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The Deep Deuce and Beyond

A Photographic Exhibition Exploring the Architectural Legacy of African Americans in Oklahoma City

To the east of the gleaming facades and upscale apartments along West 2nd street in Oklahoma City lay the abandoned homes and weed infested lots, of what was, one of the most successful American American business districts note country.

 

The "2,“ "The Deuce,”  " Deep Deuce,“ akin to Harlem of  the 1930s in spirit if not in scope spawned legendary figures such as jazz guitarist Charlie Christian, blues shouter Jimmy Rushing and internationally acclaimed writer, Ralph Ellison. These images speaks to decades of struggle since the Urban Renewal of the 1960s and the spirit that remain in these historic structures.

 
This exhibition was commissioned by Blac Inc., a non-profit cultural center in Oklahoma City and funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
 
It has appeared in several exhibitions through out the Oklahoma and is in the permanent collection of the State Museum
of Oklahoma.
Havana a Place Out of Time
A Photographic Journey

This exhibit, commissioned by Raymond P. Silcock and Joan Wolfensberger, debuted at the Sande Webster Gallery in 2000. Since then the exhibit has travel to several venues and is currently available for bookings. 

 

In the artists statement Tarver wrote: 

Havana is lethargically energetic, immaculately filthy, an illusive illumination. It is a wonderful contradiction. For every answer given to explain Havana, there are dozen more questions. It is a soceity held together by ingenuity, floating on an outdated dream.

 

These lush, toned gelatin silver images, many take at night, have been described as poetic and are an attempt to reveal what is beneath the contradiction. The attempt to reveal a fresh interpertation of the city.

Fox Earth 

The home of Paul and Linda Richardson

In the book about Foxearth Inga Saffron, Pulitzer Prize winning Architecture Critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote: Paul Richardson never met Paul Rudolph, the formidable mid-century architect who designed the stone-and-glass house that became his beloved country retreat during the last six years of his life. 

 

Richardson took a declining, outdated structure and,along with his wife Linda, transformed it into a modern farmhouse filled with art. It was his pride and joy.

 

After his untimely passing Linda commissioned this body of work and a book to commemorate her husband's labor of love. The bookis with the University of Pennsylvania Architecture Department.

 Law office at Dolchin, Slotkin & Todd, P.C.

Two Liberty Place • Philadelphia

Decorated with images from the Unstructured, Candy, Havana, Ourtown, and Homestead Series

Valley Green Bank • Philadelphia

Conference room decorated with images from the Spring in Detail Series

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