April 25, 2023
By Landry Brewer
The Elk City Museum Complex recently served as the canvas for an Oklahoma Michelangelo to ply his trade.
Newcastle artist Dean Codner has spent a lot of time in town lately touching up museum structures, including the Memorial Chapel, and making them look great.
With more than 40 years of experience, Codner’s resume includes painting billboards in the 1980s and ‘90s, contracting with Coca-Cola, painting the University of Central Oklahoma logo and mascot on UCO’s Wantland Stadium, and creating murals at several state eateries, including Toby Keith’s OKC restaurant.
For the 100th anniversary of Norman’s Campus Corner, in 2017 Codner was chosen to paint a mural on the University of Oklahoma’s IT Building on Buchanan Avenue celebrating some OU athletic legends.
Codner painted OU’s first Heisman Trophy winner, Billy Vessels, and National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame member Wayman Tisdale into the scene.
The Campus Corner mural reflects the comic-book influence of Codner’s youth.
He told the OU Daily in 2017 that the comic books he and his childhood friend sold bottles to buy provided a diversion from the dysfunction of alcoholic parents and domestic violence. His grandmother encouraged his artistic inclination and drove him to art classes on Saturdays.
“She encouraged me to keep trying. She said, ‘You don’t have anybody but yourself, so if you never try, you’re never going to know if you can make it,’” Codner told the OU Daily.
He studied Commercial Architecture and Advertising Design in college, then he became a professional artist.
Now, more than four decades later, Codner can add Elk City’s Museum Complex to his already-impressive resume.
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