STORIES FROM THE CORE

2022

Stories From The Core (project overview video); over 250 discrete art cards ( 9” x 6”) pairing digitally manipulated Oklahoma landscape photos and meditative prompts. Printed on paper.

Stories From The Core (video of public library installations); art cards, prints, video of digitally manipulated landscape photos, meditative prompts

Art cards

Art cards with meditative prompts

Quartz Mountain, 2022, digitally manipulated photo by Sarah Ahmad

Lead Artist & Project Director: Sarah Ahmad

Artwork, photography, installations, video by Sarah Ahmad

Project—project concept, design, creation (project conceived & realized), direction, outreach, media, presentations, fundraising, partnerships, management, documentation, planning/timeline, evaluation by Sarah Ahmad

Meditation prompts & writing contribution by Maryam Ahmad

Collaborators: kara lynch, May–December 2021; Maryam Ahmad, May 2021—August 2022

Partners & Contributors (2022): Oklahoma Public Libraries; Third Floor Design, University of Tulsa; Oklahoma Arts Council; Oklahoma Oral History Research Program, Oklahoma State University Library

Graphic Design, Third Floor Design, University of Tulsa, School of Art, Design, and Art History (2022): Twila Bouldin, Madeline Fossett, Sarah Power, Abbey Ames, Megan Ames

Consultant/Advisor for Native American Writings, Land Acknowledgment: Jullie Pearson Little Thunder

Advising/Consulting (May 2022—September 2022): william cordova

Research Assistants: Catherine Pinney-Shrouder, Christina Roberson

Sponsors: Tulsa Artist Fellowship; Thrive! Grants, an initiative of Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition.

Lake Murray, 2022, digitally manipulated photo by Sarah Ahmad

Project Statement

“Stories from the Core” seeks to bear witness to grief—the grief of individuals across Oklahoma, and the grief of the land itself—as a movement towards healing. This project fuses storytelling practices, photography, and the healing power of the earth. Art cards with enigmatic digital collages of landscape photographs from public park lands are paired with meditative prompts to facilitate intimate moments of mourning. Participants are invited to take a piece of artwork away with them to honor their losses and ultimately open themselves up to hope.

The visual foundation of “Stories from the Core” rests on photographs by multi-disciplinary lead artist Sarah Ahmad, and a series of virtual co-therapeutic walks in progress. Many photographs have been digitally collaged creating ethereal mind-scapes designed to spark imaginative engagement with the earth. The meditative prompts were written by Maryam Ahmad, a creative non-fiction writer and medical student whose work on Narrative Health articulates the personal and social meanings of illness. One example of a prompt reads:

Find a private area outside, one where you are alone with nature. Consider a painful memory or experience you have been carrying, something that makes your body feel like stone. Whisper this grief to the land. Imagine the earth absorbing it from your rooted feet. Now imagine your grief turning into a seed deep within the soil, soon to emerge in a new, beautiful form to greet the sun. Offer a thanks and a blessing to the earth for its work of transformation.

In a time marked by unprecedented loss and communal grief—from the COVID-19 pandemic to racial violence to environmental destruction—the need for healing-centered spaces is as critical as ever. “Stories” meets this community need by facilitating moments of self-reflection and engagement with the natural world as a way of both honoring grief and growing through it. 

Lake Murray, digital photo collage, 6” x 9”, art card front

Art cards

Art cards with meditative prompts

Links to Installations:

Northeast Oklahoma: Tahlequah Public Library, Central Library, Tulsa City County Library, Spark Summit

South Central Oklahoma: Champion Public Library, Ardmore

Central Oklahoma: Pioneer Library East, Norman

Southwest Oklahoma: Lawton Public Library

Southeast Oklahoma: Talihina Public Library & Spiro Public Library

Northwest Oklahoma: Soutar Memorial Library, Bois City

Norman Public Library, 2022

Central Library, Tulsa, 2022

Tahlequah Public Library, 2022

Project Report Summary:

Number of visitors to 7 libraries in 4-6 weeks during Stories from the Core display:

57,521 for 7 locations in 4-6 weeks
980 art-cards were displayed and distributed at 7 locations, 140/library

Some Comments:

Everyone raved about the beauty of each picture. The ones that took pictures had a hard time deciding which one they wanted. We have one person that went by the pictures that had the peach color in them which was sort of neat I think. —Ruth Mcclard, Library manager, Talihina Public Library

We were very honored to of been selected to display these beautiful images! Several of our customers stated they felt very captured and moved by the motivational prompts. Thank you for bringing this to our community. —Shannon Grice, Program Coordinator and Spiro Library Manager, Southeast Oklahoma Library System

Comments in person: "I love everything about this!"
This project has really meant a lot to me. Thank you so much for doing it and including us. —Johanna Burton, Library Associate, Tulsa Central Library

People have really enjoyed interacting with the art. 
Thanks again for sharing your artwork with us. We really enjoyed it.—Katie Pendley, Library Associate, Norman East

We really, really enjoyed being a part of this project! Your artwork is amazing and it was very easy to work with you!—Cherokee Lowe, Library Director, Tahlequah Public Library

We have surely enjoyed the installation and getting to meet the artist was quite a treat.
Many thanks for sharing your fascinating work.—Rudy Ellis, Circulation Coordinator, Resident Artist, Library Associate, Champion Library, Southern Oklahoma Library System

Black Mesa, 2022, photo collage by Sarah Ahmad

Community Engagement

Like Ahmad’s 2021 outdoor installation “The American Dream,” “Stories from the Core” takes art beyond the conventional gallery space, expanding traditional urban 'arts districts' to include rural regions. “Stories…” appears in public libraries at eight pilot locations: seven are located near public parkland featured in the project; one is in Tulsa, Ahmad’s city of residence. Thousands of families visit the Oklahoma Public Libraries to use their summer programming. The postcards are designed to engage people of all ages and literacy levels: some have one of fourteen meditative prompts by Maryam Ahmad; another set is blank for children or others to record their own reflections. Individual libraries will use the images as part of creative curricula. Beyond engaging with rural communities, “Stories from the Core” seeks to raise the profile of Oklahoma’s rich public lands.

Champion Library, Ardmore
July 6th—Aug. 10th: Visitors count 2,898
August: 2,291+ 686
Meeting room with direct interaction with prints display1,415
Cards left 0

Tulsa Central Library
June 16th–July 7th visitor count 8,864
July 1st—July 31st visitor count 12,406
Cards left 0

Talihina Public Library
July visitor count 150, August visitor count TBD
Cards left 0

Spiro Public Library
June 25th—June 30th visitor count140 average
July visitor count 487, August visitor count TBD
Cards left TBD

Pioneer Library System-Norman East
June 21st—June 30th visitor count 1,759
July visitor count 5,229
Cards left 0

Lawton Public Library
June 22nd—June 30th visitor count  3,178 average
July visitor count 12,013

Tahlequah Public Library
June 28th—June 30th visitor count 723
July visitor count 6,665
Cards left 0

Soutar Memorial Library
August—September

The older boy in the neon green shirt made a whole story to go with his. His was a magical tree and people were afraid of its magic so they chained it up and it started to die. But then there was a lightning storm, and the lightning freed the tree and it sent out rainbows everywhere, all across the world.
For our interactive project we made several copies of the cards you provided us with and let customers design on top of them with paint markers. We then took the finished pieces and mixed them with leftover cards to cover different size boxes. We put the boxes on display with a sign that invites customers to flip the boxes and change the art. —Katie Pendley, Library Associate, Norman East

We have had a great response from patrons on your exhibit. With all the epic students we have frequenting the library, they really appreciate the colors and vibrancy of your work and sit quietly watching the images while awaiting their instructors and appointments.—Rudy Ellis, Circulation Coordinator, Resident Artist, Champion Library, Southern Oklahoma Library System

Land Acknowledgement

Contributed by Julie Pearson Little Thunder

Oklahoma sits on Native lands occupied for millennia by the Caddos and Wichitas, used by other tribes for hunting and gathering, and designated “Indian Territory” in 1830 for the forcible Removal of the southeastern Muskogee, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw peoples. Subsequent broken treaties, forced removals and displacements have resulted in a total of 39 federally recognized tribal nations living here.

MAP OF OKLAHOMA’S CONTEMPORARY TRIBAL COMMUNITIES, Kevin Dyke, Oklahoma State University Library Maps and Spatial Data Curator

Oklahomans have a deeply fraught relationship with the land: it has long been a site of conflict and contestation. This project seeks to offer participants a moment of respite from the chaos and upheaval of everyday life, allowing them to find solace in the beauty of Oklahoma. At the same time, we encourage recognition that the land itself has absorbed immense trauma and pain—from the forced removal of Native peoples, and the violence against Black communities, to environmental destruction and devastation. “Stories from the Core” invites people from all backgrounds and persuasions to experience the land as a force for healing, rather than a site of discord. The project embraces personal narratives from across the spectrum of Oklahoma. A universal that we all share is that we have a story to tell: a moment of sadness carried in our hearts that could be released into the red earth of Oklahoma’s ancient geology.

Placing art-cards in public libraries across Oklahoma—specifically focusing on those outside metropolitan areas—invites community members to engage in their own way. The postcards’ artwork and prompts honor the grief of the land itself as well as the pain Oklahomans have endured, creating a space for conversations on how to move towards healing as a state and a community.

Artwork, Photo & Video Galleries

by Sarah Ahmad

Galleries may also be found by region in the lefthand navigation panel.

Art cards; Art cards with Meditation Prompts; Healing with Nature Meditations

SparkSpace Installation, Tulsa, OK

SparkSpace Installation, Tulsa, OK

SparkSpace Installation, Tulsa, OK

Installations Schedule:

June 16—July 30th: Central Library, Tulsa City County Library (Northeast Oklahoma)

June 21—July 30th: Pioneer Library System, Norman (Central Oklahoma)
August: Stories from the Core Collaboration Project with Norman Public Library East—FLIP THE BOX

June 22—July 30th: Lawton Public Library (Southwest Oklahoma)

June 28—July 30th: Tahlequah Public Library, Eastern OK Library System (Northeast Oklahoma)

June 24—August 30th: Talihina Public Library, Southeast OK Library System (Southeast Oklahoma)

July 3—Sept. 3rd: Ardmore Champion Public Library, Southern Oklahoma Library System (South Central Oklahoma)

June 25—August: Spiro Public Library, Southeast OK Library System (Southeast Oklahoma)

August—September: Soutar Memorial Library, Boise City (Northwest Oklahoma)


COLLABORATORS

kara lynch was a key collaborator on 'Stories from the Core' from May-December 2021. This artist contributed to the initial visioning of the project. Lynch's labor and insight were crucial to the first six months of research, fundraising, and fieldwork. Sites visited during this period include North Central OK - Keystone Ancient Forest, Osage Hills & Tallgrass Prairie; South East OK - Robber's Cave, Spiro Mounds, Beaver's Bend, Broken Bow, Talimena Scenic Drive and the Choctaw Nation; and North West OK - Black Mesa. kara created three sonic meditations to the Tallgrass Prairie as part of 'Stories from the Core.’

Maryam Ahmad is a nonfiction writer whose work examines the layers and languages of the body, in illness and in health. Her essays have appeared in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 3: Halal if You Hear Me, published by Haymarket Books in 2019, and her work appears or is forthcoming in Catapult, Guernica Magazine, River Teeth, and Sonora Review, among others. A recent graduate of Brown University, she designed her own major in Narrative Health, seeking to understand the personal and social meanings of illness, and the processes through which this meaning is written and re-written. Her work culminated in an honors thesis, titled “how we got sick.” This lyrical nonfiction manuscript explores her family’s intertwined illness narratives, pulling apart the threads of racism, mental illness, and familial dynamics to reveal how sickness can become collective, how the bonds of a family erode. She is currently at work on her debut manuscript, tentatively titled sickness stories.

Maryam Ahmad’s preoccupation with the body, its caverns and vessels and rooms, drives much of her creative and professional work. In Tulsa, she worked as a narrative researcher for Take Control Initiative and the Metriarch Collaborative and co-authored a report entitled Our Stories Reflect the Sky: A Narrative Report on Marginalized Women’s Health in Oklahoma. Ahmad is a medical student at the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine in Pasadena, California. “Stories from the Core” is her first collaborative project based in the visual arts and builds on her extensive background in storytelling and practices of community listening.

“There is no more radical agenda—radical in the sense of getting to the roots of our problems, which lie in the deep recesses of culture and mind. The promise of ecotherapy lies in the possibility that such work can initiate healing rooted in our affinity with the natural world and can sponsor sanity in a world gone mad. In time it might restore our rootedness in particular places, based not on intellectual abstractions of religion, philosophy, or ideology but on the tug of something already deep inside us.”

David Orr, “Foreword,” in Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind

“Stories from the Core” is made possible with funding from The Tulsa Artist Fellowship, and additional support by Thrive! Grants, which is an initiative of Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition: www.thrivegrants.org.

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