Art Project Begins To Cover Downtown Tulsa Building

An art installation, maybe the biggest one of its type ever in Oklahoma, is happening in downtown Tulsa.

Over at the 108 Contemporary building in the Brady District, 17 long panels of knitted fabric with an unusual name - The Unbearable Absence of Landscape – is going on display.

About this time last year, hundreds of knitters began knitting little squares. Then, over the last few months, those squares have been seamed together into 17 six-foot by 20-foot tapestries that will hang from the top of the building.

10/21/2015 Related Story: Artist's State-Wide Knitting Project To Cover 108 Contemporary Building

Romy Owens is the lead artist on the project. She said, when it’s complete, it will be like a huge digitized picture of a landscape, or in this case, The Absence of Landscape.

"I've never done anything on this scale before," Owens said.

It's quite the engineering project.

On top of the roof, Wallace Engineering and Manhattan Construction have created a series of wooden troughs with an orange bladder filled with water; it provides the counter weight to the knitted tapestries.

Krystle Brewer said, "We've never done anything like this with 108 Contemporary, and nothing like this has ever been done in the state, or even the region."

The extra weight they're engineering for is if, over the winter, they get wet and perhaps freeze. They are trying to plan for everything.

This is a first for everyone involved in the project so they are taking their time.

The tapestries are supposed to hang until the end of January.