Being in a live setting added another challenge. I felt a little under the spotlight, which was something I wasn’t used to at the time. The artwork itself was intentionally simple, and I remember having mixed feelings about that. In the end, watching the piece evolve through everyone’s participation made the final result much more interesting than what any one of us could have created alone.
3D Sculpture & Projection Mapping | Collaboration with Logan Sours
The second project brought together another side of my creative practice through 3D design and digital art.
I had already worked on previous projects with Logan Sours, founder of Dreamspace Lab, so our past collaborations helped create the opportunity to bring another idea with us to Austin.
Dreamspace Lab is a Tulsa-based experience design studio that works at the intersection of art, technology, architecture, lighting, and human interaction. Logan’s background in lighting and experience design made projection mapping a natural part of what this project could become.
For my part of the installation, I worked in Blender to create a 3D render that combined elements of my artwork with parts of Logan’s visual identity and logo. I digitized pieces of my own work and incorporated them into the environment, experimenting with how artwork I normally created physically could exist in a completely digital space.
I also sculpted a large chrome head as part of the design. The bust was eventually printed as a physical object, taking something that began as a digital sculpture inside Blender and bringing it into the real world.
Logan then used projection mapping to bring another layer of light and movement onto the piece.
That combination was exciting to me because the project moved back and forth between physical and digital creation. Artwork was being digitized, a sculpture was being modeled virtually and then physically produced, and projection mapping was being used to transform the final object again.
It was another example of stepping outside of what people might traditionally think of when they think about my mural work.
The Austin Experience
Beyond the individual projects, traveling to Austin for SXSW was an experience in itself.
I got to spend time with other creatives, reconnect with familiar faces from Tulsa, meet new people, explore the city, eat some great food, and experience a completely different creative environment.
There was something meaningful about realizing that ideas we had experimented with back home could eventually create opportunities somewhere else.
Seeing my artwork create opportunities to travel was something I had hoped for, but actually experiencing it was different. It opened my eyes a little more to how broad a creative practice could become. Painting, photography, 3D modeling, sculpture, projection, technology, and public interaction did not necessarily have to exist separately. They could overlap.
More than anything, this trip was one of those early moments when I realized my artwork could take me somewhere.
Literally.