ARTS & CULTURE
Sparking creativity MULTIDISCIPLINARY ART COLLECTIVE SPARK! CREATIVE LAB EXPLORES BELONGINGNESS THROUGH A RADICALLY COLLABORATIVE NEW PERFORMANCE PIECE WITH OKLAHOMA CONTEMPORARY. By Evan Jarvicks
The artists of SPARK! Creative Lab are as diverse as Oklahoma City possibly can be, but when they come together to hold a workshop or performance, their attire is entirely uniform. Wearing bold, red coveralls that recall traditionally blue-collar industries, they emphasize the collective’s unified voice. SPARK! celebrates the differences within its roster while reminding that deep down, everyone shares in the cosmic lifeblood that runs through the veins of humanity. Unity and diversity are not mutually exclusive concepts. Formed in 2021, SPARK! Creative Lab is a certified non-profit founded by performing artist and live composer Nicole Poole that began engaging with the greater community through improvised pop-up performances during the pandemic. Dancers, musicians, poets, visual artists, actors, filmmakers, and more gathered in outdoor public spaces like Scissortail Park and Film Row’s Paramount exterior to create and document on-the-spot artistic compositions with the public. The collective’s first major commissioned piece is YIELD: We Belong to the Land for Oklahoma Contemporary, a “ten-week creative investigation into concepts of place and belonging in Oklahoma City” as the organization’s website states. It is co-directed by Poole and SPARK! production coordinator Jessica Ray, the latter of whom specializes in dance, choreography, and film. Taking inspiration from sculptural installation Nature, Sweet Nature by artist Maren Hassinger, the project has been coming to life for weeks through a series of deeply experienced collaborative sessions, some of which are open to public participation. “YIELD is a huge lesson in collaboration,” Ray said. “We are navigating multiple disciplines and bringing them together to present a work, and while that’s happening, we’ve also committed to hearing the public and listening to community ideas and responses. In that, there is so much to carry, but in that weight and responsibility, there has been so much joy in realizing that the main point to this process is process.” The process started with an open dialogue between SPARK!, the public, and a prestigious nine-person panel of 22
local anthropologists, historians, and conservators of richly diverse backgrounds including Dr. Elisha Oliver, Dr. Bob Blackburn, and Dr. Hen r iet t a Ma n n. Considering that famous but rarely dissected line from the musical Oklahoma!, “We know we belong to the land,” the The cast of YIELD. Photo Provided panelists discussed the complex myriad of ways that the workshops centered around dance, people of Oklahoma City coexist with music, and theater, Oklahoma the land. From this raw material of Contemporary is holding two more cultural, historical, and environmenopportunities for the public to work tal meditation came an innovative with SPARK!. May 8 will focus on method of artistic processing. visual artmaking through recycling, “The public was asked to contribute and May 14 will bring the piece’s mulreal-time written reflections and retidisciplinary elements together in a sponses to final workwhat they shop before were hearing the debut. w h i c h Spaces are ‘yielded’ limited to 12 about 150 participants index cards ages 15 years of material. and older, so Tony Tee & I advanced then got tosignups are gether and strongly encurated couraged. these into a It may six-stanza seem intimicollaboradating to coltive poem laborate that almost w it h a wrote itself,” company of Poole said, sea soned , A YIELD performance. Photo Provided naming the accomOklahoma hip-hop father figure better plished artists, but SPARK! is remarkknown as DJ Nymasis. “It is a stunning able in its no-barrier methodology. To snapshot of who we are as a commumake a meaningful contribution, parnity and what we hold to be important ticipants need not be schooled in any right now.” artistic discipline. It may even be The poem, in turn, is being used to better that way. inform the forthcoming debut perforAhKamaye Perry, who creates psymance of YIELD, which will be held at chospiritual hip-hop as Changing Oklahoma Contemporary’s sculpture FrEQencies, creates outside the garden on May 26. Like every other boundaries of formal music education. aspect of this project, it will be free and “The open creative playfulness open to public collaboration. drew me in,” Perry said. “Collaborating “The audience will be led through with the artists of SPARK! has been a journey of the poem, which is also a super fun and educational.” journey from independence to interSPARK! provides a unique credependence,” Poole said. “So they’ll go ative environment where her unconfrom being spectators to integral comventional artistic process can coexist ponents of the piece.” with the likes of company member There is still time to join in the culJ. Cruise Berry, a pianist and comtivation of YIELD. Following recent poser who thrives in the intricacies
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of music theory. The linchpin of SPARK! is Poole’s approach to extemporaneous composition. She is one of the few people in the world who is certified in a technique called soundpainting. “It’s a specialized sign language that allows instant communication between artists to create or sculpt material on the spot,” Poole said. “It was created by composer Walter Thompson, who I have had the extreme good fortune of working with since the mid-1990s … With over 1,500 gestures, soundpainting allows us to connect on a deeply creative level that transcends [speech].” Though rich with potential complexities, soundpainting is so intuitive that almost anyone can readily pick up on the basics. While its namesake implies auditory art forms, the framework was designed with dancers, actors, and visual artists in mind. Poole has expanded it to include spoken word and elements of hip-hop. “In all, the creative impulse is the same with everyone; we just translate it differently,” Poole said. “It’s deeply gratifying to watch local artists sink their teeth into deep collaboration and dialogue about creation.” While the nonprofit has made great strides to tear down cultural and economic walls in the arts, SPARK! Creative Lab never does so at the exploitation of its artists. Everyone involved earns a living wage through the work that goes into each session. In this light, the collective’s industrial red uniforms make perfect sense. “First and foremost, artists are workers — beyond entertainment and commodity, we work to inspire imagination and metaphoric thought,” Poole said. “We’re sort of repairmen for the spiritual elevator, if you will.”
