Words & Music-In the Heart of the Heart of the Country
2021-03-31 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | IN
In this first installment of Words & Music: An audio series exploring the life and work of Indiana writers, Hoosier authors Susan Neville, Adrian Matejka, Kevin McKelvey, and Jim Walker discuss the sublime beauty and challenges of Indiana through the lens of William H. Gass’s 1968 fiction story, “In the Heart of the Heart of the Country.”
The episode features excerpts of the story as well as a conversation about what it means to be a writer living and working in Indiana. This launches an eight-part series made possible by Indiana Humanities and produced by WQRT and Big Car Collaborative.
You can listen live via the streaming link or listen on regular FM radio in Indianapolis by tuning in to 99.1 FM. After it debuts on the station, it will be available for listening online. We’ll share that link here.
About the participants in this show (all Indiana writers):
Susan Neville is the author of six works of creative nonfiction and her collections of short fiction include The Town of Whispering Dolls, winner of the Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction; In the House of Blue Lights, winner of the Richard Sullivan prize; and Invention of Flight, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She teaches at Butler University.
Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. He teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington and served as Poet Laureate of Indiana for 2018-19. He is the author of five award winning books and his first graphic novel, “Last On His Feet” is forthcoming from Liveright in 2022.
Kevin McKelvey is a place-based poet, writer, designer, and social practice artist. He teaches at University of Indianapolis and directs the M.A. in Social Practice Art and oversees the undergraduate major in Environmental Sustainability. At University of Indianapolis, he founded Etchings Press, a student-run publisher, helped start a community garden and microfarm, and has contributed to numerous interdisciplinary efforts for students and the community.
Jim Walker is a poet, artist, and teacher who believes everyone deserves open access to the joys of art, creativity, and great public places. A co-founder and executive director of Big Car Collaborative, Jim worked previously as a journalist (writer, photographer, editor, and designer). He’s a student of cities and enjoys spending time with his family, supporting his Garfield Park neighborhood, walking, biking, travel, reading, and baseball.

Power Plant Grant Information Session
2021-04-01 18:30 - 21:00 | IN
Learn more about the new annual Power Plant Grant program made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts on March 25, 6:30pm, April 1, 6:30pm or April 15, 6:30pm. The grants provide visual artists who live, work, or run spaces in Indianapolis with grants ranging from $2,000 to $10,000. Applications for this round are due by April 26, 2021.
Eligible applicants are visual/multidisciplinary artists who create original work in painting, drawing, sculpture, book art, ceramics, fiber, printmaking, digital/media works, film, video, photography, performance art, sound art, social practice and/or hybrid or interdisciplinary practice of any/all of the above.
Artists must be over 21 at the time of the application, and may not be full-time students.
Artists must live and/or work in Indianapolis.
Employees or board members (or immediate family members of employees or board members) of Big Car Collaborative are not eligible for this opportunity.
Teams, partnerships, and unincorporated individuals running spaces are eligible. Nonprofit organizations are not.

Art Dog
2021-04-11 12:00 - 17:15 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join us for the first event of 2021 at Tube Factory! We are partnering with food artist extrodinaries, Thin Glizzy. We are excited to share with you foot long hot dogs like we’ve never seen or tasted before! Also on site will be Cat Head Press, doing demos and selling merchandise from some of Indianapolis’s best artists, live music from Preston Ott, and War Pig Beer available. Littleton, CO native Natasha Vidger will have her artwork up in the Main Gallery at Tube. Reserve your tickets now for indoor seating. No groups of more than 4. And this ticket will reserve your seat for 45 minutes. Franklin Food Pantry will be accepting canned good donations. Masks required. Hot dogs range in price from $10-12.

Artists & Community Conversation Series- Juan William Chavez, Dr. Jarrod Dortch and David Kirkland
2021-05-13 19:00 - 20:00 | IN
Join us for the first installment of this four part series developed with artists and neighbors who are doing work related to or influencing our thinking with the Artist and Public Life affordable artist housing residency in our neighborhood on the near Southside of Indianapolis.
This episode will include Juan William Chávez artist, activist and director of Northside Workshop, APLR artist, Dr. Jarrod Dortch and Chef David Kirkland.

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Made possible by PNC Bank.

About Juan William Chávez
Juan William Chávez is an artist, activist and director of Northside Workshop. His studio practice focuses on sculpting space within urban ecosystems through partnerships and collaborations as a way to address social and environmental issues. His work includes public sculptures, multimedia installations, paintings, drawings, and unconventional forms of beekeeping and agriculture. His exhibitions focus on themes of the urban environment, ecology, sustainability, craft/labor, activism, identity and archaeology of place. Chavez has exhibited at ArtPace, Van Abbemuseum, McColl Center for Art, Tube Factory Artspace, 21c Museum Hotel, Laumeier Sculpture Park, and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Currently Chavez’s work was included in El Museo’s survey of contemporary Latinx art, ESTAMOS BIEN – LA TRIENAL 20/21. His interdisciplinary approach to art has gained the attention and support of prestigious institutions like the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, Graham Foundation, ArtPlace America, Andy Warhol Foundation, and Art Matters Foundation. Chávez holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Read More: https://juanwilliamchavez.com/home.html

About Chef David Kirkland
David Kirkland, the owner and executive chef of Turn Restaurant and David Kirkland Catering, believes food and music brings people together. He began his career in the early-1990’s, bouncing from the Café at St. Louis Art Museum (Catering St. Louis) to Frazier’s Brown Bag, and then Venice Café. Kirkland learned everything he could from some of the city’s best. In 1996, he moved to San Francisco and began focusing on his music interests, becoming a resident DJ at several clubs throughout the city. However, he never lost his love for the culinary arts, cooking for friends and family and exploring the area’s now famous farm-to-table approach to food. After moving back to St. Louis, Kirkland returned to the kitchen with a mission, taking the helm at Café Osage in 2007. He opened Turn Restaurant and David Kirkland Catering in Spring of 2016.
Read More https://www.stlmag.com/…/hot-seat-a-conversation-with…/

About Dr. Jarrod Dortch
Dr. Jarrod Nicholas Dortch is a Professor of Communication at Ivy Tech Community College in Muncie, Indiana. He also serves as the owner and operator of Solful Gardens, a local urban agriculture startup specializing in bringing Fresh.Urban.Natural produce to clients’ properties and working with community gardens. He has been affiliated with Big Car as a Community Artist and as Community Gardener at the Tube Factory artspace. He is currently working with Listen Hear and WQRT 99.1 FM. He enjoys bringing together art, education, and gardening to help to enrich the experiences of communities and their denizens.

The Indianapolis Anthology Reading & Book Release
2021-05-15 17:00 - 19:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
“As a child, I thought Naptown was a cool nickname for Indianapolis. Little did I know it was more pejorative than cool. Indianapolis used to—and sometimes still does—have a reputation for being boring and lacking culture. The Indianapolis Anthology proves otherwise. We see the beauty, the ugliness, the racism, the diversity, the past, and the present. It’s all here. Through each story, you see Naptown isn’t a sleepy little city, and I was right all along.” —Oseye Boyd, editor of the Indianapolis Recorder
“A must-read for anyone who thinks they know the city.” —Rachel Sahaidachny, associate editor of The Indianapolis Review
The Indianapolis Anthology (May 4, 2021), edited by Norman Minnick, showcases Naptown’s vibrancy and diversity with pieces from journalists, poets, historians, established community voices, and first-time writers. Indianapolis is more than the home of the Indianapolis 500, John Dillinger, Kurt Vonnegut,and Wonder Bread. In these pages you’ll find lawn chairs in the beds of pick-ups; the magnificent stench of diesel, sweat, and sweetly hissing charcoal; suffragists and entrepreneurs; cement Pietàs; sneakers dangling from power lines; dog bakeries and yoga studios; red brick bungalows and war memorials; steakburgers and Mexican seafood; Pho and sauerbraten. In other words, you’ll find not Naptown, or flyover country, but a vibrant city that is truly a cross section of today’s America.
Belt books are distributed by Publishers Group West.
Masks are required

Artists & Community Speaker Series with Daniel Gray-Kontar, Raymond Bobgan, and Uzuri Asad
2021-05-27 19:00 - 20:00 | IN
Join us for the second installment of this four part series developed with artists and neighbors who are doing work related to or influencing our thinking with the Artist and Public Life affordable artist housing residency in our neighborhood on the near Southside of Indianapolis.
This episode will include Executive Artistic Director of Twelve Literary Arts Daniel Gray-Kontar, Executive Artistic Director of the Cleveland Public Theater Raymond Bobgan, and APLR artist Uzuri Asad.

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Made possible by PNC Bank.

About Daniel Gray-Kontar
Daniel Gray-Kontar is a poet, teacher, youth mentor, rapper, journalist, and education activist. He has worked as an advocate for social transformation in the city of Cleveland for more than 25 years. Gray-Kontar is an education consultant for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; writer-in-residence at MOCA Cleveland; the former chair of the Literary Arts Department at the Cleveland School of the Arts; and a former graduate school fellow at UC Berkeley’s College of Education. His work in arts education has been showcased on PBS Newshour, The UK Guardian, NPR, and The Christian Science Monitor, among other news media outlets. Gray-Kontar has lectured at universities, public schools, arts organizations and scholarly conferences across the US. His Ted Talk discussing youth leadership in public school education has affected the ways public school administrators think about the inclusion of youth and their families in the process of re-making school cultures and curricula.

About Uzuri Asad
Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Uzuri Asad now lives and works in the Garfield Park neighborhood of Indianapolis as part of Big Car Collaborative’s Artist in Public Life Residency program. She’s a singer, dancer, choreographer, and jewelry-maker. Formally trained in West African dance and contemporary movement, her art is guided by lived experiences and her cultural upbringing. Her style is a unique blend of fluid, free flowing, yet intentional movements. For Asad, dance is a sacred means of individual expression that lives and breathes through her.

Amanda Strong:Animations
2021-06-04 18:00 - 22:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
“Biidaaban”
In Amanda Strong’s astonishing short film, Biidaaban sets out to harvest sap from sugar maples in urban Ontario neighbourhoods. The practice of harvesting sap to create syrup goes back to time immemorial for the Anishinaabe, people but the lands have since been covered over by urban development and occupation. Biidaabaan can see the traces of the people, creatures, land and time as they work to continue in their ancestors’ movements. Biidaaban is a young Anishinaabe gender non-binary person that can see through multiple dimensions while existing and moving in their present time and space. They are sometimes accompanied by their friend Sabe (a 10,000-year-old shape shifter who some have called a Sasquatch), Ghost Caribou, and Ghost Wolf — but only Biidaaban can see them. They act as reminders of what exists in this space and provide lessons about honesty, humility and working for the people.
19 minutes 14 secs

“Four Faces of the Moon”
This animated documentary follows the journey of an Indigenous photographer as she travels through time. She witnesses moments in her family’s history and strengthens her connection to her Metis, Cree and Anishnaabe ancestors. This is a personal story told through the eyes of director and writer Amanda Strong. The oral and written history of her family reveals the story — we witness the impact and legacy of the railways, the slaughter of the buffalo and colonial land policies.
12 minutes 54 secs

About Amanda Strong
Amanda Strong is an Michif interdisciplinary artist with a focus on filmmaking, stop motion animations and media art. Currently based on unceded Coast Salish territories also known as Vancouver, BC, Canada. Strong received a BAA in Interpretative Illustration and a Diploma in Applied Photography from the Sheridan Institute. With a cross-discipline focus, common themes of her work are reclamation of Indigenous histories, lineage, language and culture. Strong is the Owner/Director/Producer of Spotted Fawn Productions Inc. (SFP). Under her direction, SFP utilizes a multi-layered approach and unconventional methods that are centered in collaboration on all aspects of their work.
Strong’s work is fiercely process-driven and takes form in various mediums such as: virtual reality, stop-motion, 2D/3D animation, gallery/museum installations, published books and community-activated projects. Strong and her team at Spotted Fawn Productions are currently working on the research and development of bringing these works into more interactive spaces.
Most recently she was selected by renowned filmmaker Alanis Obamsawin to receive $50,000 in post-services through the Clyde Gilmour Technicolour Award. In 2016 she received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Awards for Emerging Film and Media Artist. In 2013, Amanda was the recipient of K.M. Hunter Artist Award for Film and Video. Her films have screened across the globe, most notably at Cannes, TIFF, VIFF, and Ottawa International Animation Festival. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, BC Arts Council and the NFB. Spotted Fawn Productions is currently developing new short animations Wheetago War and Spirit Bear. SFP’s latest short animations Biidaaban (The dawn comes) Four Faces of the Moon and Flood are available online through CBC Short Docs and CBC Arts.

Masks are required. Made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Artists & Community Conversation Series- Cal Cullen, Allen Woods, Dr. Jarrod Dortch
2021-07-22 19:00 - 20:00 | IN
Join us for the third installment of this four part series developed with artists and neighbors who are doing work related to or influencing our thinking with the Artist and Public Life affordable artist housing residency in our neighborhood on the near Southside of Indianapolis.
This episode will include Executive Director of Wavepool Cal Cullen, Executive Director of Mortar Allen Woods, and APLR artist Dr. Jarrod Dortch
Made possible by PNC Bank.

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About Cal Cullen
Calcagno Cullen is a social practice artist, arts educator, and curator. She is founder and Executive Director of Wave Pool Arts Center, a gallery, studio space, and socially-engaged arts activator in Cincinnati, and the co-founder of The Welcome Project, a social-enterprise and makerspace for and by Cincinnati’s refugees and immigrants. She has previously worked in the education department of SFMOMA, the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View, California and was the Director of Adobe Books Backroom Gallery in San Francisco,. She is a member of the women’s art collective The FemFour, and collaboratively organizes the traveling exhibition and catalog of Women’s March posters entitled ‘Still They Persist.’ She has also curated and organized a multitude of exhibitions including ‘Dial Collect’ in 2013 at SOMArts in San Francisco, ‘Social Medium’ at Wave Pool, a segment of ‘Bay Area NOW 7’ at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Survival Adaptations at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery. She has been artist in residence at The Center for Great Neighborhoods in Covington, KY, Lo Studio dei Nipoti in Calabria, Italy, Teple Misto in Ivano Frankivsk, Ukraine, and in Sardegna, Italy. Her work has been shown in solo shows at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, and elsewhere. Her personal mission is to “create empathy and social change through contemporary art.”

About Allen Woods
Managing Partner & Creative Director of Mortar

Woods is a devoted husband, father and entrepreneur – in that order. A lifelong Midwesterner, he’s never allowed the size of a city to place a limit on the size of his dreams. Allen is the creative force behind the MORTAR brand, as well as a business consultant and training facilitator for incoming students.
His determination (or stubbornness – as his mom would call it) has allowed him to develop a resiliency that has grown with him on his entrepreneurial journey. Recognized as a 2016 Cincinnati Business Courier 40 under 40 Business Leader, 2017 John F. Barrett Entrepreneur Vision Award and 2017 Echoing Green BMA Fellow, Woods is also a sought-after public speaker who recently shined on the TEDx stage. As a brand strategist and designer, Allen assisted directly in the growth of hundreds of small businesses and personal brands across the globe.
When Allen isn’t at MORTAR, he’s probably somewhere with his wife, Kyla, planning or recording the next episode of their brand new marriage podcast, Permanent Plus One.

About Dr. Jarrod Dortch
Dr. Jarrod Nicholas Dortch is a Professor of Communication at Ivy Tech Community College in Muncie, Indiana. He also serves as the owner and operator of Solful Gardens, a local urban agriculture startup specializing in bringing Fresh.Urban.Natural produce to clients’ properties and working with community gardens. He has been affiliated with Big Car as a Community Artist and as Community Gardener at the Tube Factory artspace. He is currently working with Listen Hear and WQRT 99.1 FM. He enjoys bringing together art, education, and gardening to help to enrich the experiences of communities and their denizens.

Nick May: Fag Family
2021-09-03 18:00 - 2021-11-14 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
“Fag Family is a series of double portraits of individuals in my queer community. These portraits capture the queer relationships, queer spaces, and the liberating magic of queer world-building that I have the privilege to observe and be a part of,” says May.
“Historically, portraiture was a display of wealth and power; a luxury afforded only to the rich, affluent, white aristocracy. Queer individuals, especially queer individuals of color, have been totally erased from that history. I vehemently reject the stink of white supremacy and classism that continues to infect the art world, and my goal with these portraits is to subvert that ugly history by capturing my fellow queer friends with all of the luxuriance and beauty of oil painting.

Created with photo references, my portraits are nearly life-size and meticulously painted in order to earnestly catalog and celebrate the human lives I observe. Painting is an incredibly physical process: building the stretcher bar, stretching the canvas, priming and the process of painting demands an inordinate amount of energy. This painstaking process is compulsory however, because it is crucial for me to match the energy of the sitter I portray. Exerting so much energy into the surface of the canvas itself injects a kind of life into the portrait, as a homage to the living person themself.

Many of my fundamental artistic influences derive from the trauma I endured as a queer child. The escapist avenues I ventured in adolescence like children’s novels, campy movie musicals, fantasy video games made an invariable impression upon me. Growing up with image-dump platforms like Tumblr and Instagram exposed me to many artists who influence my work: Alice Neel, Mickalene Thomas, and Jordan Casteel to name a few. As a queer adult, drag queens, experimental pop music, and queer literature has indelibly impacted me. The apotheosis of these influences has left me obsessed with beautiful images, creating fantasies, and the human lives around me.

The power and beauty of my queer community inspired me to create this body of work. Despite existing in predominantly conservative midwestern towns and within an oppressive society, we create safe spaces for one another to brazenly enjoy our queerness. Within these spaces we transform ourselves, celebrate, and love one another. Within these spaces we create a whole new world that celebrates and uplifts us.”

Nick May is a portrait artist whose practice is deeply rooted in community and queerness. They received their Bachelors of Fine Arts with emphasis in Painting from Ball State University and are currently working as a portrait artist in Indianapolis, Indiana. Created from photographs, their portraits are nearly life-size and meticulously painted in order to earnestly capture and celebrate the human lives they encounter.

Made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Art Dog 2.0 Glizzies and Breakfast Sammies
2021-09-12 11:00 - 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join us for our second Art Dog event at the Tube Factory Artspace! Normal Coffee is partnering with food artist extraodinaires, Thin Glizzy, for a Sunday brunch event. We are excited to share with you a brunch menu complete with Classic and Chicago style 6″ hot dogs, a biscuit sandwich, a sweet breakfast pastry, a fresh, vegan salad, and beverages like Sun King beer, wine/mimosas, and coffee served out of our cafe space, Normal Coffee. Nick May will have their artwork up in the Main Gallery at Tube. All patrons are required to wear a mask indoors unless they are eating or drinking. There are limited servings, so RSVP and come early to guarantee your choice of brunch item!

Ambience Room:A Social Mixer
2021-09-17 18:00 - 22:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Ambience Room serves as a revival space where art and music lovers can socialize, hydrate themselves, charge their phones and find themselves dancing to the different variations of electronic music. Enjoy pov polaroid cameras, art installations and possible goodies 🙂
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Presented / Hosted by: @sweetgarbij @faithocean @iam5laphouse
Sounds by: @iam5laphouse@obiquawn @fatboyfabio @taylorgroft and nirrti azül 🙂
Vending by: @celestial.beadings@lifted.thrift @shueclothing@medusasheadshoppe@nineties_airport @underworldkingpin
Art installation by @styledbyfei

Maria E. Hamilton Abegunde-Remembering What I’d Rather Forget
2021-09-18 13:00 - 14:30 | Zoom, United States
Join us for a reading, talk about writing as a process and act of witnessing, remembering, healing, imagining and activating healing and justice.

Audience Q& A with Maria E. Hamilton Abegunde follows. The event will also play live on 99.1 WQRT. You can stream at www.wqrt.org

Maria E. Hamilton Abegunde, Ph.D. is a Memory Keeper, poet, ancestral priest in the Yoruba Orisa tradition, healing facilitator, doula, and a Reiki Master. Her research and creative work are grounded in contemplative and ritual practices and respectfully approach the Earth and human bodies as sites of memory, and always with the understanding that memory never dies, is subversive, and can be recovered to transform transgenerational trauma and pain into peace and power. She is the inaugural recipient of the Ph.D. in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University.

Dr. Abegunde is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including Wishful Thinking about the 2001 disappearance of Tionda and Diamond Bradley in Chicago. Anthologized poems are included in Gathering Ground, Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century, and Catch the Fire. Her poetry has also been published in Tupelo Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Cogzine, and Rhino.

Excerpts of her memory work, The Ariran’s Last Life, have been published in Trouble the Waters: Tales from the Deep Blue, Let Spirit Speak!, Warpland, Best African American Fiction, and The Kenyon Review. Co-edited works include Jane’s Stories III with Glenda Bailey-Mershon with whom she and others co-founded Jane’s Stories Press.

Dr. Abegunde is a Cave Canem poetry fellow. She has also received writing fellowships from Sacatar, Ragdale, and Norcroft. Her awards for poetry include the New Discovery Award from the Poetry Center of Chicago and a COG poetry finalist award (Judge: Juan Felipe Herrera). In 2021 she was one of the inaugural poets selected for the Poets & Scholars Retreat at the Rutgers University Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice.
Her creative work and research was recognized through the NEH summer institute fellowship Black Aesthetics and African Centered Cultural Expressions: Sacred Systems in the Nexus between Cultural Studies, Religion and Philosophy, under the directorship of Dr. Pellom McDaniels III and Paul Carter Harrison. Her book chapter “Seeing as a Ritual for a Good Death: The Spiritual Construction of Alain Gomis’ Film Tey” appears in Ashe: Ritual Poetics in African Diasporic Expressivity (edited by Michael Harris, Paul Carter Harrison, and Pellom McDaniels III).

Because of her work on intergenerational/ancestral trauma, community healing, arts-based practices, she was invited to join faculty in the School of Education at the University of Juba, South Sudan to help create a two-year Master’s program in Teaching Emergencies. Dr. Abegunde is also a trained Civic Reflection Dialogue and Powerful Conversations on Race facilitator for Spirit & Place, which she used to launch the initial symposium and dialogues for the anti-Black racism critical conversations on race for the IU College of Arts and Sciences.

She is an inaugural winner of the Dr. James E. Mumford Excellence in Extraordinary Teaching Awards from the IU Faculty Academy on Excellence in Teaching (FACET) and an Inclusive Excellence Award for teaching during extraordinary times.
Dr. Abegunde was the founding director of The Graduate Mentoring Center in the University Graduate School, where she directed the center between 2014-2021. As director she developed the Five-Fold Path for mentoring as a contemplative practice as well as nationally recognized student-centered mentoring practices, including trauma-informed practices, for students, faculty, and staff.

Before coming to IU Dr. Abegunde worked in elementary school education for over 20 years and as an independent teaching artist. She was the lead team teacher for the Middle Passage Project and sailed from Puerto Rico to Brazil with Captain Bill Pinkney to retrace and teach about Middle Passage routes. She also served as poet and ritualist-in-residence for the UNESCO-Transatlantic Slave Trade Route-USA Project.
When Dr. Abegunde is not teaching and working, she enjoys watching/reading science fiction.
Made possible by the Midwest Gig Fund

A Normal Market: Lapis Lily, Vintage Kat & Mom, Celestial Arts & Antiques
2021-12-12 10:00 - 14:00 | IN
Normal Coffee has your breakfast and hot beverages covered on Sundays.
About Lapis Lily
I am a sustainable artist and love to create with found goods. I will ship with recycled materials. I source all shipping materials myself and save them from landfills. Sometimes I create boxes to specifically fit your item. I want to do what’s best for the environment while helping you decorate your home.
About Vintage Kat & Mom
This mother daughter duo vend vintage and boho clothing, prints and more!
About Celestial Arts & Antiques
One of a kind art and jewelry made in this No Mean City.

Snuggy Bear Presents: MLK Day 2022
2022-01-17 12:00 - 17:00 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Live programming from 12p-5p on WQRT 99.1 FM
TImes are subject to change.
SunggyBear Presents
12:00 Oreo Jones
(Opening introduction building understanding of concept.)
12:15 Ashley Gurvitz (Community Advocate)
12:45 Tiana Cain (APLR Artist, Entrepreneur)
1:15 Thomas Kneeland (Published Poet)
1:45 Rebecca Robinson (Visual Artist, “18 Collective”)
2:15 Oreo Jones (APLR Artist, Recording Artist, Station Manager)
2:45 Carrington Clinton (APLR Artist, Performing Artist)
3:15 Quinton Holland (Counselor and Therapist, Entrepreneur)
3:45 Andrea Hunley (IPS Principal, State Senate Candidate)
4:30 Ebony Chappel
Closing of the day rebuilding understanding of concept.
About Snuggy Bear
Largely underrepresented in museums and galleries, “Snuggy Bear”, Dr. Jarrod Nicholas Dortch is part of a movement of Black artists and curators who are hosting exhibits and creating work that shines a light on Black culture. He has been affiliated with Big Car as a Community Artist and Gardener at the Tube Factory artspace. He is also a member of “The Eighteen” a collective of local artists who made history by painting the #BlackLivesMatter mural on historic Indiana Avenue in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Since this offering he has been part of exhibitions and programs at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and The Indianapolis Art Center, curated “Art and Vinyl” an annual celebration of Black art and music for Big Car and has received several grants to create artworks throughout the city. His work was displayed on downtown storefronts during the NCAA Men’s and Women’s College Basketball Tournament as part of #SWISH. Dortch serves as both a professor of communication and a business owner. He owns and operates Solful Gardens, a natural produce provider in Central Indiana that brings quality food access to urban areas that are underserved with an overall focus on food equity. He also has created Snuggy Bear Presents as a way to further disrupt the status quo of contemporary and fine art. With roots in art, community, and education, Snuggy Bear is leveraging these disciplines to help promote personal and communal growth one bespoke curation at a time.

Create Hear-Kris Graves
2022-01-29 14:00 - 16:00, 2022-02-03 12:00 - 14:00 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Produced by artists and curators from Big Car Collaborative, Create Hear is your place to listen to conversations with people making intriguing, innovative, and impactful things happen on the cultural front in Indianapolis, across Indiana, and beyond.

In this episode, Oreo Jones interviews photographer Kris Graves, the most recent Artist in Residence at Aurora PhotoCenter and whose exhibit “A Southern Horror” is Feb.4-March 20 at Tube Factory artspace’s Guichelaar Gallery.

Graves (b. 1982 New York, NY) is an artist and publisher based in New York and California. He received his BFA in Visual Arts from S.U.N.Y. Purchase College and has been published and exhibited globally, including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Getty Institute, Los Angeles; and National Portrait Gallery in London, England; among others. Permanent collections include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Getty Institute, Schomburg Center, Whitney Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Brooklyn Museum; and The Wedge Collection, Toronto; amongst others. Graves also sits on the board of Blue Sky Gallery: Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts, Portland; and The Architectural League of New York as Vice President of Photography.

Create Hear: Laura Foster Nicholoson
2022-02-05 14:00 - 15:00 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Produced by artists and curators from Big Car Collaborative, Create Hear is your place to listen to conversations with people making intriguing, innovative, and impactful things happen on the cultural front in Indianapolis, across Indiana, and beyond.

In this episode, Shauta Marsh interviews New Harmony, IN based textile artist Laura Foster Nicholson, who recently received the Dehaan Artist of Distinction Award. Her exhibit “Scenes from the Carbon Border” runs February 4-April 18 at Tube Factory artspace.

Landon Caldwell and Mark Tester: Alice
2022-02-15 19:00 - 20:30 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Step through the looking glass with WQRT! In late 2021 artists Landon Caldwell and Mark Tester were commissioned to create a live soundtrack to Jan Svankmajer’s “Alice.” Have a cup of tea or coffee and tune in to 99.1 FM. You can also watch along on YouTube while listening.
About Landon Caldwell & Mark Tester:
Caldwell & Tester are Indianapolis-based artists, musicians, composers, and producers. Their duo work explores various niches in electronic music with a focus on process, often incorporating spontaneous composition & experimentation with an array of technology, creating works that harness rhythm, ambiance, and melody to conjure meditations on fleeting sensations and early morning comedowns.
Together they have toured in the United States, Canada, and Europe and are regularly engaged with artists and musicians across the Midwest and beyond. Since 2016 they have operated Medium Sound, producing a number of the label’s releases.

Kelvin Burzon and Jenny Delfuego: Process/Progress
2022-03-04 18:00 - 2022-03-25 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Multi-genre visual artists Kelvin Burzon and Jenny Delfuego are creating movement-based work to accompany their visual art as part of a partnership between Big Car Collaborative and Indy Movement Arts.
In the fall of 2020, Indy Movement Arts began experimenting with small, digital fellowships as a small contribution towards the arts economy and keeping artistic production viable. The Process/Progress residency is the latest iteration of this experiment, paying intermedia artists to reflect on their creative process and how they incorporate movement into their practice.
The residency was conceived as a digital one but given that Indy Movement Arts is rooted in movement and dance, a discipline that often involves some immediate interchange between artist and audience, the artists were commissioned in partnership between the two organizations to make a new work involving such an interchange.

About the artists:
Kelvin Burzon’s recent work addresses, but does not attempt to resolve, the tension between religion and homosexuality. He examines religion’s traditions, imagery, theatricality, and psychological vestige. By appropriating religious imagery and language, the work is recontextualized by the insertion of LGBTQ members and activists. Burzon’s work has been exhibited abroad and all over the country and is part of several permanent collections including the Kinsey Institute and The Center for Photography at Woodstock.

Jenny Delfuego was born in Chicago to immigrant parents and has been exhibiting work under different monikers since the 90s. She examines ephemerality, light and shadow, and the edges of impermanence. The indications of our existence are often made and unmade in the time it takes to observe them. Her involvement with Indy Movement Arts has promoted experiments in communal conversation and collaboration. What marks, what indications do these conversations leave? Delfuego studied painting at Indiana University and her work is in private and corporate collections on five continents.

The exhibit is made possible by The Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, The Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Performances will take place March 25th

pLopLop Vol. 14 Submission Form
2022-03-17 08:00 - 2022-08-01 17:00 | IN
Are you a writer? Have something to say? Want to put it in print? Submit your work to PLopLop! 100 word limit. Submissions are due by August 1.
pLOpLop is an “Antholozine” of Poetry, Prose and Artwork published by Indianapolis, IN based visual artist, Big Car co-founder and writer John Clark since 1992.
pLopLop has published the work of writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Fielding Dawson, Eileen Myles, Gerald Locklin and more.
Influences: Surrealism, Dada, Henry Miller, Patchen, lo-fi indie rock, DIY activities, indie publishers and bookshops, British Invasion, mimeo-revolution, underground writers, garage rock and improvisation.

The Color of Pomegranates
2022-03-23 19:30 - 21:00 | Kan-Kan Cinema, 1258 Windsor St., Indianapolis, IN, 46201, United States
Join Kan-Kan Cinema and Big Car Collaborative for the screening of “The Color of Pomegranates” (Sayat Nova). The late Soviet director, Sergei Paradjanov, makes an earnest attempt to fuse poetry and film by seriously exploring the poetic potential of the cinema.
A breathtaking fusion of poetry, ethnography, and cinema, Sergei Parajanov’s masterwork overflows with unforgettable images and sounds. In a series of tableaux that blend the tactile with the abstract, “The Color of Pomegranates” revives the splendors of Armenian culture through the story of the eighteenth-century troubadour Sayat-Nova, charting his intellectual, artistic, and spiritual growth through iconographic compositions rather than traditional narrative. The film’s tapestry of folklore and metaphor departed from the realism that dominated the Soviet cinema of its era, leading authorities to block its distribution, with rare underground screenings presenting it in a restructured form. This edition features the cut closest to Parajanov’s original vision, in a restoration that brings new life to one of cinema’s most enigmatic meditations on art and beauty.
A deliriously beautiful film “The Color of Pomegranates” stays in the mind long after the film has run its course.
Big Car Co-founder & Director of Programming and Exhibitions, Shauta Marsh will host a discussion and Q&A post the film.

Process/Progress Art Salon
2022-03-25 19:00 - 23:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join Indy Movement Arts and Big Car Collaborative for an innovative evening of performance, performance art, and kinetic creation.

Kelvin Burzon and Jenny Delfuego will premier new work as a part of the Indy Movement Arts Process/Progress residency, accompanied by original work from Indy Movement Arts dance-makers, Bethany Bak and Lauren Curry. Patrons are invited to freely traverse the space; Drink, talk, and make merry as creation unfolds in all the nooks and crannies of the Tube Factory Artspace. From the intricately constructed to the joyfully participatory, there will be something for everyone. For the truly locked-in art-goer, the evening will culminate in a technicolor dance party.

Will we levitate the Tube Factory with good vibrations? There’s only one way to find out…

In the fall of 2020, Indy Movement Arts began experimenting with digital fellowships as a small contribution to towards keeping artistic production viable. The Process/Progress residency is part of that experiment, paying artists to reflect on their creative process and how they incorporate movement into their practice.

About this event
Doors open at 7:00pm. The performances and participatory offerings will be scattered throughout the evening (7:00-9:00pm) and we will close out the night with a technicolor dance party, beginning at 9:00pm.

Process/Progress Art Salon is presented in partnership with Big Car Collaborative and is made possible by The Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Mayasa Design House: In Color
2022-04-01 08:00 - 2022-04-24 17:00 | Listen Hear, 2620 Shelby St, , Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
I am always seeking ways to blend the art in my soul, blur the genres, and allow a cohesive expression to come from multiple places within. -Uzuri Asad, Mayasa Design House
Listen Hear will host paintings, jewelry and other items from Uzuri Asad of Mayasa Design House. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Uzuri Asad now lives and works in the Garfield Park neighborhood of Indianapolis as part of Big Car Collaborative’s Artist in Public Life Residency program. She’s a singer, dancer, choreographer, and jewelry-maker. Formally trained in West African dance and contemporary movement, her art is guided by lived experiences and her cultural upbringing. Her style is a unique blend of fluid, free flowing, yet intentional movements. For Asad, dance is a sacred means of individual expression that lives and breathes through her.
Music has always been a big part of her life. Beginning with an idea or a piece of music, her creative process is a daydream of ideas and music that become living and breathing pulsations within her. Deeply in tune and connected to each individual element, she creates jewelry by envisioning the people who would wear what she makes, the environment they might dwell in, and how those pieces may be incorporated into their lives naturally.
She recently worked as a choreographer and performer for “Village Voices: Notes from the Griot”, a collaborative production created by Joshua Thompson and directed by Megan Simonton. Within this work, she was part of an educational experience that brought creative expression from the stage to the classroom, creating dialogue to address the painful and ugly things that aren’t spoken.
Everything I do is based on lived experiences. A great deal of my work is centered around celebrating and creating space for healing Black women. I’m moved by the living artistry of my family’s existence, and by the people who I have come to love along my journey. I’ve been inspired to examine and express things happening in the world as of late, so I am exploring movement and adornment that reflects the emotional and spiritual effects of my community.
Asad believes, through movements of expression, that her work can create a meaningful reflection of the times that become reference points in the future of what has occurred. With her bold, unapologetic, and intrepid movements, she inspires people to find their voice and create a space to heal women. In this space, women don’t have to make themselves smaller or quieter. They embrace their identity and power to its fullest.
Facebook.com/ijomovement
Instagram: zuri_mayasa
This exhibition was made possible by the Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation.

Drea Cofield: All At Once
2022-04-01 18:00 - 2022-05-23 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Alla prima is the Italian term for the material technique of wet on wet painting, and literally translates to “at the first”, but I prefer to read “all at once” as it denotes a kind of urgent submission to the sensorial subject that parallels the sublimation of my more libidinal imagery into the touch of the landscape. Like a lover lost in the realms of desire, a pendulous breast or glistening ass becomes the wet slip of a brushstroke, the resonant touch of two tones, and other things unnameable. How does a stand of trees relate to the figure? How does the midday sun relate to my state of mind? Temperature and speed become tantamount in the lived moment as I try to consume everything with my eyes. Less time to think for more time to feel the shifting light and twining trees mirrored in the creek. Most of the paintings in this body of work were created in one sitting.
About the artist
Drea Cofield is an artist currently working between Indianapolis, IN and Brooklyn, NY. In 2013, she received her M.F.A from Yale School of Art (New Haven, CT), and in 2008, her B.A from DePauw University (Greencastle, IN). She has exhibited in the U.S. and internationally including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland and Italy. Most recently she exhibited in the Armory Show with 1969 Gallery in New York. Her work has been featured in the Brooklyn Rail, Artnet News, Juxtapoz, Blouin Art Info, and in Suzanne Hudson’s latest issue of Contemporary Painting (World of Art). She is the recipient of an Elizabeth Greenshields Grant and the Yale University Gloucester Painting Prize. Residencies include the Guild of Adventure Painters SWAB Mobile Residency in 2019. She is the Founder and Director of Bomb Pop-Up, a pop-up Art & Music initiative that focuses on providing visibility in exciting contexts to emerging and established artists and musicians; working with other 200 artists from all over the world and collaborating with institutions such as the National Academy of Design. Cofield has been a visiting artist at Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, and the School of Visual Arts. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.
Image :”Hole” 60 x 50 inches, oil on canvas
This exhibition was made possible by the Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation.

Juan Chawuk: Iridiscencia Cultural
2022-05-06 18:00 - 2022-07-17 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Juan Chawuk invites viewers to experience his home state of Chiapas, Mexico through paintings, photography, sculptures and murals. As part of an ongoing series, this work shines light on the multicultural citizens of Chiapas, how they’ve coexisted for centuries, and how conflict there has fostered new ways of creating.
As an indigenous Maya Tojobal artist, Chawuk’s photographs show how cultures fuse together a shared iconography including some imposed by outside cultures with what remains from traditions of the past — including from the land’s ancient cultures. These icons generate dialogue and reflect emotional colors and shapes, leading to surprises. The series of small paintings are more mythical with a touch of the magical realism often linked with Latin American art and literature. Featuring live models and jungle animals, the paintings’ brushstrokes suggest the magnificent handicrafts of the Chiapas region. And the sculpture is made of mud and fibers from the jungle that the Lacandones people once used for tunics. This piece encourages viewers to experience the Chiapas cultures and their nature.
Chawuk’s interpretations transform perceptions of Chiapas and allow viewers to experience the creative iridescence (a reflection of various colors, similar to a rainbow) that his senses capture in these works.

The exhibit is a partnership with Arte Mexicano en Indiana and curated by its founder, Eduardo Luna. Luna is a social practice artist, cultural promoter and advocate for Mexican identity and Latina/o/x culture. Luna hails from the state of Guerrero, the city of Acapulco, in the Costa Chica region of southern Pacific Mexico. Since 2012, he has been curating events featuring artists of Mexican and Latina/o/x heritage for diverse Indiana audiences. Eduardo is a co-founder of Nopal Cultural, La Sardina Gallery, and Radio Calaca (formerly Espanglish Night), and has served for many years as Big Car staff artist. Arte Mexicano en Indiana was founded in 2020, with a mission to encourage and promote Mexican art, music, and culture in Indiana through collaborations and by organizing and promoting public events. “Our vision is that people of Mexican heritage develop pride in their cultural heritage, and that native Hoosiers develop a richer perspective on the Mexican people and the culture we contribute to Indiana,” says Eduardo. He is a member of the international Mexican Cultural Art Alliance (MCAA), a group of Mexican and Mexican-American arts administrators started by Carlos Tortolero, founder of the National Museum of Mexican Art.

Juan Chawuk: Iridiscencia Cultural
La percepción de la cultura de Chiapas se transforma con las interpretaciones. Ahí surge la iridiscencia (Reflejo de colores distintos, generalmente como los del arco iris)creativa que captan mis sentidos y que se manifiesta a través de estas obras.
En esta muestra de tres series, hago referencia a esas interacciones en el tiempo que muestran a Chiapas como hogar de varias culturas milenarias en gran agitación global, con una identidad en constante conflicto que se expresa en nuevas maneras de crear.
La serie de fotografías es una muestra clara de una combinación de filosofías y creencias religiosas; la interpretación de las imágenes impuestas por una cultura externa con lo local, el pasado remoto de una cultura milenaria, pero que en la actualidad tienen interlocución y genera los prismas que reflejan colores emocionales y formas que sorprenden a la vida diaria.
Esta serie de fotos se hizo reflexionando sobre las emociones que provoca las fusiones de iconografías.
La serie de obras pequeñas es más mítica y su toque de realismo mágico identifica a Latinoamérica con los procesos creativos, desde modelos en vivo hasta animales de la selva. Sus pinceladas recuerdan las energías de la naturaleza que se mezclan con las magníficas obras artesanales de la región Chiapaneca.
Asimismo, la serie de piezas de barro y fibras de la selva que antes utilizaban los lacandones para túnicas, juega con las estampas de los textiles sin ser tan obvias pero pretende llevar al espectador a rememorar un Chiapas que, si ya lo conoce, se transforma en experiencia que revive. Y si aún no lo conoce, transporta al espectador a Chiapas y sus textiles en un contexto contemporáneo, fantástico y creativo que invita a una experiencia de vida con estas culturas y su naturaleza.
Que esta muestra sea una manera de conocer una parte de México que se identifica con lo global contemporáneo pero con una raíz muy valiosa de su pasado milenario.

Made possible by Arte Mexicano en Indiana, The Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Tsanavi Spoonhunter Select Short Films
2022-06-03 18:00 - 22:00 | IN
“Purple Flower Girl”
Raised from humble beginnings in a rural town, artist Jean LaMarr celebrates her cultural traditions while making a name for herself in the larger art world. Purple Flower Girl will take viewers into a space meant for those who are unfamiliar with LaMarr’s legacy and its impact.
Director and Producer: Tsanavi Spoonhunter
Cinematographer and Colorist: Christian Lee Collins
Composer and Re-Recording Mixer: Conor Chee
Editor: James Tensuan
“Sagebrush Heathen”
Jack Malotte’s work showcases the Native American experience by way of art, and challenges Nevada’s political landscape around extraction and nuclear test sites on tribal lands. From his remote reservation in rural Nevada, Malotte presents a unique perspective of what it means to be, what he describes, a Sagebrush Heathen.
Director and Producer: Tsanavi Spoonhunter
Cinematographer and Editor: Tim Lenard
Composer: Sage Romero
Tsanavi Spoonhunter was born and raised in Payahuunadü— “the land of flowing water,” homelands of her Paiute people— located in Owens Valley, California. She is also a proud citizen of the Northern Arapaho Tribe of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.
Her ancestry and upbringing in Indian Country have strongly informed her storytelling and artistic vision. Some of her published works have included federal government funding for tribes, jurisdictional issues between governing agencies and economic development on tribal lands.
Spoonhunter’s educational background is rooted in journalism. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno; and a Masters of Journalism degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley with a focus on documentary film.
Her master’s thesis film, Crow Country: Our Right to Food Sovereignty (2020), has screened at festivals and selected venues across the country and has won numerous awards including Best Documentary Short from the American Indian Film Festival. In all, her short films have screened on Alaska Airlines, at the National Museum of the American Indian, The Redford Center, art museums and PBS affiliates.
She serves as director and producer on her first feature-length documentary titled Holder of the Sky (2023). The film has received support from SFFilm, the International Documentary Association, Sundance Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Independent Documentary, the Native American Media Alliance and the Logan Nonfiction Program. It is currently in production.
Spoonhunter is a 2022 Sundance Institute Humanities Sustainability Fellow, SFFilm FilmHouse Resident and First People’s Fund Fellow. As a Native American reporter and filmmaker, her goal is to pursue the highest levels of accuracy and ethical standards when telling stories about communities across the United States, and abroad.

Image from artist Jean LaMarr.

Rob Funkhouser- Study In Place
2022-06-03 18:00 - 2022-07-24 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Study in Place is a set of interactive sound sculptures and instruments that celebrate the everyday sounds and objects around us. An attempt to unify diverse threads in his creative practice, daily life, and occupation, Funkhouser seeks a reckoning with the tension between falling into routine and cultivating long-term personal growth.
“Moving to Indianapolis caused in me this profound, almost cosmic, sense of being in the right place at the right time. It afforded me both the right economic circumstances, and artistic community to begin a period of joyful exploration into my own art and identity. Having lived the better part of a decade here, changes in all aspects of life have surfaced a need to take an inventory and rediscover my place in life– both literally and artistically,” says Funkhouser who previously lived in his hometown of Richmond, Indiana.
This show also features the first exhibition of a collaboration between Funkhouser and his neighbor and visual artist, Justin Cooper (both are residents in Big Car’s Artist and Public Life housing program). Each piece they made together features a flower found in the Garfield Park neighborhood, many of which have taken up residence in their respective yards.“
The kalimbas and sound boxes represent the fruit of many conversations had on one porch or another, and approximately 55 gallons of coffee between us,” says Funkhouser. “Living close to each other, we were able to slowly build a set of instruments that both pushed into new aesthetic territory and helped grow a shared language of form.”In a time where content is being created and served on a bigger scale than any one person can possibly keep up with, Funkhouser shares with his audience the possibilities that music affords us as a medium to connect to place and each other.
About the artist
Rob Funkhouser is a composer, performer, and instrument builder who can never quite sit still. His work is concerned with ideas of place, memory, and pattern and he is interested in interrogating the interstitial spaces between established genres. He holds an M.M. from Butler University in Music Composition, and most recently completed Peace of Mind, Speed of Thought for Classical Music Indy. He has released recordings, curated performances, and installed works in many places both around Indianapolis and in many other parts of the country. In 2020, he began a long-term living residency with Big Car as part of their APLR program, and served as a resident artist for Cat Head Press in collaboration with Landon Caldwell. He also serves as Education Manager for the Rhythm Discovery Center, where he runs public programming for schools and community members. He has collaborated with diverse groups including Forward Motion, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, No Exit Theater, and Chicago-based director Ryan Gleason.
Made possible through the generous support of The Efroymson Family Fund. Additional support provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Arts Council of Indianapolis and the City of Indianapolis.

Rob Funkhouser and Eric Salzaar Study In Place Live Performance
2022-07-24 16:00 - 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Rob Funkhouser will perform live on the Cristal Baschet he created during the pandemic.
Funkhouser is a composer, performer, and instrument builder who can never quite sit still. His work is concerned with ideas of place, memory, and pattern and he is interested in interrogating the interstitial spaces between established genres. He holds an M.M. from Butler University in Music Composition, and most recently completed Peace of Mind, Speed of Thought for Classical Music Indy. He has released recordings, curated performances, and installed works in many places both around Indianapolis and in many other parts of the country. In 2020, he began a long-term living residency with Big Car as part of their APLR program, and served as a resident artist for Cat Head Press in collaboration with Landon Caldwell. He also serves as Education Manager for the Rhythm Discovery Center, where he runs public programming for schools and community members. He has collaborated with diverse groups including Forward Motion, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, No Exit Theater, and Chicago-based director Ryan Gleason.
Eric Salazar holds a B.M. in Clarinet Performance from Ball State University and an M.M. in Clarinet Performance from Bowling Green State University. He currently serves as an Director of Community Engagement for Classical Music Indy where he manages, books, and promotes over a hundred and fifty performance events a year in Central Indiana. Eric also mentors and hires 30-40 independent classical musicians annually. With their combined efforts this group brings music to over 100,000 Indiana residents a year, with a focus on people who would not otherwise have access to live music performance.
Made possible through the generous support of The Efroymson Family Fund. Additional support provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Arts Council of Indianapolis and the City of Indianapolis.

Qahar Behzad: The Colors of Afghanistan
2022-08-05 08:00 - 18:00 | IN
Opening in Tube Factory artspace’s Guichelaar Gallery is a collection of works by Behzad created between the years 2011-2022 in Afghanistan and the US.
Behzad grew up in Kabul in a family of book publishers, surrounded by centuries-old historical texts and rare books of poetry in his father’s libraries and bookstores. Behzad remembers reading traditional Afghan storybooks his father published that directly influence the art he creates.
Behzad paints about life in Afghanistan, often from observation, depicting places like Kabul’s busy bazaars and Afghanistan’s picturesque mountain ranges. He paints with depth and expressive color, drawing inspiration from one of his favorite Western painters, Claude Monet. Through these influences, Behzad expresses his take on the rich and storied culture of his country.
Behzad’s journey as an artist began in the mid-1990s, when he was six years old. The Taliban had first emerged in his home country, and Behzad’s family found safety in Pakistan. Not able to attend school yet, he spent his days drawing. Here, he completed his first artwork, a drawing of former Afghan king, Mairwais Naika, after studying his portrait in a history book.
His family encouraged him to pursue development as an artist. “I had no real training or instruction in art,” says Behzad. “I just sat down and began to draw. Everyone who looked at my drawings appreciated what my artwork stood for, and pushed me to continue.”
A few years later, his family was able to resume life in their home country, and Behzad began to explore painting in oil and watercolor. After the establishment of US military base Camp Eggers in Kabul, Behzad became the first artist to display and sell artworks there. From 2005-2015, he created daily in his studio on base, producing thousands of drawings, oil paintings, and watercolors. Behzad’s studio became a haven of peace amid an otherwise hectic atmosphere. Soldiers and other military personnel could drop in for tea, to observe Behzad’s creative process, commission a painting, or take a lesson with the artist.
One of the paintings featured in this exhibition, Behzad Bookstore and Afghan Burqas was originally created by Behzad in 2009. In this piece, a group of women dressed in traditional burqas read from shelves of books in his father’s shop in Kabul. The piece celebrates the new freedoms available to women after the first Taliban regime ended, when they could leave their homes, pursue education and learn their rights. In 2021, these freedoms were again taken away. The Taliban is again denying the education and enlightenment of Afghan people, and Behzad Bookstore has closed due to their threats. Behzad recreated this painting in 2022 to highlight this tragic regression, and to remember better times in his country.
Behzad’s works have gained international recognition. Some of these works include portraits of Queen Elizabeth ll commissioned by the British Ambassador to Afghanistan, former US President George W. Bush, for which Behzad received a personal letter of appreciation, and former US President Barack Obama, commissioned by his election campaign staff. The US Navy also commissioned a large canvas mural featuring a fleet of ships stationed in San Diego, California. Behzad has completed many paintings for U.S diplomats and advisors, NATO representatives, and the government of Afghanistan.

Qahar Behzad Bio
A self-taught artist from Kabul, Afghanistan, Abdul Qahar Behzad is now based in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he works as a Legal Assistant for Exodus Refugee Immigration. He earned a degree in Law and Political Science from Rana University in Kabul in 2020.
Behzad was the first artist to display and sell his paintings at Camp Eggers, a US military base in Kabul. From 2005 to 2018, he operated painting studios there, as well as at Camp Phoenix, NKC (New Kabul Compound) Base, ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) “Resolute Support” Headquarters, Camp Cobra, and Camp Qula House, where he created artworks for soldiers and military personnel.
When Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, Behzad was working as an artist in Kabul. Amidst the chaos and violent takeover, former commanding US officials, many of whom served in the Indiana National Guard, wrote letters of support to bring him to safety in the US. Behzad evacuated to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, where he volunteered as an interpreter for 4 months.
Behzad is committed to helping other refugees like himself. He is working to bring the rest of his family to safety in the US, and advocating for the evacuation of other Afghans who still live under threat of the Taliban every day.

LaShawnda Crowe Storm-Sister Song:The Requiem
2022-08-05 18:00 - 2022-10-16 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Sister Song: The Requiem is a community-based project that examines how art and community co-creation processes can be used to heal the intergenerational trauma associated with enslavement and its aftermaths. The project, led by artist LaShawnda Crowe Storm, blurs the lines between the public and private by transforming mundane places into sacred spaces through public rituals.
A requiem is an act of remembrance for the dead. How does honoring the dead give life to the living? How do the living remember their histories while creating new futures? How does embracing history help us release specific traumas and move toward a future where healing is possible? We explore these questions through the community co-creation process that is at the heart of Requiem: womb making.
Each womb is handcrafted and designed in wax by Crowe Storm, then cast in aluminum. After casting is completed, Crowe Storm invites artists and community members to choose a womb. Womb makers then adapt and modify the womb by following these simple directions: Make this into a talisman or spiritual object to heal your/our histories, be willing to allow what needs to emerge to emerge, and transform the womb to reflect a vision of healing. Each womb maker must also be willing to continuously ask themselves the question, “How do I reclaim the ‘spirit of the womb’ when that spirit has been stolen, harmed, wounded?”
Requiem is the second iteration of Sister Song. The first included 8 wombs that were installed as part of the exhibit Keeper of My Mothers’ Dream (2017, Indianapolis). Requiem incudes nearly 50 vessels on exhibition: the wombs by the original 8 participants along with 40 others, some invited by the original womb makers and others identified by Crowe Storm. In addition, some of the original 8 womb makers created new wombs. The exhibit also includes newly commissioned poems by Maria Hamilton Abegunde.
Participating womb makers include: Abegunde, Afriye We-Kandodis, Alice Berry, Ariana Beedie, Bambi Aldridge, Breon Tyler, Clare Wildhack-Nolan and Ezmae Wildhack-Cain, D. Olivia Jones, Joyce Moore, Juaquita Callaway, Julia Rodreguiz , Keesha Dixon, Kianga Jinaki, LaToya Marlin, Lillis Taylor, Malaika Baxa, Marilyn Kunkle, Melissa Larimer, Monica Johnson, N’dieye Gray Danavall, Phyllis Boyd, Ronda Chapman, Samantha Horton, Sharon Clark, Shauta Marsh, Stacia Murphy, Stephanie Roberston, Trish Williams, Tysha Ahmad, Uzuri Asad, Val Tate, Veronica Schwartz DeFazio, Viola Moten Ratcliffe, Yolanda Echols and Yvette Upton.
LaShawnda Crowe Storm is a mixed media and community-based artist, activist, community builder and occasionally an urban farmer. Whether making artwork or sowing seeds, she uses her creative power as a vehicle for dialogue around topics such as racial and gender violence, social change and justice. At the core of her practice is a desire to create community; any community in which the process of making art creates a space for difficult discussions with an eye towards community healing. She has received numerous awards for art and community activism. Crowe Storm received an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004.
Image: LaShawnda Crowe Storm, “Mother At The Crossroads,” bronze, 2021. Photographer: Polina Osherov.
Made possible by Mr. & Mrs. Craig E Von Deylen and Laurel S Judkins with support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Arts Council of Indianapolis, The Arts Council of Indianapolis and The Efroymson Family Fund.
