Free Kokedama Workshop
2022-10-20 11:00 - 13:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Learn how to make your own kokedama! Choose your plant from our wide selection of indoor plants and turn it into a kokedama. Come prepared to get your hands dirty! In this workshop, you will also learn proper care and upkeep of your plant. Supplies are limited and only 30 kokedamas will be made, first come first serve.
What is a kokedama? A Japanese art form of presenting a plant in a ‘living pot’, a kokedama is essentially a plant living in a “moss ball” that can sit on a tray, small stand, or hang from your ceiling.

Circle SPARK Fest
2022-10-22 13:00 - 18:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Join us for a brand-new, two-day celebration of art and fall at Monument Circle.
You’ll find Indianapolis-based artists and artisan vendors, live music, performance art, pumpkin decorating, and lots more. On Saturday, bands playing are Radar Gold, Books & Straight As, Vertice, and The Brothers Footman. On Sunday, you’ll hear Addie Kosten, Beatty and the Bayonets, Kristen Bales, and Ricardo.
Big Car’s Wagon of Wonders and will be there with a variety of outdoor furniture for gathering and celebrating art, creativity, and harvest time.
And artist Derek Tuder will bring his mobile art gallery and selfie studio.
What’s this?
Big Car Collaborative and Downtown Indy have teamed up with 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. Everything is free for people to enjoy.
We started this round of SPARK in the last week of June. We’ll be going through the end of October — Mondays through Thursdays 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Fridays 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
In September: we add 5-9 pm Wednesdays and Circle SPARK Festival on Oct. 22-23 (Saturday and Sunday). Our last day will be Oct. 28.
We’re focusing on getting folks outside and together to enjoy the cooler fall weather in October with lots of events and programs — including new additions on Wednesday evenings with walks and live music.
Event info and more at circlespark.org and @sparkplaces on Instagram.

Circle SPARK Fest
2022-10-23 13:00 - 18:00 | IN

Lunch Break Live-Crescent Ulmer
2022-10-25 12:00 - 13:00 | IN
Crescent Ulmer is a folk songwriter that travels like a blues-man, a troubadour of sorts, living life with a mantra of spontaneity and honesty. It is no wonder that they are known for their raw, acoustic sound and sincere, real-life songwriting. In one show, expect to laugh and cry, sometimes simultaneously.
Organized by The Girl Called Books and made possible by Lake City Bank as part of SPARK Monument Circle.
What’s Spark Monument Circle?
Big Car Collaborative and Downtown Indy are teaming up with 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. Everything is free for people to enjoy.

Halloween on the Circle
2022-10-26 18:00 - 21:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
Feelin’ spooky? Join us for a live soundtrack to the silent scary film, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), at 7:30 p.m. on the Monument steps. Film and soundtrack by local musicians in partnership with Classical Music Indy.
AND brace yourself for a Halloween-ish tour of the seedy, sinister, dark side of Indianapolis history at 6pm for the spooky mayhem slideshow and walk with Kipp Normand.

ALL TOURS MEET at the trailer on the southwest quad of Monument Circle. Expect to walk between a half-mile and 2 miles total. In case of bad weather, cancellation decisions will be made by 3 p.m. Check SPARK social media or website for updates.
* FREE *
What’s This?
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. We’re based from the southwest quadrant.

Boot Scoot USA presents A Halloween Honky Tonk Dance Party
2022-10-27 18:00 - 22:00 | 1 Monument Circle, South Facing Steps, United States
John Stamps & KNags of BootScootUSA are wrangling up a rootin’ tootin’ night of Halloween fun on Monument Circle with live DJs, line dance instructions, a vintage market and a bit of classic country music.

Go into winter with some new dance moves and clothing no one else is wearing by scoring one of a kind vintage clothing AND free line dance lessons from Jeff Smilko.
Plus there will be prizes for best dressed and best costume.

Some of best vintage vendors in Indy will be there so the only thing square about you, might be your dancin.’

What’s This?
Big Car Collaborative and Downtown Indy are teaming up with 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. Everything is free for people to enjoy.

Selina Trepp: Selected Shorts
2022-11-04 08:00 - 2023-01-05 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Trepp’s works research economy and improvisation. Finding a balance between the intuitive and conceptual is a goal, living a life of adventure is a way, embarrassment is often a result.
She works across media, combining performance, installation, painting, and sculpture to create intricate setups that result in photos, drawings and animations. In addition to the studio-based work, Selina is active in the experimental music scene. In this context she sings and plays the videolah, her midi controlled video synthesizer, to create projected animations in real-time as visual music. She performs with a varying cast of collaborators and as one half of Spectralina, her long running audiovisual collaboration with Dan Bitney.
Tube Factory artspace will host three of her short, stop motion animations.

The 2021 Mad Scientists’ Transatlantic Mandala Pen Pal Diary
2022-11-04 18:00 - 2022-11-20 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
The 2021 Mad Scientists’ Transatlantic Mandala Pen Pal Diary is an exhibit featuring 365 drawings and 12 enlarged mandalas enriched with conversation between Dr. Rainbows and Dr. Sunshine. The exhibit is a work in progress and mockup for publishing the entire “Mad Scientists’ 2021 Transatlantic Mandala Diary” as a graphic ‘novel’.

On view in Guichelaar Gallery at Tube Factory artspace.

Marilyn Gatin, PhD (Dr Rainbows) writes from Indy:
“My practice is to select a theme for each upcoming year – for 2021 I chose STRUCTURE because I felt so unmoored, angry, and anxious.
Following Carl Jung’s example, I decided to draw a ‘mandala’ every day. Each circular drawing would express my current emotional state – a visual journal, diary, meditation – and provide the structure I needed to manage my mental health.
Other than a few sketches for sculptural pieces, drawing was a new challenge, a challenge I could control in an out-of-control world. I love the right kind of challenge.
Sharing my mandalas was an important aspect of the structure I needed to hold me in place. Everyone was suffering in a COVID-disrupted world, though we had hope that 2021 would be better and everything would be back to normal soon. I thought my meditative drawings would at least provide a distraction to others and allow me to contribute something positive to my friends and the wider world of social media every day.
Liisa is my dear friend since we first worked together in Virginia – a gregarious wonderful light in any room. Our bond was formed during our science work together and is cemented by art. I knew being locked down in Berlin was going to be an extra challenge for her, but I also knew she would rise to the challenge like she always had before.
Liisa kept me engaged in the process – having a daily, hours long, in-process conversation about the drawing, about the world, about the company we both worked for, about our intimate lives – I jokingly call her my German talk therapist. Having a drawing coach and deep thinker in a different time zone was crucial to me finishing the project. 2021 cemented our already concrete friendship.
What a year!

Dr Rainbows
Liisa Eisenlohr, PhD (Dr Sunshine) writes from Berlin:
Having moved to Berlin during the pandemic with “work from home” conditions imposed by my employer, there was no opportunity for me to build a social network. Usually, my only in-person social interaction for the week was the brief conversation I had with the masked cashier seated behind a Plexiglas shield when I ventured out to buy groceries. Talk about a grim time…
The daily texts with my dear friend and fellow mad scientist, Marilyn – sometimes deep, occasionally irritated, often hilarious, and always lively –helped me maintain my sanity throughout 2021. Receiving the mandala-of-the-day was a highly anticipated little surprise and broke up my everyday tedium. Our conversation records the anger, solitude, and despair we experienced during the pandemic, but also documents the comfort, support, and camaraderie we shared with one another during the Year of Mandalas.
Dr. Sunshine”

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.

Meet The Artists Selected for the Citizens Park Mural in Fall Creek Place
2022-11-22 18:00 - 20:00 | Grace Apostolic Church, 649 22nd St, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, United States
Selected artists Dr. Jarrod Dortch and Tiffany Black will design the large-scale installation coming soon to College Avenue in 2023. For several weeks, Dortch and Black will host community events to gather input and participation in the design process as they create community-specific artwork that reflects the history and dynamic energy of the Fall Creek Place neighborhood.
Meet The Artists as they kick off their first community engagement event. Learn about the project and how you can get involved!
Visit https://www.tblack.co/fall-creek-place to learn more.

Jennifer Blue Hands-Wild Muse
2022-12-02 18:00 - 2022-12-18 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Opening the month of December at Guichelaar Gallery (next to Tube Factory artspace) are oil and mixed media on panels depicting characters that are created using a technique that visual artist Jennifer Blue Hands calls ‘Draw, Trace, Color.’
“Different and specific areas of the brain are activated while using the method to process deep trauma,” says Blue Hands. “As a CPTSD (Complex post-traumatic stress disorder) survivor, practice in CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), Art Therapy, daily meditation, and Somatic therapy assist to maintain a productive and healthy lifestyle for myself.”

About the artist
Blue Hands has a BA from IU Bloomington, in Painting and Drawing with a minor in Art History. Currently a scenic painter at The Phoenix theatre and a Fabricator at Whale Creek, Co, she has held a variety of artisan positions over the years. “One of my favorites was at the Butte Silver-Bow Arts Foundation as a teaching artist, assistant to the director, and community organizer. Another favorite was as a Volunteer Coordinator for the Imagine Butte Resource Center (IBRC) working with the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation for The Color and Light Festival, says Blue Hands.” A proud mother of three, her future plans are in volunteering with Hospice, and obtaining her Masters in Art Therapy.

Admission is free

Guichelaar Gallery
1130 Cruft St.
Indianapolis, IN
46203
317-450-6630
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

Fall Creek Place Residents: join Citizens Park mural artists for a virtual walking tour
2022-12-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Grace Apostolic Church, 649 22nd St, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, United States
Selected artists Dr. Jarrod Dortch and Tiffany Black will design the large-scale installation coming soon to College Avenue in 2023. For several weeks, Dortch and Black will host community events to gather input and participation in the design process as they create community-specific artwork that reflects the history and dynamic energy of the Fall Creek Place neighborhood.
Join the artists for a Virtual Walking Tour with former resident, Bashiri Asad.

Visit https://www.tblack.co/fall-creek-place to learn more, participate, and stay up to date on the project.

Fall Creek Place Residents: Let’s Make Art!
2022-12-15 18:00 - 20:00 | Grace Apostolic Church, 649 22nd St, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, United States
Get involved in the design of the Citizens Park mural in Fall Creek Place by joining the selected artists for a night full of art-making activities!
Selected artists Dr. Jarrod Dortch and Tiffany Black will design — alongside residents — the large-scale mural installation coming soon to College Avenue in 2023. For several weeks, Dortch and Black will host community events to gather input and participation in the design process as they create community-specific artwork that reflects the history and dynamic energy of the Fall Creek Place neighborhood.
Visit https://www.tblack.co/fall-creek-place to learn more, participate, and stay up to date on the project.

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).

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES
2023-01-04 13:20 - 16:30 | 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
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.

MLK Day Special with Snuggy Bear Presents
2023-01-16 12:00 - 18:00 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Join Dr. Jarrod Dortch and special guests in this radio program that explores and celebrates the Black experience and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.
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.

Words & Music: Marguerite Young
2023-01-21 17:00 - 18:00 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Join Big Car co-founder and executive director, Jim Walker as he interviews Indianapolis-based author Susan Neville about her research on and time spent with the often under appreciated writer, Marguerite Young.

From Poetry Foundation on Young:
Poet, novelist, and biographer Marguerite V. Young was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. In an interview with the Paris Review, Young recounted, “We were brought up to believe that to be born in Indiana was to be born a poet—a myth which I can’t accept now, but I did then. I remember telling my grandmother, when I was about seven years old, that I intended to be a poet.” Young studied at Indiana University and Butler University and earned an MA in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature at the University of Chicago. While at Chicago, Young took a job reading to Minna Weissenbach, a society woman and opium addict who was a patron of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The experience informed Young’s later writings. Young published her first book of poems, Prismatic Ground (1937), soon after graduating from Chicago; she taught in Indianapolis, at a high school, and at the University of Iowa before moving to New York City in 1943.

Young’s second collection of poems, Moderate Fable (1944), and her account of Utopian communities in New Harmony, Indiana, Angel in the Forest (1945), created a splash in the literary scene of Greenwich Village. It took her 18 years to finish her next book, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling (1965), a sprawling epic detailing the inner adventures of Vera Cartwheel as she embarks on an imaginary journey to discover the truth of her beloved nursemaid, Miss MacIntosh. Running 1,198 pages, it is the longest novel in English published as a single volume. Young once described her imagination as “muralist,” telling the Paris Review, “I like to see the epic swing of the thing, the many as opposed to the one. I am a pluralist in that sense.” Young spent the rest of her life writing a biography of Eugene V. Debs that attempted to embed him in his social and cultural milieu. More than 2,000 pages long in manuscript, Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs (1998) was edited and published posthumously.Young taught writing at Fordham University and at the New School of Social Research for many years. Her admirers included Djuna Barnes, Anne Tyler, Anaïs Nin, Carson McCullers, and Allen Tate, among others. In conversation with Ellen G. Friedman and Miriam Fuchs, Young articulated the underlying connection among all her works as “the human desire or obsession for utopias.” She went on, “The structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered. … All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side.”

About Susan Neville
Neville is the author of six works of creative nonfiction: Fabrication: Essays on Making Things and Making Meaning; Twilight in Arcadia; Iconography: A Writer’s Meditation; Butler’s Big Dance; Sailing the Inland Sea, and Light. Her essay on women in the Klan in Indiana, “Into the Fire,” is available as an ebook from Ploughshares. Her collections of short fiction and hybrid fiction include The Town of Whispering Dolls, winner of the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction, In the House of Blue Lights, winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize; Invention of Flight, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction; and Indiana Winter. Her stories have appeared in the Pushcart Prize anthology and in anthologies including Extreme Fiction (Longman) and The Story Behind the Story (Norton).

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.

Mvhayv Radio Marathon
2023-01-28 12:00 - 20:00 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Mvhayv Radio is a language and cultural preservation project by multi-disciplinary artist, Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee) based in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
All day we will air episodes 1-10 to celebrate kicking off a new season starting Feb 4 with episode 11.
Episode 1 – Can you dance to this?
Episode 2 – Songs to find your radical lover to
Episode 3 – TikTok
Episode 4 – All Indigenous
Episode 5 – Africa
Episode 6 – Muscogee (Creek) & Seminole Hymns
Episode 7 – All Indigenous spoken word, noise, and moccasin gaze.
Episode 8 – Music to bake cookies to.
Episode 9 – All Indigenous poems and music.
Episode 10 – All Indigenous poems and music.
Harkins 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. 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 Vancouver Art Gallery. She created an online Indigenous concert series called 6 Moons, and published a CD of Creek/Seminole Hymns. She will open an exhibit at Tube Factory artspace July 5-October 19, 2024.
She is also part of Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ a performance group that features music and choreography by Harkins. With support from PICA and Western Front, songs from the performance have been collected into a limited edition double-LP which can be found on Harkins’ Bandcamp. Harkins resides on the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation and is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
This program is made possible by National Endowment for the Arts and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Nathaniel Russell: HERE IT IS IT ALWAYS IS
2023-02-03 18:00 - 2023-03-19 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
For “HERE IT IS IT ALWAYS IS,” Russell shares new paintings, objects, and situations made improvisationally with recycled, found and reused materials. A visual artist, illustrator, and musician based in Indianapolis who has shown his work around the world, Russell utilized the Efroymson Gallery at Tube Factory during the month of January to build his work for this exhibition. With “HERE IT IS IT ALWAYS IS,” Russell continues to explore themes of hope, anxiety, compassion and our place in an ever-expanding universe.

Nathaniel Russell was born and raised in Indiana. After college, he spent several years in the San Francisco Bay Area making posters, record covers, and woodcuts. His work can be seen around the world in traditional galleries and informal spaces. Russell has also created many book and album cover designs, illustrations for the New York Times, and a viral series of fake flier projects.

Two of Russell’s murals are found on Big Car’s campus — You are Here on the Listen Hear building and Totally Pencil on Tube Factory. Russell also previously made colorful, oversized plywood cutouts for Big Car’s parking lot garden at Service Center outside of Lafayette Square Mall and shared a solo show, Thing, at Big Car Gallery in its early days in Fountain Square.

Opening receptions: Feb 3 & Mar 3, 6-10 pm in our Jeremy D. Efroymson Gallery.

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 Efroymson Family Fund.

African Dance with Uzuri
2023-02-08 19:30 - 21:00, 2023-02-15 19:30 - 21:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join Uzuri Asad, artist in Big Car’s Public Life Residency, for a dose of culture, self-care, and community as we explore rhythms from West Africa and other parts of the Diaspora. Give your body and soul a moment to reflect and progress all at once, meet Asad on the floor!

Valentino Market
2023-02-11 12:00 - 17:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Looking for a one of kind gift for your beloved this Valentine’s Day? ERA Creates and Arte Mexicano en Indiana have teamed up to hand select vendors, art, crafts for you to show your love, YOUR love.

Kottu
2023-02-19 13:00 - 14:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Come spend a restful and slow Sunday afternoon with Yeabsera and Meskerem Tabb, artists in Big Car’s residency program, as they share the Ethiopian culture of hospitality through a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

Kottu (ካቱ) is an Ormic word that translates to come on in. The Tabbs will share traditional Ethiopian coffee from roasting to brewing while engaging in compelling conversations.

About The Coffee Ceremony
The coffee ceremony is considered to be the most important social occasion in many villages, and it is a sign of respect and friendship to be invited to a coffee ceremony. Guests at a ceremony may discuss topics such as politics, community, and gossip. There is also abundant praise for the ceremony’s performer and the brews she produces.
Regardless of the time of day, occasion (or lack thereof) and guests invited, the ceremony usually follows a distinct format, with some variations.
Beyond pure socialization, the coffee ceremony also plays a spiritual role in Ethiopia, one which emphasizes the importance of Ethiopian coffee culture. Coffee has a long history of association with Islam, and it is said that a transformation of the spirit takes place during the three rounds of the coffee ceremony thanks to coffee’s spiritual properties.
The lengthy Ethiopian coffee ceremony involves processing the raw, unwashed coffee beans into finished cups of coffee. It begins with the preparation of the room for the ritual.
First, the woman who is performing the ceremony spreads fresh, aromatic grasses and flowers across the floor. She begins burning incense to ward off evil spirits and continues to burn incense throughout the ceremony. She fills a round-bottomed, black clay coffeepot (known as a jebena) with water and places it over hot coals.
Then, the hostess takes a handful of green coffee beans and carefully cleans them in a heated, long-handled, wok-like pan. Holding the pan over hot coals or a small fire, she stirs and shakes the husks and debris out of the beans until they are clean.
Once the beans are clean, she slowly roasts them in the pan she used to clean them. During the roasting, she keeps the roast as even as possible by shaking the beans (much like one would shake an old-fashioned popcorn popper) or stirring them constantly. The roasting may be stopped once the beans are a medium brown, or it may be continued until they are blackened and shimmering with essential oils. The aroma of the roasted coffee is powerful and is considered to be an important aspect of the ceremony.
After the hostess has roasted the beans, she will grind them. She uses a tool similar to a mortar and pestle. The “mortar” is a small, heavy wooden bowl called a mukecha (pronounced moo-key-cha), and the “pestle” is a wooden or metal cylinder with a blunt end, called a zenezena. With these tools, she crushes the beans into a coarse ground.
By the time the beans are ground, the water in the jebena is typically ready for the coffee. The performer removes a straw lid from the coffeepot and adds the just-ground coffee. The mixture is brought to a boil and removed from heat.
At this point, the coffee is ready to be served. A tray of very small, handle-less ceramic or glass cups is arranged with the cups very close together. The ceremony performer pours the coffee in a single stream from about a foot above the cups, ideally filling each cup equally without breaking the stream of coffee. The dregs of the coffee remain in the pot. This technique prevents coarse grounds from ending up in the coffee cups.
In some cases, the youngest child may serve the oldest guest the first cup of coffee. Afterward, the performer serves everyone else.
Guests may add their sugar if they’d like. Milk is not typically offered. After adding sugar, guests bunna tetu (“drink coffee”), and then praise the hostess for her coffee-making skills and the coffee for its taste.
After the first round of coffee, there are typically two additional servings. The three servings are known as abol, tona, and baraka. Each serving is progressively weaker than the first. Each cup is said to transform the spirit, and the third serving is considered to be a blessing to those who drink it.

African Dance with Uzuri
2023-02-22 19:30 - 21:00 | IN

Betsy Stirratt Artist Talk
2023-02-25 14:00 - 15:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join artist Betsy Stirratt as she gives a tour of her exhibit, “Unearthing,” provides background and answers questions about her work.
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.

Normal Pop-Up Market
2023-02-26 11:00 - 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Coffee, fancy toast, and one of a kind artworks and jewelry by Cierra Johnson, Angelita Hampton and Shanise Wright. Selected by Big Car staff artists Yeabsera Tabb and Adair Allen.
