Ambience Room:A Social Mixer
2021-09-17 18:00 - 22:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | 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.

Sister Song Womb Makers Artist Talk
2022-08-06 15:00 - 17:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Hear from some of the artists and community members that LaShawnda Crowe Storm invited to create a womb. Womb makers adapted and modified 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 had to continuously ask themselves the question, “How do I reclaim the ‘spirit of the womb’ when that spirit has been stolen, harmed, wounded?”
Womb makers: 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
Made possible by Mr. & Mrs. Craig E Von Deylen and Laurel S Judkins with additional support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Amy Kligman and Ish Muhammad In Conversation
2022-08-17 19:00 - 20:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Learn more about two of the artists selecting this year’s Power Plant Grant recipients!
Amy Kligman has been the Executive Artistic Director at Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, MO since 2015. Kligman’s career and experience as an exhibiting artist and grassroots curator/arts administrator spans 20 years of studio & exhibition work, independent curating and organizing, and artist-run projects. In 2011 Kligman was one of a team of 5 artist-curators who established Plug Projects, an artist-run project space in Kansas City’s West Bottoms that hosted a robust & nationally recognized calendar of exhibitions and artist-centered programming.

Ish Muhammad is a self-taught artist residing in Northwest Indiana. Muhammad’s work, post-graffiti abstract expressionism, is exhibited in galleries, museums, and site-specific installations nationally. He is a founding member of Crazy Indiana Style Artists (CISA). CISA is recognized as Indiana’s first Latino Art Collective.

Dear Black Girl with Tamara Winfrey Harris
2022-08-20 15:00 - 17:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
A public reading and discussion around the book “Dear Black Girl: Letters from Your Sisters About Stepping Into Your Power.”

Tamara Winfrey-Harris is a writer who specializes in the ever-evolving space where current events, politics and pop culture intersect with race and gender. She says, “I want to tell the stories of Black women and girls, and deliver the truth to all those folks who got us twisted—tangled up in racist and sexist lies. I want my writing to advocate for my sisters. We are better than alright. We are amazing.”
Tamara is the author of two books: The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America (Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2015) and Dear Black Girl: Letters From Your Sisters On Stepping Into Your Power (Berrett-Koehler Publishers 2021). The award-winning Sisters, now in its second edition, has been optioned by Wise Entertainment and Gabrielle Union’s production company I’ll Have Another to be turned into a dramedy for television.
Tamara’s work has been published in media outlets, including including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan, New York Magazine and The Los Angeles Times. And her essays appear in The Lemonade Reader: Beyonce, Black Feminism and Spirituality (Routledge, 2019); The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery (Wayne State University Press, 2018); Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest (Black Belt Publishing, 2020); and other books.
Tamara is co-founder of Centering Sisters, LLC, an organization that unapologetically addresses the needs and issues of Black women and girls; and the Black Women’s Writing Society, a monthly virtual space for Black femme creatives. She is also a certified yoga teacher who focuses her work on the healing and well-bring of her sisters.
Tamara is a native of Gary, IN, and a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Sorority, Inc. She graduated with a BA degree from the Greenlee School of Journalism at Iowa State University.

Made possible by Mr. and Mrs. Craig E Von Deylen and Laurel S Judkins with additional support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Super Sunday Showdown
2022-09-25 12:00 - 18:30 | Listen Hear, 2620 Shelby St, , Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Live Music, THE Torta Food Truck, drinks, yard sale and the Colts Game —outside and inside of Listen Hear.
Organized by Clint Breeze and other Artist Public Life Residency artists, the event is free but donations are recommended, 100% will go to pay the musicians.
Wampus Milk Daddies, 12:10-12:45
Wampus Milk Daddies is a fusion band that covers a wide array of styles ranging from prog rock, jazz fusion, hip hop to funk. The group has been featured on WFYI radio and has been a staple in the local Indianapolis music scene for several years. Drums- Elijah Pollard Guitar- Owen Welch Bass- Ryan Johnson Alto Sax, Tenor Sax, Flute and Vocals- Tony Echarry Trumpet- Ethan Hodes
Breezfunk, 1-1:45
Norrie The Goat, 2-2:30
“I consider myself to be an artist rather than a rapper because of what I bring to the table. I produce and engineer my own sound and I created my own sound from scratch. I started making beats, rapping, engineering, mixing and mastering my own music in 2014.”
Tubbles with Special Guest, 2:45-3:15
StarChaser, 3:30-4:15
A little more progressive, a little more modern and a whole lot louder—that’s Kara Tucker’s approach to StarChaser, a band born out of her previous music group Elliot Bigger in pursuit of creative freedom and a brand-new sound. Tucker, who has been playing music around Indy since 2006, serves as the group’s guitarist and vocalist. Backed by her husband Nick Teedo on the bass and Dorian Phelps’ killer drum skills, she’s writing songs for the band’s debut record, which will blend together progressive metal, rock and pop.
Bashiri & The Lady, 4:30-5:15
Acknowledging that each of us has a priceless gift that we must harness and share with the world, Bashiri Asad has come to define his sound as “IndySoul.”He laughs. He cries. He loves. He dreams. Just like you, everyday. He feels deeply, and turns his feelings into music. Soul music. Music that says exactly how you feel, everyday. Bashiri Asad is the “Everyday Soul Singer,” and he will remind you that feeling what you feel, in your soul, is just fine.
IndySoul is his passion, and he exudes this with every song!
DJ Littletown, 5:15-6:15
Jessica DJ Little Town is a selector and master of mixing music! Indianapolis born with dual citizenship belonging to Brazil, Little Town began collecting vinyl records at the age of 12 with great influence from her older sister who worked at a record store. From there, she learned to mix on vinyl and gradually entered the MP3 mixing world. Her first major performances include; CultureShock Festival 2015, Chreece Festival 2016, Bloco do Rodrigo S Block Party 2017, Body Mechanics (Residency) at the Root Cellar 2017, Soul’d Out All Vinyl Dance Party (Residency) at Square Cat Vinyl, and Low Pone Queer Dance Party (Residency).
What’s APLR?
The Artist and Public Life Residency (APLR) — consists of arts-based community leaders who team up with neighbors (and others across the city) to strengthen our block, the southside, and the broader community through arts-based approaches.
APLR artists are creatives, makers, teachers, designers, and more. Fields include — and are not limited to — architecture, culinary art, curation, visual art, public art, furniture, fashion, craft, design, film and video, creative writing and journalism, performing arts, music, theater, placemaking, socially engaged art, etc.

Docey Lewis-Living Threads
2022-11-04 18:00 - 2022-12-11 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Docey Lewis’s Living Threads takes the viewer on a journey of contradiction. Our technologically enhanced culture facilitates our ability to see and create both real and virtual connection while relentlessly making us more aware of the threats humanity faces. Seeking balance, we alternatively seesaw between retreating to our cocoons and interconnecting.

Among the many threats we face is species loss. The exhibit highlights several extinct or threatened species in Posey County. The pre-human ecosystem in our area was abundantly populated and in natural balance. After man settled along the Wabash and elsewhere, this utopian equilibrium eroded to the point of dystopia. The world now faces environmental, social and economic catastrophe, while our perverted material culture still spreads an unrealistic ethos of fossil fuel powered unlimited growth, fast fashion, junk food and surveillance capitalism.

The materials used in creating artworks for Living Threads have as much meaning as the pieces themselves. “I have been entangled for many years in the cultures, natural materials and co-creations of faraway communities who have had to pivot from utilitarian and ritual use of their materials and techniques to making salable products for a global market,’ says Lewis. “Along the way, a large body of samples and materials have piled up in my studio. During the pandemic, I began to untangle the accumulation and recycle it into artwork. Many hands have touched the raw materials, and I celebrate the living farmers and artisans whose participation has made this work possible. Connections with communities and all living things are represented in this collaborative body of work.”

About Docey Lewis
Lewis had her first solo exhibition in the late 1960s—not in a gallery or museum, but in a library 30 miles south of San Francisco. She showed a selection of hand woven, abstract textiles she had made on a hand-built loom. The show sold out.

Yet, rather than pursuing an art practice, Lewis made a series of unexpected choices that led her on a serpentine, half-century journey around the globe. While mastering the innumerable methods humans have concocted to make textiles, and empowering hundreds of other women artisans in the weaving workshops she set up in the Philippines, Nepal, Morocco, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, Lewis dined with royalty, collaborated with legends, and built an entrepreneurial empire.

Now in her 70s, Lewis has returned to the art studio—not in San Francisco, New York, or one of the other exotic locales she has variously called home. Instead, she now works in a modest, light-filled studio above a locally celebrated wine bar and coffee shop, in a historic building in New Harmony, Indiana. Amid wafts of fresh soups and sounds of evening cheer, Lewis tries to make peace with her past, weaving intricate, layered abstractions that literally pull at the threads of her personal history.

Among the many ironies of Lewis’s story is that her ancestors, namely Robert Owen, embarked on a mission to establish a Utopia in New Harmony—based on the moral principles of education and total equality. This concept of fostering the best qualities of humanity has been passed down from generation to generation ever since and is embedded in Lewis’s life. With her exhibition, Living Threads, Lewis is drawing our attention to the natural world, our relationship to the environment as caretakers and our ability to alter it.

Open through December 11, this exhibit is part of our Social Alchemy project. With this multifaceted, multiyear project, Indianapolis-based arts organization Big Car Collaborative — with our partners, the University of Southern Indiana, Indiana State Museum, Historic New Harmony, the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art and others –– have created a series of radio shows, exhibits, and conversations exploring, learning, and sharing how utopia has informed places and pursuits over time.

Social Alchemy explores historical and contemporary examples of utopian experiments, fictional utopias and dystopias, and social and cooperative-living design projects (linking back to our affordable artist housing program on our block in Indianapolis). Through a variety of public programs — made possible with support from Indiana Humanities and Efroymson Family Fund — it offers a deeper understanding of the relationship between the built environment and social good.

Image:Warbler Quilt
The Bombyx mori cocoons used to make each of shibori dyed rectangles are cultivated in the Highlands of Madagascar and delivered to the SEPALIM workshop(a non-governmental organization focused on conservation-based livelihood development.) in Maroantsetra, twice a year. Before making the long trip by boat and motorcycle to deliver giant sacks of cocoons, farmers slice open each cocoon and use the dried caterpillar as feed for their chickens. Nothing goes to waste. Each cocoon is trimmed, ironed flat and sewn one by one to create a textile.

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES
2023-01-02 19:00 - 22:30, 2023-01-03 19:00 - 22:30 | Kan-Kan Cinema, 1258 Windsor St., Indianapolis, IN, 46201, United States
Recently declared the new greatest film of all time, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is a singular work in film history.
The film meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow, whose chores include making the beds, cooking dinner for her son, and turning the occasional trick.
In its enormous spareness, Akerman’s film seems simple, but it encompasses an entire world. Whether seen as an exacting character study or as one of cinema’s most hypnotic and complete depictions of space and time, Jeanne Dielman is an astonishing, compelling movie experiment, one that has been analyzed and argued over for decades.
Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henri Storck
Director: Chantal Akerman
Writer: Chantal Akerman
Length: 202 minutes
Not Rated
(1975)

About Akerman
Chantal Akerman was born in 1950 in Brussels, and died in Paris in 2015. Akerman was a pioneer in feminist and experimental filmmaking. Born to Holocaust survivors from Poland, the generational trauma of this experience was a continuing theme in her work and in recent decades she explored her own Jewish identity. She made over 40 films during her life time, and is considerd to be one of the most important European directors of her generation.
Recent solo exhibitions have been shown at EyefilmMusem, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2020); MOCA, Toronto, Canada (2019); Oi Futuro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2018), a retrospective at La Cinemateque Francaise, Paris, France (2018); Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2015); The Kitchen, New York (2013); Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium (2013); Museum for Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium (2012); a film retrospective at the Vienna Film Festival, Austria (2011); the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri (2009); List Visual Arts Center, M.I.T. Cambridge, Massachusetts (2008); Camden Arts Centre, London, England (2008); Tel Aviv Musem of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel (2006); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2004); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (1995).

Em Elise, Jane Sun Kim, Simon Plemon: delicate(s)
2023-01-06 18:00 - 2023-02-20 18:00 | Listen Hear, 2620 Shelby St, , Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
delicate(s), is a collaborative multimedia installation assembled by Em Elise, Jane Sun Kim and Simon Plemon. The installation is a hypnotic visual foraging into the emotional nature of memory and the physical residue it leaves on, in, and around the body.
Spiritually fused by a collective longing for depth in a time of social media’s staged memory and the dissociative “new normal” induced by a global pandemic, delicate(s) investigates, commemorates, and liberates the artists’ hauntings beyond a two dimensional plane.
Featuring suspended sculpture, fabric prints, hand-drawn charcoal wall illustrations, projected video, enveloping soundscapes, and personal relics, delicate(s) summons the senses and elicits reflection in its viewers.
How do we integrate our memories into the minutia of our daily lives? How do they shape the way we move, react? Do they control our perception of reality, our identities?
Artist bios:
Em Elise
Whether it be through image making, prose, video, ritual, embroidery, movement, sculpture, auditory experience, or often a combination of media, Elise consistently gravitates towards immersive creative outlets to go inwards, seek purpose, process trauma, and embrace a sense of divine interconnectedness. Fueled by spiritual encounters and soul feelings, Elise approaches artmaking as alchemical therapy: an embalming of oneself, transmutation of pain, and reclamation of the holistic body. From using instant film to immortalize fleeting moments of intimacy to divulging ancestral and gender-based wounds through found footage and video collage, Elise creates to empower vulnerability, amplify marginalized narratives, cultivate collective healing, and provide an anchor for those that feel lost as and out of place in this world as she often does. Elise is native to and currently based out of Indianapolis, Indiana but frequently practices in Copenhagen, Denmark.
connect: @sin__atras
Jane Sun Kim
Kim contemplates the tangled relationship between nostalgia and identity under the
weight of the sentimental, often burdensome past. Her work is an incantation of lost moments, intimate secrets, fading youth, an ever persistent recollection of the past clouding her psyche.
Through expired film displayed on translucent banners, suspended sculptures using synthetic hair from her father’s beauty shop, and imagery of passed friends on wavering sheer silk, she weaves together her understanding of self. Kim draws influences from her experience as a child from a Korean American immigrant family, film of her family’s unspoken past, and her struggle with repetitive thought patterns from obsessive compulsive disorder. Kim was born in Augsburg, Germany and raised in Seoul, South Korea and predominantly Indianapolis, Indiana and is a part of Big Car Collaborative’s Artist and Public Life Residency.
connect: @vulturesonly
Simon Plemon
Plemon’s artwork explores personal mythology and macabre identity through a
fantastical lens. Through the use of video, textile work, and experimental image making Plemon crafts a hauntingly liminal universe. Much of Simon’s work is an atmospheric blend of documentation and experience. Motifs of feminine handicraft, biblical imagery, and physical morbidity of the body regularly appear in Plemon’s work. When not creating physical pieces, Simon can be found curating local dance events or tattooing.
connect: @clownartist
Made possible by the Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Betsy Stirratt: Unearthing
2023-01-06 18:00 - 2023-03-19 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
In Unearthing, Stirratt explores how natural and cultural objects are presented in collections and museum settings, and how we preserve, classify, and display them.
From Stirratt: “I have visited many natural history, herbaria and medical museums in Europe and the US with the aim of understanding their objectives, collecting impulses, and labelling practices. With similar intent, I visited several regional historical sites and collections, including the Workingmen’s Institute in New Harmony, the Indiana University Paleontology Collection, and Angel Mounds. The resulting photographs and objects demonstrate the sometimes underestimated importance of local and regional history within the broader museum sphere.
The items within a museum or private collection are accumulated with a view to imposing order, classifying nature, preserving memory, or in some instances to signaling status. Items may be preserved for their cultural and historical importance, or for their aesthetic qualities. For some, collecting serves as a means of accumulating knowledge, or as inspiration for their imagination and memories. For me, it’s the embedded history of objects and places, and how history and folklore can inform our relationship with the world.
More specifically, I’m interested in the idea of both documenting collected items and using this documenting collected items and using the documentation process to create new artifacts: a coupling of curation and creation, as it were. Influenced by my many years as a gallery director and curator, I think about the way that art and objects are selected and placed in juxtaposition with each other and how they are subsequently perceived by viewers. It is important to acknowledge that the viewer’s experience is changed by the inclusion or exclusion of objects and the information that accompanies them.
The videos in the exhibit were made using three artists books that contain words and pictures about collections I have visited: specifically botany, anatomy and zoological collections. Each of the videos features the turning pages of the books in the Collected Series, interspersed with video and audio clips that I gathered from museum visits, educational films and from life.
Additionally, alongside the pieces inspired by museum collections and artifacts in this installation, I am including materials I have collected (e.g., a 19th c. herbarium, Victorian bird taxidermy, amateur butterfly collections) relating to my interest in history, natural history and the ways objects are preserved and presented within a curated setting. These items were gathered because almost all were created by an amateur who had some specific interest in the subject that he/she was preserving.
Collections and museums inform us about the world we live in, record the past and provide material memory across generations. Unearthing is an attempt to impose order on an unordered world, drawing upon hazy memory, inexact connections, and interpreted histories. The process of unearthing objects, both physically and metaphorically, can broaden our experience of the world, stimulating imagination and wonder about what we have around us.”
About the artist
Betsy Stirratt’s creative practice focuses on themes about nature, collections and the environment. She is the Founding Director of the Grunwald Gallery of Art at Indiana University Bloomington where she has curated exhibitions and published catalogs since 1987. Exhibiting her own work widely since 1983, solo exhibitions include La Maladie at The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia and the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago and Veiled Taxonomies at the Center for Book Arts in New York. Her work has been included in group exhibits at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Indianapolis Museum of Art, and White Columns and Art in General in New York among others. She is the recipient of a Visual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
VISIT US
Wednesday -Friday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturday & Sunday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Tube is also open until 10 p.m. each First Friday.
Closed Holidays
Made possible by The Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis and the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation.

Words & Music: Maurice Broaddus
2023-01-14 17:00 - 18:00 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Join Oreo Jones as he interviews Indianapolis-based Maurice Broaddus –a writer, community organizer and teacher. His work has appeared in magazines like Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, Magazine of F&SF, and Uncanny Magazine, with some of his stories having been collected in The Voices of Martyrs.

Broaddus’s books include the urban fantasy trilogy, The Knights of Breton Court, the steampunk works, Buffalo Soldier and Pimp My Airship, and the middle grade detective novels, The Usual Suspects and Unfadeable. His project, Sorcerers, is being adapted as a television show for AMC. As an editor, he’s worked on Dark Faith, Fireside Magazine, and Apex Magazine.

Words & Music is made possible by a grant from Indiana Humanities . And is a project of Big Car Collaborative , the nonprofit behind WQRT.
Learn more at MauriceBroaddus.com.
Words & Music is made possible by a grant from Indiana Humanities . And is a project of Big Car Collaborative , the nonprofit behind WQRT.
