The Artists ///
Project Sponsors ///
TRANSFORMING URBAN SPACES WITH DYNAMIC PUBLIC ART
The Bloomberg Philanthropies Public Art Challenge encourages mayors to collaborate with artists to develop innovative public art projects that address critical issues in their communities.
In February 2018, U.S. mayors of cities with 30,000 residents or more were invited to apply for the 2018 Public Art Challenge to receive up to $1 million in funding for temporary public art projects that address an important civic issue.
After announcing 14 finalists, five cities were selected as winners of the 2018 Public Art Challenge: Anchorage, Alaska; Camden, New Jersey; Coral Springs, Florida; Jackson, Mississippi; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The foundation’s first Public Art Challenge, announced in the fall of 2014, supported creative projects in four cities: Gary, Indiana; Los Angeles, California; Spartanburg, South Carolina; and a collaborative team from Albany, Schenectady and Troy, New York. The inaugural Public Art Challenge generated significant activity across four regions, including catalyzing $13 million for local economies, 10 million views, 245 partnerships, and 490 public programs.
Unique among todayʼs leading philanthropists, Mike Bloomberg has run both a multi-billion-dollar company — Bloomberg LP, a technology company he founded in 1981 — and one of the worldʼs largest cities. His entrepreneurial spirit, public-policy experience, and belief in the power of cities to drive solutions to pressing global problems define Bloomberg Philanthropiesʼ approach to making the world a better place.
Bloomberg Philanthropies focuses on five key areas for creating lasting change: arts & culture, public health, environment, education, and government innovation. These five areas encompass the issues Mike Bloomberg and his team are most passionate about, and where they believe the greatest good can be achieved. While Bloomberg Philanthropies works on a wide range of issues within each focus area, they apply a distinctive approach to all of our undertakings.
The Call and Response Poster Project
GAP Hexagon Galleries & Info Stations
Hexagons generally symbolize union, community, harmony, and balance in the universe. An ideal shape to form and complement the Call & Response poster project. The hexagon spaces anchor the GAP VAN, a mobile multi-purpose vehicle that travels around the city facilitating poster-making workshops.
In addition to the 28 projects selected and supported by the Greenwood Art Project, a Call & Response poster project was devised as a democratic way of including all Tulsans.
Project Team
Rick Lowe
Lead Artist
Rick Lowe is a Houston-based artist and professor of art at the University of Houston. He has exhibited and worked with communities nationally and internationally.
William Cordova
Lead Artist
William Cordova is an interdisciplinary cultural practitioner born in Pueblo Libre, Lima, Peru. Lives and works Lima/Miami/New York City. Cordova’s work addresses the metaphysics of space and time and how objects change and perception changes when we move around in space.
Jerica Wortham
Program Director
Jerica D. Wortham is a native of Tulsa and selected as the Program Director for the Greenwood Art Project. She is a best selling author and award winning spoken word artist. She has been writing and performing her poetry since a very young age.
Marlon Hall
Social Media Archivist + Anthropologist
Marlon F. Hall’s life intention is to cultivate human potential in ways that are whimsically beautiful and positively willful. He is an international lecturing anthropologist, filmmaker, and cultural architect.
Jeff Van Hanken
Project Coordinator
Jeff Van Hanken is Chair of the Arts/Culture Committee of the Tulsa Race Massacre Commission and is the Project Coordinator of The Greenwood Art Project.
Ashley Philippsen
Senior Director of Engagement & Advocacy
ImpactTulsa
Ashley Philippen's focus is to ensure people-centered community wealth building and driving efforts surrounding Historic Greenwood and the Tulsa Race Massacre.
Kode Ransom
Minister of Travel + Navigating
Kode Ransom is a community organizer, poet, youth basketball trainer, screenwriter, and film director. Born in Tulsa, Ransom made it a personal mission to learn as many perspectives as he possibly could throughout his life.
India Lovejoy
Event Specialist
India Lovejoy, the founder of Black Buddha Creative Agency, acts as a bridge between creatives, collectors, and entrepreneurs as a curator, event producer, and fine art service provider.
Jonathan Durham
Site Manager
Jonathan Durham is an artist working in sculpture and installation, based out of Brooklyn, NY. Jonathan is a site manager helping to facilitate indoor/outdoor installations.
THE HONORING
/ Meta-Narrative /
: a narrative about historical meaning, experience, or knowledge, which offers a narrative that runs underneath an existing story
"The Honoring” sheds light on history with the flashlight of a short fictional happening that is rooted in a larger truth. We went to an old plantation right outside of Tulsa to tell a story that runs underneath the work of the GAP.
