MAPLE ST. CONSTRUCT: A BRIDGE BETWEEN THE WEST COAST AND THE MIDWEST
Join the Tulsa Artist Fellowship community with Maple St. Construct, a creative-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that functions as an experimental studio, residency, and gallery founded, curated, and organized in Omaha, Nebraska. Through various outputs, they seek to promote discourse between artists working in Los Angeles and the Midwest.
EVENTS
Maple St. Construct: A Dialogue Moderated by Shane Darwent
Tuesday, June 4 | 6PM - 7PM
Archer Studios at Tulsa Artist Fellowship
109 N Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard E
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74103
Moderator and Tulsa Artist Fellowship Alumnus Shane Darwent has collaborated with Maple St. Construct and facilitated their time in Tulsa through Plains Exchange, a residency project founded by Darwent with support from Tulsa Artist Fellowship in 2023.
Home on the Range
An exhibition by Maple St. Construct, Gabriel Delponte, and Tulsa Artist Fellowship
Opening Reception | Thursday, June 6 | 5 - 8 pm
On view through June 21 by appointment
1303 E Admiral Blvd
Tulsa, OK 74120
Home on the Range is a creative exchange turned exhibition between the artist-run initiative Maple St. Construct, Tulsa-based artist Gabriel Delponte, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship across multiple venues in Tulsa over the span of a two-week residency. The basecamp for Maple St. Construct's time in Tulsa will be a raw, bow truss-style warehouse building on East Admiral Blvd that will serve as both a studio and eventual gallery space for the project.
Maple St. Construct takes a fluid, collaborative, and improvisational approach to exhibition-making that will be on full display in Home on the Range. Bringing few, if any, finished artworks with them, the artists and architects Mike Nesbit, Thomas Prinz, and Robin Donaldson will instead respond to a site and available materials to inform their work which will come together during their two-week stay in Tulsa. Documenting this experience will be the LA-based filmmaker Seejon Thomas, whose experimental chronicling of the project will accompany the resulting exhibition. Maple St. Construct regularly pairs artists working in different locations together as a part of their collaborative exhibition-making. Tulsa-based artist Gabriel Delponte will serve as site host and fellow exhibiting artist.
First Friday 'Home on the Range'
Installation & Experimental Documentary Screening
Friday, June 7 | 6 - 9 pm
Archer Studios at Tulsa Artist Fellowship
109 N Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard E
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74103
A distillation of the more sprawling and site-responsive Home on the Range warehouse installation located on East Admiral will take place in the storefront gallery of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship studio building in the heart of downtown Tulsa. This activation will coincide with Tulsa Artist Fellowship's signature monthly event, First Friday, and feature a series of printed takeaways made in collaboration with Flash Flood Print Studios and an experimental documentary of Maple St. Construct's time in Tulsa by Seejon Thomas.
Image: FLOOD, Mike Nesbit, Omaha, Nebraska, 2017; Photograph by Dan Schwalm.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
With deep roots in Southern California, founder Robin Donaldson studied painting and printmaking at UCSB, earned his Master’s degree in Architecture from SCI-Arc, and spent his early career working closely with Thom Mayne of Morphosis. Since founding D+P, Donaldson has continued to explore the foundations and push the limitations of architectural practice, working with ambitious and innovative clients to realize extraordinary ground-up residential projects; create homes for quantum computers; and—on the home front—founded an R+D lab dedicated to formulating and articulating new materials, methods, design strategies, and architectural applications. Donaldson is the heart of Donaldson + Partners longstanding relationships with clients, collaborators, and essential partners as well as of the firm’s constant evolution and transformation. Outside of the office, he is a committed member of the local and national AIA, and a frequent contributor to local planning committees. Donaldson has been widely recognized for his interdisciplinary creativity, collaboration-intensive teamwork, and stylistic sophistication, and his work has been published locally, nationally, and internationally in Elle Decor, GA Houses, The Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, and more. He lives in Santa Barbara, above the store.
Mike Nesbit is a fine artist based in Los Angeles and Omaha. With a background in architecture, his multidisciplinary interests greatly inform his artwork, allowing Nesbit to explore areas between art and architecture with a focus on technique, process, context, and representation. Nesbit has participated in solo and group shows throughout the United States and Internationally. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Before art and architecture Nesbit played four years of professional baseball with the Seattle Mariners. Nesbit is a co-founder of the Non-Profit/Artist-Run Space, Maple St. Construct, located in Omaha, Nebraska. Maple St. Construct, is a gallery/residency program that looks to bridge the gap between Los Angeles and The Midwest by providing artists in Los Angeles and The Midwest with the resources to create work outside of their typical environments.
Thomas Prinz is an architect and fine artist based in Omaha, Nebraska. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Master of Architecture from Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. In 1990, Prinz established Arc-Studio to explore the disciplines of art and architecture. He creates works with thoughts of structures as well as paying homage to many past great artists like Giotto. His works are collages, monotype and digital prints on paper. Prinz is a co-founder of the Non-Profit/Artist-Run Space, Maple St. Construct, located in Omaha, Nebraska. Maple St. Construct, is a gallery/residency program that looks to bridge the gap between Los Angeles and The Midwest by providing artists in Los Angeles and The Midwest with the resources to create work outside of their typical environments.
Shane Darwent is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice mines the commercial vernacular that lines American roadways to inform experimental photographic works, large-scale sculpture, and site-responsive installations. Within a landscape designed to overwhelm, Darwent's practice seeks out a redacted formalism in order to meditate on the transitional nature of these spaces and the shape-shifting economic constructs of which they are a part. Exhibiting internationally, Darwent has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Ragdale, the Ucross Foundation, and the Jentel Artist Residency Program, as well as a Core Fellow at Penland School of Crafts. He holds an MFA from the University of Michigan (2017) and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2005). Darwent's work is included in the 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow publication by Thames & Hudson (2019). His solo exhibitions include Sun Smoke, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York City (2021); Plaza Park, Boise State University (2019); The Setting Stone, University of Tulsa (2019); and Suburban Psalm, Spring Break Art Show, NYC (2018). He is an alumnus-in-residence at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship in Tulsa, OK (2018–2024).
Gabriel Delponte was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1975. His education as a self-taught visual artist began with a focus on contemporary society. Delponte's interest led him to an early encounter with contemporary arts, which influenced his study and unique creative process. He works across various disciplines, including design as a parallel activity. Delponte has exhibited nationally and internationally. Key exhibitions include the "Chorus" installation at the Rockefeller Center, New York, in 2006; the "Non-Title" piece at the Paik Hae Young Gallery, Seoul, Korea, in 2006; "Mas Agujeros Que Coherencia" at the Cámara de Comercio in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2008; the "Avatar" mural at the Cultural Plaza Defensa in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2009; the "Perla Labuan" in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2009; and the "Zone Painting" at the Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, South Carolina, in 2017. In 2014, he moved his studies and workshop to Japan to conduct an art project, which led him to work there for six years and host the "Bridge Me Japan" project. In 2018, he exhibited the "Scholar" at the City of Fujisawa Art Space, Japan. Since 2019, Gabriel Delponte has been developing new works in Miami Beach, Florida, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
ABOUT MAPLE ST. CONSTRUCT
Maple St. Construct is a creative-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that functions as an experimental studio, residency, and gallery founded, curated, and organized in Omaha, Nebraska. Our mission is to provide programming free to everyone as a public service to elevate the creative discourse in the communities we serve. Maple St. Construct serves a critical role in the promotion and presentation of art, design, and the built environment by bridging the discourse between outside and local cultural conventions with the community of Omaha, Nebraska, and beyond.
ABOUT PLAID EXCHANGE
Plains Exchange is a platform for discourse and collaboration between artist communities in the Southern Plains and Western Ozark regions. New relationships are fostered by hosting short-term artist residencies, creative exchanges, and collaborative projects between artists working in similar, yet largely disconnected regional arts hubs. Plains Exchange collapses regional boundaries and foster relationships to build a thriving fine arts community in the middle of the country.
MORE INFORMATION
Tulsa Artist Fellowship strives to provide a welcoming and accessible experience. Our exhibitions and events are free, documented, and archived. For inquiries about accessibility or requests for accommodations, contact philbrook.org/contact.
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