Paul Davis, creator if the 2002 Mayfest poster toyed with using something distinctly Oklahoma in origin. "I remember one of the things I came up with was a cowboy artist. But I decided I didn't want this to be too specific to one place or one art form. So that's where the girl came from."

Mayfest 2002 poster artist captures joy and exuberance of annual event

When he started thinking of how to capture the spirit of Tulsa's Mayfest in an image, Paul Davis toyed with using something distinctly Oklahoma in origin."I remember one of the things I came up with was a cowboy artist," The former Tulsan said. "But I decided I didn't want this to be too specific to one place or one art form. So that's where the girl came from."The girl -- a leaping cerulean figure in diaphanous drape, bearing a brilliant red banner -- is the central figure in the poster Davis created for the 2002 Tulsa International Mayfest. At her feet, which seem astride a stylized skyline, is a little brown dog bounding along beside her."I wanted something that would express exuberance, joy, fun, things you associate with the word `festival,' " Davis said. "It just seemed more appropriate than anything else I came up with."Besides, the Tulsa that Davis knows is not a Tulsa that still exists."I did a show last year at a gallery in Japan," Davis said, speaking by phone from his studio in New York City. "It was a joint show with a Japanese artist, Tadanori Yokoo, and it was supposed to be a kind of autobiography. The big painting in that show was one I did of a Tulsa street scene -- not one that was all that accurate, but more an image of how I remembered downtown Tulsa."I started out a sign painter for Skaggs, so I put Skaggs in there," he said. "I had (radio station) KVOO there, in the old Philtower Building, Brooks Clothing, all the places I remembered. Then I put in a bench on the sidewalk where my grandmother, mother and sister are sitting."Much of what Davis depicted in that painting is gone now, lost to the crush of progress -- even KVOO, for decades Tulsa's premier and seemingly unalterable source of classic country music, is changing into something very different."When I do come home, it's always a huge shock to see how things have changed," Davis said. "I remember being downtown one day at 5 p.m., and wondering where in the world all the people were."That will change come Thursday, as the 2002 Tulsa International Mayfest begins in downtown Tulsa, filling much of the area along Main Street between Third and Sixth streets with all manner of visual and performing arts. Davis' original Mayfest art work will be auctioned off as part of the gala opening of the Mayfest Invitational Gallery, an invitation-only event held Wednesday evening. Once again, the Invitational Gallery will be set up in the lobby joining the Williams Towers at Third Street and Boulder Avenue.Mayfest has traditionally selected a local artist to create the Mayfest poster image, which also ends up adorning a variety of festival souvenirs. However, last year the festival decided to look outside the city boundaries for an artist, choosing Tulsa-born actor Gailard Sartain for the task."Gailard's an old friend of mine, and he suggested the idea to the Mayfest people that I do the poster this year," Davis said.Posters are something for which Davis is famous, thanks to his groundbreaking work for the New York Shakespeare Festival, for whom Davis created such indelible images as Raul Julia as a malevolent, derby-hatted Mack the Knife in "Threepenny Opera," or the subway graffiti spelling out the title of Ntozake Shange's play, "for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf."Davis was born near Antlers, and came to Tulsa with his family when his father, a Methodist minister, was assigned to Will Rogers United Methodist Church. He attended Wilson Junior High and Will Rogers High School, where his natural talent for drawing became more focused."I had a couple of very good teachers at Wilson, Mr. Higgins and Miss Ownsby, and my teacher at Rogers, Mrs. Bateholts, she truly was instrumental in shaping my life, in terms of thinking about art as a career, about finding the opportunities."One of those opportunities was found in the back of a comic book -- an advertisement for the Cartoonists and Illustrators School of New York (now the School of Visual Arts). Davis earned a scholarship to the school, and left Tulsa for New York soon after his high school graduation.Davis quickly became a star in the world of graphic art and design, first with the influential PushPin Studio, then as a freelance artist and magazine designer.His portrait of Che Guevara for Evergreen magazine, the posters he created for public television's "Mystery" and "Masterpiece Theater", program design work he did for groundbreaking magazines like Normal and Wigwag, are among the iconic examples of graphic arts in the past few decades.Two books of his work, "Faces" and "The Poster Art of Paul Davis," have been published, and his work regularly appears in museums and galleries, including a 1999 show at the University of Tulsa's Alexandre Hogue Gallery, a mini-retrospective titled "Moving.""I've always thought that most American artists are failed cartoonists," he said. "That's usually how most of us were introduced to the idea of art, that there was somebody out there entertaining people by drawing pictures. Myself, I grew up loving things like Pogo and L'il Abner, but soon realized I wasn't Walt Kelly or Al Capp. So you start looking for other things to do."That's what led me to magazine illustration, which was everywhere in the 1950s and early '60s," Davis said. "I never thought in terms of high art or low art, just in terms of good and bad. That's why I'm not so surprised that graphic design has become more and more accepted by the art world and the public. Lots of popular art ends up evolving into high art -- especially when it's not so common any more." James D. Watts Jr., World entertainment writer, can be reached at 581-8478 or via e-mail at james.watts@tulsaworld.com. Photo by STEPHEN HOLMAN / Tulsa World