A local graffiti artist has been active at the Norick Art Center.
Chris “Sker” Rogers, a Tulsa-based graffiti artist with more than 25 years of experience, recently spray painted patterns in the restrooms in the Norick Art Center. Sker also taught as a guest artist in some classes in Norick this semester.
“He was here teaching graffiti techniques in a cat house painting class,” said Heather Lunsford, director of the school of visual arts. “We had a grant to paint feral cat houses.”
The grant comes from the Watershed Animal Fund, an organization that supports efforts to better the lives of companion animals, according to their website, watershedanimalfund.org. Lunsford said they built 25-50 A-frame cat shelters that artists and students decorated. The School of Visual Arts teamed up with the Oklahoma Central Humane Society, and they are working now with the society’s feral cat manager to find optimal locations for the small shelters.
The class is a one credit hour service learning course, available to any student of any major. They will also offer a one credit hour mural painting class in Spring 2019.
Art professors do not typically teach students graffiti technique, but Lunsford said they try to expose students to special topics that they do not teach. They found Sker due to his work’s inclusion in the Oklahoma Contemporary’s “Not For Sale: Graffiti Culture in Oklahoma” exhibit in late 2017. Lunsford said she did not have the idea to have him paint anything in Norick until he already acted as a guest educator.
“I was like, ‘You know, you should come in and graffiti somewhere in the building,” Lunsford said. “And our bathrooms were so boring.”
Sker agreed to paint the bathrooms and did so with an abstract style in mind, he said.
“I basically painted an abstract wave of color,” Sker said. “A different color for the men’s room versus the women’s room. It gives it some energy and something visually attractive inside of there.”
Sker later posted videos showing his work on the bathrooms to his Facebook page. Lunsford said she enjoys the paint job Sker gave Norick’s bathrooms. Students also said they enjoy Sker’s work.
“I really like it,” said Kyla Bruegel, art/film senior. “It adds a lot of colors to the building, makes the bathrooms less drab. It makes me happier to be in the building.”
Much of Sker’s work can be found on Instagram, @sker_kreativ. It can also be found at Facebook.com/SkerKreativ.
“I’ve been involved with this graffiti culture since the beginning here in Tulsa,” Sker said. “I’ve put so many years into it. It drives me on to keep going. I look at it as a privilege to keep painting.”
Leave a Reply