PATTERN Magazine Vol. 14 Fall 2018

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EDITOR’S LETTER

AN ARTSY CITY I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO AN ISSUE ABOUT THE INDIANAPOLIS ARTS SCENE. AND LOOK! IT ONLY TOOK US SEVEN YEARS TO GET THERE! In this issue we specifically focus on the visual arts in town. Like fashion, film, music, and dance, our visual arts have been churning away quietly, but consistently for many years — the ebb and flow of failures and successes noticed only by those paying close attention.

BUT THIS YEAR FEELS DIFFERENT. There has been a deluge of new art galleries, art shows, visiting artist series, public art opportunities, and conversations (just about every day of the week) centered on the role art plays in creating vitality and building equity within a community. It is becoming harder and harder to miss the arts, in this city of sports*, even if you’re not paying attention. And if, like me, you’ve been a longtime supporter of the arts, then you’re probably keenly aware of how much art is happening here and now.

THIS ABUNDANCE AND DIVERSITY OF TALENT MADE PATTERN’S SELECTION PROCESS OF ARTISTS DAUNTING at best (and somewhat terrifying, to be honest). It’s a given that we’ve omitted a great number of artists who are worth featuring. I apologize in advance to both artists and patrons who will be disappointed for these omissions. Please note that this ranks as our biggest issue yet — 180 pages! — and is, in fact, due to our attempts to squeeze in as much brilliant talent between the covers as we could.

IN MANY WAYS, INDIANAPOLIS REMAINS A WELL-KEPT SECRET WHEN IT COMES TO OUR ARTS, DESIGN, LITERARY, AND MUSICAL TALENT. So it’s been gratifying “packaging” our visual arts scene, a lá PATTERN-style, and telling its stories so that people inside and outside of Central Indiana can appreciate the depth and breath of creatives found here.

I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we loved putting it together!

*PATTERN wants to give a special shout-out to the folks at IndyCar and Indianapolis Motor Speedway who have set an example for how sports and arts can augment and complement one another very successfully.

POLINA OSHEROV_EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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DISTRIBUTION

EDITORIAL

Editor & Creative Director Polina Osherov

Distributed worldwide

by Publishers Distribution Group Inc. pdgmags.com Printed by Fineline Printing, Indianapolis IN USA PATTERN Magazine ISSN 2326-6449 is published by PATTERN

Design Director Emeritus Kathy Davis

DIGITAL

Managing Editor Eric Rees

Online Content Manager Julie Valentine

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Michael Ault Gabrielle Cheikh Crystal Grave Freddie Lockett Lindsey Macyauski Aaron Reitz Sherron Rogers Sara Savu Adam Thies Barry Wormser Tamara Zahn

SUBSCRIPTION

Visit patternindy.com/subscribe Back issues, permissions, reprints info@ patternindy.com

Design Director Lindsay Hadley Graphic Design Fellow Claire Bowles

Copy Editor Jami Stall Staff Photographer Esther Boston

DESIGNERS

Ryan Hunley John Ilang-Ilang Amy McAdams-Gonzales Stacey McClure Jon McClure Daniel Vuyovich Julie Valentine

WRITERS

Jacqueline Eckhardt Jennifer Delgadillo Dan Grossman Crystal Hammon John Helling David Hoppe Charlie Hopper Tim Lisko Shauta Marsh Danicia Monét Dawn Olsen Theresa Procopio Eric Rees Taylor Rose Susie Schmank Shelley Selim Jami Stall Kjell Wangensteen

EDITORIAL INTERNS Julia Bluhm Keller Masnyk Samantha Ripperger

PHOTOGRAPHY INTERN Chantal Sallade

RETOUCHER Wendy Towle

PHOTOGRAPHERS Reagan Allen Elese Bales Willyum Baulkey Wil Foster Hadley ‘Tad’ Fruits Julian Jones

A SPECIAL THANKS TO

Buckingham Companies for their generosity and support of our office space needs.

Also to Scott Travis, Becca Manolov, Chad Haneline, and Jeremy Marks.

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LIVE HERE. NOW LEASING the ambassador The Congress 923 N Meridian Street | Indianapolis, IN 46204 LibrarySquareIndy.com | 844.883.5916

The Plaza 7

CONTENTS PATTERN ISSUE NO. 14 patternindy.com

WORDS

EDITOR’S LETTER, 4 CONTRIBUTORS, 12 ANGEL OLIVERA, 26 ART CURATORS, 29 ARTIST STUDIOS, 37 ART COLLECTORS, 42 ARTIST SKETCHBOOKS, 47 STATE THE STATE OF THE OF ARTISTS, THE ARTISTS, 52 52 MYSTERIES COMMON TO US ALL, 69 THE ART SEEN, 84 THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION, 90 88 COLLECTIVE SOUL, 108 106 A WAY WITH WORDS, 112 110 DESIGN GALLERY TELLS A NEW STORY, 116 114 ALEC STEWART, 120 118 THE HOW OF WHERE, 122 120 BENNY SANDERS, 124 122 THE NAKED TRUTH, 126 124 NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM, 130 128 GOING MAIN CARMEL, 132 STREAM, 130 LOU HARRY, 134 132 PATTERN ON THE ROAD, 137 135 THE DEFINITIVE ARTICLES, 176 174 OP-ED, 182 180

IMAGES

VOLLEY OF THE DOLLS, 14 CROSSOVER, 74 SHOT IN THE DARK, 100 98 COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES, 150 148 ALTER EGO, 160 148 MEN’S ROOM, 168 166

ON THE COVER AND THIS PAGE Bessie, SEEN Model Management ON THE COVERby AND THISOsherov PAGE Photography Polina Bessie, Seen Model Management Style by Julie Valentine Makeup by Kathy Moberly Photography byBenham Polina Osherov Hair by Belinda Style by Julie Valentine Assisted by Samantha Ripperger Makeup

by Kathy Background Art byMoberly Fab Crew Hair

by Belinda Benham Wardrobe: Hat, Jodie Bailey Hats Assisted Samantha Necklace,byAnn Taylor Ripperger Wardrobe: Hat, Jodie Bailey Hats Shirt, Topshop Necklace, Ann Skirt, Ann TaylorTaylor Shirt, Topshop Skirt, Taylor by Wendy Towle CoverAnn retouched

Special thanks to Bryan Luellen of Indy Go. 8

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SURREALISM POP CONTEMPORARY MODERNISM

ART STAYS HERE.

Wake up with Warhol, dream with Dali and discover a world of style with The Collection at Conrad Indianapolis. collectionsuites.com

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Art Dish The Harrison Center’s monthly dinner series pairing an artist talk with a meal curated by a local chef, served on our descending table. Email artdish@harrisoncenter.org for 2019 ticket availability and private rental information.

Sponsored by:

CONTRIBUTORS

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE ART EXHIBIT OF ALL TIME AND WHY? DAVID HOPPE WRITER

David Hoppe is an essayist, critic, and playwright whose books include the collection, Personal Indianapolis and Food For Thought: An Indiana Harvest.

Hoppe is a contributing editor for NUVO. He and his wife, Melli Hoppe, live in Long Beach, Indiana.

“Calder/Miro at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Two longtime pals who, as this exhibition abundantly demonstrated, were seemingly incapable of a false note.”

REAGAN ALLEN PHOTOGRAPHER

Reagan Allen is a recent Ball State University grad who majored in photojournalism and digital media. She travels around Indiana and the Midwest as a freelance portrait and wedding photographer.

“I saw my favorite art exhibit during my junior year of high school when I visited New York City. One of the galleries there was doing an exhibition with work from photojournalist Robert Capa. It featured everything from his war photography to his portraits of Picasso. Being able to see all the things he got to document for various publications while he traveled around the world was what inspired me to pursue a degree in photojournalism.”

JULIAN J. JONES PHOTOGRAPHER

CHARLIE HOPPER WRITER

Charlie Hopper’s a principal and writer at Young & Laramore Advertising, where for decades he’s won various awards most people have never heard of. He teaches copywriting at Butler University and has had long-running columns in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The AV Club, and Food & Drink magazine. His commentary has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Adweek, Ad Age, and Atlas Obscura.

“When the Indianapolis Museum of Art reunited the last four landscapes Georges Seurat painted, all views of a harbor called The Channel of Gravelines, it felt like an event. Three were borrowed from other museums, and it was somehow moving, standing in front of four luminous pointillism views that perfectionist Seurat had labored over, a quartet that hadn’t hung together for a hundred years.”

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A fine arts photographer, Julian J. Jones is a student at Herron School of Art & Design these days. Though Jones originally pursued degrees in culinary arts and in baking & pastry arts from Johnson & Wales University, and then furthered his studies in Yssingeaux, France, for a professional baking certificate and at The French Pastry School in Chicago.

“Seeing the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci in person at the Louvre in Paris, France, — it was a very emotional but beautiful experience for me. I remember seeing the Mona Lisa in textbooks in grade school, but I never thought I would see it in person. It was really the first painting I connected to.”

KJELL WANGENSTEEN WRITER

Kjell Wangensteen is Assistant Curator of European Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. A recent transplant to Indiana, he is interested in the intersection of Baroque art and contemporary culture.

“I found the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heroic Africans exhibition (September 2011–January 2012) to be one of the most memorable I have ever encountered. The show took a set of objects largely unfamiliar to Western audiences and made them reverberate in subtle and thoughtful ways. Right away it became clear that the African objects in the exhibition challenged our own concept of the naturalistic portrait with a visual language all their own. I found myself curious at every turn about the cultures that produced such amazing things.”

DANELLE FRENCH

JOHN HELLING WRITER

John Helling is the Director of Public Services at the Indianapolis Public Library, but only because his plan to become the next Rimbaud did not quite pan out. He enjoys reading and writing and exploring the world with his three-year-old son.

“The art ‘exhibit’ that probably had the greatest effect on me in recent years was a series called Byproduct: The Laundromat in Kansas City in 2015. There were lectures, performances, film screenings, discussions -- all inside an actual laundromat and timed to fit inside a wash/dry cycle. It was one of the best ways to make art available and accessible that I’ve seen.”

MAKE-UP ARTIST

Danelle French is an Indianapolisbased makeup artist. She has a BA in Communications and is a licensed esthetician. Her work ranges from music videos and published fashion editorials to campaigns for Finish Line and Macy’s.

“During a trip to Paris last year, I visited the Musée de l’Orangerie to see Monet’s Water Lilies. The series is breathtaking in person. The sheer scale of them is unbelievable. It brought me to tears. The museum also has some of my favorite pieces

by Matisse, Picasso, Renoir, and Marie Laurencin.”

DAN GROSSMAN WRITER

Dan Grossman is the Arts Editor for NUVO Newsweekly. He’s a longtime Indianapolisarea resident, returned Peace Corps volunteer (Niger ‘92-’94), occasional Uber Driver, former Goodwill Team Leader, and has published poems on topics ranging from Nigerian weather patterns to the Utah desert to Bob Guccione’s non-masterwork Caligula. He has not had any success trying to influence his fourteen-year-old daughter’s musical taste.

“The Degenerate Art exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1991.”

TIM LISKO WRITER

Tim is a photo teacher, a photographer, or a strategic brand copywriter, depending on the day.

“Ay Wei Wei, in the IMA at Newfields, in 2013. The piece I remember most was made-from-handstraightened rebar that was taken from concrete school buildings, then destroyed by the Sichuan earthquakes. It was massive — some ninety tons, I think — but such a tender parental gesture of mourning.”

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Mix and (Game, Set) Match

Volley of the

Dolls PHOTOGRAPHY BY POLINA OSHEROV STYLED BY JULIE VALENTINE STYLE ASSISTANT CHRISTINA NI ASSISTED BY SAMANTHA RIPPERGER MAKEUP BY NIKKI BROWN, KEONDRA ATWATER HAIR BY PHILIP SALMON MODELS TATUM, DESTINEE, DOLCE (LMODELZ MODEL MANAGEMENT), AUJA, EMMA (SEEN MODEL MANAGEMENT) RETOUCH WENDY TOWLE DESIGNED BY AMY MCADAMS-GONZALES CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES PROVIDED BY BEAUTY & GRACE, LESLEY JANE AND MOYER FINE JEWELERS

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INDUSTRY INSIDER

ANGEL OLIVERA Indy’s legendary hospitality hooks a talented couture designer WORDS BY CRYSTAL HAMMON + PHOTOGRAPH BY ESTHER BOSTON Never underestimate the power of global events to alter the course of one person’s life. For Angel Olivera, the impetus for change was an economic recession. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Olivera left his home in 2008 and came to Indianapolis with few resources and even fewer contacts.

What he did have was ambition. He dreamed of rebuilding his existing fashion design business in the US as something bigger and better than it could become in the Isle of Enchantment. Olivera says the 2008 recession strained business conditions in Puerto Rico, and his father encouraged him to make the move.

“After building a successful career at home, I knew it would be hard, but not impossible to do in the US,” he says.

Studying his options, Olivera bypassed New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, choosing Indianapolis for its low cost of living and its reputation for welcoming entrepreneurs and English-speaking Latinos. Once here, Olivera got a full-time job as a tailor for Nordstrom and began bootstrapping his custom-design business, which makes oneof-a-kind dresses for weddings, engagement parties, and special occasions.

Olivera was still relatively unknown in 2012 when he promoted his first US fashion show with a Facebook ad. To his surprise, over 200 people attended the show.

“I thought, ‘Wow! If I can do this when I’m totally unknown, imagine what I can do when I open a shop,’” he says.

Olivera credits the show with helping him gain visibility among people who want to wear unique, well-crafted clothes, designed to fit their bodies.

After building a solid book of clients and opening his 54th Street studio, Olivera is ready for another show, planned for 8 p.m., October 24 at The Sanctuary at Penn, 701 N. Pennsylvania St. The show is dubbed Narciso’s Garden, a nod to Olivera’s grandmother, whose garden was adorned with the flower named after the Greek god, Narcissus.

Olivera will use the show to highlight his 2019 spring collection, which features readyto-wear clothes that can be ordered to size.

“I think it’s time to show my customers what else I can do besides custom dresses,” he says.

What will viewers see on the runway? Nothing less than a piece of his soul. The 2019 collection displays Olivera’s love for color and metallics, as well as his appetite for designing a wide range of styles — everything from classics to bohemian romantic.

Planning a fashion show these days is not for the faint of heart. The industry is having a lively debate about the relevance of runway shows. For starters, many designers complain that street-style photographers and fashion bloggers are detracting from their collections and competing for influence. Thanks to technology, designers can also choose more affordable, less time-consuming alternatives to promote their brands over the traditional fashion show. By necessity, they are expensive to produce, in part because they must be multimedia spectacles in order to captivate an audience.

Olivera is nervous about the investment, but that’s where his concern ends. He views fashion bloggers and street photographers as an extension of the fashion press.

They’re partners — not competitors.

“We always include fashion bloggers in these kinds of projects,” he says. “They help push the voice of designers out to the public.” He expects the October show to help him reach a larger audience and advance his business goals, including a plan to start a school that teaches the art of sewing.

Olivera has spent most of his adult life mastering couture techniques, and much like Norman Norell, who was famous for bringing couture quality to ready-to-wear, he incorporates couture elements in every garment, whether it’s custom or not. His work also shows the influence of other well-known designers — the elegance of Carolina Herrera, the femininity of Oscar de la Renta and the intricate detail of Valentino.

“What I loved about Oscar de la Renta was the way he could make a woman look sexy even when she was completely covered,” he says. “Sexiness comes from the way a woman wears her clothes — not how much skin she shows.”

Goal one is to make women of all shapes and sizes look good in their clothes with meticulous fitting that accentuates natural curves. A custom design may require two or more fittings, but Olivera says the extra time is worth it, especially when a client gets noticed.

“I always tell my clients, ‘If you look good, I look better,’” he says.

Growing a business while juggling a full-time job and family life hasn’t been easy.

Olivera seldom takes a day off, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I get a lot of satisfaction from making new friends out of my customers and sharing my art with others,” he says. “It’s hard physically, but not mentally because I love what I do.” $

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Big Green is building a healthier future for Indy’s kids through its network of Learning Gardens and food literacy programs.

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To help bring real food to Indianapolis schools visit www.biggreen.org

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ART CURATORS

PHOTOGRAPHY + WORDS BY POLINA OSHEROV 29

POLINA OSHEROV: Who is your typical client?

PO: Who is the most underrated artist that you’re aware of right now?

MINDY TAYLOR ROSS: My typical clients were not-for-profits or municipalities, but currently they are major corporations, and we’ve also started working with some individual collectors in Central Indiana.

MTR: I think the work of women and people of color continue to be underrated. I am pleased to see Amy Sherald, Sheila Hicks, Odili Donald Odita, Hank Willis Thomas, and Kehinde Wiley, among others, getting the attention they deserve. I am also so pleased that because of this attention, as well as our political climate, that the topic of race and gender in art—especially public art—is starting to be talked about and examined in public spaces and museums.

PO: Share a bit about your background.

MTR: My degree is in Art History from the University of Southern California. I traveled to Europe after graduation, to see much of the art and architecture that I had spent years looking at in books and on slides. When returning to the US to decide what was next, I randomly moved to Captiva Island, where I eventually met the famous American artist, Robert Rauschenberg. He and I hit it off and, through his support, I became the managing director of the gallery in Florida that represented him. I went on to meet many of his contemporaries in the New York School of the 1950s and 1960s. A couple from Indiana owned the Florida gallery that I managed and directed. Through them I met my now husband, Jim Ross of Eckert & Ross Fine Art here in Indy. In 2003, I decided to move to Indiana to get married and set up my own business.

PO: Which project are you most proud of and why?

MTR: In 2002 I produced a “Beamers” exhibition with Robert Rauschenberg, which was the first time ever that his 1986 BMW Art Car was on display in a commercial gallery, along side the paintings he produced at the same time he painted the race car. In 2003 I curated and produced a commercial exhibition and sale of drawings and collages by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The exhibit and sale were in support of “The Gate” project in Central Park, NYC, and the “Over the River” project in Colorado.

Just before this exhibition opened, then Mayor Bloomberg announced the approval of “The Gates.” It was amazing! Locally, my public art exhibitions may be best known—Tom Otterness in Indianapolis, Julian Opie: Signs (which is why we have “Ann Dancing” on Mass Ave. She’s mine.) As well as Chakaia Booker: Mass Transit, and George Rickey: Evolution. The pivot outdoor project for me was my role as curator during the design and construction of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail: A Legacy Of Gene and Marilyn Glick.

The climax of my indoor career thus far is the Cummins Indy building designed by Deborah Berke Partners, with whom I was able to work. That opened in February of 2017.

MINDY TAYLOR ROSS ART STRATEGIES LLC

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PO: How can Indianapolis become a better place for artists?

MTR: We need more patrons who genuinely support artists by buying art made by artists who are based here, as well as those who are based elsewhere in the world.

We don’t need rhetoric. We need people who are interested and willing to work with curators in our museums to determine what they should consider buying and giving to our institutions to support artists and to make great art available to more people for the long term.

PO: Have you ever discovered someone who went on to become a very successful artist?

MTR: I am fortunate that I have had the support of many famous artists; therefore, I am not certain that I have “discovered” anyone at this point. However, I am fortunate to have been able broker the sale of art by several really good women artists based here in Central Indiana—artists such as Anila Quayyam Agha, Dorothy Stites Alig, and Jamie Pawlus.

These women are just based here. They show and sell their work around the country and world, and we should support them, keep them, and attract others like them to our city. These creative minds make our city a more a vibrant, rich, and intellectually challenging place to live. This is what attracts and retains other talented people.

PO: What advice would you give a new collector of modest means in regard to starting their own art collection?

MTR: Buy the very best that you can afford. Buy what you love, but also seek the advice of a qualified professional you can trust. ✂

KELLI MORGAN

THE INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART AT NEWFIELDS

POLINA OSHEROV: Who is your typical client?

KELLI MORGAN: Museums and private collectors PO: Share a bit about your background.

KM: I’m originally from Detroit, Michigan, and completed my undergrad work in African-American Studies at Wayne State University. I completed my grad study in African-American/Art History/Public History at UMASS Amherst. I say often that I’m not a traditional art historian, I’m a critical-race cultural historian. Thus, I don’t simply study artists and art objects, I study the systems and structures they uphold and operate in.

PO: Which project are you most proud of and why?

KM: To date, I’m most proud of my “Black Like Who?” exhibition that I co-curated with Dr. Graham Boettcher at the Birmingham Museum of Art in 2015. It’s one of my shining stars, as the show connected the greater B’ham community through candid conversations regarding race, particularly the ways that “blackness” is often stereotypically rendered in American Art, at the height of the BLM movement. Though the show was small, its impact on the city and the museum itself were tremendous! Graham and I often called it our “little show that could.”

PO: Who is the most underrated artist that you’re aware of right now?

KM: As a black curator of American Art, I strive to correct and honestly overhaul the traditional American Art historical narrative. So, though I sometimes work with contemporary art and artists, I primarily focus on artists who, though deceased, are imperative to our greater cultural history. Currently there are two phenomenal artists on my mind that haven’t received the recognition they so rightfully deserve — Laura Wheeler Waring, a Philadelphia artist who was a virtuoso in painting, and William Edouard Scott, an Indiana artist who’s often left out of the narrative.

PO: What advice would you give to artists struggling to make a living from their art here in Indy?

KM: I wouldn’t offer advice, I’d ask questions. For instance, I’d ask what their end game is? What kind of artist do they want to be? I’d ask what is their definition of success? There are various ways to become a successful artist. One has to recognize what one truly wants, uncover the various paths to get there, and then set their sights on doing it.

PO: Have you ever discovered someone who went on to become a very successful artist? If so who, and why did you think they had a great future ahead of them?

KM: It wasn’t so much a discovery as it was a reclamation. During my tenure at PAFA, the executor of John Rhoden’s estate contacted the Director and CEO Dr. David Brigham to inquire if there may be any interest in acquiring some of Rhoden’s work. Rhoden, a prolific and very well-decorated American sculptor, pretty much lived an amazing life with his wife Richanda, but never developed a successful market around his work. Thus, the majority of his sculpture remained in his home in Brooklyn, New York. I was familiar with Rhoden’s work, because he was originally from Birmingham, Alabama.

Long story short, of all the institutions the executor contacted, I was the only curator to return his inquiry with serious interest.

PO: What advice would you give new collectors of modest means about starting their own art collection?

KM: Students! Go to student shows. This way you buy into an artist’s career early and at a modest price. As the student’s career grows the work appreciates in value.

Also, works on paper. Prints and drawings are a great, affordable way to begin collecting. ✂ 31

POLINA OSHEROV: What do you do?

SARAH URIST GREEN: I’m the creator, curator, and host of The Art Assignment, an educational video series produced by PBS Digital Studios that explores art history through the lens of the present. My work lives on the Internet, and I consider the 77 percent of Americans who go online, at least daily, to be my audience. YouTube is The Art Assignment’s primary platform, and Google’s analytics tell my typical audience member is an 18- to 24-year-old who identifies as a woman. But there are many different kinds of people who watch our show, from art educators, students, and the intellectually curious, to the art doubters and conspiracy theorists.

PO: Share a bit about your background.

SUG: I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and have loved art and artists from a young age. College took me to Chicago, and after school I tried to make a go of it as a graphic designer but ended up working at a commercial art gallery instead. It was there I encountered museum curators, of whom I became outright jealous the more I learned about their jobs. I moved to New York for graduate school in Art History, interned in art museums while in school, and when I was done, took at job in the curatorial department at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. After six fantastic and productive years making shows and building relationships there, I left the museum in 2013 to start The Art Assignment with PBS. PO: Which project are you most proud of and why?

SUG: In the past year we’ve made some truly gorgeous episodes as part of our Art Trip series. In particular, our video documenting our visit to Marfa, Texas, where you should really go yourself, but if you can’t you should watch our video immediately. Locally, I’m super proud of my involvement in the development of 100 Acres at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I always enjoy being in that place, sitting on strange yellow benches (Bench Around the Lake by Jeppe Hein!), and seeing the place being put to use by the community.

SARAH URIST GREEN THE ART ASSIGNMENT

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PO: How can Indianapolis become a better place for artists to live and work?

SUG: For this city to evolve into a more supportive environment for art, we need to work on our density problem. By that I mean: Indianapolis and its resources are too spread out and poorly planned for us to have the kind of public and private spaces where we can experience art together. Small gestures get lost here. I think city planners and private entities should focus on larger scale, more experimental ways to incorporate art and design into public spaces. When a chunk of money is set aside for art, I’d rather see it focused toward one really cool thing, than spread out into many hands and weaker work. On a smaller scale, I’d like to see more people experimenting with weird, artist-run exhibition spaces.

PO: What advice would you give a new collector of modest means about starting an art collection?

SUG: You don’t have to have a lot of money to buy art, but you do have to keep your eyes open and seek out opportunities to find it. Along with visiting galleries and fairs and open studio nights in real life (search online and you will find them), check websites like 20x200, Everything But the House, EBay, 1st Dibs, or Paddle 8. Figure out one thing you know you like (Lumpy ceramics! Black and white drawings! Pictures of hands! Old portrait paintings of people you don’t know!), and try to expand your collection based on that criteria. ✂

CHRISTOPHER WEST CHRISTOPHER WEST PRESENTS

POLINA OSHEROV: Who is your typical client?

CHRISTOPHER WEST: My clients are as varied as the art they wish to collect. I work with younger collectors looking to thoughtfully begin or add to a collection. I also help more seasoned collectors, who might be downsizing their collection or considering their legacy, create a strategy for the future of the artwork they own. This could involve anything from a museum donation or public auction to a private sale.

PO: How do you define a professional art curator?

CW: The word curator has become incredibly overused.

The other day, I saw someone proclaiming they “curated” their sock drawer on Instagram. A curator is someone with a deep understanding of art history, a person who uses that knowledge to bring new understanding and meaning to works of art.

PO: What is your favorite part of this job?

CW: I love discovering a private collection I didn’t know existed, and learning about the collector’s often decades-long passion for these artworks.

Did you know there’s an Alice Neel painting here in Indy and a great Calder near Bloomington?

PO: Who do you think is the most underrated artist in town right now?

CW: We seem to be at a pretty exciting moment right now.

Ten years ago I would have said pick any person from the list of thousands of talented female artists and artists of color. And though there is a long way to go, thankfully, many of these artists who have been passed over by Art History are getting a second look—both in museums and in the art market. I feel very fortunate that two of my favorite curators on the planet, Kelli Morgan and Shelley Selim, are both here in Indianapolis at the IMA and are giving many of these overlooked artists a more prominent place in the collection.

PO: What does this city need to do to be more supportive of artists?

CW: We need more collectors. Without collectors, our museums become less relevant, our galleries become nonexistent, and hence, our lives much less interesting.

PO: Do you have any advice for a new collector of modest means?

CW: I like to have my first meeting with new collectors at a place where you can’t actually buy any art—at the museum. There, we start to get a sense of their aesthetic sensibilities and also learn their goals for collecting. Do they want to decorate their homes?

Support the local art scene? Or begin a more focused collection with longer-term goals in mind? Regardless of the answers, exciting things can start to happen for as little as $100 a month. ✂

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POLINA OSHEROV: Who is your typical client?

JULIA MUNEY MOORE: Stakeholders, businesses (forprofit and non-profit), and major institutions. Everyone is interested in public art and what it can do for people and places!

PO: What do enjoy most about your job—and least about it?

JMM: Since my projects can take years of intense work, I really get to know the artists I work with, and when the project is over I continue to follow their work. We stay friends and colleagues forever, and other public art curators who work with them are almost friends by association. It’s extremely rewarding.

My least favorite part is that the projects I am most passionate about are not usually the ones people are falling over themselves to fund. I try to use my passion to help people get as excited as I am, but it can be draining.

PO: Which project are you most proud of?

JMM: The public art for Indianapolis International Airport’s new Midfield Terminal, which was my project when I was with Blackburn Architects, continues to be my favorite, because so many people see it and love it. It’s a perfectly balanced collection with amazing individual pieces, and it works so well in the space. I like to think that part of the reason the airport keeps getting voted “Best Airport in North America” is due to the excellence of the artwork.

I’m excited to still be involved with art at the airport, even ten years after that project finished, because art turns a place that nobody really wants to spend a ton of time in into a place that visually signifies “home.”

I’m also really proud of a small project the Arts Council did in conjunction with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, over in Speedway, in 2016. Seeds of Light by Arlon Bayliss was one of those projects where artist, site, vision, and community just came together perfectly. It may not look like much to outsiders, but to those who were involved, it was magical.

PO: Who are Indy’s most underrated artists you’re aware of?

JMM: Locally, I feel that Quincy Owens and Luke Crawley are ready to break out beyond the forms and budget levels they have been working with so far. Artists are creative, but with higher budgets, their creativity can really be freed. They are building a following, but slowly.

All it will take for them is one high-profile project and someone to take a huge chance, and they could go national.

JULIA MUNEY MOORE ARTS COUNCIL OF INDIANAPOLIS

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PO: How can Indianapolis become a better place for artists to thrive?

JMM: The artists I work with don’t so much sell their work, as co-create work in concert with the community and the site. Everything they do is custom. What would really help public art thrive is for the Indianapolis community as a whole, but particularly city leaders and major stakeholders, to recognize the gift public artists have for cutting deep to the heart of an issue and giving them something nobody ever thought they wanted, but realize afterward they needed. It’s less transactional than simply convincing others to buy into their vision: It’s making the unexpressed visions of others come to life. The value of this kind of creativity is very difficult to convince people to support—until they see it happen.

Then they can’t stop talking about it. Just give the artists a chance, trust them, and don’t be so afraid of making a mistake.

PO: Do you have any advice for a new collector who has a lot of interest in art, but not a lot of money?

JMM: For public art, I would say to trust that the artist will give you something great for whatever budget you may have. Certain expectations can only be realized with a matching level of funds (you can’t commission a permanent, life-size bronze sculpture with $1000, for example). But if you are honest with the artist about the nature of the community and the impact the artwork is to have, they will figure out the art part and how to make the budget work. ✂

SHAUTA MARSH

BIG CAR COLLABORATIVE/TUBE FACTORY

POLINA OSHEROV: Who is your typical client?

SHAUTA MARSH: I work with everyone from artists and arts patrons to the disenfranchised and others who don’t typically have easy access to art and culture.

PO: Share a bit about your background.

SM: After pausing my career for four years to work from home with our two children, in 2004 I helped start Big Car Gallery with my husband, Jim Walker, and a group of friends in Fountain Square. Eventually I took charge of our exhibits at Big Car and was essentially baptized by fire into arts management. I wasn’t exactly curating, but I organized shows, coordinating with many different artists from Indianapolis and around the world. I also helped write grants, did accounting, and wrote press releases.

I gained invaluable curating experience when I started working at iMOCA with Jeremy Efroymson in 2009. I worked for him for two years; he was my mentor. And, when he left, I was promoted to executive director at iMOCA. While I don’t have an art degree, I’ve made up for it by being very hands-on, and also through extensive traveling, research, and reading. I do these things because art is an obsession. Higher education is important, but it can only take you so far.

PO: What’s your most and least favorite part of this job?

SM: People and PEOPLE. PO: Which project are you most proud of and why?

SM: The Mari Evans project, working with Mari Evans, Carl Pope, and Alkemi was amazing. I don’t think I’ll be able to top that. But I’m proud of everything I’ve done and every artist we’ve invested in. In the past two years through Big Car, I’ve been able to invest over $200,000 in local and national artists via commissioned exhibits and projects.

PO: What advice would you give a new collector of modest means about starting their own art collection?

SM: Buy what you like, and ask about payment plans.

PO: What show are you currently working on that you’re really excited about?

SM: There are a couple. I’m currently researching utopia and dystopia, how you can’t have one without the other.

A show with New York-based Saya Woolfalk will come out of that. I’m also studying chickens, mythology, and symbols associated with chickens for the Chicken Chapel of Love, a Las Vegas-style wedding chapel we’re building at Tube Factory. I’ve raised the chickens since they were two days old. Indianapolis-based artists Brose Partington, Elliot Thornton, and others will be part of the project. ✂ 35

Carmel City Center S H O P. D I N E . E N J O Y. L I V E !

LOCATED IN CARMEL, INDIANA

FOR A COMPLETE LISTING OF THE SHOPS, RESTAURANTS & SERVICES VISIT:

CARMELCITYCENTER.COM

PATTERN ISSUE NO. 14

Former site of GM Stamping Plant, Indianapolis.

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A new perspective on Indianapolis is coming.

ANNOUNCEMENT FA L L

2018

ARTIST STUDIOS

WORDS BY POLINA OSHEROV 37

PHOTOGRAPH BY TAD “HADLEY” FRUITS

POLINA OSHEROV: How long have you been in your current studio and where is it located?

LOBYN HAMILTON: It has been two years since I purchased the building. I have been operating out of it for about a year now. It’s located in the North Mass area. I’m from around here. My parents were married in the house across the street from my studio.

PO: Describe the space. Is it well organized, or messy?

LH: Areas are organized. At the moment there is chaos! Vinyl, of course, is in one area, tools in another. Old magazines belong on the shelving area. There is order; however, once you begin to break, cut, and route vinyl records, chaos ensues. Vinyl pieces go everywhere. Vinyl dust particles have to be swept up.

PO: What kinds of items are on the walls/ shelves?

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LH: I have my work salon-style on the west side of my studio. High ceilings here are cool, so I can fit a good amount of work on the wall. The wall is pretty powerful and can be distracting with past and present work intertwined. I have a huge workbench with shelves with thousands of vinyl records stacked in and on top of it. Everything is here

— from receipts and an Epson printer to the old windows we removed from the building when installing the new ones.

PO: Do you keep collectables or trophies, or do you prefer to keep things sparse?

LH: Other than the twenty thousand records I have? (He laughs.) I have tons of Rolling Stones magazines, Black Panther Newspapers, to vintage reading material to a bazooka. The craziest thing I have in the studio are the receipts from when this building used to be a grocery store. I have receipts saved from vendors all over the city, the Midwest, and the country. The receipts are over 100 years old and still in wonderful condition.

PO: How much time do you spend in your studio? Do you have a set schedule, or do you go there when inspiration strikes? Is there a favorite time of day that you prefer to work?

LH: Art hours are all hours of the day. It never stops. I’m always in the studio. If I am not in the studio, I am doing something to figure out what to do next or taking a break so I can have full focus to work through and

problem-solve for the next project.

There is structure. I set mental deadlines on projects, or there will be firm show and project deadlines, which help. Also, there are financial structures which say: “Get your shit together. You gotta make some art, sell some art, and pay some bills.” There are emotional schedules and structures like inspiration, pain, uncertainty, study, doubt, faith, motivation, despair, fulfillment, competition, and what to do next. Questions like: “Am I done?” “Do I have anything else to say?”

“Was my last idea my best idea?” “Is the new work as strong as past work?” — so I say all that to illustrate this isn’t a game, pastime, or passion; it is a career.

PO: What are you working on right now that you’re really excited about?

LH: Actually what is really exciting (and terrifying) is I don’t know what I am working on next. I have conceptualized a decent amount of projects, but haven’t placed any in production at this time. So that’s a good space to be in (a small percentage of the time). ✂

PHOTOGRAPH BY TAD “HADLEY” FRUITS

KYLE POLINA OSHEROV: How long have you been in your current studio and where is it located?

PO: Do you have open studio hours? If so, when?

KYLE RAGSDALE: I have been in my studio upstairs at the Harrison Center since 2002.

KR: My studio is open nearly every First Friday, but people can visit Harrison Center studios Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., if they visit City Gallery in the Harrison Center and ask to see studios.

PO: Describe the space. Is it well organized or messy? What kinds of items are on the walls/ shelves? Do you keep collectables or trophies, or do you prefer to keep things spare?

KR: My studio is a crazy menagerie of art and materials and inspiration. There is work there from junior high forward and many projects in process. It seems chaotic and messy to some, but I know where most things are. My friend Evelyn organizes and purges for me every semester, when she’s home from college.

I also get it walkable every First Friday so people can come through.

PO: What’s the most indispensable item in your studio? What supplies do you have to replenish the most?

KR: My music player is probably my most important studio item. I like painting to music.

Sometimes I listen to classical or new wave or big band or alternative. But music always inspires my work. I replenish brushes the most, because I take bad care of them and use cheap brushes.

PO: What’s your favorite place to see art?

PO: How much time do you spend in your studio? Do you have a set schedule, or do you go there when inspiration strikes? Is there a favorite time of day that you prefer to work?

KR: I love going to Herron (School of Art) student shows, and Eddington West, and 924, and Indianapolis Art Center, and Tube Factory, and Mab Graves’ Studio. I enjoy Chelsea galleries in NYC and love the MOMA. And I enjoy southwestern folk art from my native New Mexico. ✂

KR: My life is always in flux; different seasons present different tasks. I’m coming to the place in my year where I’m painting every day, getting ready for my November First Friday show. I paint most days but don’t start till after lunch. I start with wild reckless things that don’t matter, like warm-ups. Then after 3 or 4 hours in the zone, I can tweak and fix little things once I’m more awake and eloquent. I prefer working 2 p.m. to 9 p.m.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY TAD “HADLEY” FRUITS

POLINA OSHEROV: How long have you been in your current studio and where is it located?

Clients visit my studio by appointment.

317-370-5664

PHIL O’MALLEY: My studio is in the Indianapolis Enterprise Center at 55 S. State Ave. I look at the southside of Willard Park from my loading dock. I’ve been here since the spring of 2011.

PO: What’s your favorite place to see art?

PO: Describe the space. Is it well organized, or messy? What kinds of items are on the walls/ shelves? Do you keep collectables or trophies, or do you prefer to keep things sparse?

PO: What are you working on right now that you’re really excited about?

PM: My studio is organized chaos. I have a big warehouse space with high ceilings, no windows, and a football field’s worth of table space — all covered with projects and supplies. I have a dozen works of art going simultaneously. My library overflows. I can always find a purpose for something that might be on its way to the dump. My walls are covered with art, ideas, references, and mementos.

PO: What’s the most indispensable item in your studio? What supplies do you have to replenish the most?

PM: The most indispensable item in my studio is an Internet connection. As a research tool, it’s indispensable. I replenish paint the most.

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PM: My favorite place to see art is online. I still visit galleries and museums, but within an hour or two I can circle the globe online.

PO: How much time do you spend in your studio? Do you have a set schedule, or do you go there when inspiration strikes? Is there a favorite time of day that you prefer to work?

PM: I spend half of my time in my studio. I’ve never operated with a studio schedule. I’m just compelled to get into my studio. I guess it would be similar to a devoted basketball player who’s addicted to getting to the court.

PO: Do you have open studio hours? If so, when?

PM: My studio isn’t open to the public, and I’m not part of the First Friday rotation. I’m not aware of any other artists in my building.

PM: For the past year, I have been working on my Creative Renewal Fellowship that I received last summer through the Arts Council of Indianapolis. With this grant I am venturing further into video editing and will be using more video in my art. I work in many different medias. By adding video I can expand my artistic voice. ✂

PHOTOGRAPH BY LARRY ENDICOTT

MAB afraid I’m going to be blacklisted for being the worst brush tender ever to wield a Taklon.

POLINA OSHEROV: How long have you been in your current studio and where is it located?

MAB GRAVES: I’ve been in my current studio for about seven years now. It’s located right above Monster Gallery in Fountain Square.

PO: How much time do you spend in your studio? Do you have a set schedule, or do you go there when inspiration strikes? Is there a favorite time of day that you prefer to work?

PO: Describe the space. Is it well organized or messy? What kinds of items are on the walls/ shelves? Do you keep collectables or trophies, or do you prefer to keep things spare?

MG: I generally maintain a rather precarious balance between chaos and order in my studio. The walls are painted a rich, bohemian turquoise and are covered floor to ceiling with art. The pieces on my walls are so familiar to my heart. They feel like family.

They are paintings from art friends, pieces from contemporaries that called me to them, and a few pieces of my own work that once completed, I knew I could never part with. I LOVE having a clean, hyper-organized studio, and in between projects I do; but, when I’m working on a project, chaos reigns. I create in the center of a tornado of whiling brushes, reference objects, pieces of natural science, and exsanguinated espresso cups.

PO: What’s the most indispensable item in your studio? What supplies do you have to replenish the most?

MG: Ugh! That’s a hard one! I’m multidisciplinary, so my most indispensable item changes, depending on what medium I’m working in. I have an Alvin Draft-Matic 0.3mm drafting pencil that I can’t sketch without, and hardwood cherry painter’s palette that’s an extension of my arm when I paint. The supply I have to replace most often is far and away: brushes. I’m a HORRENDOUS brush mom. I have pots and pots of poor, abused, neglected, and bristle-congealed brushes that I will someday (but not today) get around to properly cleaning. My favorite brush brand is Trekell, and I joke with them habitually that I’m

MG: Well, I live in an open loft, and my studio is approximately 18 feet away from my bed… so a better question would probably be how much time do I spend OUT of my studio! I leave the house once every couple weeks, usually. I work between sixteen and twenty hours a day, taking short pilgrimages a harrowing 30 feet or so into the kitchen for green tea, apricots, and espresso.

PO: What’s your favorite place to see art?

MG: How much time do you have? Top fave is my very own walls, but if I’m forced into the sunlight: The LA Art Fair, The Peabody Museum, The Field Museum, Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose Magazine, The British Museum, Disneyland, The MoMA, MCA, The IMA, Red Truck Gallery in New Orleans, and Haven Gallery in New York. But in all honesty, since I rarely leave the studio, most of the art I see is on my little screen, in my pocket, via Instagram. ✂ 41

ART COLLECTORS PHOTOGRAPHY BY ELESE BALES

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PATTERN VOLUME NO. 14

WORDS BY JENNIFER DELGADILLO

ALAN Alan K. Mills is an Indianapolis lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg LLP. His father was a military man for the United States Air Force, which meant his family traveled a lot. During his childhood, he lived in a military base in Madrid, Spain, where he recalls seeing his father buy his first work of art from a street artist. That painting now hangs at a house he owns in Savannah, Georgia.

During college, Mills bought works he liked from art students. He then branched out and met other artists in Indianapolis, among them Carl Pope, whose work he’s been collecting for over thirty years.

His collection has grown significantly since his college days, and now it includes works by some of the most important African-American artists in contemporary art, including Kin XX (Be My Knife) by Whitfield Lovell, Cotton Bowl by Hank Willis Thomas, and a wide variety of works by Pope, including photographs the artist took of Mills’ children. Mills also owns works by Sam Gilliam, Elizabeth Catlett, and three works by controversial artist Margaret Bowland, including Nakedness Has No Color.

“To me, all art is political,” he says. “There is often a message or perspective in how you see the world, and that perspective is influenced by who you are and what you think.”

Local and emerging artists are also part of Mills’ collection. Walter Lobyn Hamilton’s Malcolm X is among Mill’s favorite works, as well as Derrick Carter’s “The American Dream,” where Tupac appears wearing an American flag straitjacket.

“I don’t look at buying art to make money from it.

I look at it and ask myself, is this something that speaks to me?” he says. “Does it say something that causes me to think about the world which I live in and the people in that world? When I find pieces like that, I like to buy them.” ✂

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Steve Hamilton is the CFO of the Indianapolis Symphony, and Keith Norwalk is the recently retired president and CFO of Crown Hill Cemetery, “I promised myself and Steve that I would retire at the age of seventy — I am seventy next month!”

Norwalk describes this time as a new life. He and Hamilton purchased a condo on Mass Ave, overlooking the hustle and bustle of the city. They both love to travel.

After winning a windfall cash prize in a poker game, Hamilton decided to invest his winnings in starting an art collection. His first purchase was Building a Religion, a painting

by Constance Edwards Scopelitis. The couple later went on to acquire works by Rita Spalding, Kyle Ragsdale, John Domont, and other works by international artists, with the help of art dealer Rhonda Long-Sharp.

Through Long-Sharp, Norwalk and Hamilton recently purchased Dancing Couple #2 by Andy Warhol. “Every time Rhonda invites us to a show we always say, ‘Rhonda we’re gonna come, but we’re not going to buy -- no more wall space!’ but she knows us so well,” says Hamilton.

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PATTERN VOLUME NO. 14

The couple’s collection already included works that reference Warhol. Among them, photographer William John Kennedy’s photo Warhol Holding Marilyn Acetate II, in which Warhol appears holding an unrolled acetate of Marilyn in the Factory; Warhol Flowers II, in which Warhol appears in a field of black-eyed Susans, with an early Flowers canvas serving as a backdrop; and Indiana Reflecting, a photo of Robert Indiana at his studio with the EAT/DIE diptych.

Another work from their collection that references Warhol and the pop art movement is Chris Bracey’s Warhol-Coke. The neon sign is one of the last completed and signed works by the artist before his untimely death.

Norwalk attributes his love of art to growing up with his twin brother, who had an artistic spark. “I was imbued with his sense of appreciation. And then when I met this guy (Hamilton), it just caught fire. We just have so much fun with it.” ✂

TONY Tony Quintana represents one half of the Quintana + Beringer curatorial team behind 10th West Gallery at the Stutz Business Center. But before he became one of Indy’s freshest point of views, Quintana was an intern in the building where he now works.

During his time as an art history major at Franklin College, Quintana interned at the Raymond James Stutz Art Gallery with Elise Schweitzer as gallery director. He then met many of the artists he would later go on to represent and buy work from, including Philip H. Campbell, Cagney King, Autumn Keller, and Constance Edwards Scopelitis -- who he’s been working with for seven years now.

Quintana’s time surrounded by artists is recorded on the walls of his Southern Indiana home. His personal collection includes more than fiftyw pieces by contemporary artists from Indy and beyond. In addition to owning works by the aforementioned artists, he’s also purchased pieces from former artists of the Stutz community that moved on to other cities, such as Heather Stamenov and Adam Collier Noel (who only comes second to Schweitzer in number of works in Quintana’s collection).

“Everyone can afford art,” he says. “I always ask if I can do some kind of installation payment plan and 99.9 percent of people say yes –[that goes for] galleries and artists.”

Quintana expresses the same excitement used to describe his love for the works of Schweitzer and Noel as he does when discussing pieces by Edwards Scopelitis and ceramics artist Lesley Baker. And his enthusiasm continues when he speaks of new artists he learns about and from whom he begins collecting. Some of his most recent purchases include Shamira Wilson Young, Katrina Murray, and Liz Wierzbicki “I’m impulsive in the sense that I have to have it before anyone else does, but I take my time to get to know the artist and know a little bit about them,” he says. “Sometimes I just get this feeling that is so indescribable, and I have to find the artist and talk about the work and buy it.” ✂

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After walking inside the living room of art collector L (who wishes to remain anonymous), one is first greeted by the largest works in the room, Venus Cupid, by Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz and Fools Gold by painter Kehinde Wiley. But works by international artists fill the entire home. Every wall beholds a treasure.

L remembers always being drawn to art, but she didn’t begin collecting it until after marrying her late husband. An art lover, he collected art as an investment and for personal joy for more than thirty years, with the help of an art dealer in New York.

But during her time with him, L says her husband’s approach to collecting changed.

“I just wanted to collect whatever we wanted.

Together we collected things that we fell in love with -- we used to call it fishing.”

L and her husband travelled to different cities, never knowing what they would find until something spoke to them. Among the pieces they collected while traveling are Rojos by Spanish painter Santiago Carbonell, which they found in Mexico, and while traveling in Cuba they purchased a photo titled Day at the Beach by an unknown artist.

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PATTERN VOLUME NO. 14

“We didn’t have any one particular thing in mind.” she says. “Many times nothing happened; other times we found things that spoke to us. We both had to agree before we purchased.”

Photography is prominent in the collection L and her husband amassed during their twenty years together. A large portion of the photo works is a portfolio they purchased from the Elton John AIDS Foundation. It consists of works donated to the foundation by some of the world’s most significant contemporary artists, including Sally Mann, Shirin Neshat, Ruud van Empel, Nan Goldin, Damien Hirst, Sam Taylor-Wood, Thomas Struth, Juergen Teller, Richard Misrach, and Katy Grannan.

Other notable pieces in L’s collection are Clowns by multimedia duo Aziz + Cucher, Rally at the Gates by Iranian painter Kamrooz Aram, and Woman on Bed ‘Seduction’ by Lynn Hershman Leeson, which hangs over her own bed.

“All of the pieces in my home are pieces that we fell in love with together,” she says. ✂

ARTIST SKETCHBOOKS PHOTOGRAPHY BY ESTHER BOSTON

WORDS BY TAYLOR ROSE

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PENELOPE DULLAGHAN

Penelope “Penny” Dullaghan, is a freelance illustrator whose whimsical colors, block shapes, and minimal lines have made their way to book covers, logos, and animations. Working from an in-home studio where she also homeschools her daughter, Dullaghan’s creative process is entirely reflective of what translates onto a page.

“I like going for long walks in the morning, because they clear my head like nothing else,” says Dullaghan. “All these swirling thoughts and ideas and lists in my mind get pared down and manageable as I cover ground. I also walk to get inspired. I like trails that meander and introduce me to tiny flowers, wildlife, rocks. The longer I walk, the more I notice.”

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“My sketchbook is a tool for me to really notice what is around me,” says Dullaghan. “I can so easily get too busy and move through my day without really paying attention to the time passing. My sketchbook helps me slow down to record ideas and shapes I see. It was my way of processing as we traveled around Costa Rica. It slowed down time and helped me pay attention to what I was seeing.

Whenever we stopped I’d do a drawing or two, inspired by what was around me: An open-air building, tropical plants, the amazingly blue sky. My setup was minimal—a sketchbook I could easily slip into my bag, a small gouache palette, a few water brushes, and an ink brush pen, a little jar for water, and a small towel.” ✂

JINGO JINGO DE LA ROSA

Jingo de la Rosa, as an artist, is all about growth, change, and failure.

“Allowing myself to play means that I also allow myself to make mistakes, which is a very necessary learning tool,” says de la Rosa. His sketchbook is often where he allows himself to experiment, and even wrestle with bigger concepts, like human connection and place.

“I’m excited about exploring what the concept of home means to me,” says de la Rosa. “I grew up in the Philippines, and moving to the United States has altered that concept again and again. Recently, I had this sudden fascination with small towns in Indiana. It’s totally different than what I grew up with, but in a weird way, it’s part of who I am now as a person. I’m fully convinced that Indiana is now my home, and I’d love to explore that further through my work.”

One of the ways he actively addresses his connection to a physical space is by taking his sketchbook and drawing in coffee shops around the city. For him, it’s a break from his

home and studio at the Harrison Center — even though he notes that the energy of that building often feeds into his artwork. “[I use my sketchbook] to document and process what’s happening around me,” says de la Rosa. “It can be anywhere from lunch at Love Handle, to riding the train in Chicago, to hiking trips in Colorado. My work as an illustrator can feel very isolating at times, and using my sketchbooks is my way of connecting with what’s real and with what matters.

“I used to think that being an artist means that I have to do everything I can to constantly hone my craft,” he says. “While that is partly true, the real purpose of being an artist is to project our work outward, rather than inward.

That means my art is done for the sake of the community around me, instead of myself. That mindset has completely changed the way I create. These days, I think about how I can influence my city through my work, and my attitude towards community and the people around me.” ✂

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COURTLAND BLADE

The paintings that Blade creates are a sharp contrast to the plein air that fills art history books under an Indiana index. “Over the past few years I have been moving from extremely generic images that deal with ‘non place’ or places with no history that are places of transience. This work was a reflection of the heavy corporatism that was happening everywhere, and this lacked a true sense of place.”

Recently he has been experimenting with ideas of placemaking and turning his eye to historic and iconic elements of Indy in his compositions. While much of his work is centered on the philosophical and visual values of an area, his studio (at a glance) seems to be stripped of them.

“My studio is essentially a white box in a basement,” says Blade. “I have no windows, I have a few light sources, a table to hold my supplies, a few shelves, and a couch in the corner. I work best in my studio, but I do a lot of brainstorming when I am at home and when I am out in the city.”

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One of the ways that he processes and keeps notes when he is outside of his stark workspace is through his sketchbook.

“Some sketches were just for the sake of sketching, while many were studies for painting that I later created, and ideas that I did not finish,” says Blade. “I also have a lot of notes from studies, as well as reminders to remind anything from another artist name to a concept I was working on or something I needed to get from the store, even a movie that I want to see… It is a great way to capture those great ideas that pop in your head, before they kind of float away.

Of course, it is also a way to work on your “seeing.” Also the sketch book is a space to work out composition problems as well as color arrangements and visual structure of a painting.” ✂

MARGI MARGARET KIMBALL

An impressive client list, including corporate heavyweights like Simon & Schuster, Macy’s, McDonalds and a slew of universities, all fill the lines of Margaret Kimball’s CV for her work as a hand letterer and illustrator.

“At different points, we were on conference calls, discussing whether the flourishes of a letter were too swirly, and whether the kerning could be adjusted,” says Kimball, recalling working with McDonald’s. “It was like a very nerdy conversation about a handlettered piece, and I loved it.”

Although Kimball’s decision to work with an agent, as of 2015, brought large-scale work to her workload, much of how she executes that work is deeply connected to family.

“My daughter gifted me this sketchbook last year,” says Kimball. “It’s a simple Field Notes book, and at first I wasn’t sure if I’d use it. At night, my husband and I take turns reading to our girl, and one night I took out the sketchbook while he read. Now I sketch in it almost every night while sitting on a chair in our living room. I try not to think

too much about what I’m doing, but just to draw whatever images have floated through my mind that day. The process of regular sketching has helped me become a bit more fearless in my subject matter. For instance, I used to steer clear of drawing people. With the sketchbook it doesn’t matter what they look like, so I just draw away.

“My workspace is in my house,” she continues. “I have two desks that sit parallel to each other, and my chair is in the middle so I can swivel from one to the other. (I call it the Superstation, and it’s next to our Imaginarium, the guest room where my husband writes fiction.) On one desk I have my desktop computer and scanner. On the other desk, I just have a cutting mat, markers, pencils, and paints. I try to keep screens off the second desk, so I can sit quietly with a project and think it through.” ✂

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S T A TE of the ART ISTS DESIGN BY CLAIRE BOWLES

FROM PLEIN AIR AND PORTRAITURE PAINTING, TO STREET ART AND TEXTILES INDY’S VISUAL ARTS SCENE IS BURSTING WITH TALENT.

CHRISTOS

Self-taught contemporary pop artist Christos Whitaker was living in Nashville, Tennessee, and heading to Chicago when some friends in Indianapolis suggested he come check out the city. He wound up staying, and in 2012 sold his first big painting. As of January 2018, he became a fulltime artist.

With his art business being self-run and self-promoted, Whitaker actively relies on networking, the Internet, and social media; all critical tools in the age of Instagram artists. His use of spray paint and acrylics has translated from canvas work into clothing, which includes footwear and jackets.

He heavily relies on commissions, online purchases, and connections in other cities to make up the bulk of his sales.

“The Indianapolis art scene can be tough,” he says. “There’s a lot of competition here, and what is here is sectioned off. It’s about trying to find the right people.”

Still, Indianapolis’ affordability isn’t lost on Whitaker. It enabled him to double his living space from Nashville for half the cost, which allowed him to transition into being a full-time artist.

“There are some great things happening here, but you have to seek them out,” he says. “I’ve done so well in other cities, but it’s more difficult here.

The community really could be better.” ✂ INSTAGRAM: @CHRISTO.ART WEBSITE: CHRISTOART.BIGCARTEL.COM 52

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FEAR NOT THE FUTURE 48 in x 36 in mixed media on canvas

WORDS BY THERESA PROCOPIO

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ANN DANCING 16 in x 20 in oil on masonite panel

JUSTIN VINING

WORDS BY JACQUELINE ECKHARDT For Justin Vining it’s not the story before that makes the painting, it’s the story afterward.

“As an artist, I collect a lot of art,” says Vining. “I think the most powerful and most treasured pieces are the ones I have a personal connection to.”

He loves that his work can create personal links for others as well. The Indianapolis-based artist specializes in landscapes and cityscapes. He describes his observational plein air painting as conceptually straightforward – he paints what is directly in front of him.

“What has been really, really cool for me as a creator is painting Indianapolis scenes and selling them in Indianapolis,” says Vining.

He sees the real power of his work when someone inserts his or her own perspective into his pieces. “I clearly can’t know these stories when I go to paint,” says Vining. “I love that.”

Because his subject matter elicits memories of everything from childhood 54

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homes to marriage proposals from those in his community, Vining keenly connects with patrons. And he’s grateful for their engagement.

“One of the things I love is how supportive it is here,” he says. “We have such a growing art scene, and it’s a really fun thing to be a part of.”

Vining is inspired by the growth of patrons and empowered by the high level of collaboration in the city.

“It’s an exciting time to be an artist in Indy,” he says. “There is so much potential.”

Vining’s next solo exhibition at the Harrison Center Main Gallery is in March 2019. ✂ INSTAGRAM: @JUSTINVINING WEBSITE: JUSTINVINING.COM

ERIN HÜBER WORDS BY JAMI STALL

Sleek raven tresses and blunt-cut bangs frame Erin Hüber’s milky facial features in sharp contrast, not unlike the dark and delicate figures that the artist intricately carves to life from black and white paper stock.

Known as Scherenschnitte (German for “scissor cuts”), the paper-cutting art she uses also benefits from her skills as a painter and storyteller. “I create this art to share my own narrative as inspired by family and history,” she says.

Huber intends for her subjects to be timeless, representing the undaunted women who came before her and the one she is today.

“I feel that I connect with the past when I tell their stories. The difference between them and me is I’m the new generation — the single mother, Lone Ranger. They had large families with lots of children to help them. I draw strength from their connection. They were strong and endured much worse than I ever will.”

In 2014 Hüber created the Mother Artist Project, shedding light on the lives of passionate artists who are also passionate moms. To continue celebrating this community of women, she maintains a blog database of their contributed experiences.

In addition to conveying theirs, Hüber adds her own: “I tell stories through cut paper while balancing four kids, seven hens, a dog and a cat.”

She says a Mother Artist Market and podcast are both in the works for 2019. Huber shares a studio at the Harrison Center with mother artist friend Christina Hollering. ✂

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COMMISSIONED WORKS various sizes mixed media

CONSTANCE EDWARDS SCOPELITIS WORDS BY THERESA PROCOPIO

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After seeing her work in Miami, the Cornell Art Museum in Delray, Florida, contacted Stutz-based artist Constance Edwards Scopelitis to produce an exhibit. Opening this October and running through February 17, 2019, ten pieces of her work - which often reflect a response to politics, social justice, and occasionally some humor - will be shown in a separate gallery within the museum.

The Indiana University graduate followed up her fine arts degree by studying with legendary American figurative painter Isabel Bishop and the Art Students League. Scopelitis’ work has been awarded national and international fellowships, including the Creative Renewal Fellowship through the Lilly Foundation, and she was recently selected as a TimeBased finalist by juror Yesomi Umolu for ArtPrize8.

Scopelitis has been Indianapolis based for many years and sees a local art scene that is filled with amazingly creative and intellectual artists. “I have been studio-based in New York City, Laguna Beach, CA, and Chelsea, NY, but I always kept my Indianapolis studio,” she says.

“Here, you can make your art dollars go farther, while also having the opportunity to experiment in other markets.”

She sees Indiana’s more conservative nature as thought-provoking for artists, which naturally gets their artistic juices flowing. “Why would you go somewhere where everyone thinks like you? Here, you can have very interesting and challenging conversations,” Edwards Scopelitis adds.

Her next project in videos, highly mixed-media, and contemporary portraits will be shown in LA, New York, and Florida. She then plans to have a major show in Indianapolis sometime within the next year. ✂

SUSAN BREWER

INSTAGRAM: @CONSTANCEART WEBSITE: CONSTANCESCOPELITIS.COM

INSTAGRAM: @SUSANDBREWER WEBSITE: ARTFULLYENGAGED.COM

PATTERN VOLUME NO. 14

Susan Brewer was working in a stressful job when she had an abstract dream. She felt her self-conscious telling her “this could be your life.”

Today she is an abstract expressionist artist who works at the Evan Lurie Gallery in Carmel.

“I love abstract and create very layered pieces,” Brewer says. “My process is in the moment and in a place in time. I eventually pull out of the physical for an instinctive completion of my pieces.”

She recently curated an exhibit at the Evan Lurie Gallery with artists from the Indianapolis area. At the gallery, she talks to people about the pieces they naturally gravitate toward, what they’re engaged in, and how it speaks to them.

Brewer says, “I often hear ‘I don’t know much about art,’ but people do have a natural curiosity about art.” When she walks into restaurants and sees mirrors and chandeliers, she asks, “Where’s the art? One great piece brings soul to the space.”

She saw a change in the local art scene in 2008, when a lot of art galleries closed and then failed to reopen. The focus here has shifted to art fairs, where 40 percent of art is now purchased.

“Everything is something for a while and then tapers off,” she says. “Like any business, artists have to find a way to connect with people and build their base, and learn how to sell and market their work.” ✂

CHANGING PERSEPECTIVE 48 in x48 in acrylic on canvas

WORDS BY THERESA PROCOPIO

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RUSSIAN SPACE PROGRAM 3 ft x 4 ft collage and mixed media on canvas

MIKE GRAVES WORDS BY JULIA BLUHM

Mike Graves attended the Herron School of Art to study sculpture and eventually painting, but “it didn’t really work out,” he says with a laugh. After leaving, Graves decided he would just “paint harder, and do as many different things as possible.”

He’s certainly done the latter. Graves is an artist, curator, DJ, and a main proprietor for BRIDGE Collective, a local vehicle for artist collaboration.

Through BRIDGE Collective, Graves makes a lot of his art collaboratively. He usually does all the pre- and post-production himself, but the art happens spontaneously with other artists.

“We’ll have an idea like, let’s do thirteen trains with Marvel characters on the side,” he says. “I’ve got five canvases right now, so I’ll do the trains, and then hand them off to this guy, and he’ll go to his studio and work on it for a while and bring it back to me.”

Even though this is a hypothetical example, Graves’ paintings do tend to be influenced by whatever he’s interested in at the time, whether it’s trains, comic books, music, or Buddhism.

When he was starting out, he was also very influenced by “the dark and sexual side of life,” he says. He still does erotic art periodically, and he has been repeatedly accepted into the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. He hopes Indianapolis can also be more accepting of this kind of art, because he says that sexuality is “the most natural thing for anyone to explore.”

As for current works, Graves recently finished a large-scale mixed-media tribute to jazz musician Wes Montgomery, in collaboration with artist Elvis Mires. It is on display at the Forte. More of Graves’ work can be seen at the Murphy Center in Fountain Square, where he is also a curator. ✂ INSTAGRAM: @INDYARTISTMIKEGRAVES WEBSITE: BRIDGECOLLECTIVE.ORG

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JEDEDIAH JOHNSON WORDS BY SHAUTA MARSH

In 2011 Jedediah Johnson put on some red lipstick, started kissing strangers — at times with permission, at times without — then immediately took their photo to create a series of work, “The Makeout Project.”

By 2015, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, and several other publications enamored with the project, propelled him to go viral.

“The national platform didn’t change much for me,” Johnson says. “People liked that work, but once they’d seen it and took it in, they moved on. When something goes viral and you don’t have a YouTube channel or similar delivery device for future work, your fame just kind of dissipates. I also got bored with kissing people and bored with the images.”

“The Makeout Project” and many of his other works stem from Johnson’s discomfort with his body.

“Since I was a small child, everything in the culture has told me that my body is wrong, disgusting, and my fault,” he says. “Those attitudes have shaped my entire life. I work in body positivity, because it allows me to truly feel comfortable in my body for the first time in my life.”

This self-acceptance has led to his latest series, “Body Modification.” Wanting others to see the beauty in their physical state, he puts out open calls on Instagram for people who will pose nude. Mostly he hears from women.

“I’m not a sociologist, but here are my guesses,” he explains. “Due to gender roles, it is harder for me to find men to pose nude than it is to find women. First off, there is a long, tall, and wide history of nude women in art and a much smaller tradition of nude men. Also, being nude in front of a camera is a very vulnerable position, and men are generally taught to be less vulnerable.”

He thinks men are less likely to have body issues than women, because, as Johnson puts it: Society hasn’t totally brainwashed the average man that his body isn’t good enough. So his “Let’s be body positive,” message just doesn’t resonate with as many men.

Johnson will show his work alongside Amanda Taves, and Tiffany Pierce in the Jeremy Efroymson Gallery at Tube Factory artspace Dec. 7-15. ✂ INSTAGRAM: JEDEDIAH_JOHNSON WEBSITE: JEDEDIAHJOHNSON.COM

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QUINCY OWENS WORDS BY JAMI STALL

PIERNAS mannequin legs, acrylic, LED components

Even if you don’t know Quincy Owens, you’ve probably seen his work, either while walking past the installation at White River State Park or catching sight of one of his temporary exhibits at Gallery 924, the Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center, or at the Harrison Center, where he’s been a studio artist for 15 years.

Owens’ signature light sculptures often feature pigmented geometric patterns, with colored LEDs, filters, and sometimes, synchronized sound.

They stand everywhere from downtown Indianapolis, to Newport Beach, California and Atlanta, Georgia, to Grand Rapids, Michigan.

He most often collaborates now with Luke Crawley (Owens + Crawley LLC).

The two met while teaching at Herron High School. Owens taught art, and Crawley instructed physics, which explains his technological contributions to their work.

Though Owens no longer teaches, the full-time artist and father of five thrives on continued learning.

“The concept of having a well-rounded education shouldn’t be any different in the art field,” he says. “I like to be well-versed in as many materials as I can, especially with the huge change in technology over the last few years.”

He takes full advantage of learning everything from the newest pigments and resins to the latest LED technology and programming innovations for lights, motion sensors, and even fog machines.

“My work aligns itself really well with the modernist artists, where I care as much about the use of materials as the visual outcome,” he says.

In early 2019 he and Crawley will unveil their largest sculpture to date: three thirty-foot-tall light sculptures on the newly redeveloped Monon Trail in Carmel (between 104th and 106th streets).

As the world gets smaller for this internationally known local artist, his appreciation for those near grows larger.

“I’ve realized it’s less and less about the artwork and more about the community and relationships I have with people – from personal to communal, partnerships and collaborations — it’s about our shared experiences,” he says. ✂ INSTAGRAM: @QUINCYOWENSART WEBSITE: QUINCYOWENSART.COM

MICHAEL “ALKEMI” JORDAN WORDS BY DAWN OLSEN

Michael “Alkemi” Jordan is a self-taught artist who has been painting for over forty years. His murals – nearly four dozen in all – include two for the Arts Council of Indianapolis’ “46 for XLVI” program and the photorealistic Mari Evans on Mass Ave. When asked how his career began, Alkemi plays it honest. “I was a knucklehead kid who went to prison at nineteen,” he says. “I met my teacher in prison, and he taught me how to paint, how to draw. That’s where I got educated. I came out of prison at twentyone and have been doing artwork ever since.”

Alkemi describes his style as “semi-abstract,” drawing inspiration from Salvador Dali and Norman Rockwell. “I like to draw the way I dream,” he says. “I like putting pictures inside pictures – things your subconscious sees.” A natural light lover, Alkemi often paints outdoors, welcoming conversation from both passersby and curious children.

He is also a poet and has published three books designed to give both the young and young-at-heart a broader view of the ABCs. Alkemi, born and raised in Indianapolis, has exhibited his art at Cincinnati Museum Center’s Museum of Natural History & Science, Indiana Black Expo’s Cultural Arts Pavilion, Crispus Attucks Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, and Indianapolis Public Library’s “Meet the Artist” program. He is currently working on two murals, as well as a commissioned piece that features portraits of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Karl Marx, and Barack Obama. ✂ INSTAGRAM: @REALALCHEMY 61

FREE YOUR BEANS 57 in x 32 in black bean ink on panel

LAUREN ZOLL

WORDS BY JOHN HELLING Lauren Zoll was recently awarded from the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation a grant that is intended to promote risk-taking, and it’s easy to see why. Zoll’s work requires significant experimentation.

One series of paintings that resemble watercolors is made from ink she makes herself out of black beans, which she grew with some project collaborators.

Another series created from mulberry ink, harvested from a tree outside her studio, is shiny and reflective. She creates the recipes for these inks herself, using a complex process that requires a beginner’s knowledge of chemistry. She uses the word “anthocyanin” several times, which means the blue and purple pigments from flowers and fruits.

The common thread through all her work is light. Some work “harvests” the light, to use her word, and other pieces reflect it right back at the viewers, forcing them to look back at themselves. A piece made from glass actually captures light and turns it into electricity, mimicking the process of photosynthesis. A metal grid over a background of color creates the illusion of a floating field of dots, like what you might see if you close your eyes.

It’s an impressive breadth of media. She started out with a camera, then was trained as a metalsmith, and then cycled into painting and video (including a solo show at the IMA), before coming back to metal.

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She sees her current work as a full circle moment, using light and metal at the nanoscale. “I’m always inventing; I can’t do the same thing over,” she says. “My role as an artist is to expand the simple things and give them new meaning, shedding a new light and a new way of seeing.”

So what’s next? She wants to study solar panels and work with photovoltaic technicians, and take that back into her painting practice.

It’s experimental and she doesn’t quite know where it will lead, but that’s kind of the point. The supportive nature of the art community in Indianapolis and the ready supply of material mean that she can continue reaching forward.

She sums it up with enviable confidence: “Right now I’m re-creating a science lab experiment and making photovoltaics -- in the end, whatever I make will be art, because I’m an artist.”

Zoll’s work can be seen at Gallery 924, the Indianapolis Arts Council, or at The Other Fair as part of Expo Chicago. ✂ INSTAGRAM: @STUDIO_LAUREN_ZOLL WEBSITE: .LAURENZOLL.COM

#16 72 in x 72 in found materials and mixed media on panel

SAMUEL VASQUEZ WORDS BY DANICIA MONÈT

Samuel Vazquéz, by way of Puerto Rico, grew up in Harlem in the late seventies, when the city was starting to see its first waves of gentrification. Back then it was a crumbling cinematic treasure trove. Graffiti stained the walls, streets were flooded with trash, and rundown apartments poked the skyline. Vazquéz collected all that commotion, quite literally, and spewed it back out for a new audience to perceive.

Starting out as a graffiti artist he studied typography and design, texture, and scale, under the best tutelage one could -- city life.

“The language I’m creating now is all a reference to that,” he says. “A lot of what I find and collect reminds me of my time there, the decay I witnessed in both the people and the places.”

Despite the rough edges of New York, it was home – and a stark difference from Indy, as Vazquéz learned. “Two weeks after moving to Indianapolis, I wanted to move back to New York, because there was an immediate culture shock,” he says. “There, I stepped outside and encountered neighbors from Lebanon, Spain, Africa, etc. Culture was at my doorstep, literally, but in time I found Indianapolis to be a great place to build.”

Approaching twenty years of practice, his catalog has matured and transformed with the times, but much like any true graffiti artist, his tag - BRAME - still resonates pure.

“The vocabulary of ‘things’ is so endless,” he shares. “I’m excited about playing with all of it.” ✂ INSTAGRAM: @SAMUELEVAZQUEZ WEBSITE: SAMUELEVAZQUEZ.COM

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Left: MOOD FRACTURE 8 in x 10 in mixed media on wood panel Center: HAVOC 48 in x 30 in acrylic on canvas Right: INTO BRANCHES 8 in x 10 in mixed media on wood panel

TASHA BECKWORTH WORDS BY JULIA BLUHM

WORDS BY ERIC REES

If you ever have the chance to meet Indianapolis-based artist and designer William Denton Ray, expect to only call him by his proper first name one time. He’s the type of guy who insists on the more personable “Billy” after that.

One might go through a similar process when you encounter his art for the first time. His abstract work catches the eye at first, carrying a feeling of high art that demands to be digested and understood.

But the longer someone looks, the more he or she might see familiar aspects of graffiti, song lyrics, street art, family, and other personable artistic influences that he’s picked up during the more than fifteen years he’s been in the industry.

This year marks the ninth that Ray has called the Harrison Center his studio home, and he’s coming off a new show that has been a work “to make things more cohesive.” He’s had numerous art shows and local installations in the past, but he’s put his latest pieces through more of a critical eye, making sure that they all work together. The result is a collection of art that incorporates his style of erratic and active visual expression.

When he’s not between his northside home studio and the Harrison Center, Ray fills his time beautifying the Sun King brand and shuttling his kids between soccer games. Even if it’s a full schedule, he enjoys the flexibility he’s earned to go on the occasional vacation to Michigan with his family. If you look closely enough, you might just see some of the inspiration for his art drawn from those family moments. ✂ INSTAGRAM: @WHIMSICALFUNK WEBSITE: ETSY.COM/SHOP/WHIMSICALFUNK 64

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INSTAGRAM: @TBECKWITH82 WEBSITE: SOCIETY6.COM/TASHABECKWITH

ETH digital illustration

WILLIAM DENTON RAY

Tasha Beckwith is a 2006 graduate of the Herron School of Art, and though she studied painting, she hadn’t really painted since 2012.

She didn’t have the space to be a traditional artist at the time, so instead she immersed herself in a different medium in which she had no formal training: digital art.

Beckwith taught herself how to make digital art through researching at the library, watching YouTube videos, and reading magazines.

Digital art attracted her with its limitless range of textures. “I’ve never been good at watercolor,” she says. “But that’s something digital art can help you with, because you can find the textures for everything.

So I can make it look like watercolor.”

Though her medium of choice has changed, Beckwith’s love for portraiture hasn’t. She continues to feature faces and figures often in her work, because that’s what comes naturally to her. It’s also a way for the artist to represent her culture.

“Right now I would say it’s about highlighting my culture and individuals for being beautiful kings and queens,” she says.

Beckwith’s most recent works of art include celestial elements such as constellations and planets. The telescope in her living room provides nightly inspiration.

This interest began when she looked through a telescope at the moon for the first time. “I was blown away by how clear I could see it and how big it was,” she says. “It made me feel like there’s so much more outside of the world that we don’t know about.”

Beckwith’s work can be seen at the Interfaith Church, the Tube Factory artspace, and the Art Council of Indianapolis building. ✂

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MARCO QUERIN WORDS BY JOHN HELLING

Marco Querin’s artwork, a world of line and shape and form, creates a sense of control that he finds reassuring in a world that is steadily growing more chaotic. He works with fiber to create large geometric abstractions that can resemble grids or interlocking curves. This fine control of a delicate medium allows him to explore topics like multiculturalism; tightly interwoven bands of color, pulled tightly on the same large canvas plane, call to mind situations in both his native Italy and here in Indiana, where people of many different backgrounds find themselves living in close proximity to others who are not like them. The end product is beautiful, but it belies the intense labor and attention to detail that go into its creation. Like a truly flourishing society where everyone shares success, it is not improvised or accidental.

“These are topics that must be faced, must be considered,” Querin says. “People everywhere use fibers, threads, or sewing to connect with each other and create their culture. To represent societal issues this way for me is calming, addressing a situation that is delicate.”

The burgeoning art scene in Indianapolis has encouraged Querin to step outside of his bubble and find the limits of what he can do. Five years of living within the limitations of a small Midwestern city have pushed him to drop his inhibitions and “plant more seeds” to break into what perhaps felt like a forbidding network of insiders before.

“People here have been receptive,” he says. “Most human beings exist in a state of fragility. Art allows us to discard circumstances and needs, and be who we want to be.” Querin’s work is currently on display in the collections at Cummins, CICF, and the ACLU of Indiana. ✂ INSTAGRAM: @MARCOQUERIN WEBSITE: MARCOQUERIN.NET 66

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MILLIMETERS (EXPERIENCING TINY THINGS) 42 in x 36 in mixed media

SHELBY ALEXANDER WORDS BY THERESA PROCOPIO

After graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a fine arts degree in 2014, mixed media artist Shelby Alexander headed to the Pratt Institute in New York to study fashion design. There, she stumbled upon research that shows the fashion industry as the second biggest environmental pollutant after oil companies.

“Normally people think of pollution as raw sewage piped into waterways or coal-powered plants,” she says, “But they don’t think about the pollution that’s caused by the shirts on their backs.”

Alexander focuses on raising awareness of this issue by creating realistic figure drawings on textiles, using only second-hand clothing. “With my interest in both fine arts and fashion design, it naturally made sense to combine the two,” she says.

Currently an artist in residence at the Stutz Building, she now works on larger formats and experiments with different media, textiles, and paper while

becoming more involved in the local art scene.

“I’m newer to Indianapolis,” she says, “But I’m impressed with the art and music here. There’s a huge underground effort for more studios and collaborative spaces. The Arts Council of Indianapolis is doing some great things, such as The Young Collectors Show geared toward children, and the High Art Billboard Project where ten artists are selected to have their work blown up to the scale of a billboard at various sites around the metro area.” ✂ INSTAGRAM: @SHELBYAALEXANDER WEBSITE: SHELBYALEXANDER.COM

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SIVAVIS

WORDS BY DAWN OLSEN For the past three years Sivavis has been turning heads. His analog collages have made appearances at the Indianapolis Art Center, Satch Art Space, Metonymy Media, Fountain Square Brewing Company, Indy Reads Books, and at various coffeehouses. His work was most recently exhibited at 10th West Gallery, in a group show that celebrated the medium of paper.

But before he picked up a pair of scissors, Sivavis was producing sample-based electronic music.

“I did that for several years as a hobby,” he says. “Then, I had a sort of ‘Eureka’ moment and started cutting up my photography books and making collages. I absolutely fell in love with the magic of it.”

His tools – an X-ACTO knife and spray glue – are simple. But with these two items, Sivavis deconstructs vintage magazines and creates images that depict truth, honesty, and strangeness.

He finds LIFE magazines particularly interesting, given the publication’s stronghold on American thought.

“These magazines could get a whole country to … think it’s OK to put raisins on baked chicken breasts. That’s power. I like to think I’m removing some of that power and fleshing out a narrative that actually makes sense to me.”

Sivavis – who was born and raised in Indianapolis – will soon move into a new studio at the Circle City Industrial Complex.

He plans to experiment with layered resin collages, and he recently collaborated with Starscalp Gentile on a music video for Nashville-based Harpooner. ✂ INSTAGRAM: @SIVAVISART WEBSITE: REDBUBBLE.COM/PEOPLE/SIVAVISART TIME IS AN UNSTUDIED IMAGINATION OF THE EXPERIENCED 8 in x 10 in collage

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MYSTERIES COMMON TO US ALL: THE ART OF LOIS MAIN TEMPLETON

By David Hoppe

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first met Lois Main Templeton at the Faris Building in 1988. My wife and I had moved to Indianapolis with our preschool son in March of that year. An ice storm descended on the city during our first night in the duplex we rented in Broad Ripple. When we awoke, morning sun shone through frozen crystal, coating tree branches and power lines. Nature, for a few hours at least, had asserted herself, stopping everyday existence in its tracks. The effect was eye-opening — and just dangerous enough underfoot to make you pay attention in a way that felt exhilarating.

Something similar happened upon entering Lois’ studio. First there was the space itself: high-ceilinged and high up, on the Faris’ seventh floor, northeast corner, with its big screen windows, measured into a massive checkerboard of panes. If you wondered — as many of us did — whether Indianapolis was truly a city, or just a big prairie town, the view from Lois’ studio split the difference in an energizing way. Through Lois’ windows the aspirational tops of high-rise office buildings, with their big plans and big deals, looked close enough to touch. But if you took a step to the left or right, changed your view just so, you could see how quickly the avenues where these towers stood gave way to land as flat and nondescript as a tabletop, stretching all the way to the horizon.

The juxtaposition of these views made you feel as if you were at the center of a new kind of frontier, figuring out what it meant to live in a middle-size American city as one century ended and another took shape.

The Faris Building itself was a decidedly urban experience. It was an industrial relic, a great block of brick and glass, built for rough use and heavy materials, the kind of setting where a film noir detective might find himself cornered by a tough bunch of thugs

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armed with grappling hooks. It was also, of course, a place where people worked hard and made things, and so its evolution into an artists’ hive felt like history being put to use.

Lois was reputedly the first artist to lease studio space from Bob Faris. This was in 1981. “I explored all sorts of abandoned buildings in downtown Indianapolis while I was at Herron,” she recalled of her midlife enrolment in art school. “I set out and found that huge, old, decrepit warehouse while I was still a student. I knew what happened when you graduated; you fell into a deep long trench full of former Herron students, all of us trying to get out, trying to make it, wanting to keep on with what we had begun at Herron. I was older than they were. I did not have time for that.” She graduated magna cum laude at the age of fifty-one-years-old. Her age, she once told me, was a source of strength. “I had in me a big reservoir out of which to paint.”

But she needed a studio to do it in. She found it on downtown’s southern rim, just up the street from Shapiro’s legendary deli.

When Bob Faris told her she could have a studio in his building, she asked him if she could sign a lease. “He looked at me and he said, ‘I don’t bother with leases.’ I said, ‘I’ve been reading, and it says I should have a lease.’” Faris suggested a stationers where Lois could get the proper form. When she brought it back to him, he asked her if she could afford $200 a month. “I couldn’t,” recalled Lois, “but I was not about to have my husband pay for my studio.”

That’s when she began teaching — another important part of Lois’ practice. Teaching not only helped pay those early bills, it would become a wellspring for Lois’ creativity: equal parts inspiration, energizer, and accelerant. During those times when she felt dried up and in doubt about her painting, teaching (especially children

and adults with disabilities) brought her around. It reinforced the idea that, at its core, art is not only a dive into one’s unconscious, but social, too. Art is of, by, and for people; something we’ve done since our beginnings. Primal.

Conversation played a part. Lois loves to talk, to think out loud.

That’s what brought me to her studio in the Faris thirty years ago. By that time the building had been thoroughly colonized by visual artists and gallerists. A letter carrier, reading the names on the post boxes there, found what amounted to the city’s creative family tree — with Ard, Berkshire, Campbell and Domont, Funk and Kadlec, Mecklin, Sanders and Siskind, to name just a few.

The architect Jim Lingenfelter belonged to a firm with an office across the hall from Lois. Jim was a longtime Indianapolis guy with a deeply ingrained sense of his city’s history and potential.

He and Lois started having box lunches brought in to Lois’ studio by way of creating a kind of salon — meals, as I recall, made and delivered by a local chef who would soon be breaking her own trail for the city’s independent restaurant scene, Becky Hostetter.

One of Lois’ recurring motifs is the kitchen table. While her Faris studio was most certainly a space where she could close the door and engage in an often tempestuous inner back-and-forth with paintings as they found their way into light, it was also meant to be a gathering place for Indianapolis’ burgeoning creative household.

This was important. The city, at that time, was not, on the surface, at least, a congenial place for artists. No one spoke of a “creative class.” Mayoral administrations did not trouble themselves with cultural policy. There was virtually no public funding for creative projects and, apart from the Civil War obelisk at the center of Monument Circle, little public art worth noting. If you wanted art, you went elsewhere — to Chicago or the coasts. Indianapolis, we were told, was about sports.

This obliviousness brought a charge to the conversations in Lois’ studio. It turned the periodic Faris open houses into tribal happenings, where an alternative version of Indianapolis expressed itself with grungy exuberance. The city might not have known it yet, but it needed this as much as we did. And while the cumulative impact of the Faris years can never be summed, those of us who were there felt we were part of something. Lois, presiding in long denim skirt and frayed turtleneck, may not have driven this action, but she was surely its ethical center. Her painting bore witness to the fact an artist who committed herself could find a voice and make ambitious work here, in this place.

Lois has spent significant parts of her life on both coasts — in northern California, where she and her husband Ken lived for twenty years before moving to Indianapolis, and in Maine, where they have kept a house and currently reside. Her experience of these places, with their distinctive landscapes, climates and cultures, have certainly had a profound impact on how she engages with the world, not least because both have provided her access to a restlessly oceanic sense of space and time. Proximity to the tidal pull of vast bodies of water seems necessary for an artist who calls the unconscious “my basic source.”

But it is hard to spend time with Lois’ art and not find oneself in the presence of an abiding Midwestern sensibility. This is an admittedly tricky proposition. Where both coasts are imprinted with a host of images and stories evoking their respective cultural traditions, the Midwest’s cache remains elusive. Perhaps that’s because so many Midwestern artists have evoked the place from a distance, as exiles who flew the coop. As Kurt Vonnegut once joked about Indiana: “I don't know what it is about Hoosiers. But

WHAT I NEED TO REMEMBER AND RECALL IS THAT PAINTING IS LIKE TRUTH. ONCE IN A WHILE IT IS IMMEDIATE AND CLEARLY SEEN. BUT MORE OFTEN IT HIDES BEHIND AND IS ONLY GRADUALLY REVEALED.

wherever you go there is always a Hoosier doing something very important there."

Lois Main was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1928 and grew up spending time in Sand County, Wisconsin — the riverine landscape made famous by naturalist Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac. In fact, the Leopolds and Mains were neighbors; young Estella Leopold and Lois were best childhood friends. “The land was pretty open,” Estella later wrote of her family’s homestead in Stories From the Leopold Shack, “you could see for a mile in two directions. The cornfield was full of weeds and burrs, and the soil was about pure sand. The little barn sat on a wide sweeping plain, which was actually a high, flat terrace that stood about twelve feet above the active floodplain, dotted with sandbars and willow bushes.” Early explorers, she said, described the land as being “a mix of oak savanna, marshland, and forest, with excellent hunting grounds for deer, elk, moose, bear, beavers, and ducks.”

Though settlers had cleared the woods for farming, this was still deep country, with place names inherited from the Winnebago, Sauk, and Fox tribes. People lived close to the land and the weather. “I got to go into the marshes with my father,” Lois told an interviewer at the Eiteljorg Museum in 1998, “looking for the wild, looking for the edge. This lack of fear of being lost is very western.

We do not need to have a map first. Certainly this has a bearing on my painting. When halfway through, I often don’t know where I am, and certainly don’t know where I’ll end up.”

Lois conjures those marshes, evoking their mystifying spaciousness and low-lying fog, bulrush verticality, and the aural calligraphy of birdsong, in numerous paintings. Her sense of place is infused with memory. The writing she incorporates into her canvases registers like songs overheard on a radio, playing in a distant room. Fragmentary words and phrases rise to the surface of awareness but their meaning is never certain or imposed. You fill that in yourself.

Lois has called the Midwestern part of her practice "collaborative".

She has seemingly resisted the stereotype of the artist as isolated, preferring, when she can, to make herself part of a community or neighborhood, as she did at the Faris and Murphy buildings, as well as in her shared studio with Phil O’Malley — and in her teaching.

But this sense of collaboration also appears to describe a dynamic triangle, including herself, her painting, and whoever happens to encounter it. A kind of social imperative underlies her art, a need to break down barriers to feeling between herself and others. This, perhaps, is where jazz comes in. When she talks about “looking for the wild, looking for the edge,” she could easily be referring to another of her acknowledged inspirations, jazz improvisation.

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Lois has written eloquently about experiencing jazz live, in clubs,

of modernism, they can resuscitate the idea of abstract painting.

during her years in the Bay Area. Then she arrived in Indianapolis

Or, taking a more critical stance, they can invest their faith in the

and found another, historically rooted jazz scene, with musicians

subversive potential of those radical manifestations of modernist

who shared her desire to connect. “What I want to have happen

art labeled Minimalism and Conceptualism. But what if these, too,

when people look at my work, is what happens in jazz when,

appear hopelessly compromised, mired in the predictability of their

after all the diverse voices going on in improv, the group comes

conventions, subject to an academicism or a sentimentality every

together — and makes that turn.” This coming together, a kind of

bit as regressive as that adhering to the idea of Fine Art?”

climax, is also the moment when contrived boundaries between

Had Lois been younger, more subject to the rage for relevance

humans and nature break down. The work of art becomes as much a part of the natural world as any tree, rock, or rainstorm.

Human being is not apart, but part of.

that “reservoir” of experience to draw upon. She was old enough to know, bone-deep, what art was for, and why she so singularly

canvas alone. Much as she hankers after collaboration, she is

needed to paint.

finally on her own. She has described this as the “potato” part

“THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO,” she journaled in 1991, adding

They’re not dirty, they’re dusty. It’s a treasure hunt. A potato grows beneath the surface. It’s not a party thing. It isn’t pretty. It is not sociable, unless it bumps into another potato. And it likes being in the dark.”

Lois keeps a journal — there are now volumes of them, spanning decades, handwritten and thick with photos, sketches, clippings.

They testify to an unstinting work ethic, but also to ongoing struggles with her midlife vocation. In May, 1991, she writes that she is working toward “a sense of competence and accomplishment,” but that when she finds herself in her studio, “I have no facts, objects, plans to ‘organize.’ I do not know what I’m doing, how, let alone why. This discrepancy between my worlds, my selves, causes me a big studio problem. I can and do assign myself a task — but there is no guarantee I will be successful and I HAVE SUCH A HARD TIME PLAYING.” Then in March, a year later: “What I need to remember and recall is that painting is like truth. Once in awhile it is immediate and clearly seen. But more often it hides behind and is only gradually revealed.”

And in 1998: “Wonder if part of the fear an artist — any — has of this early stage is the same fear of vulnerability that is scary between the sexes. Beauty is going to turn up and oh lord will you blow it?

Or allow it. Also at least fifty percent of the action will come from the other. I put paint on, but the paint does as it pleases…”

parenthetically: “(it is why I blew away my precious Happy Face)”.

Which is not to suggest that Lois has shied away from thinking hard and long about what she does. Her multitudinous journals are ample testimony to the dues she’s paid in this regard. Finally, though, what draws us to her work is not theory, but her mastery of materials and utter commitment to the process of bringing her humanity into view.

How lucky for us — and, perhaps, for Lois — that, as the art world was embroiled in an epic argument with itself, she landed in Indianapolis, our deceptively sophisticated provincial capital. A place where she could be herself. Here Lois sounded her Midwestern roots, as well as all she’d learned from living out west. Brought forth the deep interweaving of places, time, and self. Though the journals show she was never immune to doubt, and has been, at times, her own severest critic, there was nothing in her adopted city’s cultural environment to stop her. The mutual reward has been this abundant, ever-questing body of work, with its vivacious rigor and courage to tap into memories and dreams.

Spend time with Lois’s painting and you begin to grasp the wealth of experience she is able to summon. The layers of color she applies, scrapes away, and reapplies act as metaphor for the way we experience the world. We see and then we see some more and then…we’re not sure whether what we’re seeing is truly in front of us, or inside our heads, filling in for what we know is out there, but can’t quite apprehend. Meanwhile, calligraphy skitters across her surfaces, or rises up from the depths, alternately acting like the

It must be noted here that when Lois graduated from Herron in

self that won’t, even in meditation, shut up, and a séance — the

1981, her chosen medium, painting, was in the throes of one of

visitation of ghosts. Shapes, no less strange for their air of familiarity,

those critical upheavals that roil the art world from time to time.

Modernism, and the idea of art-historical progress it represented, was long gone. In its place (to read the critics) was an anything

appear then reoccur. They are domestic yet wild, quick and stolid, comic then bereaved. In the end, these pictures attain what some Buddhists call “suchness.” They are as fully themselves as a many-

goes spirit, eschewing whatever principles — from institutional

ringed tree stump or a geode, cracked to reveal the crystals inside.

authority to the very idea of beauty as something worth achieving,

There is defiance in these paintings: Lois standing up for — and

or even thinking about — the art world had relied upon for order

to — herself. The work is personal and exploratory. But it is not

and coherence since the Renaissance.

merely self-referential. It reaches out to the eyes of others, depicts

Painting itself was suspect. The same year Lois left Herron,

mysteries that are common to us all.

critic Thomas Lawson summed up the situation in an essay for

This, at least, is what I saw in Lois’ studio some thirty years ago. It

Artforum magazine entitled, “Last Exit: Painting:” “It all boils down to a question of faith. Young artists concerned with pictures and picture-making, rather than sculpture and the lively arts, are faced now with a bewildering choice. They can continue to believe in the traditional institutions of culture, most conveniently identified with easel painting, and in effect register a blind contentment with the way things are. They can dabble in ‘pluralism,’ that last holdout of an exhausted modernism, choosing from an assortment of attractive labels…the style most suited to their self-referential purposes. Or, more frankly engaged in exploiting the last manneristic twitches

PATTERN VOLUME NO. 14

paralyzed by doubt about her calling. Fortunately for us, she had

In the end, though, Lois’ chosen artform demands she face the

of herself. “When you dig the soil and pull it back, there they are.

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besieging art school undergraduates, she might have been

was the work of an artist committed to going wherever the process took her, and a woman who was determined not to be afraid of that. Lois has observed that one of her favorite things about the Midwest are its storms, the way they sometimes seem to gather off to the west and come rolling in, across the prairie. “It’s the most exciting experience,” she once said, recalling how high winds can blow down power lines, so that the live wires hiss and spark on the ground like dangerous serpents. That unleashed energy, frightening to most, attracts her. You can see it in her paintings: “I want my lines to be live.” ✂

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AT THE THE FOREFRONT OF A FLOURISHING ARTS COMMUNITY, THESE ORGANIZATIONS LOOK FOR WAYS TO HELP ARTISTS AND ART PATRONS REACH THEIR FULL POTENTIAL.

The Indianapolis Art Center was founded during the Great Depression to give out-of-work artists meaningful employment. IAC’s Director of Exhibitions and Events, Kyle Harrington continues that mission of elevating artists to this day. He works to create opportunities for artists of every type, but works especially hard to highlight those that other galleries might shy away from.

“I’m in a position to dissolve barriers for people that might have fewer opportunities,” he says. “We try to spread our resources to include as many artists as possible, and we try not to get pigeonholed.” IAC has six galleries, and it installs a new show every six to eight weeks, so there’s always someone new in the spotlight.

“I remember what it was like to be an emerging artist, and I remember all the obstacles I faced,” he says. “I’m doing what I wish people had done for me at that point in my life.”

The center tries to give exposure to as many artists and as many types of art as possible. Since it shows many artists and a variety of work, the IAC embraces the liberty of showing art that might be considered risky or not commercially viable.

“It’s art for art’s sake,” Harrington says. “It’s art that might otherwise be ignored. We feel like we’re providing a well-rounded experience for the visitor, because we can show art that we feel deserves to be shown.”

Harrington actively searches for new artists to feature in his galleries, instead of waiting for them to pop up on his radar. He combs social media, shows up at artist talks and openings, and asks people around town who is out there worth seeing.

“I’m nosy basically,” he says. He keeps a huge notebook that’s filled with the names of local artists he’s

either seen or heard about and wants to work with, and he uses it like a cookbook to curate shows.

So what can Indianapolis do to reciprocate his effort to create an environment that will produce and grow ambitious artists? Simple. “Indianapolis can’t be afraid to strut it like a peacock,” he says.

“Indianapolis has an arts scene that holds up nationally, but we have a very Midwestern tendency to apologize for our own presence and think we don’t belong. We need to respect ourselves and see ourselves as valid, as equals in the art world.”

He also thinks we need to look at artists as resources for the city, like talent to be recruited. “We can convince people to move to Indianapolis all we want, but if they get here and there’s nothing for them, they won’t stay,” he says.

On the flip side, Harrington offers simple advice for young artists: “Just show up.” He continues, “Art is a way for people to connect and if you’re not out there, you’re ignoring the whole point of being an artist. Dive into the scene! Commit to it. Be a sponge.

Find out who people are and what their process is.”

Harrington offers and apt analogy, comparing the Indianapolis art scene to a pond full of fish. If you distribute the fish food in a way that only a few of the fish have access to it, you’ll wind up with a few giant fish and a bunch of malnourished fish fighting over the scraps. He says it’s better to distribute resources equally, even (or perhaps especially) to the fish that haven’t established themselves yet.

He says we should be talking about how to make sure all the fish in the pond have a shot.

Harrington does his best to make sure the growth in the local art scene is equitable. “Basically, our options are to intentionally cultivate artists or to lose them to brain drain,” he says.

KYLE HARRINGTON OF

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INDIANAPOLIS ARTS CENTER

WORDS BY JOHN HELLING

SHANNON LINKER OF

ARTS COUNCIL OF INDIANAPOLIS Recovering from the 2008 recession has been an uphill climb for the Indianapolis arts community, but there are numerous signs that a full comeback is near. “In all sectors, we’re seeing some amazing and promising things,” says Shannon Linker, the interim president of the Arts Council of Indianapolis (ACI).

Linker, a sixteen-year veteran at the ACI, leads an organization plagued by the challenges arts councils have always had, plus a few new ones. “Funding is always going to be an issue,” she says. “We have a very supportive mayor, but our budgets are very tight. As much as the city might want to get us back to the levels of funding we had before the recession, it’s going to be very difficult.”

INDICATIONS OF A RESILIENT ARTS COMMUNITY Despite local pride in a vibrant arts scene, the ACI receives less funding than arts organizations in peer Midwest cities, according to Linker. That may be part of the reason the Indianapolis arts community has not recovered as quickly as other cities.

Nevertheless, an upward trend in economic data suggests the local arts scene may soon recover all the ground lost during the recession. An annual survey by Americans for the Arts showed $486 million in local economic activity drawn from the Indianapolis non-profit arts sector in 2007. By 2010 the same indicator dropped to $384 million, but last year it climbed to $440 million.

Linker sees anecdotal signs of resurgence in the city’s commercial art galleries. Only a few galleries were left after 2008, but she says the count has returned to its pre-recession level. “We also have many new and thriving dance companies, including the Phoenix Rising Dance Company, Kids Dance Outreach, Ballet Theatre of Indiana, Indianapolis City Ballet, and Indiana Ballet Conservatory,” she says.

Attaining comparable levels of arts funding with peer cities remains an ACI goal. Meanwhile Indianapolis offers other favorable assets to the arts community, including robust support from foundations, corporate donors, and individual philanthropists.

“When Lilly Endowment, Inc. recently announced its cultural innovation grants [Strengthening Indianapolis through Arts and Cultural Innovation], there was a huge boost of excitement and energy in the Indianapolis arts community,” Linker says. “Every arts organization was thinking, ‘Wow. What could we do if we got this kind of funding?’ They all pulled together amazing ideas and submitted them. The endowment received over 250 applications and 25 of those have moved forward to the second round.”

Indianapolis is a city where you can meet and know practically anyone. Linker says that trait gives artists and arts organizations easy access to a network of people who can support their work. Deals can be made over coffee. Case in point: Jeremy Efroymson learned informally about The House Life Project and decided to help fund its startup. The project reimagines a vacant house as a hub for art and culture.

WORDS BY CRYSTAL HAMMON

REACHING NEW AUDIENCES FOR THE ARTS Like arts councils in every city, the ACI is also confronting changing audience demographics that threaten the health of arts organizations. “It’s not just the idea that people who used to go to art galleries, museums, symphonies, and theatrical performances are getting older,” she says. “We also have young people of color who may not feel comfortable in a western, idealized style of art presentation. We have to make sure our arts organizations are connecting to these communities. We can’t keep doing the same things and expect to reach them.”

The ACI has responded by changing the organization’s approach to awarding grants. “Through our grant program we’ve started working on support for smaller organizations that are better able to adapt to these new demographics,” she says. “We’ve been able to allocate money for them to grow the entire arts audience.”

One example is Indy Convergence, a small, westside non-profit embedded in a part of the city that was considered a cultural arts desert. “There were no arts organizations anywhere nearby,” Linker says. “Nothing was happening.

They spent a year in the community, talking to people and learning what the desires and needs were.”

Indy Convergence started bringing artists from all over the country to do six-week residencies and workshops. “Now, it has grown into a community center that offers just about anything you can imagine,” she says. “They are reaching an audience that some of our other arts organizations would just not be able to reach.” Linker says shifting money away from medium and larger arts organizations was controversial, but many larger cities applauded the ACI for its progressive decision.

information that could benefit artists in central Indiana. “We created the Artist Opportunity E-newsletter,” Linker says.

“That is how we share anything we know about any opportunity that would be advantageous to your career. It’s the no-brainer first step for any artist.”

As a visual artist with a background in art history, Linker admits that she is especially attuned to individual artists, but the ACI strives to maintain a diverse staff that understands and responds to the needs all disciplines within the arts community. The organization maintains an aggressive outreach effort to hear and connect members of the arts community, encouraging artists from all disciplines to apply for its grants.

When artists are outspoken about their needs, Linker says the ACI always finds a way to help. “We’ve got all of these different disciplines, often working within their own silos,” Linker says. “That’s not a good thing, so we started Artist Industry Nights.” Underwritten by the Willard and Ann Levin Foundation, these evenings are free networking events for all local artists.

The idea is to bring writers, graphic designers, painters, actors, theater people, musicians, and other artists together without an agenda, to meet, talk, and explore possible collaborations. A theater director struggling to create a set design may meet a visual artist who can create exactly what’s needed. “We’re seeing some amazing projects come from this support system,” Linker says. ✂

OVERCOMING A NATIONAL THREAT Linker is buoyed by the national show of public support for the arts when President Trump proposed dissolving the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA)—a move that could have devastated the arts in big cities and small towns across the country.

“So many people stood up and took it to heart,” Linker says.

“Everyone was saying, ‘Are you kidding? The one thing we know uplifts our country, educates us, and makes us better people is the arts. What we invest in the arts is nothing compared to what we get out of it in our communities.’ People get it. They understand that the arts bring such value to our community—and not just in terms of economic impact, but in terms of making communities whole, allowing children to express themselves, do the right thing, and develop empathy. It’s hard to put a value on that, yet people said it was worth this and more.”

The NEA did not go away. “In fact, we saw an increase in the NEA budget that year,” Linker says. “And the same thing happened again this year. That’s really good news, and hopefully, it will continue.”

RESPONDING TO THE ENTIRE ARTS COMMUNITY During her tenure at the ACI, Linker has been responsible for developing the Artist Services Program. When the program began, the ACI held roundtable discussions with artists from all disciplines. One of problems identified was access to 85

MIKE BARCLAY OF

iMOCA A lot of things have changed since the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) was founded in 2001. At the time, contemporary art was almost absent from the local art scene.

At the Simon Youth Academy, iMOCA has facilitated workshops on photography in art history, which culminated in a pop-up show in Simon Malls, featuring autobiographical photographs done by students.

“We helped fill that void, but since then, there’s been a resurgence in contemporary art,” says Mike Barclay, iMOCA’s director of exhibitions.

“We’re really happy with these partnerships, which have given us access to people we might never have met if we hadn’t been involved in the community,” he says.

From the start, iMOCA considered itself a museum without walls, relying on the historic Emelie Building and later the Murphy Building for temporary gallery space and a place to get established. Most recently, it partnered with the Buckingham Companies and Buckingham Foundation to curate CityWay Gallery in The Alexander Hotel.

THIS FALL, IMOCA HOSTS AN ARTIST TALK BY RACHEL HAYES, WHOSE ART IS ON DISPLAY AT THE CITYWAY GALLERY THROUGH DECEMBER. IN NOVEMBER, THEY’RE HOPING TO FACILITATE THEIR FIRST BOOK CLUB, WHICH WILL EXPLORE TEXTILE ART.

A funny thing happened on the way to becoming one of the city’s most visible advocates for contemporary art. Even the most established museums and arts organizations were understanding the urgency of reaching new audiences, especially in underserved neighborhoods. As a newcomer to the Indianapolis arts ecology, iMOCA had limited resources, and its scrappy, boots-on-the-ground mentality was both a necessity and a stroke of genius.

A few years ago, Barclay and Brent Aldrich, director of operations at iMOCA, started working within the Englewood neighborhood as the arts partner in Great Places 2020, hoping to cultivate strategic relationships that could spread enthusiasm for contemporary art. Their efforts paid off in the form of several additional public art projects and programs, including partners such as: •

CAT HEAD PRESS

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INDIANA LANDMARKS

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THE LOCAL INITIATIVE SPORTS CORPORATION (LISC) AND ENGLEWOOD COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION

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SIMON YOUTH ACADEMY

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HOLY CROSS NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATION

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PARAMOUNT SCHOOL OF EXCELLENCE

In the Holy Cross neighborhood, for example, iMOCA spearheaded an art project with ideas drawn from eighth-grade students at Paramount School of Excellence. Students worked with professional designers and business owners to design and paint an outdoor mural. The idea was to offer a meaningful arts experience at a higher level of professionalism than a school art class might provide.

“It was an opportunity to engage a lot of people who wouldn’t normally have a connection with each other, merge different ideas and open people’s minds to new concepts,” Barclay says.

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Some programs happened so organically that Aldrich and Barclay often wondered if they were only doing interim work that would change once iMOCA was more established. The results suggested something more significant. “Doing all these public projects has given us a lot of traction,” Aldrich says.

“And the opportunities just keep coming. Many of them have risen to a level that they may be more primary than we first thought.” iMOCA’s success in building a bigger footprint through community partnerships recently led to a ten-month feasibility study to guide the organization forward and identify unmet needs. One of the study’s insights has implications for future fundraising efforts. While the number of arts organizations in the city has increased, funding is somewhat stagnant. If that remains true, then its inventive, offbeat and mobile approach is a smart use of resources — a canny attribute that any arts organization would be glad to have.

From the outside, it may appear that iMOCA has taken a long time to find its groove. Barclay says there’s a good reason for that. “It takes a while to investigate opportunities, to do your due diligence, and really understand your organization from an inside and outside perspective,” he says.

Having a physical space is still desirable, but moving to a permanent home, which could happen as early as 2019, is unlikely to change iMOCA’s emphasis on programming and community partnerships. “We love gallery exhibitions, and we are still committed to doing some of that, but we’ve definitely realized that it doesn’t have to be the only thing we do,” Aldrich says. iMOCA expects 2019 to be a big year for reaching out to new audiences, launching new programs, and supporting emerging and mid-career artists with opportunities to advance their careers.

A permanent home will be beneficial in some ways, yet not without challenges. “The trick of having a physical space is how to be thoughtful about tying exhibitions and programming together,” Aldrich says. “Education is so important for getting people in a space and engaged, so we want to have a robust programming and education element, and do it in a way that’s accessible and deliberate.” ✂

JOANNA TAFT OF

THE HARRISON CENTER WORDS BY CRYSTAL HAMMON

By her own admission, Joanna Taft has drawn very few boundaries between her personal life and her role as executive director at the Harrison Center. As a result, the organizational philosophy that guides the seventeen-year-old studio center for visual artists seems almost inseparable from the one that drives its founding leader.

A two-word meme may capture it best: relationships matter. You can see evidence of its impact in the steady growth of artists who sell work and have studio space there, and in the organization’s manifold effort to add strength and vibrancy to Indianapolis.

Beginning in 2001 with one gallery and ten artists, the Harrison Center now has thirty-six artists and five galleries.

When an artist lands a space here, they get what Taft calls “wraparound services.” That includes affordable studio and gallery space, exhibit opportunities, paid work, access to art patrons who can buy their work, assistance with getting residencies, and even help finding housing when it’s needed.

Taft says the resident artists are doing well. “Many of them travel to other cities to make new connections for their businesses, or they’re outside their studios doing plein air painting,” she says. “When they aren’t here they aren’t losing opportunities, because we can still sell their work while they’re gone.”

As artists have matured, the organization has evolved with them, offering improved services aimed at deepening art patronage. Last summer, for example, it rented gallery space in Chicago for two months. “It was a grand experiment to show our artists, and to see what kind of relationships we could build there,” Taft says. “It was great to help us develop plans for our next steps.”

Judging from the waiting list of applicants for studio space, the Harrison Center is a coveted place to take an art career to the next level, but it’s not for every artist. The organization values a mix of artists with different levels of experience and various media. It rarely adds a new artist without a previous relationship that has tested an artist’s desire to work as part of a team. “We’re a community service, and we’re not here for ourselves. We’re here for others,” she says.

“We need artists who need other people and who know they need to work together in order for other people to be successful. When we have an open studio event, you may not sell that night, but your next-door neighbor might.”

HOLDING ONTO LOCAL CREATIVE TALENT Taft is proud of the Harrison Center’s influence in Indianapolis, but acknowledges that its progress to this point has not been a straight line upward. Early on, things were moving along according to plan.

Artists were selling work, connecting with established collectors and with new ones who were buying their first pieces of original art.

But one day Taft got a wakeup call from several resident artists. They wanted to move to New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. “I asked ‘Why don’t you like it here?’ and they told me they needed to move to larger cities where there were more art patrons,” she says. Taft was flummoxed by the problem, knowing it would take a long time to develop the kind of serious art patronage they were describing.

In 2018, the Harrison Center started ArtDish, a monthly dinner that allows potential patrons to get acquainted with a featured artist over a meal prepared by a rotating roster of celebrity chefs. Every dinner through the end of 2018 is sold out, and the featured artists are selling work.

Meanwhile, things were changing in the neighborhood surrounding the Harrison Center. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis moved its Herron School of Art and Design from its nearby location to a new on-campus site, leaving three vacant buildings. The school’s absence removed a positive force in the neighborhood and created new problems, such as crime and vandalism. Former mayor Bart Peterson asked Taft to sit on a commission to determine what to do with the school’s former site.

“As often as possible, we need to eat with people,” Taft says. “This is the future — helping our artists develop relationships and inviting people into a rich conversation about art. Our artists feel like a million bucks and people get a better understanding of what we do here, and what the artist’s life is like.”

A lot of ideas were floated, but none of them seemed sustainable, fundable, or exciting enough to get people passionate about Taft’s trifold test for what makes a good project. From the back of the room, she listened quietly, and then raised her hand. “You know, there’s this charter school movement,” she said.

“I don’t know much about it, but what if we honored the art education history of that site by starting a high school designed to grow art patrons — well-rounded citizens who would become our voters, artists, doctors, volunteers, soccer coaches — all the people we need for a well-rounded society?”

Soon afterward, efforts began to convert the site into Herron High School, an award-winning school that prepares students for success in college and in life. Taft stayed involved in the project, although she admits that she was often a little scared. “I learned that you can get a lot of work done when you’re afraid,” she says.

BEYOND FOUR WALLS Taft’s involvement in that transition also taught a valuable lesson about looking beyond the four walls of the Harrison Center. “In the beginning we were just programming in our building, and then we began to look out in the community at challenges and come up with distinctively cultural solutions.”

One of those challenges has been the cultural and economic gentrification of the city as new people seek housing in old neighborhoods. Taft says the organization’s past work has revitalized neighborhoods, but its current and future work is much more vested in honoring the past, elevating the stories of long-term residents and businesses, and being inclusive to people who’ve been part of these neighborhoods for decades.

“We believe that the arts can be used for healing, whether it’s for people who are lonely and left out, or for neighborhoods that are forgotten or going through change,” Taft says. “That’s the focus of our neighborhood work. We’re not here to make our neighborhood look good, even though some of our work may do that.

We’re here to elevate stories and to bring people of all backgrounds together to be known and loved, and in our hearts, all of us want to be known and loved.” ✂

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DESIGN BY DANIEL VUYOVICH WORDS BY CHARLIE HOPPER

DESIGNERS // MODELS MIKEAL NEON // WILL (INDEPENDENT) MONIQUE BURTS // DAJAIE (INDEPENDENT) BECK JONES // PREET (LMODELZ MODEL MANAGEMENT) BETH BENNETT // AUJA (SEEN MODEL MANAGEMENT) YEMISI SANNI // MARIE (LMODELZ MODEL MANAGEMENT)Â

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MAKEUP BY KATHY MOBERLY

PHOTOGRAPHY BY POLINA OSHEROV

HAIR BY PHILIP SALMON

STYLE BY JULIE VALENTINE

DESIGNER BETH BENNETT FOUND MEN’S CLOTHING—OSCAR DE LA RENTA SUIT, ALAN FLUSSER TROUSERS—AND CREATED A WOMEN’S OUTFIT, INCLUDING A BANDEAU OF PATTERNED SILK NECKTIES.

Painter Benny Sanders found a green canvas jacket at Goodwill for his project.

Since he paints, naturally, he treated the jacket as an artist would any canvas.

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“I REALLY LIKE THE HUNT,” SAYS BETH BENNETT. SHE SMILES. “I DO HAVE AN EYE.” PATTERN partnered with Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana, to ask designers like Bennett to visit a Goodwill store, and then use whatever they found to create a new garment. Fashion reborn.

Clothing re-imagined. Goodwill merchandise transformed by professional design sensibilities.

“Sounded fun,” says Bennett.

It was. Each designer created a distinct, fashionable statement on the art of transformation.

BLURRING THE LINES Because what the designers created is fashion, but also textile art, we spoke to Newfields, a place for nature and the arts described as “revolutionary”

by The New York Times. “People, I think, in this state don’t like to brag,” says Dr. Charles L. Venable, the Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of Newfields.

“We’re as big as MoMA in New York, plus 152 acres of park and botanical gardens.”

Also, as one of the nation’s oldest, most highly regarded encyclopedic museums — meaning it has examples of all kinds of art — Newfields curates more than 7,000 textiles.

INSPIRATION IN THE GALLERY “I go to Newfields a lot. If I get stuck mentally, I’ll go and take notes,” says painter Benny Sanders, who transformed a canvas jacket from Goodwill into wearable portraiture.

“It’s really mobile pop art, art that can be worn,” says Amanda Holden, conservator of textiles at Newfields, comparing Sanders’ work to one of her favorite pieces in Newfield’s collection — a Sprouse designer jacket with nightclub-friendly dayglow Mona Lisa face painted by Stefano Castronovo. “It’s cross-disciplinary, really, involving both textiles and painting. I love it.”

DESIGNERS WITHOUT BORDERS “I went into Goodwill open, knowing I could find anything — or, nothing,” laughs Yemi Sanni, who infuses Nigerian Yoruba culture and history into women’s clothing.

Holden recognized the Nigerian influence in Sanni’s piece, and also saw similarities with radical works in Newfields’ collection from Japan and Belgium.

“It’s part of a deconstructionist mindset — seams unfinished, found materials, taking apart and putting back together materials.”

“Taking the seams apart is very tedious,” says Sanni.

“But it’s the prelude to my favorite part, which is knowing that soon I can cut it, and make what I envision.”

Holden points to a kilt hemmed into a skirt. “Now, Beth Bennett’s piece, transforming men’s clothes to women’s wear, that reminds me of Vivienne Westwood and our Harris Tweed collection. Westwood is considered a punk icon,” Holden says. Then she smiles at a mannequin in wild attire. “Then there’s this artwork by Nick Cave.”

AN EXPERIMENTAL INSTINCT The 2013 art piece Soundsuit by artist Nick Cave is a marvel of mixed media — in addition to fabric, there are ceramic birds, metal flowers and a gramophone horn. With that in mind, let’s examine the list of Goodwill purchases made by Beck Jones, a freshman at the prestigious Parsons School of Design in New York: green jacket, wedding dress, 1920s blue dress, fern flower pot, flowers, turquoise nightgown, two green tablecloths, two prom dresses (one red, one blue), two velvet dresses (blue, black), a magenta lace dress, high heels and a fan.

“It just happened. I stepped into a Goodwill store to see what I’d find. Right away I held up the green coat and said, ‘Here’s what we’re doing,’” says Jones.

“Things change and evolve, and that’s what I love.

It’s all part of the creative process… When I started, Goodwill was where I went to get things, what I had access to. But I still love working from pre-used material. It already has a story, that helps you tell your story.”

And in every good story, the protagonist changes somehow between the introduction and the ending — a transformation, so often reflected in fashion and art.

PAINTER BENNY SANDERS FOUND A GREEN CANVAS JACKET AT GOODWILL FOR HIS PROJECT. SINCE HE PAINTS, NATURALLY, HE TREATED THE JACKET AS AN ARTIST WOULD ANY CANVAS.

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DESIGNER YEMI SANNI IS KNOWN FOR THE BEAUTIFUL PRINTS SHE OFTEN USES IN HER DESIGNS. “I WENT INTO GOODWILL WITH AN OPEN MIND,” SAYS SANNI. “I JUST GO WITH THE FLOW, MIX AND MATCH.”

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DESIGNER MIKE NEON GOES TO GOODWILL OUTLET STORES A LOT. “I GO FIND THINGS, THEN ADD TO THEM,” HE SAYS, “TAKING SOMETHING THAT’S ALREADY BEEN OUT IN THE WORLD THEN ‘REMIXING’ IT, BASICALLY.” 93

HERE’S AN EXCERPT FROM A CONVERSATION

BETWEEN DR. CHARLES L. VENABLE, MELVIN & BREN SIMON DIRECTOR AND CEO, NEWFIELDS, AND KENT A. KRAMER, CEO, GOODWILL OF CENTRAL & SOUTHERN INDIANA. VENABLE: “We both oversee very large, complicated organizations. I think we’re similar in the sense that people don’t realize how much these organizations do.”

KRAMER: “People often say, “I had no idea,” when I tell them everything Goodwill does. I imagine that happens to you, too..”

VENABLE: “Yes. Newfields has been known to the world as an art museum, but we do all this other stuff, gardens and parks and events... I know you as a place I give a donation to and go shopping...”

KRAMER: “...but there’s more to it, yes. Since 1930, we’ve been employing people in Indiana. It used to be you could find a job and sustain your family, even if you didn’t have a high school diploma. That’s changed, so we started looking at education as the main pathway to getting people sustainable jobs.”

VENABLE: “Telling our stories clearly and believably to a wider audience is key to our future, for sure…”

KRAMER: “People still don’t know, but we’re helping people reach their potential through education—we run fifteen high schools — and also through helping first-time moms stay healthy. And then we ourselves employ over 4,000, over half with some kind of barrier to employment.”

Both men lead nonprofits that transform lives. Though their missions are very different, they face many of the same challenges, getting out the word about all the good their organizations do. View this interview and more about the Goodwill designer challenge at goodwillindy.org

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TWO NONPROFIT LEADERS FIND COMMON GROUND

“I LOVE HISTORY AND TOOK INSPIRATION FROM MARIE ANTOINETTE,” SAYS DESIGNER BECK JONES, REFERRING TO THE LAYERS OF EXTRAVAGANT, EVEN EXPERIMENTAL CHOICES HE MADE THAT ARE REMINISCENT OF THE FRENCH COURT IN MARIE’S DAY, WHEN SHE SHOCKED THE WORLD BY REVEALING HER ANKLES. 95

“GOODWILL ALWAYS HAS

SO MANY GREAT GEMS TO CHOOSE FROM.” – MONIQUE BURTS, DESIGNER

FROM THREE DIFFERENT DRESSES FOUND AT GOODWILL, DESIGNER MONIQUE BURTS CREATED THIS EVENING GOWN. BUT THAT WASN’T HER PLAN GOING IN. “I FEEL LIKE I WAS KIND OF INSPIRED ONCE I WAS THERE,” SHE SAYS, “BECAUSE IT MADE ME CHANGE EVERYTHING COMPLETELY.”

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HAT, KILLSTAR JUMPER DRESS, KURO, HOODEDWEPT

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MODEL: HANNAH BETTIS (SEEN MODEL MANAGEMENT) • LAYOUT DESIGN BY STACEY MCCLURE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WIL FOSTER • STYLE BY NICK STARR • MAKEUP BY GAIL TANKSLEY • HAIR BY TERRA NEAL

DA R K SHOT I N TH E

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DRESS, THE LOFT

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MISSIONARY DRESS, KILLSTAR

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ROMPER, SUGAR & BRUNO

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collective soul

THE ARTIST WHO SAVES STORIES OF THE PAST

“I’m the guy at the parties that will make friends with the dog, or especially the cat,” says self-professed introvert Kipp Normand. “I feel like that’s the real badge of honor, because cats are excellent judges of character; they don’t accept affection from strangers easily.”

WORDS BY J AMI STALL PORTRAIT OF ARTIST BY DREW ENDICOTT DESIGN BY R YAN HUNLEY

Charismatic and confident seem to more aptly describe this storytelling history buff who led the “Oddities Walking Tour” of Downtown Indy recently. A resident artist at the Harrison Center for the past fourteen years, Normand packs the house and affably works the crowd when he hosts openings. And his extensive social media followers, friends, and colleagues would likely assume that he jests when calling himself “retiring.”

But the cats, they know that’s his public persona. Theirs remains the best perspective of this softspoken, quirky gent. They know he feels most comfortable in the company of his feline friend, Lamont, while watching DVDs of old French flicks from the library. “I have an addiction to the Criterion Collection and like anything with subtitles,” he admits.

The cats, they also understand his joy of watching the army of little brown sparrows and pair of cardinals he feeds just before each dawn. “Sometimes, I’ll get a visit from the celebrity blue jay,” he says.

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The Universal Anthology exhibit / image by Michael Godek

A complex human collage formed of great intellect, warmth, wit, melancholy, and

Normand continues, “I think beautiful things of this world are those that are hard

reverence, Normand is not unlike the fascinating art he creates.

to find and harder to see … like the idea of some secretive library somewhere

His work appears throughout Indianapolis and in collections in Detroit, Chicago, New York, and London. His academic pedigree includes a master’s in American Studies from the University of Notre Dame. Fueling an obsession with U.S.

person who ferociously collected every box top forever. I find things like this sweet and so beautiful.”

history, he possesses almost encyclopedic knowledge of this country’s past, as

Conversely, he feels deeply saddened by the pervasive ugliness in this country

well as this city’s storied beginnings. (Highlights of Indy’s grand and scandalous

since the 2016 election. Normand says he tries to maintain a Trump-free space,

history is the subject of his featured exhibit at the Harrison Center this month.)

but it’s nearly impossible, which he believes is by design. Normand doesn’t let

Normand indulges his insatiable passion to “collect the accumulated cast-

the despair seep into his pieces, but it does affect his productivity.

off material of society to retell its history.” The results are his 2-D mixed media

“I always have all kinds of ideas in my head, and though they can be the fuel for

installations that often chronicle the life of found objects and their lost or false

art-making, the physical act of making something is necessary,” he continues.

narratives.

“When I get depressed, I find myself less willing to go to the studio.”

“I use old furniture, material, and bits of advertising and images from magazines

In his dark moments, the artist wonders if his appeal for damaged and

or very old books to sort of rebuild the museum of my imagination,” he says.

discarded objects is actually cathartic for living under a broken political

“And that’s a wild and strange place.”

infrastructure and within a neglected environment.

Normand incorporates vintage material in most all of his pieces, but he

“The whole idea of this wonderful planet — this great museum of our world — is

eschews the use of priceless keepsakes or antiques. “I like things that are old and crumbly and falling to bits, because I can paint over them or glue them.

But if it’s something that’s pristine and really beautiful or valuable, I won’t desecrate that object,” he says. “I have a real problem with collage artists that

crumbling and fading even while we’re producing it,” Normand says. “So maybe accessing this idea of loss and brokenness is my way of preparing myself for the eventual forfeiture of the Earth itself.”

will take a gorgeous 19th-century book that’s in good condition and rip out the

This past May, before Indianapolis International Airport announced Delta Airlines’

illustrations.”

new nonstop flight from Indy to Paris, it turned to the folks at the Arts Council

Often he juxtaposes artifacts or images that could be considered sentimental or cloying with those that are shocking or even violent. The effect, he says, strikes a note with people. “Similarly, I think the beauty of nature is especially fantastic, but it can be terrifying and very cruel,” he adds.

Objects conveying loss and dissolution often find a place within his assemblages.

“I’m drawn to broken, decayed, and lost things. I see beauty in all of that.”

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that’s filled with the lost collection of some ancient scholar, or just an average

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of Indianapolis. They turned to Normand. He obliged with his When Lindbergh

Reached Paris exhibit. It featured vintage luggage, with tattered travel stickers, a steamer trunk, an elaborate old birdcage, umbrella, tennis racket, picnic basket, ventriloquist’s puppet, and an artful jumble of other 1920s travel memorabilia.

Whether Normand designs works of his own inspiration or for commissions, he says his heart must be in it, or it’s pointless to begin. “I can’t fake it if I’m not into it.” He views his body of work as a huge collection of museum artifacts for study,

People Worked Here Once

“Sometimes those stories are things put together from the provenance of an object, or they can be things that I imagined; or they’re cobbled-together bits of facts and imagining,” he says.

He believes most history is subjective based on whoever tells it, citing the skewed versions of American history that have been taught in schools for

Fountain Square 1950

and enjoys looking for stories in the discarded objects he finds.

decades. He says that whether the accounts were altered by blatant omission of the truth or glossed-over versions of it, certain acts of the American experience deserve to be corrected.

“I guess maybe I see that as partly a role that I might take as sort of an artist historian — to tell those stories that have been lost, overlooked, or perhaps repressed,” he says.

Normand titled his current exhibit at the Harrison Center “Historicity.” The show poses the questions: What do we believe about ourselves, about our history, and about our future as a city? His featured works address true and fictional stories, myths (and their origins), and various perceptions of the Circle City.

“A lot of people think of Indianapolis as such a conservative place where nothing ever happens, but all you have to do is peel back the covers a bit and look at some of the history books to learn otherwise,” he says. “I share some of the good, the bad, and the ugly. For example, in the late 19th and early 20th century, this was basically the hotbed of radical thought, politically.”

Normand relishes collections of ephemera about the city — old maps and tales about long-vanished places. He perks up just talking about his new pieces.

“It’s a really fun show, fun for me — but I’m especially nerdy, so I find it really interesting,” Normand says. “Besides, a sense of humor is an essential aspect to the work I do.”

The cats, they would agree. ✂

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WAYWITH WORDS

A

“MY WORK IS ABOUT AMERICA AND THE LIMITS IT PLACES ON HUMAN FREEDOM.” WORDS BY SHAUTA MARSH DESIGN BY LINDSAY HADLEY

Carl Pope knows us. And he knows things we don’t even know about ourselves. Much of his work as an artist addresses race and its challenges for people across our nation. He’s optimistic but not ignorant about our future.

“My work is about America and the limits it places on human freedom. Race is involved because Black lives reveal the truth about freedom and democracy in this country,” says Pope. An Indianapolis native, he has worked here with studio photography and, later, text-based conceptual art and writing since the 1990s.

Institutions around the world purchase his work. Or, like The Whitney Museum of Art in New York, bring back into view past works of his that they collected. In the current political and cultural climate, Pope has become a virtuoso. Just recently, the Cleveland Museum of Art acquired 108 pieces from his letterpress poster installation The Bad Air Smelled of Roses.

“It is a hypnotic suggestion to its readers to venture into Blackness to willingly undergo a rebirth, a metamorphosis, a radical shift into new ways of seeing the world — to uncover connections that are simply overlooked or shrouded by limits placed on one’s ability to look, think, and imagine in increasingly expansive ways,” Pope says of the work. “Or to glimpse an image of something previously unseen, unrecognizable. And after we come to know and understand what is before us, we then realize that is only an aspect of ourselves.”

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DESIGN GAL TELLS

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A NEW STOR

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LLERY

RY

THE NATION’S LARGEST COLLECTION OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY DESIGN IS REIMAGINED WORDS BY SHELLEY SELIM + PHOTOGRAPHY BY TAD FRUITS + DESIGN BY CLAIRE BOWLES

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This thematic section is called Work in Process, and focuses on the processes and techniques designers use to make objects. Paul Jenkins created the painting hanging the back of the platform (Phenomena Danger - Pass Left, 1964) by slowly pouring thin veils of non-drying paint over a tilted canvas, letting the paint course on its own with only slight guidance from his brush. Similarly, Gaetano Pesce created his Sansone I table — on display in front of the painting — by pouring different colors of liquid resin into a table-shaped mold and allowing the colors to settle naturally.

The Channeling Histories section features Alessandro Mendini’s Poltrona di Proust (1978). It remains one of the museum’s most beloved objects. Mendini created the chair by projecting an image of a pointillist painting by Paul Signac over the chair and carefully mimicking its short, saturated brushstrokes over the entire surface.

The IMA owns a spectacular collection of pointillist paintings, so it made sense to place one in dialogue with the chair. This one, Garden at La Hune, St. Tropez (1909), was painted by Signac’s long-term partner, Jeanne Selmersheim-Desgrange. It depicts a view of his home in St. Tropez.

This platform focuses on color, and its sometimes overlooked but integral role in design. The pedestal chair designed by Eero Saarinen in 1956 is one of a set of six that live at Newfields’s famed Miller House and Garden (1953–1957) in Columbus, Indiana. The Miller House is a certifiable midcentury masterpiece, and I wanted its presence felt more in the Design Gallery. Opposite of the pedestal chair is a virtual reality viewing station, where guests can take a virtual tour through the home. The tour focuses on interior designer Alexander Girard’s masterful use of color in the living and dining rooms. The tour ends by transporting visitors into the dollhouse that stands behind the home’s famous conversation pit.

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At just over 11,000 square feet, the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields has the largest permanent collection gallery devoted to modern and contemporary design of any museum in the country. When I first started working at the IMA just over two years ago, my first order of business was to reinstall it — the museum had already received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to add more interpretive elements (videos, interactive features, etc.) based on feedback from visitor interviews. The goal was to help guests feel more comfortable in the space, want to stay there longer, and understand the three “movements” — modernism, postmodernism, and expressionism — that defined the objects in the gallery’s initial installation.

In a textbook move for any new curator, I decided I wanted to slightly divert from the plan and go in a curatorial direction that interested me more. In this case, grouping the objects thematically. Instead of the division into “isms” you’ll see in many art museums, the refreshed gallery now groups objects together related to inspiration — nature, history, color, function. It focuses on innovation in the design process itself, whether it is unorthodox materials or cutting-edge modes of production. This also opened up for me the opportunity to bring in other objects from the museum’s diverse holdings, including works from our Japanese, Chinese, Native American, African, and contemporary art departments.

And there is a wealth of new interactive features for guests to engage with, including an 800-square-foot Design Lab activity space, and Newfields’ first foray into virtual reality. All of this was achieved through intense collaboration with my incredible colleagues at the museum, particularly Jen Mayhill, Assistant Director of Interpretation. She spearheaded the addition of all the interactive elements in the space.

The long entryway into the Design Gallery has been converted into a timeline of objects spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Floor-to-ceiling images of interiors from corresponding time periods to provide more historical context. I love how the whiplash curve of the metal ornamentation on the Louis Majorelle cabinet (about 1900) in the foreground is echoed in the elaborate wall decoration in Victor Horta’s Hotel Tassel (1893–1894) behind it.

The Square, Circle, Triangle theme is inspired by Italian designer Bruno Munari’s famous texts of the same name. It focuses on elemental geometry, and how the reduction and simplification of form helps to emphasize line, volume, proportion, and the interplay of positive and negative space. Hella Jongerius’s Polder sofa (2005) takes its name from polders, which are tracts of land below sea level that have been drained and secured by levees.

Jongerius’s native Netherlands is famous for its polders that cover about a third of the country’s total terrain. Jongerius borrowed the sweeping, linear geometry from this human-made landscape to create this sofa’s strong horizontal emphasis, and it uses subtle nuances in color to accentuate the blocks of cushions that compose the piece.

The Design Lab is an opportunity for visitors to explore the design process through four stages: Brainstorming, Rendering, Prototyping, and Reviewing.

Our rendering app was designed in-house, and allows users to design a chair, lamp, or teapot. They can then email themselves a link to the file and have a model of it 3-D printed by a list of vendors we’ve provided. We’ll also be offering more in-depth classes and workshops in the space where participants will be able to have their designs 3-D printed right in the lab.

The Reviewing portion of the Design Lab features three chairs that are also on display in the gallery. Visitors can sit on them and rate them according to style and comfort. ✂

nature, history, color, function.

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QA ALEC STEWART. DIGITAL COWBOY. GALLERY COFOUNDER. BRINGING EMERGING CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS TO INDY’S EAST SIDE. WORDS + PHOTOGRAPH BY POLINA OSHEROV

Alec Stewart is a twenty-four-year-old graphic designer and self-proclaimed “digital cowboy” who makes his home between Indianapolis and Dallas. He’s also the cofounder, along with Ian Kime, of Kime Contemporary, a gallery with a focus on emerging contemporary artists that opened on Indy’s east side earlier this year. The gallery has been presenting shows unique to the Indianapolis market, bringing in artists from outside the state, as well as working with local talent.

Polina Osherov: How did you discover an interest in art?

Alec Stewart: My artistic career began when I started

being seriously taught in college at the Rhode Island School of Design. Sure, I had drawn since an early age, all the way through high school at Brebeuf Jesuit, but I would describe the art I made at that time as more of a hobby-based coping mechanism. Much of what I learned technique - and theory - wise was self-discovered through experimentation and trial and error.

PO: How did you come to be involved with Kime Contemporary?

It was at Brebeuf Jesuit that I first met Ian Kime, the founder of Kime Contemporary. After I had graduated college at RISD, Ian and I reconnected and decided to open a gallery together on a whim. Ian had the idea of Kime Contemporary gestating for a while beforehand, and I became the catalyst for its eventual reality.

PO: What is Kime’s core philosophy for how it selects which artists to show?

PO: What feedback have you gotten to the types of shows you’ve brought to Indy?

AS: Since its opening in January of this year, Kime has strived to show young talent from not just Indianapolis, but across the nation. Through partnerships in Dallas and peer connections throughout the Midwest and beyond, we have been able to show up-and-comers for a variety of events, including Collector’s Night and First Fridays. We have aspired to be the space that serves as a stepping-stone for young, skilled artists who may not have the CVs to show in more established spaces, but definitely have the caliber of work that needs to be recognized and shown. We pride ourselves on a community-oriented approach and the DIY ethos that comes with that.

AS: “Edgy” is the most common descriptor that I hear.

PO: There is a definite increase in artist-run galleries in Indianapolis, to what do you attribute this, and do you think it’s just a passing fad?

AS: There are many factors for the upswing of artist-run galleries in Indianapolis. One of the key factors in the disenfranchisment of younger artists in institutional spaces. Many established galleries in Indianapolis only want to work with artists that already have a reputation.

The artist-run galleries work as a deinstitutionalizing agent that allows for a greater range of voices to be heard and seen. It also allows for more risks to be taken.

I cannot predict the future, but I sincerely hope that the artist-run galleries and spaces continue to grow and thrive.

PO: What’s in store for Kime in 2019?

AS: Kime is looking forward to presenting smaller popups around Indianapolis and beyond. We hope to go international with a potential pop-up in Warsaw, Poland.

We don’t want to be tied to our brick and mortar location, and we are excited to tackle new spaces with sitespecific events.

PO: Is there anything else you want our readers to know about Kime and you?

AS: Kime can be reached through our Facebook page or Instagram (@kime_contemporary), and my own personal artwork can be viewed on Instagram at @alexander_ steward. ✂

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THE HOW OF WHERE Author Cara Courage and Jim Walker discuss Placemaking

Tube Factory Artspace in Garfield Park

Placemaking place • mak • ing {plās mā kiNG} verb 1. An approach that makes public spaces comfortable, inviting, and fun for people In 2013 Jim Walker and Cara Courage happened to sit next to each other at a Project for Public Spaces conference in Detroit. Courage was visiting from England as part of her PhD thesis research. A well-known fixture in Indy, Walker, had been working in placemaking via Big Car Collaborative for a decade. He was there to learn and share about the artist-led nonprofit’s work. Walker and Courage hit it off,

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and she soon decided to visit Indianapolis for a summer as a “thinker in residence.”

Courage later included observations of Big Car — including Spark Monument Circle — in her first book, Arts in Place: The Arts, the Urban and Social Practice published in 2017. Since then, she co-edited another book just out from Routledge — Creative Placemaking: Research, Theory and Practice — that includes a chapter written by Walker with his partner and Big Car curator, Shauta Marsh.

Courage now heads the Tate Exchange, spaces dedicated to art and the role of art in society at the Tate Modern museum of art in London. And Walker continues to lead Big Car’s staff of 15 artists on projects that include Tube Factory artspace; the FM radio station, WQRT; artist residency housing; and placemaking projects at City Market, Indy Parks, the Indiana State Fair, Lockerbie, the former GM stamping plant, and Electric Works at the former General Electric campus in Fort Wayne.

Walker and Courage recently talked again via Skype.

Here’s a bit of their conversation: CARA COURAGE: I see placemaking as always about putting the community front and center with making decisions about what a place looks like and how it functions. But I’ve also worked with developers who think placemaking is a way to put a salvo over massive social tension, you know, gentrification and social upheaval and generating nice, shiny photographs that they can put in their corporate reports. There’s some friction, isn’t there, around what they’re saying and what it really is?

JIM WALKER: “Making” sounds like a hands-on, personal thing. You make a meal. You don’t build a meal. Places that look good but don’t usually have people in them, that’s placebuilding. The making piece can still happen later. But placemaking is really where you design in

social aspects, opportunities for connections between people — the kind of messy stuff that often gets left out in placebuilding. It’s way harder work. And you can’t cut and paste that from another project. It has to be specific to that community and physical location. It takes programming the space so things happen there. So it’s not a very financially easy thing to do because you can’t just keep on reproducing these things in other locations like you can cut and paste plazas with benches and fountains and plop in art.

You find all kinds of plazas and parks that that look the same from place to place. But the way a community uses spaces will be very different from place to place. Still, designers expect everybody to adapt to their design.

It’s this modernist idea that the person designing and building these things is like a god, and all of us should do whatever they design for us to do. Like go way out of our way to this door, sit on a stone, melt in the sun. The chairs are going to be super heavy and hot. Too bad.

simple approach. The tools, the mechanisms, the models of what makes placemaking is not rocket science. But planners and policy makers sometimes have a real fear of giving up their control and are not trusting of the public. The public is this other thing, over there, that don’t know anything about place or about design. That’s something I certainly saw with what you were doing in Big Car in Indianapolis. It is flipping that table — who’s around a table of development — and shifting that and getting other people’s voices in it.

CC: One of my favorite things to see is a desire line.

That patch of grass that people have just walked over because that’s the quickest way, that’s the way they want to go. They’re not going to go on that path that takes them out of their way to get to where they want to go, that the landscape architect has put in. That always makes me so happy when I see those, because it’s a minor act of revolution against that kind of godlike presence of the architect. And that, for me, is also something which the agency, the power of placemaking to actually shift that dynamic in the public realm. When that’s done right, well that’s the thing that keeps me going back to placemaking. That’s the kind of lure of it for me when I see it doing its job really properly. Placemaking is interested in what people do in place, and why they do it, and how they do it. That kind of old-style urban design just doesn’t do that. The human is always factored out of that building or that street, and placemaking puts that back in.

CC: I sometimes say: “How did I get here?” I feel really privileged to have this role at the Tate Exchange because, every day there, we’re bringing in organizations external to the Tate. And they’re coming with their communities, their issues. We have a whole floor of part of the Tate Modern building. They come in and they create their community in there. They come and tell their story. They talk to the public.

The public tells their story back, and that’s a really, really powerful thing. We are completely shifting the perceived authority in the art world of who the artist is and how art is made and where it’s made.

We have a free tea station there. That’s one of the most important things in the room. They might sit down there, rest their feet after walking around Tate Modern for hours and hours and hours, and then they’ll start chatting to somebody. Or they’ll be intrigued, and they’ll go over to somebody and say, “What are you doing, and why are you doing it?” Then a couple of hours later, they’ll have come out and it’d have been part of creating a big, massive sculpture out of cardboard boxes or they would converse with somebody from a completely different sort of demographic than them, or they would have conversed with. An older person might have had a really engaged conversation with a younger person about body image, for example.

JW: It’s important to include everybody in the process.

When you can give people the opportunity to be part of what’s going to affect their lives, there’s a real investment in the community. So everyone can have some license and input and ownership of public life.

Supporting better private life for people is really hard.

The public life is hard, too, but if you’re doing it anyway, why not do it in a way that gives people more of what they want and allows them to have some say? Many of us are losing a lot of control in our work lives, and in that part of society where people used to just be able to count on a higher paying job. So there’s lots more people struggling in that way. How to solve that problem is huge, and everybody should be involved in thinking about that.

But other parts of life are kind of eroding, too, like social connections between people.

CC: You said the word control there. And that also makes me think actually what placemaking does is a very

JW: Right. The idea is having anybody be able to express themselves, and be creative, and get involved, and be part of projects where they’re in the mix, where they’re an active part of art. And not only visually experiencing it, or listening to it, or feeling it — but they’re engaged in participating. It changes the dynamic of the audience.

It’s interesting that’s where you’ve landed, too, in your work with what you’re doing at the Tate.

what this thing called creative placemaking is, and then reconstruct it from different viewpoints. I think placemaking is really beautifully placed to affect the theory of it, because it’s a practice. You do it. You’re doing it all the time. And that’s what the theory should be responding to, not the other way around.

JW: You’ve been to many places, what is it about Indianapolis that draws you here to see us?

CC: I absolutely love it. Indy’s got a real place in my heart.

When I first visited, I had no expectation really of what Indianapolis might be like. When I got there, I found a place that was so intoxicating in a way — and I don’t just mean Fountain Square’s got really good beer, which it does have — but you know, people who really care and are proud of where they’re from. They’re committed and dedicated to Indianapolis as a place — and to the people.

I saw really exciting work happening there, and I met a great community of people. And, when that happens, it’s an amazing thing. ✂

JW: You’ve also been writing and editing along the way too. Let’s talk about the new book.

CC: I’d hope that anybody doing this kind of work could pick this book up and find something in there for them. That’s why we wanted to get people who are doing the work, to get their voice into it.

So there’s you and your chapter and other artist’s voices coming into the book as well. And there’s other community voices that are coming into it too.

The whole purpose of the book is to deconstruct

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QA BENNY SANDERS. ARTIST. INSTAGRAM INFLUENCER.

HARNESSING SOCIAL MEDIA TO GROW CONTEMPORARY LANDSCAPE ARTS COMMUNITY WORDS BY POLINA OSHEROV PHOTOGRAPH BY CHANTAL SALADE

“This is a seven, a six, a one.” You start freaking out your friends. Walking down the street with someone, you’re like, “Look at the shadow. That’s the purplest thing I’ve ever seen.”

They’re like, “Shadows aren’t purple, they’re black.” And you’re like, “You don’t see that? What is wrong with you?”

PO: What advice do you have for artists who are wanting to do art full time?

BS: The cost of living in Indianapolis helps to make the leap to being a full-time artist, but I still work fourteen, fifteen hours a day on my art and not just painting. I don’t sit in my PO: Tell me about the show that you’re working on for next basement, paint something, put it on the Internet, and then year. And tell me about the @landscapetoday Instagram hope that I can make a living doing just that. You have to go account that you started. out. You have to be social. I’ll go hang out in a bar. Someone sits down next to me. I say, “Hey, what’s up? What do you BS: I started @landscapetoday in October 2017. It’s a curatorial do for a living?” And they tell me whatever boring job they account where I share paintings that I like. This account is have, and then I tell them I’m a painter, and they’re blown similar to @BlueReview or @PaintGuide. I watched @PaintGuide away. They’re like, “I can’t believe someone’s making a living grow their following, and when they got really popular, they painting.” But it’s not that far-fetched. The best thing for me started throwing these big shows. So when @landscapetoday as a full-time artist has been to be around other full-time PO: What is plein air painting? hit 10,000 followers earlier this year, I decided that I would artists and just having faith that it’ll work out if I put in the reach out to some of the painters I’d connected with work ‘cause I see other people doing it. That said, I’m not BS: Plein air painting is basically painting outside on location. via Instagram and invite them to be a part of a show in afraid to fail and go back to a part-time job. I know that’s A French word, it translates to “in open air.” It was popularized Indianapolis. And what’s been great is how responsive always a possibility, but I also see people making a very in the 1850s with the invention of tube paint, when they could everyone has been. From top-tier, well-known artists down comfortable living from art, and that really inspires me to keep get paint inside of tubes and you could take it easily with you to people that no one’s heard about but who are doing some pushing.. everywhere. amazing work, everyone has been very receptive.

PO: Back to that communal thing. I see all the plein air guys PO: What do you get out of it, because it doesn’t seem like the PO: Do you have a name for this event and a venue? hang out together. If there is any competitiveness among you easiest way to “do” art? all, I don’t see it. It’s like everyone is rooting for one another.

BS: The event will be called Landscape Today, and I have BS: Definitely not the easiest. It can be a big challenge to secured the Harrison Center for next September. It’ll be BS: It’s really incredible how little jealousy there is, if any. bring all your stuff outside, and battle with the elements. The about forty different painters. The event will also coincide Everyone’s always so excited for you to make a sale. And satisfaction for me is creating a small window of time for me with Quest for the West, which is one of the largest western they’re always excited to share their collectors with you. to complete a finished, polished product and also just the landscape painting shows and will be held at the Eiteljorg daily learning. There are things that I’m doing now that in two around the same time. A really great potential crossover in PO: So what’s next for you and for @landscapetoday? weeks I’ll realize I’m doing all wrong. It’s all rooted in learning terms of patrons and collectors. how light works. So, even if I took a photo of a person’s face BS: I’m going to keep painting! As far as @landscapetoday, and made a portrait from it, I can make it more lifelike or give PO: What’s the price range of the paintings? at its present rate of growth, I predict that the account will it a certain lighting effect based on what I know about how have around 70,000 followers by the show in September light works from plein air painting. A lot of people will paint BS: I’m curating a group of paintings and sketches that would 2019. Once it gets to 100,000 followers I can start using it as strictly from photographs and it can be cool, but it will read as sell in the $200 to $5000 range. That’s a good price range for a platform to advertise and to build brand partnerships. I’d photographic. And if you want to get something more lifelike, people who buy art in Indianapolis on the regular. love to do another show in September 2020. And then travel you really need to train yourself to see a certain way. it, probably, to two other locations. And then, beyond that I’d PO: The whole “industry” of plein air seems very communal, do love to put out a biannual publication of landscape paintings PO: You start looking at objects in a way that others don’t? you think that’s true? too. ✂ Benny Sanders fell into the Indianapolis arts scene about two years ago and has quickly made a name for himself, hosting multiple shows and collecting loyal fans and patrons in the interim. An affable former rock-and-roll musician with a printmaking degree from Ball State, Sanders also worked as a “coffee specialist” at Bluebeard, and a barista at Coat Check Coffee. Now a full-time artist with a studio in the Harrison Center, Sanders is harnessing the power of social media to grow a painting community of plein air artists in Indianapolis and beyond.

BS: Exactly. What’s funny is when I see something someone’s wearing and I’m like, “phthalo blue!” You literally start to see everything in oil colors and thinking about what colors you need to mix to get to a particular shade.

PO: I hear squinting is a big thing in plein air. What’s that about?

BS: Yes! When you squint it knocks all the values down and simplifies everything. So, you end up walking around, and using a value scale of one to nine on everything. You’re like,

BS: Yeah! There’s a lot of networking that’s happened as a result of the Instagram account. We had three painters come in for the art show that Justin Vining put together at Clowes.

Sean Frieger from Grand Rapids, Tad Rets from upstate New York, and then Dennis Doyle from Massachusetts. And they came and painted here in Indy with us and loved it. The common sentiment was, “This is crazy that you have this scene of painters. Love it. Wish I could stay here forever.” We showed them a good time.

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EXPOSING

INDY’S ATTITUDE about NUDES WORDS BY DAN GROSSMAN, NUVO ARTS EDITOR DESIGN BY LINDSAY HADLEY ART BY TRAVIS LITTLE

Since Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, (and likely long before that) the human form has been celebrated by brushstrokes, yet censored with strategic locks of hair or well-positioned fig leaves. In the 1480s such prudishness could be expected, but should bodies in the buff offend patrons of the arts these days — and in this city?

Travis Little can tell you a lot about the subject.

A few years ago at a Annual Stutz Open House, the forty-seven-year-old figurative painter learned that Midwestern sensibilities and conservative critics are alive and well in Indy’s art scene. An irate patron walked up to him in his studio and called him a pedophile. Little had on display a painting which depicted a slim, athletic woman in the nude. The female was not underage, he insists.

“He demanded to know how old she was, and I said: about one-and-a-half years old — meaning the age of the painting,” says Little. “He would leave, and then he would come back. He would stand there and talk to people. I would guess he was in his early forties, and there could have been wine involved.”

Little, a Stutz studio artist, who graduated from the School of Advertising Art in Kettering, Ohio, embarked on a career as a studio painter, illustrator, and photographer in 2001. Often enough in his paintings, the figures are nude, and they are typically female. His photorealistic work is based on live models he poses in his studio.

Little isn’t seeing his work sell very well these days in the Circle City.

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“I had what I consider an unsuccessful show here at the annual Open House,” he says.

“Well received, but no real sales, no real commissions, no real interest. Which is honestly reflective of the state of things, at least for a lot of what I do here, kind of in this general area.”

VE A H D L I COU ALK ON T A TED HAIR. C PUBI

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He says, in fact, his art doesn’t generate many sales in Indiana at all. “Most all of my work is New York, Miami, and overseas,” he says. “I’ve kind of taken off to the corners and the edges of America to find a market for my kind of art.”

Little says he really doesn’t mean to come off as disparaging when he says that the typical collector in Central Indiana is looking for subject matter that’s “more friendly, something that is more decorative, and fits into a lifestyle that is kind of cornbread.” It’s just that he sees a lot of covered bridges, bales of hay, and children playing on the beach as subject matter in Indiana art.

“I’m very aware, more and more, that I would have more sales, that I would be more acceptable if I would just simply changed the value or subject matter of the paintings I do. And I don’t do exclusively nude,” Little says. “But that I have any nude or that they’re prominently displayed immediately… it just pollutes and toxifies everything else. And this especially has been the case with shows [that present] opportunities to exhibit work for internships or for residencies.

People see that you do a lot of nudes and immediately you’re radioactive in that way.”

Little says there are some areas in the Midwest that are more receptive to his art. He’s found a audience in Cincinnati, for example.

“They’ve lived through Mapplethorpe, as I say,” Little adds. “They’ve already had a really deep conversation about art and censorship and they seem to be more sensitive to it there and are more accepting. But that seems to be a standout. I get the idea that what indiana and at least a lot of the Midwest is geared around is promotion. It’s around showing off how creative and cultured we are.”

Little also exhibits his work in the annual Dirty Show Erotic Art Exhibition in Detroit, Michigan.

But there’s a portrait in Little’s studio that fairs well in Indy, but it would get little traction at the Dirty Show. The portrait depicts a woman on an easel, pretty much from the shoulders up. Little says it used to include the model’s exposed breasts.

“A friend said, ‘Oh, that’s a beautiful piece, [with a] lovely face, but it has nipples in it,’” Little recalls. “I kind of got frustrated and ran it through a table-saw and cut off the nipple part. It’s just a pretty portrait now. It felt good at the time, because I felt like I was lashing out. It was kind of my temper tantrum against that idea, and yet I’m kind of ashamed that I’m self-censoring in a way.”

There are many people who come to see Little’s art and like it very much, but he says they can’t figure out where in their house they would hang such art.

“I’ve talked to many people when I was showing more in this area,” says Little, “People say ‘I don’t know, because I have kids’ or ‘I don’t want my friends to think something.’

They would want to own it, but they would put it in a corner somewhere where no one would see it.”

Little says that during crit nights (sponsored by the now-defunct Indianapolis Artists and Dealers Association), he received negative feedback not for the skill of his work, but for the tone.

But Little admits even he veers away from realism occasionally in his treatment of pubic hair.

“They call it the veil of modesty in the art world,” he says.

“If there’s going to be a pubic area exposed, I’ll have pubic hair, regardless of the model’s grooming habits. But people see pubic hair as being dirty. And that, a lot of times, is reflective of their own personal feelings on the matter.”

He adds that if he were to have someone who didn’t have pubic hair, the same critics would probably also find that vulgar, saying it was not covering enough.

ID, A S D EN A FRI AT’S A H E, ‘OH, T IFUL PIEC T BEAU HAS T BUT I S IN IT.’ E NIPPL

“I would have to make them a Barbie Doll in some way to have someone remotely OK with what they’re seeing,” he says. “It goes back and forth, but a lot of it is reflective of personal insecurities and sensibilities. It’s a very weird subject. I could have a Ted Talk on pubic hair.”

Of all the pieces in his studio, one stands out as most representative of the artist himself. It’s a nude woman, exposed in a full frontal way, standing on a pedestal of art history books.

“This is almost a self portrait, because all of the books are all the things that got me to where I am as an artist,” he says. ✂

“I had other artists, who I was looking to for support and for advice, call my work softcore pornography,” he says.

“They were very dismissive and asked me what my need was to focus on the human body in such a realistic fashion.

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THE ALEXANDER

NIGHTAT THE

MUSEUM WHO WANTS SHUT-EYE WITH THIS ART AROUND?

WORDS BY KJELL WANGENSTEEN

Ah, hotel art. The Econo Lodge of the visual realm. Commonplace and unassuming, it’s a genre defined more by what it doesn’t do than what it achieves: It neither puzzles nor prods, doesn’t galvanize or inspire, and it never, ever offends.

That, at least, was my assumption, having never really given the matter much thought. Strolling through the main lobby of The Alexander Hotel not too long ago, I found myself staring at a wall littered with shards of vinyl: a flock of birds, as it turns out, created by the New Yorkbased sculptor Paul Villinski. (Image 1) Jolted by Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of family homes and possessions, Villinski took a jigsaw to his own collection of LPs, out of which he crafted dozens of birds taking flight from a record player — a deeply personal expression of the power of creative endeavor in the face of even the most trying circumstances. A more vulgar sentiment was articulated nearby: A giant folio of Annie Leibovitz photographs was cheekily splayed open to her over-the-top portrait of Donald and Melania Trump, showing a very pregnant

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Melania exiting their private jet in a string bikini, while Donald revs up his Mercedes on the tarmac. (Image 2) It’s reasonable to wonder what place such provocations might have in as humdrum a space as a hotel lobby. Lobbies were, after all, the spots that the great painter Edward Hopper chose as metaphors for the bland, alienating, transactional nature of American life. (Image 3) Fittingly, the walls of Hopper’s lobbies and hotel rooms are themselves adorned with monotonous, barely distinguishable paintings. Some seventy years later, an entire industry now caters to hotels of a more corporate stripe, providing bulk quantities of room furnishings and decorative pieces of all kinds: One retailer helpfully divides the art into anodyne categories like “abstract” and “floral.” (For a smorgasbord of such banalities, I can recommend a visit to the JW Marriott on West Street.)

Far more interesting is that rare caravansary where art plays a central role, even a starring one. This was the inspiration behind 21c, a Louisville-based chain of boutique “museum hotels” that — as its name implies — spotlights the work of living artists, both local and international. Founded in 2006 by art collectors Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c features dedicated gallery spaces, installations, and curated temporary exhibitions in, on, and around each of their hotel properties. The guest rooms, too, are outfitted with works ranging from prints

to paintings and sculpture. The flagship Louisville hotel even boasts an immersive site-specific installation called Asleep in the Cyclone, where guests can stay in an environment completely designed by the artistic duo Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe. Their work spans from the large ceiling sculpture down to the records on the shelves and the design of the bed linens. (Image 3) 21c’s art-focused approach has proved so successful that it now has locations in seven cities, with more on the way. Though plans for an Indianapolis 21c hotel located in the former City Hall building fell through last year, the chain has considered other locations around the city.

Happily, the art-centric hotel model seems to have already caught on. Shortly after it opened twelve years ago, the luxury Conrad Indianapolis began showcasing works of art curated by Rhonda Long-Sharp, a charismatic former death row defense attorney-turned-art advisor. The partnership flourished and evolved into “Art Stays Here.” Through this program comes, rotating displays in the hotel’s lobby and second-floor conference rooms that features blue-chip names, such as Warhol and Picasso, alongside artworks by established local artists such as Dale Enoch, Amy Kirchner, Jason Myers, and Constance Edwards Scopelitis. In 2012, Long-Sharp opened her eponymous commercial gallery in a space just off the hotel’s lobby, offering thematic exhibitions and solo shows on a regular basis. The gallery works with members of the hotel’s staff (called “Art

Ambassadors”), who stand ready to give art-themed tours of the spaces. Well-heeled guests can even stay in one of four curated luxury rooms, each named after the art inside, including a “Surrealism Suite” and a “Contemporary Suite.”

While amenities such as these are generally available only to those who can afford them, the motivation for offering them may not be completely mercenary: Hotel lobbies are semi-public places, after all, and their décor can be admired by guests and non-guests alike. With the CityWay gallery located on its ground floor, The Alexander Hotel even smacks of community-mindedness. Curated by the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) and free to the public, the space hosts several installations and exhibitions each year — a pleasant contrast with the largely site-specific (and therefore permanent) works of art in the hotel above.

In unusual instances like these, delight, wonder, and perhaps something more await anyone willing to give hotel art a chance. That point was made abundantly clear in my conversations with hotel staff and guests, many of whom mentioned “inspiration” when asked about their reactions to the art in front of them. That’s not a word commonly associated with hotel lobbies. Proof, perhaps, of a more enlightened conception of hospitality, where bold artistic statements are nurtured, not neutered, and strong (even provocative) themes are embraced, not shunned. We’re all the better for it. ✂

THE INDIANAPOLIS CONRAD, THE COLLECTION SUITES TOP PHOTO, CONTEMPORARY SUITE MIDDLE PHOTO, POP SUITE BOTTOM PHOTO, SURREALISM SUITE

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“All great cities have focused on the arts. You can’t name a city, in ancient or modern history, that didn’t focus on the arts and have opportunities for its citizens. It’s a tremendous opportunity to build a city and do it properly.”

—MAYOR JIM BRAINARD

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CARMEL’S THRIVING ARTS DISTRICT APPEALS TO A VARIETY OF TASTES WHILE CULTIVATING A COMMUNITY When the city of Carmel installed four gateways surrounding a nearly empty four-block area where Main Street and Rangeline Road meet, Mayor Jim Brainard received criticism. For many citizens, fancy gateways— costing $200,000 apiece—that lead to an old, dilapidated part of town didn’t really make sense.

But once developments began between the gateways for the Carmel Arts & Design District, everybody wanted a piece of it.

“The first thing that was important was to make it walkable. I had suggested to the mayor that it was key that we cap the district,” says Evan Lurie, local gallery director and the mayor’s consultant for the district. Lurie introduced the concept of an arts and design district to Brainard.

“As soon as we announced what we were doing, everybody on different streets kept saying, ‘Could you push the gateways a little farther, so we’re inside there, too’”?

So, what does an arts and design district entail, besides expensive gateways and walkability? For inspiration, Lurie invited the mayor to the West Hollywood Design District, an area Lurie played a dominant role in developing.

But, of all places, why bring a design district to Carmel?

Mayor Brainard says creating the district has been beneficial for the city’s economic development.

“We don’t have mountains or oceans in Indiana, and we often don’t have good weather. We have to be able to say to the best and brightest employees coming out of the best universities in the world to come spend their lives here,” Brainard says. “If they aren’t willing to do that in Carmel, Indiana, the jobs will go elsewhere.”

One major element the mayor has brought to the Carmel Arts & Design District is an all-encompassing aspect.

“A lot of people think they’ll open a gallery in a certain area, be the only gallery and take all that business,” Lurie says. “But it doesn’t work that way. People want to go where there’s a one-stop shop. There’s strength in numbers in our industry. It expands the ability to play off a variety of art tastes.”

Lurie’s self-titled gallery was the first of many art-related destinations in the district. The gallery primarily showcases contemporary abstract works from international and—recently— local artists. It opened in September 2007, just a few months before the Great Recession.

At that time, opening a contemporary art gallery in Central Indiana didn’t seem like the smartest financial idea. But artists in larger cities were struggling to find representation because of the economic crisis. As a result, they turned to the Midwest, where Lurie welcomed their works with a local audience eager to experience a kind of art they’d never seen before.

Another component Brainard aimed to implement, that he’d seen in other successful districts, was a design center that was consistent with the one-stop-shop formula.

“I saw a similar one in West Hollywood called the [Pacific Design Center], and we modeled it after that. We realized that in Indiana you couldn’t go to one building and get almost everything you need to build or decorate a house or business,” Brainard says.

In early 2009 construction began for the Indiana Design Center. Developed by Pedcor, the center became the anchor of the Carmel Arts & Design District.

“The big question was, ‘What does a design center look like in Indiana?’ We’re not Chicago or New York, so we can’t just do what they did,” says Andrea Kleymeyer, the Design Center’s marketing director. “We had a team that visited other design centers, talked to the industry’s top firms and business owners, and we led focus groups to answer that question.”

The answer was an 82,000-square-foot building containing art galleries, more than 15 showrooms, 28 design firms, and an underground parking garage. A key difference between the Indiana Design Center and places like Chicago’s Merchandise Mart is that it’s a public-friendly destination.

“You do not have to be a designer to come in here. Come and browse, and we can help you get access to the things

that are trade-only. That we are open to the public, it should be the first place you stop before even starting your project,” Kleymeyer says.

Both the Indiana Design Center and Evan Lurie Gallery, made possible through public-private partnerships, have helped put Carmel on regional and national maps.

“This is the hub not only for the district, but for the designers and professional industries across the state. We have an advisory board with representations from major trade organizations and national brands and designers to make sure that we aren’t just this insular, one-building project.”

Lurie, who often travels to art markets in Palm Beach, Boca Raton, San Francisco, and New York, always makes sure that his collectors -- which include Sylvester Stallone, Madonna, and the Wayans brothers, to name a few -- know that the art they’re buying is coming out of a gallery in a city called Carmel.

And despite initial criticism, Brainard believes the Carmel Arts & Design project is succeeding and will continue to thrive long into the future.

“All great cities have focused on the arts,” he says. “You can’t name a city, in ancient or modern history, that didn’t focus on the arts and have opportunities for its citizens.

It’s a tremendous opportunity to build a city and do it properly.” ✂

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ARTS INSIDER

LOU HARRY

Arts critic, supporter and writer talks two decades of art in Indy.

WORDS BY JAMI STALL + PHOTOGRAPH BY POLINA OSHEROV Lou Harry knows Central Indiana arts. The Jersey Shore native was an editor for a Philadelphia arts publication back in the mid-nineties, before he loaded up his family and headed to the Circle City to become editor-in-chief of Arts Indiana magazine. From there, Harry’s writing led him to an editor’s desk at Indianapolis Monthly magazine and then on to the nice, big office at Indy Men’s Magazine, as founding editor and cocreator. For the past twelve years, he served as arts and entertainment editor for the Indianapolis Business Journal before recently striking out on his own. When he’s not writing plays, watching or critiquing them (as a board member of the American Theatre Critics Association), Harry writes books, adding to the shelf full of titles he’s already had published.

We picked his big left brain to get his views on the local arts scene and how it’s changed since he first came to Indy in 1995.

JAMI STALL: Anyone who reads your work or follows you socially knows theater is your primary area of interest and expertise. Butler University Theatre picked up your “We Are Still Tornadoes,” which opens this fall, and you’ve had other works staged locally.

What’s your role as a writer these days?

LOU HARRY: I see my area of expertise as trying to explain to a wider audience why they should give a damn about the arts. I’ve done a lot of writing about the arts, but most of my career has been with city and regional magazines and authoring books.

JS: What’s changed most about the arts since you came here?

LH: The major changes include the sort of rollercoaster at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Newfields), Herron moving from where it was at IUPUI, and the disappearance of galleries on Mass Ave and in Fountain Square. Culturally (and this isn’t necessarily Indianapolis-specific) I think the more society shifts toward a “versus” culture, due to political discourse in conversations, the less attention and passion there seems to be for the arts. The more polarized we become as a society, the less interest there is in the arts.

JS: How would you rate Hoosiers on getting their butts out to the gallery shows and into seats at performing arts events?

LH: The arts today are fighting with what everything’s fighting with, which is that a body at rest wants to stay at rest. When I got here in ’95 people couldn’t sit at home and binge-watch Netflix. True, they could go to Blockbuster and rent half a dozen movies, but even that required a little bit of effort. You had to actually get out of the house.

We used to talk about cultural events and the arts, and now that umbrella includes food and dining out as much as anything else. So those entertainment dollars are now going to the dining experience as an event/activity.

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JS: You’re a bona fide national board-approved” theater critic, but there’s not a whole lot of art reviews in the local media these days. Why is that? Are we just too polite — or too uninformed?

LH: We’ve lost the conversation largely in the media. In the newspaper there used to be an art critic, a theater critic, somebody writing about dance, classical music (almost exclusively), and someone writing about rock music, a TV critic and movie critic. These conversations were happening in the mass media, but not anymore.

And it’s not the same on social media. When you see friends on Facebook talking about a gallery exhibit, it’s easy to believe everyone is talking about it. But those conversations are just among your friends and not reaching large audiences. We count clicks now to determine what shows are important. And that’s not a real gauge.

It’s flawed.

JS: That sounds like a vicious cycle. We don’t have critical reviews, so don’t audiences don’t read about them, so the don’t go see them.

LH: Yes, but despite this lack of traditional media coverage, we can look on the positive side of one of things that has happened in the past twenty years. We’re paying attention to a wider range of artists these days.

Art criticism, just like many other fields, used to be dominated by white people of a certain age and a certain income — guys who in their younger days could afford to have that kind of education and access to the arts, which traditionally came from a place of privilege. But some of the critics today may be working hard to overcome those biases. And at least there are conversations happening, which we hope leads to light where there were blind spots in the coverage of the arts.

JS: Speaking of blind spots, what’s something you wish you could make people understand about the going to see the arts?

LH: When it comes to visual arts, which are analogous to dance and classical music, if the artist, if the composer, or if the choreographer could have told you in words what he or she intended, that person wouldn’t have needed to create the art, the composition, or the dance. So don’t worry about understanding. Go see art hoping and expecting to feel it, rather than understand it.

JS: What would you say to folks that want to support the local arts, but say they have little free time and limited funds?

LH: I’m always amazed when people will say ‘I don’t have time to watch a play,’ but then I’ll hear them talking about how they’ve just watched eighteen hours of a show on Netflix over the weekend. Or people will say they can’t afford $20 to go to a dance performance, but they pay that for two or three coffee drinks at Starbuck’s. These are CHOICES, people. ✂

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416 WABASH RECORDNG STUDIO + EVENT SPACE CHRIS WODOCK 416 E WABASH ST INDIANAPOLIS 46204 INFO@416WABASH.COM 317.784.3844

ON THE

ROAD

PUTTING IN THE MILES TO FIND CREATIVES WHO EMBODY THE PATTERN SPIRIT.

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LEAVING EVERYONE IN HER

DUST MEET PARI EHSAN, THE INSTA-GIRL MIXING HIGH FASHION AND CONTEMPORARY ART

WORDS BY POLINA OSHEROV DESIGN BY LINDSAY HADLEY

Originally from Floyds Knobs, Indiana Pari Ehsan (Pari Dust as her followers better know her), has been obsessed with clothing and art for as long as she can remember. With architecture and interior design in her background, Ehsan discovered a way to marry her love of art, fashion and design by cleverly finding designer pieces to go along with contemporary art by which she found herself inspired and moved.

Her list of partnerships runs deep, with designers as varied as Gareth Pugh, Alexander Wang, Karl Lagerfeld, Moschino and Missoni, and a list of shoot locations that reads like a who’s who of art world treasure troves from the MET, to Art Basel, Art Dubai and Indiana’s own Miller House.

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ONE DAY I WAS TAKING A PORTRAIT FOR MY INTERIOR DESIGN WEBSITE. WE DID A PORTRAIT AT GAGOSIAN GALLERY AT THE HELEN FRANKENTHALER EXHIBITION. MY JACKET HAPPENED TO MATCH THE PAINTING AND THAT’S WHEN I THOUGHT, “THIS IS IT.”

Left to Right: Artist / Location / Designer / Photographer 1. Yayoi Kusama / Fort Tilden, New York / Todd Oldham / Logan Jackson 2. Davide Balliano / Tina Kim Gallery, New York / Chanel Haute Couture / Jason Gringler 3. Alhambra / Granada, Spain / Vintage / Allan Langdale 4. Odessa Straub / Aspen Art Crush, Colorado / Versace / Logan Jackson 5. Lucy Dodd / David Lewis Gallery, New York / PRISCAvera / Tylor Hóu 6. Carol Bove / Maccarone, Los Angeles / Thom Browne / Jason Gringler

7. Larry Bell / Aspen Art Museum, Colorado / PRISCAVera /

Logan Jackson 8. Julio Le Parc / Galerie Mitterand / Paris, France / Paule Ka / Jason Gringler 9. Thomas Barger / Salon 94 Design, New York / Prada / Tylor Hóu

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INSTAGRAM: @PARIDUST WEBSITE: PARIDUST.COM

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SPACE BETWEEN WHOLES ISIS BULLET PAINTINGS BY PIERS SECUNDA WORDS BY TIM LISKO DESIGN BY LINDSAY HADLEY ART BY PIERS SECUNDA

We all know what a bullet is. And what it does. It’s a projectile, intended to leverage mass and velocity in such a way that it rips a hole through the space between some launch point and wherever the bullet eventually comes to rest, its energy spent.

A bullet, used as designed, creates disorder from order. In paper targets. In objects. In flesh. It moves some thing’s initial, intact state farther and farther from its original form, toward becoming a non-functioning version of that thing. In short, a bullet is meant to destroy.

Artist Piers Secunda takes the destruction bullets cause and uses it to create. Bullet holes copied precisely from war-ravaged battlegrounds become heavily three-dimensional paintings, cast in white industrial floor paint; those paintings become conversations between gallery walls, between art writers and their audiences, between officials and dignitaries with the power to stop the violence.

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PHOTOGRAPH OF PIERS SECUNDA FROM ANNA LUND (NJA)

A paper target, if it remained clipped in place at a shooting range, would eventually become an unusable pile of paper bits; the fibrous spaces between holes. What had been pulped, sifted, bleached, machinepressed, trimmed and printed by an offset press into so much black and white, lined and numbered order, would become chaotic and unrecognizable.

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In ISIS - controlled territory, the same thing happens to people, buildings and works of art.

ISIS’ intent isn’t really to destroy one thing. It’s to destroy so many things that the space between destruction disappears, until the collective past of entire cultures ends up piled into unrecognizable heaps. Maybe because human beings without a history, a connection, an inherent sense of pride, are easier to control; to terrify into submission. ISIS seems intent on tearing holes into as wide a population as possible, then filling it with religious fervor and a kind of self-propagating inhumanity.

There’s just no way to undo the damage that’s already been done. Any detail lost to terroristic acts is lost forever. There’s no way to put that material back, under those conditions, in a way that tells that story. But, by using dental alginate to mold precise impressions of the marks made by bullets, Secunda is able to record evidence of the destruction, form analogies around it, and carry those across international borders into conversations about why and how it must be stopped.

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Under the protection of the Kurdish, Peshmerga fighting forces, Secunda secured casts of bullet holes from towns like Daquq, Iraq, where two sides of any building might be scarred by distinct sets of bullets fired by the two opposing sides of the conflict; where tarps still flapped above the corpses of the fallen enemy.

Piers placed those casts into molds made from 3-D scans or publically available reproductions of Assyrian, Greek and early European artwork.

Specifically, it seems, those with a representative style, rich enough with detail to seem particularly significant. Perhaps to magnify the loss, even in viewers unfamiliar with the work being erased.

The finished body of work functions on a much broader scale. It’s impossible to look at the work and maintain any assumptions about the permanence of significant historical findings. What some of us find important enough to collect and preserve, others find important enough to obliterate, bullet hole by jagged bullet hole, from the face of the Earth.

“ISIS BULLET HOLE PAINTINGS” CAN BE SEEN IN INDIANAPOLIS’ LONG-SHARP GALLERY THROUGH OCTOBER 27.

WEBSITE: PIERSSECUNDA.COM

What is most striking about the finished pieces is that the bullet holes themselves seem more defined, more detailed, more real than the historic works in which they’ve been embedded. Especially when compared to the digital images of large scale destruction the general public tends to see only on screens, Secunda’s work is incredibly precise; remarkably accurate. There is such such detail, in fact, that an expert in traditional Afghan building was able to identify the mix of materials used to build a wall recorded in one of Piers’ paintings.

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REGARDING

HENRY

A RELUCTANT ARTIST AT FIRST, NOW HENRY SWANSON CAN’T IMAGINE DOING ANYTHING ELSE WITH HIS LIFE.

WORDS BY KELLER MASNYK DESIGN BY LINDSAY HADLEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY SHELBY FLORA ART BY HENRY SWANSON

In a nondescript building on East 10th Street, across from what used to be Pogue’s Run Grocery, the neighborhood gas station, and dilapidated houses, sits a mostly vacant storefront. A Boost Mobile store, in one of its past lives, the place now serves as makeshift art gallery for fine artist Henry Swanson. His oil paintings, matted on orange U-Haul tarps, furniture pads, and tie-down ropes, appear to be fine art poking fun at fine art. “[They are] great ideas, but horrible in permanence. In theory awesome, but should (they) be around forever? Probably not,” Says Swanson, describing his work.

His journey to becoming a fine artist was as atypical as the art itself. Growing up in Dallas, Texas, where kids tend to be pushed more toward sports rather than art, he devoted the majority of his time playing high school basketball and hockey. He reserved his skills with a pencil and paper for classroom doodling and passing the time while waiting for his parents to come home from work.

“Coming from somewhere like Texas, drawing’s not exactly a cooler, interesting talent to have,” Swanson says. “I still played sports, and I did competitive shit and that was what I talked about, but drawing was what I did so I wasn’t talking in school.”

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IT WAS THE FIRST TIME THAT I REALIZED THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO LIKE ART THAT WEREN’T CREEPY OR EMO OR SOMETHING.

Though he wasn’t serious about developing his art skills, his talent gained the attention of his teachers nonetheless. Unbeknownst to Swanson, his school had entered him in a statewide drawing competition.

“It was at another school about three hours outside of town. I had a torn ACL from skateboarding and was wearing a leg brace. Mom drove me out there with a number two pencil and dropped me off in front of the building, where they had a huge still life set up. They said, ‘You have two hours to draw the still life, no talking.’ Kids had these huge pencil sets and all this nonsense, and I spent like the first 20 minutes trying to get the attention of the girl next to me so I could use her pencil sharpener.”

Swanson laughs as the retells the story. “I got second place in state at drawing.”

“The prices are a little bit higher than typical for art in Indianapolis,” Stewart says. “It’s priced like stuff you’d see at the Stutz, but quality level is something that you aren’t going to see in a gallery in Indianapolis. And from artists at Henry’s age? No one is showing this work.”

It was this confidence in his friend that spurred Stewart to drive to Dallas in a U-Haul truck to pick up Swanson and his work. (Swanson has epilepsy, which limits his ability to drive long distances.)

His talents validated, he decided to go to New York after graduation to try his hand at art school. While he was aware of his artistic skills and his potential career as an artist, Swanson remained unsure if that was something he wanted to pursue. His time in New York helped change his mind.

The tarps and furniture pads they used on that trip became part of the curation, a symbol of the journey across the country to fill that old storefront with Swanson’s paintings. A huge hit, all but two of works were sold during the exhibition, which ended in early August.

“I realized, ‘Oh it’s cool to be good at art here,’” he says.

“It was the first time that I realized that there are people who like art that weren’t creepy or emo or something.”

Next June, Swanson will head to New York where he has a solo show scheduled at Massey Klein gallery.

For now he enjoys his time working on new paintings, a top-secret project with a record company, and touring middle America with his art.

Swanson decided to study painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. While there, he met Alec Stewart, a graphic design student from Indianapolis. The two hit it off and became friends, largely due to their similar senses of humor and perspectives on art.

“Even though Alec isn’t necessarily somebody who does fine art, he and I mesh on a certain level of humor,” Swanson says. “If you take any one part of it seriously, then you’re definitely going to lose a grip on what makes art a practice and design a process. Like a sense of self-honesty, even if it’s ridiculous in nature, is entirely the key to making good work.”

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Incidentally, Stewart, who works as a graphic designer, is also the gallery director of Kime Contemporary art gallery, the pop-up gallery in the old Boost Mobile store on the Eastside of Indianapolis where Swanson’s work was introduced to Indianapolis.

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“It’s kind of like, let’s just bring the most awesome artwork we can to the most places we can,” he says. “Isn’t that what’s fun about it?”

REPRESENTED BY ANNA ZORINA GALLERY, NYC WEBSITE: HENRYSWANSON.COM

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THE DEFINITIVE

WHAT TO SEE & WHERE TO SEE IT

FOUNTAIN SQUARE OILWICK / @THEOILWICK A raw warehouse space that started as affordable studios in 2015, the Oilwick has evolved to become an artist managed gallery focused on artist development. Their exhibitions range from more traditional painting shows to experimental new media and performance.

voices. They support artists and creatives who may not otherwise have a platform to share their work. Building an accessible local art community is imperative to their mission, thus, in addition to First Friday exhibits they also have regular open hours during the month, and rent their space for folks to use for art events, poetry readings, youth events, meetings, and sometimes even yoga.

FUTURE FRIENDS HOLOGRAPHIC MAGIC CLUB / @FUTUREFRIENDSHMC Future Friends Holographic Magic Club is an art space with focus on marginalized

WHITE RIVER STATE PARK

INDIANA STATE MUSEUM / @INDIANAMUSEUM The Indiana State Museum brings the best of the museum world to THE EITELJORG MUSEUM OF AMERICAN Indiana. Spanning three floors of INDIANS AND WESTERN ART / permanent and changing galleries, @EITELJORGMUSEUM the museum tells the story of the The Eiteljorg Museum houses an Hoosier state, and features a yearextensive collection of visual arts by round calendar of exhibits, events indigenous peoples of the Americas, and educational programs for all as well as Western American ages. Here you can engage with the paintings and sculptures collected past and connect it to the present, by businessman and philanthropist carrying your newfound knowledge Harrison Eiteljorg. The museum and experiences with you long after contains traditional and contemporary you leave. In addition to exhibits, pieces by such artists as T.C. Cannon, the museum houses an IMAX movie Andy Warhol and Georgia O’Keefe theater, the Indiana Store, The Farmers and is the only museum of its kind Market CafÊ, and the L.S. Ayres Tea in the Midwest, and one of only two Room, open to the public during the museums east of the Mississippi that holiday season and available for explore both Native America and the private dining throughout the year.

American West.

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DOWNTOWN FULL CIRCLE NINE GALLERY / @FC9GALLERY The Full Circle Nine Gallery is an artist cooperative gallery showing a wide variety of art styles and media. They host emerging, mid-level and experienced artists. They are open every Saturday and Sunday, 12-4 pm, as an anchor of the South Studios in the Circle City Industrial Complex.

GALLERY 924 / @ARTSCOUNCILINDY Gallery 924 at the Arts Council of Indianapolis is a non-profit gallery space that provides a mixture of programming that highlights central Indiana contemporary artists in curated solo and group shows.

10TH WEST GALLERY / @10THWESTGALLERY 10th West Gallery is a contemporary fine art gallery located inside the Stutz Business Center. 10th West Gallery focuses on artists throughout the Indianapolis community, who have excelled artistically, individually, and as a group, offering a broad range of contemporary and innovative work. Additionally, the gallery provides a space and schedule for rotating exhibitions from the Midwest and surrounding regions.

LONG-SHARP GALLERY / @LONGSHARPGALLERY Long-Sharp Gallery, a fine art gallery that caters to fine art collectors new and experienced. As a division of Modern Masters Fine Art, the gallery’s roots rest in works by important postwar and contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Robert Indiana. The Gallery expanded to include contemporary art in 2008 by adding Russell Young to its roster.

Since then, sculpture has become an important part of the

gallery’s contemporary focus with the addition of artists including Gino Miles, Thalen & Thalen, and Dale Enochs. Today, the gallery roster lists top Indiana based artists including abstract painter Amy Kirchner.

KUABA GALLERY / @KUABAGALLERY Kuaba Gallery, which is free and open to the public, is situated in the heart of Indianapolis off Monument Circle, and features the work of contemporary artists from such countries as Ghana, Zimbabwe, Brazil, and South Africa. The display of beautiful art also makes for a wonderful atmosphere for corporate events, wedding receptions and celebrations.

PHIRI GALLERY / @PHIRI_ART_GALLERY Phiri Art Gallery is an international art gallery located in downtown Indianapolis. They house unique and creative art from around the world.

GALLERY FORTY-TWO / @GALLERYFORTYTWO Gallery Forty-Two’s repertoire of well-established local, national, and international contemporary artists presents unique approaches to classical and traditional themes. The gallery’s second-floor provides collectors an alternate flavor, showcasing artwork that celebrates sports, music, and pop culture. They are committed to providing an excellent source of original paintings, giclee prints, and sculptures that combine the brilliance of inspiration with the spirit of antiquity.

MORE DOWNTOWN!

and five galleries including City Gallery, Speck Gallery, Harrison Gallery, Underground Gallery and Hank and Dolly’s Gallery.

GREENHOUSE GALLERY / @GREENHOUSEGALLERY CHRISTOPHER WEST PRESENTS / @CW_INDY The Gallery at The Green House is an artistWith a staunch dedication to the best art of the friendly venue that also hosts seminars, past 100 years, at Christopher West Presents classes and private events. As a new venue, you will often find works by 20th Century The Green House is interesting in supporting masters like Helen Frankenthaler and Ellsworth emerging artists.

Kelly next to some of the most dynamic contemporary artists making work today.

THE SCHWITZER GALLERY / @CCICARTISTS HARRISON CENTER / @HARRISONCENTERARTS The Harrison Center is a community-based, nonprofit arts organization that seeks to be a catalyst for renewal in the city of Indianapolis.

The Harrison Center seeks to connect people to culture, community and place to strengthen Indianapolis’s core urban neighborhoods.

Harrison Center is home to 36 artist studios

The Schwitzer Gallery is located on the second floor of the Circle City Industrial Complex and is currently available to artists to show their work free of charge. Thus far, CCIC has had a little bit of everything in their gallery, inlcuding self-organized feminist artist shows, emerging art, fundraiser shows, and nationally known groups.

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NEAR NORTH INDIANAPOLIS MUSEUM OF ART AT NEWFIELDS / @NEWFIELDSTODAY Indianapolis Museum of Art is part of the Newfields campus and one of the nation’s largest and oldest general art museums.

Located on 152 acres of gardens and grounds, the museum’s permanent collection spans a vast range of cultures and eras, and numbers more than 50,000 works.

STORAGE SPACE / @STORAGESPACEINDY Storage Space is a “garage gallery”, an art space connected to the home of curator Brent Lehker.

The DIY approach is a reaction to the need for more non-traditional venues for artists, and designed to make both the artist and the public feel, literally, at home, as they explore art in a relaxed atmosphere.

EASTSIDE KIME CONTEMPORARY / @KIME_CONTEMPORARY Kime Contemporary strives to show young talent from Indianapolis, and across the nation. Through partnerships in Dallas and peer connections throughout the midwest and beyond, they have been able to show up-and-comers in a variety of shows. They have always seen the space as a stepping stone for young, skilled artists who may not have the CV to show in more established spaces, but definitely have the caliber of work that needs to be recognized and shown. The gallery prides itself on the community oriented approach to their space and the DIY ethos that comes with that. Going forward, they hope to continue highlighting fresh new talent for the community to enjoy.

HOY POLLOY / @HOYPOLLOYARTGALLERY Hoy Polloy literally means “the common people,” or “the people.” The gallery represents many different types of artists in the arts community, and wants to make sure they extend that reach to everyone, through arts programming, events and

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SOUTHSIDE TUBE FACTORY / @BIGCARPIX Big Car Collaborative runs two spaces: Tube Factory and Listen Hear. Tube Factory is a 12,000-square-foot community center/museum space hybrid that was curated based upon the themes of community, place, memory, and mythology. They commission local, regional, national, and international contemporary visual and musical artists, borrow artifactbased exhibits, and create communitysourced exhibits. Listen Hear highlights sound as a material in art while bringing people together; it gives focus to the importance of our daily soundscape; engages new listeners with tools and techniques related to deep listening; and provides opportunities to new and uninitiated audiences to experience sound as art.

curation. By operating under this vision, they are able to share and connect on a common intersectional and community level.

SATCH ART SPACE / @SATCHTHEARTIST Satch Art Space is a woman artist owned, independent art gallery that has produced and hosted over 20 exhibitions and events since opening in 2015. After enjoying several years of gallery representation, Julie “Satch” Kern, decided to open her own gallery to share her assemblage art and paintings. Because of her love of creativity and art, she expanded her space to present successful exhibits such as Long Live Frida, Indianapolis Punk Rock and Das Plakat, Art of the Poster 1910-1920 Berlin.

MIDDLE SPACE GALLERY / @CATHEADPRESSINDY Cat Head Press: Printshop and Artist Cooperative, includes the Middle Space gallery as the two are operated in tandem.

Middle Space Gallery is a contemporary art gallery that focuses on exhibiting local, regional and national artists. It works with individual artists as well as area organizations to curate compelling exhibitions and provide community programming.

GARFIELD PARK ARTS CENTER / @GARFIELD_PARK_ARTS_CENTER The Garfield Park Arts Center, part of Indy Parks & Recreation, engages visitors in diverse, artistic, and cultural exhibitions, arts classes and special events. It features performing arts spaces, visual arts galleries, classrooms and a literary arts library.

The Garfield Park Arts Center strives to inspire and build a community of arts learners, leaders, and organizations.

SUGAR SPACE / @SUGARSPACEGALLERY The brain child of artists Danielle Joy Graves and Nick Witten this contemporary art gallery caters specifically to students, recent grad and young artists. Hosting mid-month opening so as not to compete with other galleries Sugar Space wants to create opportunities for new artists.

GREENWOOD

BROAD RIPPLE

ECKERT & ROSS FINE ART Eckert & Ross Fine Art, celebrating its 45th year in business, INDIANAPOLIS ART CENTER specializes in the best of traditional Founded in 1934 and designed by Indiana art. Historic Indiana art is world-renowned architect Michael featured, from the Pioneer Painters Graves, the Indianapolis Art Center of the first half of the nineteenth is one of the premier community century to the Hoosier Group art centers in the Midwest. Located and Brown County Art Colony on a 12-acre campus bordering painters from the 1880s-1940s the White River, the Indianapolis (and beyond). We also offer Art Center strives to enhance some of the best of the living people’s lives through art classes, Indiana impressionist painters. exhibitions, and community Other exceptional antique and outreach. contemporary traditional paintings are also highlighted when available.

THE SOUTHSIDE ART LEAGUE The Southside Art League is a local arts organization serving the greater southside of Indianapolis and Johnson County for over 50 years. The Southside Art League’s Off Broadway Gallery offers a venue for members to display and sell their artworks. The gallery has monthly openings for featured and guest artists, bringing in visitors from around the area to enjoy refreshments and view new artwork at openings.

MASS AVE ART BANK / @ARTBANKGALLERY Art Bank is a gallery located on Mass Ave in a historic bank building. The gallery displays works by twenty-plus local and regional artist. The many artists, in various stages of their careers, offer art in a variety of styles and price ranges — something for everyone.

Art Bank Gallery holds monthly receptions for the featured artists every First Friday from 6-9 pm.

NOBLESVILLE NICKEL PLATE ARTS / @NICKELPLATEARTS Nickel Plate Arts cultivates arts resources in the five towns along the historic Nickel Plate railroad in Hamilton County. At their main campus in Noblesville, they host First Friday open houses every month, curate two gallery spaces, maintain a gift shop of unique locally-made items and have seven studios where local artists create and sell their artwork. They also coordinate six major events each year, as well as skill-building classes for emerging artists, and arts-focused activities and opportunities at community festivals.

CARMEL EVAN LURIE GALLERY / @EVANLURIEGALLERY Since opening its doors in 2007, the Evan Lurie Gallery has specialized in showcasing emerging and established international artists with a heavy emphasis on the contemporary abstract and a strong focus on realism and neo-realism. The gallery deals in works of art in all mediums and sizes including monumental, twodimensional and three-dimensional. The 5,200 square foot space offers monthly art walks featuring one man and group shows bringing an ever-changing energy of sophistication to the Indianapolis area.

CCA GALLERY / @CCAGALLERY The CCA Gallery has been promoting exceptional art for nearly 40 years.

They provide guests with the wonderful opportunity to enjoy a variety of creative works from over 30 professional, awardwinning Indiana artists. Their collection includes a variety of painting genres, wood, pottery, glass works, jewelry, photography, and more!

MAGDALENA GALLERY OF ART / @MAGDALENAGALLERY The Magdalena Gallery of Art displays both traditional and modern works, but the gallery’s primary focus is contemporary art.

Artists represented include internationally known artists, as well as local favorites in various stages of their careers. Magdalena also runs The Carmel Academy of the Arts – the second floor of the gallery is dedicated classroom space used for fine arts instruction for students of all ages.

ZIONSVILLE CV GALLERY Art genres incorporating original, traditional, contemporary, impressionist, abstract and photographic styles can all be found within CV Art Gallery. They feature revolving original exhibitions by local, national and international artists. Their adjoining Thomas Kinkade Zionsville Gallery features one of the best selections by one of America’s most collected artists.

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VOLUME NO. 13 LAUNCH PARTY PHOTOGRAPHY BY ELESE BALES We love to see our community gather to celebrate one another! Vol. 13 release was another bash for the books!

The fantastic venue — Bottleworks, DJs KNags and Action Jackson on the tables, the Quincy Owens light installations, the stylish crowd brought together the best of what Indy’s creative and entrepreneurial peeps have to offer. Thanks to everyone who attended!

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OP-ED

THE INDY ART SCENE: On the edge and thriving MASS AVE USED TO BE ROUGH. WHEN I STARTED RUSCHMAN GALLERY on Massachusetts Avenue in 1984, I was twenty-six and the street was full of boarded-up, abandoned buildings. There weren’t a lot of people living downtown then, but I took a chance and joined a group of like-minded entrepreneurs who opened galleries. Within a few years Mass Ave evolved into a cultural hub where people could go out, buy art, and be part of a scene. It was the city’s first gallery district, and it helped lay the foundation for bringing people back downtown.

THE SCENE KEPT MOVING. IN THE LATE ’90S, CULTURAL DISTRICTS CAME ABOUT – BROAD RIPPLE VILLAGE, MASS AVE, FOUNTAIN SQUARE, THE WHOLESALE DISTRICT, AND OTHERS. The city established the districts to help revitalize communities. The Harrison Center opened. In Fountain Square there was the Wheeler Building, the Murphy Building, and iMOCA, with Big Car launching in 2004. Over time, the focus of development in some districts shifted toward other cultural disciplines — music, food, performing arts, and more. When the recession hit, a lot of galleries closed, including mine, which had been in business for twenty years.

THE MODEL HAS CHANGED. PEOPLE SAY THERE ARE FEWER PLACES FOR SHOWING ART, but those people are envisioning an older model. The truth is, there are more places showing art than ever before. In the gallery system, artists had a professional art dealer handle and promote their work and take care of business, which provided a level of comfort to some artists. The new system doesn’t offer those services. The Internet and social media have created more connectivity between patrons and artists, who now need to take a hands-on approach and be creative about getting their work to the public.

PEOPLE SEE ART IN NEW WAYS NOW. ALTERNATIVE SPACES, POP-UP VENUES, COOPERATIVES, AND MAKERSPACES are drawing a broader audience. The emerging scene is a more level playing field, with fewer traditional galleries. Even the Indianapolis Museum of Art is now considered part of a campus (Newfields) and shifted its focus to experiences. Yet, art is happening. Alternative venues around town bring new energy to the scene. Cat Head Press, in an up-and-coming neighborhood on the near east side, is a community art center where people can rent studio space, printing press time, and show their work too. The Oilwick is home to art studios, performance pieces, and art happenings. Circle City Industrial Complex has become the next hot place, featuring a sprawling industrial space, a new grouping of artists’ studios, and a lot to do nearby — including Ruckus makerspace, the winter farmers’ market, an ice cream shop, and a brewery.

THE ENERGY IS THE IMPORTANT PART. IN THE EARLY YEARS, THE INDY ART SCENE WAS ALL ABOUT TAKING A CHANCE – and it still is. The energy is here, and it keeps moving around. That’s something I’ve learned while working at the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites: the art world is always in flux. People will always look to fill a void and bring culture to the community. Regardless of the economy, art finds a way to thrive.

MARK RUSCHMAN MARK IS THE SENIOR CURATOR OF ART AND CULTURE AND FINE ARTS CURATOR AT THE INDIANA STATE MUSEUM AND HISTORIC SITES. HE IS A LONGTIME PRIVATE GALLERY OWNER AND ART PATRON.

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I AM MORE

than a lingering cough.

I am Osceana.

I needed to see a doctor. But I wanted more than that—I wanted someone who actually had enough compassion to see me as a person. And that’s what I got. At Eskenazi Health Primary Care, doctors from the IU School of Medicine work with some of the best nurses in Central Indiana. They were just what I was looking for. For more information, please visit EskenaziHealth.edu.

H E R E FO R YO U > > >

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Riding with your best friend to First Friday.

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