Celebrating Leon: Artists collaborate to create mural honoring ‘The Master of Space and Time’

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    TULSA, OK (Tulsa World ) — When artist Patrick (p.s.) Gordon moved to Tulsa for the first time, he bought a house in the city’s Maple Ridge neighborhood, just about a block or so from the mansion that had been recently purchased by one Claude Russell Bridges — better known to the world as Leon Russell.

“He threw a lot of parties,” Gordon recalled. “Of course, I just heard about them — I wasn’t a part of his circle, although I was friends with Emily Smith, who was something of a muse to Leon.

“But I did see what I think was his last performance, which was at a private event,” he said. “When he came into the room, he seemed so very frail, kind of shuffling along. But then he sat down at the piano and he just knocked it out. It was like he came to life when he was making music.”

Gordon has spent much of the past year immersing himself in the life and music of Russell as he worked on a series of large-scale paintings that are currently being transformed into a public artwork titled, “The Mural of Space and Time.”

Gordon created six oil paintings that use some of Russell’s trademark hats — from towering top hats to broad-brimmed cowboy hats — as central elements amid the finely detailed flora and fauna that fans of Gordon’s art know well. The series also includes two paintings of a roughly sketched portrait of Russell, one done in black on white, the other white on black.

These paintings are being turned into a 140-foot mural that will cover a good portion of the cinder block building just across the street from the Church Studio, Third Street and Trenton Avenue, by North Carolina artist Brian Lewis, who signs his work Jeks.

On Friday, Nov. 13, the fourth anniversary of Russell’s death, there will be a showing of Gordon’s original paintings at Harwelden, 2210 S. Main St., complete with refreshments, pianist Spencer Sutton performing Russell’s music and a chance to meet with the artists. This will be followed by the official unveiling of the “Mural of Space and Time.”

Teresa Knox, who owns and is renovating the Church Studio to the way it was when Russell used it for his own recordings, as well as those of fellow artists on his Shelter Records label, said she envisioned some sort of mural for this location almost from the day she purchased the Church Studio.

“I saw this big, white wall, and I thought how wonderful it would be to have someone paint something really beautiful on it,” Knox said. “I got to know the owner of Mac’s Engineering, which owns the building, and he quickly warmed up to the idea.

“There is a lot of concrete and asphalt in this neighborhood, so I thought we would need something that was more organic to counter that,” she said. “That’s when I immediately thought of Patrick because so much of his work involves floral and botanical things.”

Knox and Gordon met and quickly bonded over the project.

“I do a lot of commissioned portraits, so I’ve worked with clients before, but Teresa was something else,” Gordon said. “I’ve never had a client who was so integral to the creative process. She has a vision unlike anything I’ve come across before, about her love for Leon Russell and how she wants to honor his accomplishments. That’s really why I got interested in the project because I was just intrigued by her sincere passion for all things Leon.”

Gordon began going through Russell’s entire body of work, listening to all the music he could find and drawing inspiration from the lyrics to some of Russell’s songs for inspiration.

“I thought I knew Leon Russell and his music pretty well, but I feel like I had just scratched the surface before this project,” he said. “Leon Russell was a musical genius, pure and simple.”

Knox said she had two goals with the “Mural of Space and Time.”

“So many murals are created to make some kind of statement — political, social, all sorts of reasons,” she said. “But I wanted this not to be a statement but a way to create emotion, to make people happy to see something truly beautiful, to make us forget about all the sadness and heartache and pain in the world, if only for a few moments.

“My other goal is to pay tribute to Leon Russell’s legacy and the investment he made in his home town in 1972, when he turned an old church into a recording studio,” Knox said. “And I want to pay tribute to Pat Gordon and his life and legacy in Tulsa. He’s done so much to enrich Tulsa, and I wanted to honor that.”

Gordon’s paintings have been commissioned to commemorate everything from the city of Tulsa’s Centennial to such important figures in the arts in Tulsa as the late Katie Westby.

“I’ve been asked to commemorate a lot of things and people that have made Tulsa great, and it’s always a flattering and humbling thing to be asked to do,” Gordon said.

Gordon also selected Lewis as the artist to replicate his paintings into the mural.

“A friend of mine, Steve Liggett, told me about Brian and the mural he had doing of Leon that’s on Third Street,” Gordon said. “I took one look and knew he was the perfect person to do this.

“He is simply brilliant,” he said. “I’ve been painting all my life, and the things this kid can do with a spray can just boggle my mind. I mean — it took me a year to complete all these paintings. Brian is going to turn them into a 140-foot mural in something like 11 days.”

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