Rachel Leah Cohn: Mem
2024-04-05 - 2024-06-24 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
To walk through the installation, Mem, is to enter a myth. A kaleidoscope of the divine feminine, there are fountains of light centering the space on the painting of Miriam– one of the seven major prophetesses of Israel. Miriam carried a rock from which flowed an abundant amount of water during the 40 years Jewish people searched for a place to live in the desert. Access to this water made survival of her people possible. Smaller paintings surround her, as well as ritual objects such as papercuts and amulets.The title of Cohn’s show, Mem, is a Hebrew letter that has multiple significant meanings in the work. “I recently took a class about the complexity, flexibility, and magic within a single Hebrew letter. When searching for a title, this one letter encapsulates many ideas I have considered while working in the studio. The shape can be seen as a wave and stands for the word for water, mayim,’ and Miriam and mikveh, a ritual bath used for transformation,” Cohn said. “Mem is related to feminine energy, motherhood, and the womb, symbolizing protection, safety, and giving to others.
“The letter also represents the number 40, a mystical number that speaks to the cyclic nature of time, moving from the past to the future. It is the time necessary for something to ripen and come to fruition, which I relate to both the creative process and this moment for all of us, which felt like an unmoored time of wandering and isolation, but also rebuilding. For me, it is an optimistic title, a link between the world we see and the hidden alternatives. It is a hope for connection and transformation for the world, seen through the lens of my experiences and the character of Miriam.
”The exhibit is also a reflection of these experiences living life and traveling around the world to practice art as someone with Jewish heritage. Cohn has led an extraordinary life as an artist: traveling, teaching, living and learning in places like Qatar, Denmark, China, and others.“The show is really about me thinking through my cultural heritage and my connection to Judaism, which is something that has always been a part of my life, but I think has been increasingly for-fronted by myself, but also by others particularly while living in Qatar, and some of the experiences that I had there that are both positive and negative,” said Cohn, now based in Indianapolis. “It felt impossible for me to talk about my own culture with my students. Even though expressing my heritage wasn’t always something that was super important to me, I think the experience of working with them on representing their culture — and feeling like I needed to hide my own — made me think more about the valuing of sharing my experiences more directly.”
Cohn utilizes several different 2-D and 3-D artforms to create the exhibit, although her background is originally in painting. The forms include — but are not limited to — sculpture, painting and light manipulation. These artforms express a myriad of connecting themes and ideas within the exhibition.“I have been researching the traditional craft of papercutting and am pulling out the shapes and symbols that I’m interested in and then converting them into these laser-cut objects that I’m painting on top of,” said Cohn, who also works as the Foundations Coordinator and an Assistant Professor in Ball State University’s School of Art. “And then that’s within the idea of a fountain — which is ultimately the form of this project — that has to do with Miriam from the Torah and the well, bringing water out of the desert to survive.
”The water of this fountain is external, but also internal. Cohn enjoys finding ways to use the materials she has at-hand to make works of art, channeling inner resilience from her ancestors. And, sometimes being resourceful means finding new peers to collaborate with, wherever she is. Some of her notable works include Hot Pot Sauna Cart (2016) which was made for the Bi-City Biennale for Urbanism and Architecture in Shenzhen, China; Lantern (Abu Nakhla Mirage) (2017), made in the desert in Qatar as an experimentation with light and location; and The Thunder, Perfect Mind (2021), an exploration of light and themes in Judaism. Cohn said although she has an eclectic-to-the-eye portfolio, all of her works have connections to her upcoming exhibit.
“I think my practice — and adapting to what is there — has been a theme of my life,” Cohn said. “When I look at my work over time, I’m finding different ways to talk about the same things.”Tube Factory artspace Chief Curator Shauta Marsh met Cohn when she was a juror at Ball State in 2019. Marsh had traveled to Qatar with Tube Factory’s Mari Evans exhibit. And Cohn and Marsh talked about the otherness they’d each experienced in both the Middle East and the Midwest.“I don’t have a strong sense of identity. So often I work with artists who do,” says Marsh. “Their work processes and relates stories tied to identity that are in jeopardy of being lost. My style as a curator is not an expert but an explorer. The exhibits at Tube Factory are an exploration with both the artist and the audience. I asked Cohn to use her work to explore her identity.”
As a multi-racial curator, Marsh’s practice has centered around identity and exploration of the meaning of culture. And Cohn’s exhibition continues this path.“After thousands of years — humans are still so threatened by each other’s appearance, by what each other speaks and believes,” says Marsh. “But we know that people are more open to art than each other. My hope is that people will see the work and the story of it — and hopefully we can all work on feeling less othered, less fearful of each other.”
About the artist:
Rachel’s work is concerned with themes of communication, mythology and rituals. Projects often attempt to give a physical form to something that is ephemeral, through painting, sculpture and installation. Recently, she lived in the desert where she was building lamps simulating mirages as an analog for memory and loss. Lately her research has been focused on Jewish mysticism and protective magic. Rachel exhibits her work nationally and internationally, including ACRE Gallery (Chicago, IL), Satellite Art Fair (Miami, FL), Terrain Biennial (Springfield, IL), Massey University (New Zealand), Qatar Museums (Qatar), the Istanbul Design Biennial (Türkiye) and Aterlierhaus Salzamt (Austria). She has attended many artist residency programs, including Vermont Studio Center (VT), Signal Culture (NY), Otis College of Art and Design (CA) and the Fire Station (Qatar). She holds a BFA in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design, an MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently Foundations Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Art for the School of Art at Ball State University in Muncie, IN.

Curator- Shauta Marsh
This exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Ball State University’s Aspire Program, Efroymson Family Fund, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Arts Council of Indianapolis and City of Indianapolis, and the Indiana Arts Commission.
About Tube Factory: Tube Factory is a 12,000 square foot museum space curated based upon the themes of community, place, memory and mythology. They commission local, regional, national and international contemporary visual and musical artists, borrow artifact-based exhibits and create community-sourced exhibits. A previously vacant former manufacturing building, it is now a thoughtfully renovated home base for non-profit art organization Big Car Collaborative’s work as well as partnership-based community meetings and cultural events.
For more about Cohn: Check out her website at rachelleahcohn.com and on Instagram @rachelleahc

Brittany Fukushima & Dailyn Eades: SPARK
2024-04-05 18:00 - 22:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
2023 SPARK artist in residence Brittany Fukushima and Spark fellow Dailyn Eades will display a collection of work they created during their time at SPARK on the Circle in 2023.
SPARK is a partnership with Downtown Indy, the City of Indianapolis, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission — and funded by the Capital Improvements Board. It is a continuation of our work last year and in 2015 on the Circle. The SPARK on the Circle pop-up park will return in 2024.

Community Sound lab 1: Listening and Recording
2024-05-18 09:00 - 12:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Sound artists Rob Funkhouser and Landon Caldwell will start with a basic overview of intentional listening and field recording, and then lead participants on a sound walk through Garfield Park where everyone will get a chance to record sounds that they find to be interesting. For the second half of the workshop, there will be an opportunity for hands-on play with a modular synthesizer, as well as lessons on how to handle files, and prepare them to be used in your own personal projects.

We encourage people to come to either or both of these workshops. All ages and, all skill levels are welcome, this will be a family-friendly activity.

Artist Workshop: Henna with Pam
2024-06-07 17:00 - 19:00 | Monument Circle, 50 Monument Circle, Indianapolis, 46204, United States
Join us today to step into the world of intricate patterns and cultural celebration with Pam, who has been doing henna for around 25 years now. Henna has been around for many centuries as a way to temporarily dye the skin for cosmetic purposes and to color the hair. At first, henna was smeared on to individuals and did not create the intricate designs made today. There are many steps needed to properly apply henna to an individual. After the henna paste is created, the henna artist transfers the paste to a narrow piping bag. The henna is then applied depending on the design. After drying, the cotton ball with lemon juice should be applied to the henna tattoo. The color that will result depends on the time the henna is kept on the skin: the longer you keep it on, the darker the color will be. After removing, the henna tattoo will remain for 7-14 days depending on personal skin and daily lifestyles.
SPARK is a partnership with Downtown Indy @downtownindy the City of Indianapolis @indy_dmd and the Indiana War Memorials Commission – and funded by the Capital Improvements Board. It is a continuation of our work last year and in 2015 on the Circle.
At Big Car, we approach our work at the Circle as a site- and community-specific socially engaged art and creative placemaking project. The SPARK on the Circle pop-up park was collaboratively designed with Indianapolis-based Merritt Chase to be a restorative public place where people of all walks of life can relax, play, socialize, and engage with art and artists in the heart of our city.

Aurora Cyanotype Workshop
2024-06-21 11:00 - 15:00 | Monument Circle, 50 Monument Circle, Indianapolis, 46204, United States
Cyanotype is a camera-less photography made out in the sun, rather than in a darkroom. You place objects — such as plants — on top of a piece of photo-treated paper, and then use the sun to expose the paper. The result is an image that is an exact outline of the object. It’s a fun and magical way to engage photography! Although it may be new to modern people, cyanotype has been around since photography was invented in the 1800s.Come explore the creative possibilities of this fascinating process!
This activity is best suited for artists 7+ years old; minors must be accompanied by an adult.
SPARK is a partnership with Downtown Indy @downtownindy the City of Indianapolis @indy_dmd and the Indiana War Memorials Commission – and funded by the Capital Improvements Board. It is a continuation of our work last year and in 2015 on the Circle.
At Big Car, we approach our work at the Circle as a site- and community-specific socially engaged art and creative placemaking project. The SPARK on the Circle pop-up park was collaboratively designed with Indianapolis-based Merritt Chase to be a restorative public place where people of all walks of life can relax, play, socialize, and engage with art and artists in the heart of our city.

Artist Workshop: Graffiti Knitting with Mary Jo
2024-06-28 17:00 - 19:00 | Monument Circle, 50 Monument Circle, Indianapolis, 46204, United States
A gathering where knitting and graffiti collide! Simultaneously inspired by traditional knitting and graffiti, this ever-evolving piece combines fiber adjacent activities, coloring sheets derived from graffiti and knitting motifs, and opportunities for participants to share their creative path stories.
You are invited to come join the fun, because without YOU, Boo, this project can’t happen.
About the artist:
Mary Jo Bayliss specializes in creating environments that help people feel at ease using space, light and color to achieve these goals.
SPARK is a partnership with Downtown Indy @downtownindy the City of Indianapolis @indy_dmd and the Indiana War Memorials Commission – and funded by the Capital Improvements Board. It is a continuation of our work last year and in 2015 on the Circle.
At Big Car, we approach our work at the Circle as a site- and community-specific socially engaged art and creative placemaking project. The SPARK on the Circle pop-up park was collaboratively designed with Indianapolis-based Merritt Chase to be a restorative public place where people of all walks of life can relax, play, socialize, and engage with art and artists in the heart of our city.

Artist Workshop with John Clark
2024-07-05 17:00 - 19:00 | IN
Make Art and Write Poetry with John Clark!
Join Indianapolis-based visual artist, Big Car co-founder and writer John Clarke to make drawings, poems, and short stories…or a combination of all three! And we’ll also show you how to make zines, too!
We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.
SPARK on the Circle is an ongoing partnership between Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy, City of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, the Capital Improvement Board, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission.

Ink Artist Workshop with Brittany Fukushima
2024-07-12 17:00 - 19:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Join SPARK artist in residence Brittany Fukushima for an all-levels ink painting workshop. In this workshop, you’ll learn basic ink techniques and how to paint intuitively using colors handmade by the artist. See the raw materials that go into ink-making and leave inspired to create your own. All materials are provided!
About:
Brittany Fukushima is an Indianapolis-based painter and teaching artist who uses their practice to interpret their environment. Drawing and painting become a means to investigate the natural world, express the intangible, and to present alternate ways of seeing. Recently, they have experimented with paint making using foraged pigments.
Teaching is an integral part of their process as it keeps them in community and provides fresh perspectives. Brittany currently teaches at the Indianapolis Art Center and is a graduate of Herron School of Art and Design. They have exhibited throughout Indianapolis and Chicago and their work has been featured by Butter, WFYI, and Pattern Magazine.
We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.

SPARK on the Circle is an ongoing partnership between Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy, City of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, the Capital Improvement Board, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission.

Elisa Harkins: Ekvnv (Land), the Sacred Mother from Which We Came
2024-07-12 18:00 - 2024-10-20 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
With this exhibit, Elisa Harkins looks at land in two different ways: a path toward healing due to the desecration of burial mounds in New Harmony, Indiana and how the Land Back movement addresses climate change. Harkins, a multi-disciplinary artist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Tube Factory curator Shauta Marsh researched and worked on this exhibit for five years as part of Big Car Collaborative’s decade-long research project, Social Alchemy, that explores utopia and dystopia with an emphasis on the southern Indiana town of New Harmony that was twice the site of utopian experiments.
In the Main Gallery, Harkins draws attention to settler desecration of Indigenous mounds in the unmarked “Harmonist Cemetery” in New Harmony. When the Harmonists purchased the land in the early 1800s, they dug up the Indigenous burial mounds, collecting what they considered interesting items for their Cabinet of Curiosities. They then buried their dead over the native people’s remains. When the Harmonists sold the town to industrialist Robert Owen for his rationalist utopian attempt, the Harmonists took apart their church and used the brick to enclose the mounds with a wall. Today, the burial mounds are not acknowledged on signage for the cemetery.
Harkins brings light to this history and offers healing through the Spirit Houses. These are structures built that provide a protective shelter over the grave of their deceased relative. Harkins could not build them in the “Harmonist Cemetery.” So the photographic wall mural and Spirit Houses in the Main Gallery serve as a temporary monument to the native people buried there.
Through the 24 photographs on the wall surrounding the Spirit Houses,(also known as Grave Houses) Harkins tells the story of the mounds in New Harmony to demonstrate not only settler violence against Indigenous land and bodies but also the presence of multiple tribes at sacred burial sites across time. In examining multiple histories of mounds, Harkins interrogates whether Indigenous lands belong to one people alone, And her investigation prompts viewers to examine their own ties to land through time — in their lost ancestral cultures, as well as in contemporary society.
The Tear Dress on the north wall of the gallery is one Harkins wears in many photos and in her work in the video room. Cherokee women traditionally wore this dress in the Southeast in the early 1800s. Indian Removal began to take place during this time period in Indiana (land of the Indians). This is also around the time Harmonists sought to build a sort of religious utopia in the town they named New Harmony.
In the video room, Harkins shares a piece on the 200-year-old song,“Hesaketv Meset Likes or The One Who Gives us Breath.” Though the singing takes place in the present, Harkins seeks to move the audience through time, preserving culture by bringing this new knowledge of ourselves to the forefront.
Leading by example with her works, Harkins uses her Indigenous body as an extension of Ekvnv, the mother from which she came. This embodies critical reflection on deep human connections to ancestral lands across time and place. Her cultural references to ancient mounds with intersectional tribal histories — as well as contemporary tribally-specific structures such as Spirit Houses — probe the meanings of “Indigenous” identity and question whether individual tribal nations will participate in intersectional freedom for all Indigenous peoples.
In the Jeremy Efroymson Gallery, Elisa Harkins shares images, sound, and sculpture that invoke definitions of tribal sovereignty — centering land and its protection. Amid a contemporary Indigenous landscape in which tribal activities vary between cultural revitalization efforts and extractive practices at times complicit with capitalist structures, Harkins calls for land protection above all. This shows viewers that the return of Indigenous land protection practices, along with language and cultural revitalization, are inevitable outcomes on Turtle Island (some Indigenous American tribes refer to North America as Turtle Island).
Harkins often encounters tornado shelters for sale alongside the roads in Oklahoma. While dangerous tornadoes traditionally occur in the summer months, recent years have seen an alarming rise in winter tornadoes. By using the image of these Tornado Shelters, she aims to raise awareness about the increasing destruction and loss of life caused by climate change. The shelters, placed in the ground or Ekvnv, serve as a metaphor for the Muscogee origin story, symbolizing their emergence from the earth at the beginning of their civilization.
The light sculptures are in English, Cherokee, and Muscogee words:
ᎠᏴᏫᏯ ᎤᏤᎵᎪᎯ ᎦᏓ ᏤᏙᎢ
Este Cate Ekvnv Okharoces
You Are on Indian Land
The music playing in the Jeremy Efroymson Gallery, honors communities destroyed and lives lost through human created climate change. Harkins, in collaboration with Mark Kuykendall, composed this piece for the tornado shelter sculpture to serve as a poignant tribute to the lives lost, communities disrupted, and environmental imbalances exacerbated by human negligence.
“Land Back means all land back,” said Harkins, who sees Indigenous political projects such as language revitalization as, most of all, an empowering force for protecting Ekvnv (Land), the Sacred Mother from which we came. In Harkins’ works, she calls for definitions of tribal sovereignty which center land protection over individual political claims to place. She intervenes in narratives of singular or strongest connections of tribal claims to mounds in favor of historical narratives where tribal interrelations connect more peoples to more lands for the purpose of building solidarities of responsibility and care for Indigenous land.
In Ekvnv, Harkins calls for universal participation in and attention to the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous hands, inviting viewers to reckon with the power imbalances that continue between settler colonial structures and Indigenous historical worlds. To Harkins, sovereignty includes care for all–from health care to land protection that reaches worldwide, just as the Sacred Mother receives care from all.
The exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Efroymson Family Fund, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and a printing partnership with Aurora PhotoCenter.

The artist wishes to thank:
Ian Byers-Gamber
Mark Kuykendall
Don Tiger
Brose Partington
About Harkins
Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) artist, singer, electronic music composer, and curator based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology. Harkins uses the Cherokee and Mvskoke languages, electronic music, sculpture, and the body as her tools. She is the first person to sing a contemporary song in the Cherokee language. Harkins received a BA from Columbia College, Chicago, and an MFA from CalArts. She has since continued her education at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has exhibited her work at Crystal Bridges, documenta 14, The Hammer Museum, The Heard Museum, and MoMA.
In 2020, she created the Indigenous concert series 6 Moons and published a CD of Muscogee/Seminole Hymns. She is also the DJ of Mvhayv (ma-hi-ya) Radio, an Indigenous radio show on 99.1FM in Indianapolis, IN. Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ (ga-wo-ni-s-gi tso-i) is a dance performance that features music and choreography by Harkins. With support from PICA and Western Front, songs from the performance have been collected into a double LP, which can be found on Harkins’ Bandcamp. Harkins resides on the Muscogee Reservation and is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Nation.
About Tube Factory artspace: Tube Factory is a contemporary art campus and community center. There are four galleries on the campus, two are commissioning galleries. Admission is free. It’s also home base for Big Car Collaborative’s work across Indianapolis and beyond. Tube Factory features rotating exhibits, interactive projects, community space, a reference library, an outdoor gathering space, and much more to find through exploring. Tube Factory is an independent, noncommercial, nonprofit public place. Big Car Collaborative brings art to people and people to art, sparking creativity in lives to support communities. As an artist-run nonprofit organization, we utilize tools of culture and creativity to build community and social cohesion — connecting people as a way to boost quality of life. We support our community by supporting artists.
Much of our work happens on a single block where we own or co-own more than 20 properties — including a long-term affordable housing program for artists and Tube Factory — a contemporary art museum with a cafe, studios, and community space. At our campus of adaptive reuse buildings and public greenspace, we host community and cultural programs to promote social connectivity, cooperation, and creativity.
We also facilitate people-focused placemaking and place keeping projects across the city and beyond through Spark. Tune in to our experimental, community-focused radio station, WQRT 99.1 FM — also streaming at wqrt.org.
About Social Alchemy:With this multifaceted, multiyear project, Indianapolis-based arts organization Big Car Collaborative — with our partners, the University of Southern Indiana, 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.
Conceived by Big Car co-founders Shauta Marsh and Jim Walker and artist and philanthropist Jeremy Efroymson, 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 — first 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. We all grapple with divides in society and real-life examples of dystopia (shootings, mass incarceration, ecological degradation) and utopia (experiments such as co-living communities that make people demonstrably happier). This project is about exploring historical and contemporary real-world examples of utopian experiments and social design projects as well as theoretical and fictional utopias and dystopias. Our goal is for the impact of Social Alchemy to be a deeper understanding — via history, literature, and the philosophy of art, design, and architecture — of the relationship between the built environment and social good.
About Indiana and Tribal Land (from the Indiana.Gov website)
There are two tribes that have land in Indiana. However there are many other tribal members of other federally recognized tribes that live in Indiana, approximately, 25,000.
The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi receive a small portion of their land back from their removal in Indiana. The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi is a federally recognized tribe. It is one of 573 federally recognized tribes in the United States. The Bureau of Indian Affairs contacted Chairman John Warren to state that their tribe, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi had been approved on November 18, 2016 to receive 166 acres of land in trust in South Bend, Indiana. The tribe successfully put a few housing units and tribal government buildings to assist their tribal members living in Indiana. It also built a 175,000 square foot and 1,800 Class II gaming devices, four restaurants, a player’s lounge, a coffee shop, two bars, a retail outlet and approximately 4,500 parking spaces including an enclosed parking structure. For more information, visit: http://www.pokagon.com/government/indiana-land-restoration
The second tribe that has land in Indiana is the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. The tribe was given land to put a Cultural Extension Office for their tribal members living in Indiana to attend specific gatherings, ceremonies and education events at this office located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. For more information, visit: http://miamination.com/thpo
Please note that many other tribal members from other federally recognized tribes living in Indiana such as Apache, Cherokee, Navajo, Comanche, Lakota Sioux, etc.

Cyanotype Workshop With Aurora PhotoCenter
2024-07-19 11:00 - 15:00, 2024-09-13 11:00 - 15:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Cyanotype is a camera-less photography made out in the sun, rather than in a darkroom. You place objects — such as plants — on top of a piece of photo-treated paper, and then use the sun to expose the paper. The result is an image that is an exact outline of the object. It’s a fun and magical way to engage photography! Although it may be new to modern people, cyanotype has been around since photography was invented in the 1800s.
Come explore the creative possibilities of this fascinating process!
We will have some objects on hand to experiment with, but feel free to bring your own objects. Flat items usually work best, and cyanotype can be messy, so precious things like family heirlooms should probably stay at home. All other necessary materials will be provided free at the workshop.
In partnership with Aurora PhotoCenter for SPARK on the Circle.
This activity is best suited for artists 7+ years old; minors must be accompanied by an adult.
We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.

SPARK on the Circle is an ongoing partnership between Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy, City of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, the Capital Improvement Board, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission.

Artist Workshop With Mary Jo Bayliss
2024-07-19 17:00 - 19:00, 2024-08-02 17:00 - 19:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
A gathering where knitting and graffiti collide! Simultaneously inspired by traditional knitting and graffiti, this ever-evolving piece combines fiber adjacent activities, coloring sheets derived from graffiti and knitting motifs, and opportunities for participants to share their creative path stories.
You are invited to come join the fun, because without YOU, Boo, this project can’t happen.
About the artist:
Mary Jo Bayliss specializes in creating environments that help people feel at ease using space, light and color to achieve these goals.
We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.

Artist Workshop With Christina Hollering
2024-07-26 17:00 - 19:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Join artist Christina Hollering in an all-ages cut paper collage workshop celebrating the creative possibilities of paper. Learn how to intuitively create compelling compositions using the principles of design. All materials are provided; just come prepared to cut, paste, and play!
Christina Hollering is a cut paper artist and associate professor at Herron School of Art and Design. Her artwork centers around themes of biology, the environment, and the interplay between art and science, inspiring viewers to contemplate their relationship with nature.
At Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.

Hatis Noit at Tube Factory artspace
2024-07-29 20:00 - 21:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
“Words cannot describe everything we feel. How can one accurately verbalise the sensation we feel when we’re a newborn and our mother holds us in her arms, and we feel her skin on our cheek. We clearly feel her warmth and humidity, some feeling of love from her, but it’s tough to verbalise it perfectly. Music is a language that can translate that sensation, feeling, the memory of love.” — Hatis Noit
There isn’t a more unique entry into a musical journey than that of Japanese voice artist Hatis Noit. Her musical awakening took place at the tender age of sixteen during a trek to Buddha’s birthplace in Nepal. One morning when staying at a women’s temple she came across a female monk singing Buddhist chants whose otherworldly sounds moved her so intensely that she was instantly aware of the visceral power of the human voice; a primal and instinctive instrument that connects us to the very essence of humanity, nature and our universe. From that moment she knew singing was her calling.
Her newest album, Aura was inspired by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin who used this term to describe the fundamental essence of art, which he believed is strongest in its original form, only happening once. Hatis agrees with this particular aspect as she realised, “during the pandemic, I really struggled. As a singer, I’m not very good at working on the computer. I much prefer doing live performances in physical spaces. Being with people, sharing the same space with them and feeling the atmosphere and energy of that moment, inspires me every time. To me art is that — that shared moment.”
The gravitas of the pandemic caused Noit to look inwards and reflect. This resulted in the album becoming a remedy for what was going on in the world and ultimately to remember the joys and richness of life. Hatis adds to this sentiment, “we cannot live forever, do everything or be everywhere. But that makes our lives unique and invaluable. I wanted to be focused on our limitations and show how precious life is.”
The name Hatis Noit itself is taken from Japanese folklore, meaning the stem of the lotus flower. The lotus represents the living world, while its root represents the spirit world, therefore Hatis Noit is what connects the two. For Hatis, music represents the same netherworld with its ability to move and transport us to the other side; the past, a memory, our subconscious.
Through the opening piece ‘Aura’, which shares its title with the album, she evokes a haunting memory of getting lost in a forest in her birthplace Shiretoko, Hokkaido. “I felt as if I was close to my death, I could feel myself dissolving into and becoming a part of nature rather than just being an individual. This sense of awe and peace found there is always the place where I start making music from,” she remembers.
Years of perfecting her craft via live performances led her to the creation of this debut album which follows on from the introductory 2018 EP, Illogical Dance. An autodidact with an impressive range, Noit is inspired by Gagaku — Japanese classical music — folk music, operatic styles, Bulgarian and Gregorian chanting, as well as avant-garde and pop vocalists to create her inimitable style. Hatis creates wordless music, unique song worlds with transcendent vocal interpretations of epic proportions — most evident on ‘Jomon’ where she channels the fierce, dynamic energy and power of prehistoric culture during Japan’s Jomon period.
Astonishingly all songs on this record were created using her voice only. The single exception being ‘Inori’ for which she took a field recording of the ocean only one kilometre away from the nuclear power plant in Fukushima. Hatis Noit had been invited there for a memorial ceremony which marked the re-opening of the area for local people to return to their homes. The emotive and compassionate song is dedicated to the lives lost due to 2011’s tsunami, but equally to the many beautiful memories people have of their hometown.
The album was recorded in Berlin where Noit laid down her vocals in just eight hours, before the pandemic forced her and producer Robert Raths to stay local and mix it in East London, which led to working with a new collaborator: engineer Marta Salogni. Between lockdowns it was decided to take the recordings and reamplify them in a local church to bring them closer to that moment of live performance.
“It was almost like a miracle when Robert came up with the idea. That was the moment that changed everything for the album as the physical space with its organic ambience brought everything to life,” Hatis Noit recalls.
An important part of her practice and something she missed dearly during lockdown, her impressive live performances have included headline and festival shows across Europe, including a sold-out London show accompanied by the London Contemporary Orchestra at Southbank Centre, a special live performance at Milan Fashion Week and she was also invited by the revered director David Lynch to perform at his Manchester International Festival takeover in 2019. Her collaborations have seen her work with Kevin Richard Martin aka The Bug, the NYX Electronic Drone Choir and she appeared on recordings by fellow countryman Masayoshi Fujita as well as Ukrainian pianist and Continuous Music pioneer Lubomyr Melnyk.
Previous press:
“One to watch: Hatis Noit — with her ethereal crossover of mystical and modern,
this Japanese artist has been moving audiences to tears” — The Guardian
“Mixes childlike purity and digital pointillism” — The New York Times
“Truly extraordinary… An exquisite piece of work” — Mary Anne Hobbs, BBC 6 Music
“Words don’t really do it justice — an extraordinary piece of music” — Clash
“The magic in ‘Illogical Dance’ lies squarely in the human voice itself; Hatis Noit bends her vocals into so many shapes that other instruments simply seem redundant” — Drowned In Sound
“The voice is capable of incredible nuance. Case studies: Björk’s Medulla, Tanya Tagaq’s Inuit throat nsinging, Janis Joplin. Add Hatis Noit to the list” — Tiny Mix Tapes
“Our perception has been altered” — A Closer Listen
“Astonishing” — Uncut

Big Gay Market
2024-08-11 11:00 - 15:00, 2024-08-12 11:00 - 15:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Come Join SPARK at Monument Circle for this 2-day long event!
Learn more here!: https://www.indygaymarket.com/

SPARK is a partnership with Downtown Indy @downtownindy the City of Indianapolis @indy_dmd and the Indiana War Memorials Commission – and funded by the Capital Improvements Board. It is a continuation of our work last year and in 2015 on the Circle.
At Big Car, we approach our work at the Circle as a site- and community-specific socially engaged art and creative placemaking project. The SPARK on the Circle pop-up park was collaboratively designed with Indianapolis-based Merritt Chase to be a restorative public place where people of all walks of life can relax, play, socialize, and engage with art and artists in the heart of our city.

Artist Workshop: Fiber Art and PomPoms with Mary Jo Bayliss
2024-09-04 11:00 - 14:00, 2024-09-07 10:00 - 13:00, 2024-09-11 11:00 - 14:00, 2024-09-14 11:00 - 14:00, 2024-09-18 11:00 - 14:00, 2024-09-21 11:00 - 14:00, 2024-09-25 11:00 - 14:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Come to SPARK and join artist Mary Jo Bayliss to learn how to create pompoms and contribute them to her Taylor Swift inspired community artwork titled, “The Village”. Visitors will be able to make pompoms that will be used in Mary Jo’s final piece! Come join in on this collaborative artwork and make sure to stop by the circle later to see the final finished piece when Taylor Swift enters her “Indy era” and performs in Indianapolis!
A statement from Mary Jo Mayliss about this piece:
“The Village” is about the power of women working together to create a better, more equitable society. The iconography and rallying point for the activities is inspired by Taylor Swift, and without her presence in Indianapolis, this community artwork, and its far reaching scope, would not be possible–Thank you Taylor! The 13 elements that compose the artwork will be auctioned off at the end of Taylor’s Eras Indianapolis venue, with proceeds being donated for Arts for Learning, Big Car, and Ivy Tech Art Department, Indianapolis.
Mary Jo Bayliss specializes in creating environments that help people feel at ease using space, light and color to achieve these goals.
We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.

Lunch Break Live! With Kara Cole Presented by Lake City Bank
2024-09-04 12:00 - 13:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Come Join us at SPARK for a lunch time concert with local musician Regan Shalome, presented by Lake City Bank!
Kara Cole is a soulful, heart wrenching, story teller. The desire to connect experience with song is very important. Music is the 1 thing that bridges the gap in every avenue of life. Be kind xx
We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.

Artist Workshop With Stephanie Williams
2024-09-06 12:00 - 14:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Come join us at SPARK for an artist workshop with Stephanie Williams, Make and Take Painted Ceramic Pinch Pots!
In this artist activation, visitors will be able to make their own ceramic pinch pot out of clay through William’s guidance, or paint a ready to take home pot pinched and fired by the artist previously. Pinch pots that are made at this workshop will be taken home by the artist, fired, and kept to be used at the next Make and Take Pinch Pot event! Come join us to paint and pinch at Monument Circle!

We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place

Artist Workshop With John Clark
2024-09-06 17:00 - 19:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Make Art and Write Poetry with John Clark!
Join Indianapolis-based visual artist, Big Car co-founder and writer John Clark to make drawings, poems, and short stories…or a combination of all three! And we’ll also show you how to make zines, too!
We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.
SPARK on the Circle is an ongoing partnership between Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy, City of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, the Capital Improvement Board, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission.

Artist Workshop: Single Fancies With Joan Wyand!
2024-09-13 17:00 - 19:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Come join artist, Joan Wyand, on the circle to get a tiny painted masterpiece on one of your fingernails! The process involves painting a background color on the nail and once dry, Joan will paint an image of your choice. Past designs have included emojis, hearts, tiger stripes and more detailed imageslike Moby Dick and Godzilla! The artist loves a challenge, so feel free to suggest your own ideas. One nail per visitor!
More about Joan:
Joan Wyand recently received her Master of Fine Arts with a concentration in Integrative Studio Practice at IU’s Herron School of Art + Design. She received an undergraduate degree in Ceramics at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005 and spent 20 formative years in Providence. Her social-minded experimental practice was recognized in 2012 as a recipient of AS220’s Free Culture Award. She participated in the Venice International Performance Art Week Workshop that coincided with the Venice Biennale in2017. Her work at Herron has been recognized with a Paul Zimmerman Fellowship, Graduate Teaching Fellowships, the 2024 Sherry Queener Award and a summer

We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.

Artist Workshop With Giselle Trujillo
2024-09-20 17:00 - 19:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Come join us at SPARK for a FREE workshop with artist Giselle Trujillo!
About the Artist:
Inside of me, like inside of everyone, there are many characters waiting to come out in order to be somehow present in this world. They come out from a pencil and play with papers, from our mind and play with our life.
Once, when I was a child, I was close to the sea and I understood everything it said to me. then my hands made a face, a body; some faces, some bodies that watched me, touched me, and I watched them and touched them and then they abandoned me, leaving with the sea, melting themselves with all those characters who were born and going to be born from the sand and they had left with the breeze and with the sea (they are still my friends that I will never see again).
It happened the same with the mud, but the faces and the bodies wouldn’t leave. and here they were; I didn’t plan them, I didn’t make a sketch of them and they appeared. They wake me up any hour, any time talking to me, moving through my hands and when they say ” leave me like this ” I transform them in stone… …And my mind and my soul will rest in the stone, in the paper and in the sand, which had already gone.
We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.

SPARK on the Circle is an ongoing partnership between Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy, City of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, the Capital Improvement Board, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission.

Kids Day!
2024-09-21 14:00 - 16:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Come over to SPARK on Monument Circle for Kids Day!
Playworks will be bringing some of your favorite recess classics like four square, hopscotch, jump rope, and hula hoops!
Visitors will be able to make friendship bracelets and get their faces painted!
The Indianapolis Synphony Orchestra will be hosting their instrument petting zoo and holding a make your own instrument work shop, followed by story time!
We hope to see you out at SPARK for this FREE and kid centred event!
We at Big Car are teaming up with Downtown Indy and the City of Indianapolis — with support from the Capital Improvement Board and the Indiana War Memorials Commission— to spark Monument Circle with human-scale activities like games, live music, artmaking, and socializing in a comfortable place.

SPARK on the Circle is an ongoing partnership between Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy, City of Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, the Capital Improvement Board, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission.
