by Jennie Lloyd | Photos courtesy of Jarett (JB) Boss
Community Art Home is exactly what it sounds like. Tulsa artists of all ages show up once a week at a home
— loaded with art supplies, production equipment, and porch-sitting spots — to create music and art together.
The ongoing social/art experiment is magic personified, with rambunctious, inspired vibes to spare. If you’re there, you’re part of the crew. So you might as well join in and get a little paint on your hands.
Art Home began a year and a half ago when Jarett (JB) Boss opened his home to friends on Monday nights to see what they could create.
“It’s kind of like a bunch of cliques that come together and make art in weird ways,” he says.
Now, more than 60 people arrive at Art Home every week, off the beaten path and through a thicket of trees to park in gravel before walking up to the front door.
Inside, you might find a group of mostly 20-somethings freestyling over beats, dancing, and hyping each other up. In another room, a smaller group plays with production equipment on large computer screens. Down the hall, a dozen or so are in deep discussion. In the pool outside, one girl is serenely swimming, quietly cutting through water.
Friendly Feline Host
While everyone gets weird, the official host of Art Home sits perched on a kitchen counter, eyes half-closed, in total peace with his rowdy surroundings. Ramone is a slim tabby cat in shades of tan and black, relaxed and funny, with big, curious eyes.
“Ramone is just always in the art, on the art, like always up on it. He lies on the paintings,” Boss says.
Before Art Home began, Ramone “was really shy toward people and didn’t really
like people at all, besides me,” Boss says.
“But then through Art Home happening, now he’s the friendliest cat ever.”
Ramone went from being a little “punk” as a kitten to a friendly “studio cat and a social butterfly,” Boss says. Lots of people
“at Art Home sometimes come here just to see him.”
Community Art Home is held “every Monday, rain or shine,” says Evan Hughes, a regular attendee and popular local comedian and promoter. Details are posted each week via the Art Home Instagram account, @communityarthome. Shoot a direct message for the address.
Canine Comfort
A month before Boss rescued Ramone, he was devastated by the mysterious disappearance of his dog, Norah. It’s still unclear what happened. The one thing that’s certain is that Norah was either taken from or wandered off Boss’ proper ty during the height of the pandemic in 2020. And she didn’t return.
“It was such an unsure time, with no safety net,” Boss says. He had gotten Norah as a way to cope with the grief of losing his mother in 2016, but then COVID happened — another unsure thing. Suddenly “even my coping mechanism, Norah, is now nowhere to be found,” he says. “And I was freaking out.”
Boss had adopted Norah when she was a month old. Someone had a litter of fullbred Pit Bull puppies they couldn’t afford, and Boss was charmed by the runt of the litter. Norah Jones’ music was playing in the car on the way home, and Boss named the puppy right then — his sweet little dog with a shiny black-and-white tuxedo coat and gentle manners.
After Norah went missing, Boss searched for her nonstop for a month, but when weeks passed by without word, he assumed the worst. Norah was microchipped, yet no call came.
The house was too quiet.
“It had become such a vital part of my comfort as a human to have an animal around,” Boss says. One day, he came across a post about a kitten that needed a home, and Boss adopted him and named him Ramone.
The chill tabby welcomes everyone to Art Home each week, whether he’s perched on the counter or being held like a baby (Ramone loves to be cradled).
The Unexpected
Art Home normally starts at 6 p.m., with no official end and an ever-evolving format. “I have no vision for it, really, besides just
wanting people to have access,” Boss says.
“If you kinda make it all really accessible, people will naturally gravitate to the materials. They will create. That’s the fun thing to watch.”
After a year and a half of creative play with Art Home, Boss knows to expect the unexpected.
“People are so multifaceted that I have no idea what they’ll do,” he says.
Like, say, find your dog nearly three years after she disappears.
In June 2023, Boss got a call from the city of Tulsa, asking, “Do you have a dog named Norah?”
“I HAD a dog Norah,” he responded. When he realized she was alive and found, “I was like, what?” he says.
A couple had found Norah walking near 31st Street and Mingo Road without a collar. They had an inkling that the gentle dog belonged to somebody and had her microchip checked.
When Boss went to pick her up, “She definitely recognized me right away,” he says. She paused, frozen. They looked at each other, a person and his dog, separated by nearly three years of time.
Would she remember him? Yes. “She just started freaking out and going crazy, wagging her tail everywhere,” Boss says.
But where had she been all that time? “I daily wonder where Norah went,” he says. “What was she doing for almost three years?”
There isn’t much to go on.
“Her skin looks like she’s been on the street but weight looks like she’s been eating good, so I don’t know,” Boss says.
Life Together
Each day, Norah remembers more and more about her old life. Things are “the same but different,” Boss says, “the way time goes.”
Dogs can remember sounds, sights, smells, and tastes through association, but humans remember things episodically. For Norah, “It seems like the smells are what really bring it back,” Boss says. Dogs can remember those kinds of associations indefinitely. Norah never forgot Boss. The smell of home…. And “she remembers the tricks I taught her,” he laughs.
Norah still sits calmly when Boss puts treats on top of her paws. She waits to crunch until he tells her she can eat. “She’s gotten better every day that she’s been home,” he says. Once she’s settled in, Boss thinks she will “probably be out and about in Art Home,” he says. “She loves the people. But it might be a little too much right now.”
For now, Ramone remains the sole host of Monday nights at the Art Home. The rest of the week, these new roommates are learning to live together.
“When I got Norah home, I had the realization that now I had a cat AND a dog,” Boss laughs. “So that was a process. At first, Ramone was like, ‘I’m not even gonna be in the same room as Norah.’ ”
But now Boss finds them sleeping on the same couch, sunbathing in the same patches of porch sun, hanging in the studio while he makes music. Every day, they are learning new associations for family, for home — Norah and Ramone and Boss.
