ABOUT GOFF FEST
With the support of the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Goff Fest was created from the vision of artist Karl Jones, filmmaker Britni Harris and Jamie Pearson with Scrapps Designs, who felt Goff’s work was under appreciated and hoped “to share an interest in Bruce Goff’s story with a wider regional and national audience.” Since its inaugural festival in 2021, Goff Fest has grown into a multidisciplinary celebration of architecture, art and design, featuring tours of Goff-designed buildings, film screenings, exhibitions, lectures, panel discussions, live performances and community events that explore Goff’s lasting influence on Tulsa’s cultural and architectural identity. The festival also highlights Goff’s unconventional philosophy of the “continuous present,” emphasizing creativity, experimentation and the blending of art, music and architecture.
Organized by the Goff Center of the Continuous Present (GCCP)*, the festival will be held in various venues throughout Tulsa highlighting its unique architectural history and the role Bruce Goff played in that revival.
MORE ABOUT BRUCE GOFF
Bruce Goff, who passed in 1982, lived a life charged with unabashed creativity while also being shrouded in controversy. Having grown up in Tulsa, his work in architecture began at the young age of twelve when he apprenticed for the architectural firm, Rush, Endacott and Rush. Goff’s philosophy embraced the individual, the mysterious and the “continuous present”–a term coined by Gertrude Stein that he often used to describe his design style where the past and present merge into a continuous stream without beginning nor ends.
Mentored by Frank Lloyd Wright during his early years, Goff was one of the rare architects he admired for his creativity and independent ethos.
Goff’s contentious exit from the University of Oklahoma, where he taught and served as the Chairman for the School of Architecture, and the ongoing debate of the design ownership of the Boston Avenue United Methodist Church were filled with whispers of unacceptance for Goff’s eclectic designs and homosexuality in the conservative backdrop of mid-century Oklahoma. Even fifteen years after Goff’s death, Goff’s masterpiece design, Shin’en Kan, was destroyed from intentional arson.
Today, a group of Goff advocates aims to change the discourse, to open dialogues of truth and celebrate the life and work of America’s best unknown organic architect. The newly formed GCCP continues this public discussion with Goff Fest.
*ABOUT GCCP & ORGANIZING SPONSORS
The Goff Fest is proudly organized by the Goff Center of the Continuous Present (GCCP) and is made possible by the generous support of its partners and sponsors, the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, Tulsa Foundation for Architecture, The Tulsa Club Hotel, Ross Group, Elote Cafe and Catering, Tulsa Artists’ Coalition, Center for Public Secrets, Tulsa Spotlight Theatre, Friends of Kebyar, Price Tower Arts Center, Tulsa Historical Society, OATH Law, Studio 66, H.O.P.E. Testing, Oklahomans for Equality.
The Goff Center of the Continuous Present’s mission is to promote beauty in all its strength by encouraging the mysterious, the uncomfortable, and the disobedient aspects of art and architecture.