This holiday season Oklahoma City’s Red Earth Art Center invites the public to Stay & Play in OKC during the second Red Earth Treefest. Red Earth will celebrate the Christmas season with a decidedly Native twist this year when Treefest opens free to the public for an 11-week run November 1 through January 13, 2017 in downtown Oklahoma City. Red Earth Treefest features 17 Christmas trees adorned with handmade ornaments created to highlight the diverse Native cultures that make Oklahoma unique.
For those traveling to Oklahoma City for the holidays, Red Earth is offering a Stay & Play holiday package designed to create special memories with family and friends including discounts on lodging, dining, shopping and tickets to two of Oklahoma City’s most popular annual family holiday stage productions.
Wyndham Garden Inn located just minutes from the Red Earth Art Center on I-40 will offer a $79 room rate during the 11-week Red Earth Treefest exhibition. Included in the hotel package are two full breakfast coupons per night, a $250 coupon book to The Outlet Shoppes Oklahoma City and discounts to six area restaurants.
The Red Earth Treefest Stay & Play package also includes discounts to two of the city’s most popular holiday events. The Oklahoma City Ballet will offer 15% off each advance ticket to the Dec 10-20 performances of The Nutcracker at Civic Center Music Hall. While Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma City will offer $10 off each advance ticket purchase to the Nov 30 – Dec 24 performances of Charles Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol at Lyric on the Plaza in Oklahoma City’s up and coming Plaza District.
Red Earth Treefest is presented free to the public at the Red Earth Art Center in downtown Oklahoma City. Treefest features 15 Native Tribes from throughout Oklahoma invited to participate in the annual holiday event by creating handmade ornaments made to highlight their distinctive tribal culture. Oklahoma Native Tribes participating in the annual event include the Absentee Shawnee, Caddo, Cherokee, Cheyenne & Arapaho, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Citizen Potawatomi, Comanche, Delaware Nation, Kaw, Muscogee (Creek), Osage, Otoe-Missouria, Sac & Fox and Seminole. Each tribal organization has been hard at work for several months creating their handmade ornaments.
Treefest will include exhibit copy explaining how each ornament on the 15 tribal trees pertains to the unique tribal culture of the tree.
Thirty-nine Native tribes are headquartered in Oklahoma, giving the state more tribal headquarters than any other state. Nearly every tribe with headquarters in Oklahoma has homelands in other parts of the country – from the Pacific Northwest to the Florida Everglades. Oklahoma’s Native Tribes have very diverse tribal cultures that are reflected by the ornaments created for the Christmas trees on display at Red Earth.
Two additional trees include the Red Earth docent tree with hundreds of handmade ornaments including beaded corn, dreamcatchers, mini tipis, drums and parfleche bags; and a tree featuring ornaments created by Oklahoma Native artists are available for sale.
“Last year we presented our first Red Earth Treefest to the city and state - and the public loved it. We drew people from all over who included our Treefest on their holiday calendar of events,” said Teri Stanek, president of the non-profit Red Earth board of directors. “We are thrilled to carry on this tradition with the addition of the Stay & Play in OKC holiday package. I know our guests will thoroughly enjoy the Christmas trees featured at Treefest, adorned with beautiful ornaments that represent our tribal cultures so well. This year many of the tribes created additional ornaments that we will offer for sale to the public.”
Red Earth Treefest is presented free to the public 10-5 pm Monday through Friday. Special Holiday hours include 10-3 pm Sat Dec 3, Sat Dec 10 and Sat Dec 17. To take advantage of the Red Earth Treefest Stay & Play holiday package including discounts on hotel lodging and tickets to the Oklahoma City Ballet production of The Nutcracker and Lyric Theatre’s production of A Christmas Carol visit www.redearth.org for information.
The Red Earth Art Center is located at 6 Santa Fe Plaza next to the historic Skirvin Hilton Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City. Visit www.RedEarth.org or call (405) 427-5228 for additional information. Red Earth, Inc. is a non-profit organization with a mission to promote the rich traditions of American Indian arts and cultures through education, a premier festival, a museum and fine art markets.
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Red Earth, Inc. is an Allied Arts member agency and is funded in part by the Oklahoma Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Oklahoma Tourism & Recreation Department, and the Oklahoma City Convention & Visitors Bureau.
The Oklahoma Arts Council is the official state agency for the support and development of the arts. The Council’s mission is to lead, cultivate and support a thriving arts environment, which is essential to quality of life, education and economic vitality for all Oklahomans. The Council provides more than 500 grants to over 250 organizations in communities statewide each year, organizes professional development opportunities for the state’s arts and cultural industry, and manages hundreds of works of art in the public spaces of the state Capitol. For more information, visit arts.ok.gov.
