• Tulsa World: 41 animals seized from pet-rescue activist
• Tulsa World: Former Tulsa mayor sets meetings on education across the state
• The Norman Transcript: Norman offers to make warrants disappear
• Tulsa World: EPA orders Tulsa and Ada businesses to clean up water pollution
• NewsOK: Immigration delays top complaint from Oklahoma Muslims, report says
• NewsOK: Oklahoma City, attorney general at odds about request for birth date
• Tulsa World: Higher taxes on tobacco, more access to healthy food, sidewalks and bike trails needed in Oklahoma
• OK Gazette: Local charities scramble to meet increased demand as donors pinch pennies
• OK Policy Blog: Learning from the crisis — Strengthening our reserve funds

• Tulsa World: DHS to pass on $25 fee for child support collection
• Tulsa World: KISS visits Tulsa school
• The Associated Press: Judge asks Okla. for full tests from chicken farms
• The Journal Record: Officials to assemble oversight panel for MAPS 3
• Tulsa World: Supreme Court rules OSU can use eminent domain for athletic village

• Mickey’s Musings: Randy Brogdon makes false claim about tax burden
• OK Gazette: Fans, press, enemies braved bitter cold to meet rogue Republican in Norman

• Tulsa World: OKC lawmaker seeks to remove governor from parole process
• Tulsa World: Board denies clemency; inmate still on death row
• Tulsa World: Panel sits on innocence
• NewsOK: Oklahoma City voters say ‘yes’ to MAPS 3 proposal
• KGOU: In-Depth: MAPS 3 Approved
• OK Gazette: Army of performance artists strikes Norman’s art circuit
• Urban Tulsa Weekly: Entrepreneur donates historic temple to be re-used as center for conservation and sustainability
• NewsOK: Indigent Defense System director says defendants could lose right to appeal due to budget shortfall
• NewsOK: OSU chief Burns Hargis discusses decision to cancel baboon research
• OUDaily: Little River Zoo faces hard time in bad economic year
• OETA: Oklahoma’s largely failing efforts to treat meth addiction

I first found out about Sarah’s secret life as an artist a few months ago when she told me about her upcoming Emergent Artist show at Mainsite. That show is opening this Friday from 7-9 and also features work by Danford Mitchell, Michael Lortz, and Eric Wright. It’s a pretty big deal. You might want to swing by.

Where are you from?
Oh dear. I was born in Chicago but came to Oklahoma City via Memphis, Albuquerque, San Francisco, and Virginia Beach. I went to high school in Edmond, USA. These days I like to call Norman my home.

What do you do?
So much, but I’ll try to be brief.

I cook for children in a Waldorf initiative (based largely on principles from this program) 5 days a week. We eat really well. The schoolhouse is nearly finished and kindergarten starts in January. Most of the rest of the time, I make collage paintings. They’re a continuation of a project I started about two years ago- what I call a “dream map”; taping and sewing together my photographs, some painting and text, lots of ephemera and paper “trash”. It was out of control in many ways, and it got too big to work on in my space, so I started these paintings, which are more controlled and easily read. They’re loose chronicles of my dreams and waking life, and they are very stream of consciousness, so much so that I’m often surprised (and ideally delighted) by what arrives.

Who or what do you use for inspiration?
So much. Life! To be more specific (and verbose) I have always loved JMW Turner; I just drool over his color and gestures. Hannah Hoch’s work was introduced to me at the beginning of my foray into “collage-painting”, and I just found another person in a Modern Art textbook (aptly named “Modern Art”) but I forgot her name, which is so typical. She’s got these moody, foggy, ephemeral watercolor color blocks bleeding into each other… and I want that. Tapiès and early Paul Klee. I’ve had the great privilege to travel often; I’ve seen many great things inside and outside of great museums and all of that wonderful stuff is still floating around in my head. I’m also motivated/inspired by chance and chaos, trees and their falling leaves, the moon and her cycles, dreams and patterns, patterns in my dreams, my past, present and future, outside, walks, complementary colors, maps and the seasons. Words and their communicative value and formations are important too. I like to use them texturally (ha!) aesthetically, practically, and symbolically.

What artists do you respect right now?
My Mother, Leslie Lienau, forever and always. Jean Lancri.

Everyone who’s serious about and loves what they do and strives to do it well. We are all capable of being artists, and art is all around us. I absolutely believe and respect that.

What are you sick of?
Negativity, apathy, processed food that masquerades as “healthy”.… Read the full story

• Tulsa World: Tulsa Public Schools looking to cut 100 jobs risk
• Tulsa World: Adviser says Oklahoma juveniles’ sentences too long
• Tulsa World: Residents defend Stillwater mayor
• The Daily O’Collegian: OKC and Tulsa considered for new soccer league
• AP: Okla. Republican lawmaker complains that GOP colleagues abandoning tax cuts amid budget shortfall
• NewsOK: American Indian trust account case reaches $1.4 billion settlement
• The Apache House: Artist and photographer Sarah Capshaw