Mission
Dedicated to advancing, celebrating, elevating and amplifying LGBTQ+ artists by showcasing the best independent films, music, performances and all forms of mixed media.
Our Story
Founded in Tulsa, OK, Twisted Arts was created to highlight local, national, and international LGBTQ+ artists through year-round programs which include an annual fall film festival, monthly film screenings & performances, a LGBTQ+ youth filmmaking Summer camp, members-only sneak peeks, access to year-round short films, special events, and private screenings with directors, actors, and other queer media icons.
Core Values
Community: Community is key to the social changes we envision, the arts are the medium through which we communicate.
Education: Providing opportunities for conversations between audiences and artists across disciplines.
Originality: Proudly showcasing the diversity that makes Tulsa a great place to live.
Staff + Board
Kevin Lovelace, Founder & Executive Director
Kevin discovered his love for movies as a teenager while working at the local Cinema 8 in Broken Arrow, OK, where he spent hours absorbing the works of American and foreign indie film directors. Since then, he has had the privilege of working at variety of festivals, including: Chicago International Film Festival, CMJ Music Festival, Block Party, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Reel Q, Film Pittsburgh, AGLIFF and Film Independent.
His proudest achievement is creating the Pittsburgh Underground Film Festival (PUFF), which screens films made by communities typically underrepresented in the film industry and showcases women, transgender and BIPOC film directors.
Benjamin Hanley Brown, Board President & Artistic Director
Benjamin began his career as Art Director for the LGBTQ2+ lifestyle and entertainment magazine HX Philadelphia, and is now Creative Partner at Masters Group Design—a branding and design firm based in Philadelphia and Tulsa—focusing in the arts & culture space. With MGD, Benjamin has branded the Philadelphia Fringe Festival for over 10 years and has designed for the Philadelphia Environmental Film Festival since its inception. Creator of the Twisted Arts branding, he is a Circle Cinema member and supporter of Oklahomans for Equality (OkEq). Benjamin has served as a board member for AIGA Philadelphia, the professional association for design.
Cora Hasegawa, Board Member & Social Media Manager
Cora is an independent filmmaker, specializing in animation, writing, production design, and editing. Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she developed a love of art from a young age but it was in high school that she discovered a passion for filmmaking. She attended Oberlin College where she first learned stop-motion animation, creating short films using paper collage and found objects. Her thesis film, Grandma/Obāchan was shown at multiple film festivals and was nominated for various awards including Best of NewFilmmakers LA in animation and received the second place Audience Choice Award at The Fifteen Minute Film Festival. When not working, Cora enjoys reading, baking, knitting, visiting art museums, and playing with her cats.
Chauncey Smith, Board Member
Originally from Chicago land, Chauncey Smith has lived in Tulsa since 2005. Graduating from Kansas State University for Interior Architecture, he’s been a trailblazer in the commercial architecture industry ever since. Giving back to Tulsa with such projects as the BOK Center and St. Simeon, as well as doing national projects for Hilton. Chauncey’s core value has always been acts of service which includes: fundraisers for the children’s museum, delivering meals to the needy, as well as marching for women’s rights and Black Lives Matter. Enhancing the human experience for all people has always been a strong focus. Architecture isn’t only Chauncey’s passion, his multi-faceted career includes singing at Holy Family as the Bass section leader, as well as performing at the Tulsa PAC. His hobbies include tennis, being an avid reader of fiction, and costume design. His crowning achievement thus far has been singing at Carnegie Hall.
Cray Bauxmont-Flynn, Board Member & Program Manager
Cray Bauxmont-Flynn owns a design firm, furniture collection that launched in 2019 and host a Podcast based on the Native American art world. When he moved to Oklahoma, his passion for arts and culture, and his desire to be active in the LGBTQ+ community both led him to Twisted Arts. Cray also renewed the personal dedication to pursue his own dream of writing a screenplay based on the two-spirit native American culture and hopes with his continued involvement in the arts community will enable him to assist other LGBTQ natives to tell their stories for, about, and/or by LGBTQ+ youth and making the films easily accessible to them.
Being part of a vibrant arts and culture community has been rewarding for Cray. Prior to moving to Tulsa he has been served on international LGBTQ+ juries for film festivals in Berlin (Berlinale), Cardiff (Iris Prize), Tel Aviv (TLVfest), Boston (Wicked Queer), Atlanta (Out on Film), as well as jury duties for the DC Shorts Film Festival .
Don James McLaughlin, Board Member & Secretary
Don James McLaughlin is assistant professor of 19th-century American literature at the University of Tulsa. His research focuses on late 18th and 19th century literary movements in the Americas, histories of medicine and psychiatry, disability studies, queer historiography; and the history of emotions. Research for my dissertation and first book manuscript has been supported by the Penn Humanities Forum, American Antiquarian Society, a Marguerite Bartlett Hamer Dissertation Fellowship at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and a Quarry Farm Fellowship from the Center for Mark Twain Studies. I have published on the history of medicine, genealogies of black queer theory, progressive print cultures, and disability history in American Literature, Literature and Medicine, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, the New Republic, Common-place: The Journal of Early American Life, Public Books, and Legacies, the magazine of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Kris Rose, Board Member & Events Manager
Kris Rose is an author, artist, musician, and event organizer. Born in Bixby, Oklahoma, Kris has traveled extensively and has lived in Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco. She is the author of three books: White Riot / Black Massacre: A Brief History of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, The Final Girl: How Horror Movies Made Me a Better Feminist, and Mentally Unbalanced and Violent: The Hagsploitation Film. She lives in Tulsa.
Robbie Edwards, Board Member
Robbie is an appreciator of arts and graphic design, serving for nine years on the Art Directors Club of Tulsa (ADCTulsa) board in various roles from Membership Director to President and continues to participate as an active member. During his service with ADCTulsa one of his final contributions was collecting and archiving the clubs 50 year history. This includes publishing a book, having a poster and memorabilia exhibit, and donating official archive material to the Tulsa Historical Society. He currently serves on the board of Twisted Arts and is a committee member for the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture. His hobbies include video games on his PlayStation and visiting botanic gardens in his travels.