OKLAHOMA CITY – Sunday afternoon, OKC’s Calle Dos Cinco district will see the long-awaited return of one of the scene’s most varied and vital musical mini-fest celebrations when Color of Art finally roars back to life for the first time in years.
Masterminded by guitarist/visual artist Daniel Acuña and his close collaborator, Flow the Wise (the rapper, poet, organizer, and hip-hop hero known until just recently as Original Flow,) Color of Art is a part-music showcase, part-visual arts exhibition, part-dance party, all-community rallying call for artists and performers of all stripes across Oklahoma.
And for the event’s triumphant return, and first time ever in the Calle Dos Cinco district in OKC’s historic Capitol Hill, they’re sticking hard as ever to the driving principle that’s fueled the showcase since day one:
Diversity.
“Color of Art is never supposed to be a one-dimensional, one-genre kind of event,” Flow told me ahead of its return. “It’s always supposed to be a mixture of different sounds and styles and visual arts all together.”
And that mixture of sounds and styles will be driving the day once again when Color of Art bursts back onto the scene Sunday afternoon for the first time in three years.
The day’s musical lineup casts a wide net from the Pop/R&B of continuing breakout Bella Burns to the genre-mashing intensity of hip-hop rocker Caj, and from the laser-focused beats and legendary jams of the great DJ Dee Rock to the style-straddling jazz-rock collective of newcomers Ivan & The Trio.
According to Flow, it’s always been the aim of Color of Art to display that versatility and variance from across the OKC music scene, stretching all the way back to the event’s origins as a small-scale music and art showcase at Saints in the pre-pandemic times, through its evolution into a full-sized monthly blowout in Scissortail Park.
“My main focus is making sure that artists who are not being represented get a stage and a showcase for what they’re capable of,” Flow said about the booking philosophy that keeps him mixing things up on every Color of Art lineup.
Past bills have seen everything from the alt-rock of Santiago Ramones to the soulful balladry of Sarafina Byrd and the cross-cultural, multi-lingual hip-hop of Finite Galaxy, not to mention plenty of performances from Flow himself and the persistent power and presence of dance collective The Groovemeant.
“I just try to showcase that diversity and maybe that’ll help set the standard for other festivals,” he said. “Maybe if they see this local, homegrown festival that’s not corporate run, that’s showcasing local talent, and that’s flourishing and doing numbers, maybe that can change their mindset.”
Resurrecting the event now (three years after its last iteration as a collaboration with Factory Obscura) has felt like a perfect fit for the recently christened Plaza Calle Dos Cinco, the district’s multi-cultural central plaza that was similarly designed to celebrate a broad spectrum of communities too often overlooked by other organizers.
“We’re so excited to bring Color of Art to this space in Calle Dos Cinco,” Flow said. “We saw the plaza and just felt like ‘oh my god, this is a calling.’ We can’t wait to get this partnership started and to really build something together.”
But of course, the music is only one half of the Color of Art equation. There’s also the art.
There’ll be the wildly colorful, heavily textured works of Greaze Girl, the elegant textile art and wearable goods from Sawdust Designs, the chaotic cartooning and subversive monster works of Missfittdinosaur, and huge slate of others, all leaving their unique marks on the evening.
And of course, plenty of community art supplies and plenty of encouragement to get kids, adults, and anyone in between to knock out some art of their own.
But even after all the anticipation, all the questions of when it might come back, all the new partnerships and new avenues to navigate, and all the moving pieces, it’s all still Flow and Acuña. And they still say their only goal is still just to give back to the community and to prove what kind of power this city’s diversity can hold.
“I see it as a victory already,” Flow said. “This is what we’re doing, we’re just taking all of that kindness that’s been given to us and we’re building onto that.”
Color of Art returns Sunday, May 24th in the Plaza Calle Dos Cinco in OKC’s Capitol Hill district.
For more, follow @colorofartokc on Instagram.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp is the owner and Editor in Chief of Oklahoma City Free Press. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly two decades and served as Arts & Entertainment Editor before purchasing the company from founder Brett Dickerson in 2026.
He is also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
