Big Car

Lockerbie Night Market
2021-09-16 18:00 - 22:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | Needler’s Market, 320 N New Jersey, Indianapolis, IN, 46204, United States
Join us for an evening downtown, full of opportunities to enjoy the local Indianapolis arts, music, and food scene. Purchase goods from local artists and food vendors or relax and take in live music.
In partnership with Citimark and Gershman Partners, Spark Placemaking and Big Car Collaborative are back for another year to host a Night Market at Lockerbie!
Thanks to our friends at Sun King Brewery, beer will also be available for purchase at the pop-up beer garden located right off the Cultural Trail on Alabama Street.
Join us for an evening downtown, full of opportunities to enjoy the local Indianapolis arts, music, and food scene. Purchase goods from local artists and food vendors or relax and take in live music.
Vendors, food trucks, and musical acts will be announced closer to the date. All ages // Free and open to the public.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words and Music-From The Belly: Etheridge Knight
2021-09-18 20:00 - 21:30 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
In this installment of Words & Music, an audio series exploring the life and work of Indiana writers, Sean Smith aka, Oreo Jones, explores the fascinating life and poetry of an Indiana Icon, Etheridge Knight.
Susan Neville, Adrian Matejka, Hanako Gavia, and Smith discuss Knight’s later years as a poet living in Indianapolis, his critically acclaimed publishings after prison, and the art of meddling.
Born in rural Mississippi, Etheridge Knight would grow to become one of the most prolific voices in the late Black Arts movement in the 70s. In a dark and dreary jail cell in Michigan City, Knight would begin to find his true voice and calling as a pivotal writer/poet of the 20th century. A couple years into his sentence Etheridge would correspond with an American poet, author, teacher, and Pulitzer Prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks, and Detroit’s Dudley Randal from Broadside Press. It was his first published poetry book, “Poems From Prison” that would make a splash in the literary world of poetry.
Upon his release from prison, Knight would move around the country as a mysterious figure of Black American folklore, Known for his authenticity of the Black experience and his legendary Haikus. It was after the release of “Belly Song and other Poems”, Knight grabbed a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1973, and would help establish the Free Peoples Poetry Workshop.
The episode features poetry from Etheridge Knight along with a live soundtrack provided by Sean Smith’s father, Mark Powell.
This is a continuation of an eight-part series made possible by Indiana Humanities and produced by WQRT and Big Car Collaborative.
You can listen live via the streaming link or listen on regular FM radio in Indianapolis by tuning in to 99.1 FM.
About the participants in this show (all Indiana writers):
Susan Neville is the author of six works of creative nonfiction and her collections of short fiction include The Town of Whispering Dolls, winner of the Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction; In the House of Blue Lights, winner of the Richard Sullivan prize; and Invention of Flight, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She teaches at Butler University.
Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. He teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington and served as Poet Laureate of Indiana for 2018-19. He is the author of five award winning books and his first graphic novel, “Last On His Feet” is forthcoming from Liveright in 2022.
Hanako Gavia is the Assistant Director of the Center for Citizenship and Community at Butler University. She also is the great niece of Etheridge Knight.
Oreo Jones has made Indianapolis his creative mecca. A multi-talented artist who delves into sound, music, and visual experimentation, Jones shares and expands the minds of people in surrounding neighborhoods, while helping the city grow.
This episode contains strong language which may be offensive to some listeners. Listeners discretion is advised (edited)
Painting of Etheridge Knight by Michael Jordan aka, Alkemi.

Lockerbie Movie Night-Alice (live soundtrack by Landon Caldwell and Mark Tester)
2021-10-21 18:00 - 21:00 | Needler’s Market, 320 N New Jersey, Indianapolis, IN, 46204, United States
Step through the looking glass with us at Lockerbie Movie Night! Box Burger food truck and Sun King Brewery will help fill your bellys. Sound artists Landon Caldwell and Mark Tester will stimulate your ears with a live soundtrack to Czech director and stop-motion animator Jan Svankmajer’s “Alice.” Loosely based on the classic Alice in Wonderland story, the colors and proportions are dreamlike and lucid — even more so than one might imagine, and the pace at which it moves is both enchanting and perplexing. Svankmajer calls it a children’s film, but any adult would be equally as entertained by the strangeness of it all.
In Svankmajer’s “Alice,” the main character switches back and forth between being a human and a doll. And there’s no shortage of weird little details that make you cringe: rats that decide to camp out on Alice’s head and start a bonfire, socks that function as worms and crawl in and out of the wooden floors, animal creatures collaged out of bones, metal, and scarps who try to trap Alice into a closet full of creepy, crawly things.

About Landon Caldwell & Mark Tester: Caldwell & Tester are Indianapolis-based artists, musicians, composers, and producers. Their duo work explores various niches in electronic music with a focus on process, often incorporating spontaneous composition & experimentation with an array of technology, creating works that harness rhythm, ambiance, and melody to conjure meditations on fleeting sensations and early morning comedowns.
Together they have toured in the United States, Canada, and Europe and are regularly engaged with artists and musicians across the Midwest and beyond. Since 2016 they have operated Medium Sound, producing a number of the label’s releases.
Film will start at 7:15pm
Run time 1 hour and 35 minutes.

Noopiming: A Cure For White Ladies
2021-11-12 12:00 - 14:00 | Zoom, United States
Join renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Simpson and Big Car Co-founder and Director of Programming, Shauta Marsh will discuss her most recent book “Noopiming: A Cure For White Ladies” The book is available for purchase from House of Anansi Press and University of Minnesota Press.
Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.
Working for two decades as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada and the United States and has twenty years experience with Indigenous land based education. She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba, and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research & Learning in Denendeh.
Leanne is the author of seven previous books, including her new novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies (US release from UMP February 2021), which was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail, and was short listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction.
About “Noopiming: A Cure For White Ladies”
Mashkawaji (they/them) lies frozen in the ice, remembering a long-ago time of hopeless connection and now finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce us to the seven main characters: Akiwenzii, the old man who represents the narrator’s will; Ninaatig, the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman who represents their conscience; Sabe, the giant who represents their marrow; Adik, the caribou who represents their nervous system; Asin, the human who represents their eyes and ears; and Lucy, the human who represents their brain. Each attempts to commune with the unnatural urban-settler world, a world of SpongeBob Band-Aids, Ziploc baggies, Fjällräven Kånken backpacks, and coffee mugs emblazoned with institutional logos. And each searches out the natural world, only to discover those pockets that still exist are owned, contained, counted, and consumed. Cut off from nature, the characters are cut off from their natural selves. Noopiming is Anishinaabemowin for “in the bush,” and the title is a response to English Canadian settler and author Susanna Moodie’s 1852 memoir Roughing It in the Bush. To read Simpson’s work is an act of decolonization, degentrification, and willful resistance to the perpetuation and dissemination of centuries-old colonial myth-making. It is a lived experience. It is a breaking open of the self to a world alive with people, animals, ancestors, and spirits, who are all busy with the daily labours of healing — healing not only themselves, but their individual pieces of the network, of the web that connects them all together. Enter and be changed.
Photo Credit: Aaron Mason
Made possible by the Arts Midwest Gig Fund.

Eternity 123
2021-11-12 19:00 - 20:30 | IN
Change is a central element to the avant-garde Japanese dance form of Butoh. As a part of the Spirit & Place Festival, Big Car Collaborative and Indianapolis Movement Arts Collective have partnered to present choreographer and performer Vangeline presents an original work, Eternity 123 , that asks audiences to see Butoh as a way to transmute the pain and discord of societal shifts into art.
Eternity 123, is the third installment of a feminist dance triptych choreographed and performed by Vangeline. Eternity 123 traces the symbolic journey of women’s emancipation across time. With this piece, Vangeline also celebrates the impact of women on the art form of Butoh, and “cabaret.”
Butoh is a hybrid form of dance theater that came out of Post WWII Japan. Butoh links physical and spiritual practices from around the globe and accounts for aging of differently abled bodies as well as the energetic qualities of youth. Drawing from many Eastern spiritual traditions, Butoh revalues darkness as a transformative agent and an integral aspect to growth, healing and transformation for both performer and audience alike.

Eternity 123
2021-11-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Change is a central element to the avant-garde Japanese dance form of Butoh. As a part of the Spirit & Place Festival, choreographer and performer Vangeline presents an original work, Eternity 123 , that asks audiences to see Butoh as a way to transmute the pain and discord of societal shifts into art.
Eternity 123, is the third installment of a feminist dance triptych choreographed and performed by Vangeline. Eternity 123 traces the symbolic journey of women’s emancipation across time. With this piece, Vangeline also celebrates the impact of women on the art form of Butoh, and “cabaret.”
Butoh is a hybrid form of dance theater that came out of Post WWII Japan. Butoh links physical and spiritual practices from around the globe and accounts for aging of differently abled bodies as well as the energetic qualities of youth. Drawing from many Eastern spiritual traditions, Butoh revalues darkness as a transformative agent and an integral aspect to growth, healing and transformation for both performer and audience alike.

Normal Market-Paper Flame, Urban House Plant Collective, Erin Hauck
2021-12-05 10:00 - 14:00 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Normal Coffee has your Sunday breakfast and shopping covered.
About Urban House Plant Collective

Established in 2021, Urban Houseplant Co. is a female owned Collective based in Indianapolis, IN
You can expect to see The Owner, Hannah & her pup, Cleo in shop over in IRV or out in their community spreading knowledge & getting plants into people’s hands & homes.
​This Collective is ever evolving & always on the look-out for like minded, plant-loving people to collaborate with.

About Paper Flame
Sustainability is a core value of mine, and I wanted my brand to reflect that. When I started out making candles for myself, it seemed like a waste to throw away the jars once I finished a candle. I ended up hoarding boxes of empty jars. Instead of buying new candles, I refilled these jars and experimented with different fragrances. The local community in Indianapolis started donating jars to me that they had collected – and soon enough I was inundated with empty jars! And that’s how The Paper Flame was born.
As I have scaled the business, not all of the jars are re-used or upcycled. My favorite jars to use are the Oui yogurt jars because they are uniform and adorable. Some jars are from other candlemakers that are retiring, overstocked or just didn’t need them anymore. A lot of my equipment is also handed down to me from other candlemakers! I am also quite proud that most of the furniture in my house is secondhand 🙂
Besides thrifting and candlemaking, I enjoy spending my free time making kombucha, practicing Muay Thai and traveling. Ask me about Couchsurfing!
About Erin Hauck

Snuggy Bear Presents Second Sundays-Watermelon Man
2021-12-12 10:00 - 14:00 | IN
Join Snuggy Bear the Second Sunday of each month at Tube Factory artspace as he dives into the Black Film Archive with screenings and discussions, connecting the movie selected to Indianapolis.
This month he will feature the 98 minute, 1970 film,”Watermelon Man.”
“Watermelon Man is a comedy directed by Melvin Van Peebles and starring Godfrey Cambridge, Estelle Parsons, Howard Caine, D’Urville Martin, Kay Kimberley, Mantan Moreland, and Erin Moran. Written by Herman Raucher, it tells the story of an extremely bigoted 1960s-era white insurance salesman named Jeff Gerber, who wakes up one morning to find that he has become black. The premise for the film was inspired by Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” and by John Howard Griffin’s autobiographical “Black Like Me.”
Van Peebles’ only studio film, “Watermelon Man’ was a financial success, but Van Peebles did not accept Columbia Pictures’ three-picture contract, instead developing the independent film “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.” The music for “Watermelon Man,” written and performed by Van Peebles, was released on a soundtrack album, which spawned the single “Love, That’s America”.”–from Wikipedia.
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.

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

A Normal Market-Floral Brat Braiding and Sly Badges
2021-12-19 10:00 - 14:00 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
We have your Sunday breakfast, hot beverage and shopping covered!
Vendors Floral Brat Braiding and Sly Badges will be on site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Create Hear-Laura Foster Nicholson
2022-02-10 12:00 - 13:00 | IN

Landon Caldwell and Mark Tester: Alice
2022-02-15 19:00 - 20:30, 2022-02-16 19:00 - 20:30, 2022-02-19 16:00 - 17:30 | 99.1 WQRT, United States
Step through the looking glass with WQRT! In late 2021 artists Landon Caldwell and Mark Tester were commissioned to create a live soundtrack to Jan Svankmajer’s “Alice.” Have a cup of tea or coffee and tune in to 99.1 FM. You can also watch along on YouTube while listening.
About Landon Caldwell & Mark Tester:
Caldwell & Tester are Indianapolis-based artists, musicians, composers, and producers. Their duo work explores various niches in electronic music with a focus on process, often incorporating spontaneous composition & experimentation with an array of technology, creating works that harness rhythm, ambiance, and melody to conjure meditations on fleeting sensations and early morning comedowns.
Together they have toured in the United States, Canada, and Europe and are regularly engaged with artists and musicians across the Midwest and beyond. Since 2016 they have operated Medium Sound, producing a number of the label’s releases.

Create Hear-John Green and Sarah Urist Green
2022-02-19 14:00 - 15:00, 2022-02-24 12:00 - 13:00 | 99.1 WQRT, United States

Art and Vinyl: Amber Zuri Keel, Kendia Lovelady, Harriet Watson
2022-03-04 18:00 - 2022-03-20 18:00 | Listen Hear, 2620 Shelby St, , Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Snuggy Bear Presents “Art and Vinyl,” an exhibition featuring Amber Zuri Keel, Kendia Lovelady and Harriet Watson.
“For this exhibition I wanted to create comfort while stepping outside of who and what I am accustomed to,” says Dr. Dortch aka Snuggy Bear. “The artists were chosen based on their differing approaches as it pertains to medium, subject matter and artistic styles which represent the diversity of the Black woman who so often are subjected to the monolithic categorizations and restrictive boxes created by the mainstream media and the patriarchal society as a whole.”

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.

About Amber Zuri Keel

Amber Zuri is an Indianapolis based artist. She was born in Indy and has spent most of her life in pursuit of understanding and honing her creative practices. Growing up with a mother who is also a painter, Amber was exposed to an endless ﬂow of both materials and the encouragement to use them as she saw ﬁt. Over the years she has devoted herself to developing her own relationship to painting in order to discover her own voice. Emotion is the driving force behind her work. By giving herself permission to create as freely as possible, she is able to feel more herself and more at peace in a chaotic world. This persistent effort has afforded her the opportunity to share her work at a number of local galleries.

“These pieces are the result of deliberate intention. They are an abstract contemplation on communication. In a world where the way one represents oneself has manifested as a form of social currency; communication has become a vital skill. For my part, the language I understand best is that of line, shape, and color. With this work I am attempting to communicate an ease of spirit. We have all had a tumultuous couple of years. The best and most profound message I could try to communicate with my work at this time, is to choose peace, for yourself. Whenever and wherever you can. Your attention is yours to pay to whomever and whatever you choose. For the moment, I choose peace.”
About Harriet Watson
Watson was born in Indianapolis, IN on December 25, 1994. She was adopted 2 days later and grew up with her family in Greencastle, IN, and it was a rural community with little to no diversity. Harriet found difficulties being biracial in a mainly white town. Throughout her life, she has never been content being conventional and doing what society expects of a biracial female. She simply enjoys being Harriet. Many of her early works are self-portraits, depicting herself in different environments, often surrealist with vibrant colors, and using many different types of 2-D mediums. After spending two years at Ohio Wesleyan University studying art and psychology, and nearly two years at Herron School of Art and Design, Harriet finished her degree at Indiana University, Bloomington, with a BA in psychology in 2020.
Today, Harriet is a working artist and is an active member of The Eighteen. Harriet enjoys painting portraits with acrylics and draws inspiration from Black female artists from the 70s. Harriet was selected as the first-place winner of drawing and painting at the 2013 S.W.O.P.E Student Exhibition. In 2020, she was placed alongside 17 other Black artists from Indianapolis and painted the “A” in “Matter” on the #BlackLivesMatter mural on Indiana Avenue.

About Kendia Lovelady
Lovelady is a 21 year old local Indy abstract artist. Painting since before she can remember, she made her official artist debut, “ In The Eye of Genesis” in March of 2020 at the Hoy Polloy Art Gallery located on the Neareast Side of Indianapolis. Since then she has taken a break from publishing her art after creating a life of her own, but don’t be mistaken she has never stopped creating. 6 months later she is now honored to be featured in Art and Vinyl 2022 presented by Snuggy Bear, where she hopes to inspire and connect with other creatives.
“I remember the day my father introduced me to the artwork of Jean-Michel Basquiat. I was around the age of 11, and while looking over my latest piece he told me you could be the next Basquiat. I immediately asked who that was (they never spoke of him in any art class I ever attended) and he proceeded to show me some google images of his work. I vividly remember saying and I quote, “Those are scribbles and a kindergartner could draw that.” Now almost 11 years later I find myself being inspired religiously by the works of Basquiat. Inspired not only by his artwork, but his philosophies on life. Basquiat once said, “ I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life.” This quote represents everything I stand for as an artist today.
Initially once I started painting I would always have an idea of what I was going to paint and from that idea came a sketch. I knew what colors I would use and I stayed within the lines of my sketches, everything had to be clean and close to perfection. I created these unrealistic standards and expectations for myself that eventually drove me into a depressed creative block. Then one day I stopped thinking about art and started thinking about life. I put down the brushes, picked up some paint and just started splattering it. Before that moment I thought art had to be a certain way and once I realized it didn’t everything about my work changed for the better. I didn’t stop with just splattering paints, I did things that made me feel like a child again. I tried finger painting, with a creative twist of course, I painted my feet and stomped on canvases. Any and everything I thought would be enjoyable I tried. Eventually I’d pick back up the brush but not to create a predetermined idea, I drew inspiration from music, current events, and life experiences then I let the brush lead me. I stopped caring about making clean and precise art pieces because my art is just that, my art and there is no rule book to how to create. Ever since that day I made a promise to myself that I would only paint again if I made the experience just as fun and expressive as that one, and I have been doing so ever since.
If there’s any message I want to get across with my story, it’s that there is no limit to creativity, think outside of the box and do whatever it is that brings you joy even if it’s just scribbles that a kindergartner could draw.”

With support from: SoIndy, Big Car Collaborative and the
Alpha Alpha Omega Chapter of Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Incorporated.

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

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

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

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

Performances will take place March 25th

Kris Graves: A Southern Horror
2022-03-04 18:00 - 2022-04-16 15:00 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Kris Graves creates artwork that deals with societal problems and aims to use art as a means to inform people about cultural issues. He also works to elevate the representation of people of color in the fine art canon; and to create opportunities for conversation about race, representation, and urban life. Graves creates photographs of landscapes and people to preserve memory.

“In Summer 2020 a collective uprising rooted in local civic engagements ricocheted around the world in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. It relied on one of the central pillars of Democracy—peaceful protest. Although grounded in the particular, the embodied actions of the multitudes illuminated larger universal questions of basic human rights and dignity in the 21st century. The echo of empathy, anger, and pain born from the eight minutes and 46 seconds of viral video that captured Floyd’s passing, resonated not only in the United States, but in ongoing struggles across the globe. While this was going on, I photographed memorials, monuments, and sites of the antebellum South and the Confederacy. My friend Marshall (@fu64) and I drove approximately 4000 miles across eight southern states making photographs of every site we could find. Some have been removed, most remain in place.” — Kris Graves
A Southern Horror is primarily a series of 175 non fungible token or NFT works. NFTs are unique digital files that can be owned. While any person can replicate the artwork through screenshot or other means, NFTs are designed to give the purchaser ownership of the work. For example anyone can own a Mona Lisa print but there is only one owner of the actual painting. Click here to visit the works.

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

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

Laura Foster Nicholson: Scenes From The Carbon Border
2022-03-04 18:00 - 2022-04-18 18:00 | Tube Factory artspace, 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
From the hands of a young person in China, to a shipping container crossing the Suez Canal, to a semi-truck driver transporting containers cross country, to people at the big box or mom and pop who unload them, to everyone going to the stores to buy things. These are carbon borders we’ve created 一 our feet, our cars, trains, planes, streets, and sidewalks all in motion. These borders both connect and divide us.
Two years ago, driving from her home in New Harmony, Indiana to Chicago, artist Laura Foster Nicholson — a textile artist known for her handwoven tapestries — paused to notice the landscapes from our carbon borders. And the work she began creating then offers us — in this exhibition — a view of the path taken by the goods we purchase. This is often unseen and costs the world more than what’s listed on the price tag. And these carbon borders separate us from the people who made many of the items with which we live and adorn ourselves.
Nicholson noticed the cost to the environment and ultimately ourselves. She began incorporating these aspects in her works, calling attention to disasters and accidents along these borders, reminding us of the seen and unseen dangers of our way of life. “I watched the Wabash swell annually, frequently inundating the fields, sometimes filling basements, and once in a while warranting the efforts of the National Guard to sandbag around the New Harmony Inn. This past couple of weeks, texts have updated me regularly about extending the flash flood warning for the area,” says Nicholoson.
With this, we can pause to consider the invisible people and places behind items we consume and the inevitable disasters that result from the journeys. As each piece takes many hours to create, Nicholson’s work gives us access to our connectedness as humans instead of being based on consumerism and the whims of market research and algorithms. “As an artist, I am first visually inspired: the reflections in the water of these structures, foretelling the future, reflecting the past,” says Nicholoson.
This work reminds us that though we say the world has become smaller, we have become more distant from one another. No longer do we know all the hands that touched the objects we use to define ourselves. These tapestries are scenes from the carbon borders driven by our consumption and connecting us like the threads of her works.

Laura Foster Nicholson’s artwork is in several museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Denver Art Museum. With a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, she has lectured, taught, and exhibited in the US, Canada and Italy. She has been awarded an NEA fellowship, the Leone di Pietra prize at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, three Illinois Arts Council fellowships, and a grant from the Graham Foundation for Research in the Fine Arts. Most recently she was awarded the Dehaan Artist of Distinction grant.

Part of our Social Alchemy Project in partnership with University of Southern Indiana & The New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art- this exhibit was made possible by Indiana Humanities, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, The Arts Council of Indianapolis, The City of Indianapolis, The Efroymson Family Fund and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Image: “Hanjin,” 2021. 31” x 43 ½”. Wool, mylar, cotton. Nicholson used “warming stripes” to indicate long term warming trends.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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