Big Car

Meggan Gould: Sorry, No Pictures
2023-12-01 - 2024-01-16 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Meggan Gould’s Sorry, No Pictures examines photographic tools and technologies and their constant teeter on the edge of obsolescence. Gould takes apart and re-contextualizes the smallest aspects of the medium, including the iconography of camera dials, the design of viewfinder patterns, and the ubiquitous Epson inkjet printer test pattern. Intertwined with personal narrative, the artist uses “playful resistance” in her work to question the role of corporations and manufacturers of photographic technologies — from Kodak to Flickr — in shaping photography, image-making, vision, and the language surrounding the medium. The exhibition makes clear how the personal and political converge in art-making, an important point at this moment when the true cost of photography’s cultural and ecological impact is coming into focus.
The complexity and sophistication of Gould’s work mirrors the maker, who as a visual artist, educator, writer, lecturer, and mother has lived many lives all at once. Sorry, No Pictures offers a beautiful, oftentimes laugh-out-loud funny, and ultimately hopeful narrative that art-making, by its nature, involves failure, change, and transcendence.
Published in book format in 2021, the exhibition Sorry, No Pictures brings the impact of scale, presence, and additional context to Gould’s artwork. You can read more about each piece in the copies of Sorry, No Pictures available in the gallery.

About the artist:
Meggan Gould (meggangould.net) is a photographer living and working outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of New Mexico. Her multifaceted practice uses photography, drawing, sculpture, and installation in an open ended dissection of vision and photographic tools.

Tube Factory artspace
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
Big Car Collaborative brings art to people and people to art, sparking creativity in lives to support communities. As an artist-run nonprofit organization, we utilize tools of culture and creativity to build community and social cohesion — connecting people as a way to boost quality of life. We support our community by supporting artists.
Much of our work happens on a single block where we own or co-own more than 20 properties — including a long-term affordable housing program for artists and Tube Factory — a contemporary art museum with a cafe, studios, and community space. At our campus of adaptive reuse buildings and public greenspace, we host community and cultural programs to promote social connectivity, cooperation, and creativity.
We also facilitate people-focused placemaking and place keeping projects across the city and beyond through Spark. Tune in to our experimental, community-focused radio station, WQRT 99.1 FM — also streaming at wqrt.org.

NIGHTJAR, a poetry series with open mic
2023-12-20 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Indiana/Indianapolis) | IN
NIGHTJAR creates an inclusive space for all by bringing together spoken-word performers and page-based poets writing in narrative, lyric, and experimental forms. Every third Wednesday, C.S. Carrier and Michelle Niemann host a reading and invite audience members to share their own poetic responses.
December’s featured poet is Lee Bennett
Poet and publisher, Bennett will read selections from her publication, Quotidian Magazine. Quotidian is a multi-volume series of creative responses to different prompts, all falling under the eponymous category of the quotidian. Its goal is to highlight repetitive, essential tasks, hard work that goes unnoticed, and the way these most basic acts connect and humble us, including objects and places that result from and are affected by these actions and how they surprise us with the unexpected depth of their meanings.
NIGHTJAR open mic guidelines:
317 words is the maximum length for open mic contributions. Creative takes on the prompt are fine, but this must be new writing in response to the prompt!
Prompt for open mic:
Write a poem or short piece that engages with the history of Indianapolis.

Julian Jamaal Jones: Take Me Back
2024-01-05 08:00 - 2024-03-24 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
The abstract textiles and works on paper by Julian Jamaal Jones for his exhibit Take Me Back glean fragments from the songs, poetry, sounds, and his feelings for the Black church experience of the 1990s. The exhibit opens Jan. 5 and runs through March 24 at Tube Factory artspace. Chief curator, Shauta Marsh, was instantly drawn to the works, seeing an element of emotive storytelling in the abstract pieces — something that is quite unique.
Jones studied photography at Herron School of Art and Design then moved to working in textiles while working on his MFA at Cranbrook “His works are reverent. And, although Jones is tapping into a personal experience to create the works, the understanding and appeal of the works is universal. The desire for belonging and finding it through shared myth. The works speak to us all,” says Marsh.
Marsh felt it was important to have the voice of a curator who witnessed the change of mediums and the change in the artist. So Marsh and Jones asked Kat Gotfnett, Assistant Curator of Collections at Cranbrook Art Museum, to write about his work and what she sees in it and him. Cranbrook Art Museum recently purchased his work.
From Kat Gotfnett: “Home” often exists not as a structure but in spaces of community steeped in mutual reverence and a sense of belonging. In Take Me Back, Jones harnesses his nostalgia for one such place – the Black church of his youth. Growing up in the outskirts of Indianapolis during the 1990s, Jones navigated predominantly White spaces, making the church a sanctuary for him to engage with and celebrate both his religion and his Blackness. The church of Jones’s youth provided an atmosphere for creative inspiration and self-determination rooted in community, spirituality, and strong sensory experiences. In his first hometown exhibition, Jones channels his personal memories and nostalgic pangs into a new body of work that honors “the old Black church.”
In Jones’s quilts, he reimagines the traditional art form through the artist’s unique verbiage, drawing on improvisational styles of Black expression found in gospel music, as well as expressive abstract art. Gestural graphic drawings, which are foundational to his textiles, incorporate jewel tones and bold, animated markings. These drawings physicalize Jones’s emotional landscape as he recalls the spirit of the Black church, its fashionable congregants, dressed up for worship, and the Gospel choir’s coordinated robes and soulful, revelatory harmonies. These energetic renderings serve as an intimate yet abstracted record of the artist’s embodied experience with transformative spiritual and cultural forces.
Jones’s invigorating textiles further tap into the multisensory experience of church, introducing a more explicitly tactile element that also alludes to fiber as a medium connected to the body as a material of comfort and identity. Additionally, many of Jones’s quilts are created at an immersive scale recalling the grandiosity of religious architecture, the textiles adorning sacred spaces, and mesmerizing walls of stained glass. The work is partnered with pews sourced directly from a church, furthering the aesthetic church experience to bring viewers fully into fellowship with Jones through this reimagined sanctuary.
Through abstractly reconstructing a bygone spiritual moment through ancestral modes of expression, allusions to a sacred space, and celebration of Black culture, Take Me Back expresses the artist’s longing for not only a space, but a profound feeling.”

About the artist: Julian Jamaal Jones is a multidisciplinary artist and educator born and raised in Indianapolis, IN. Jones received his Bachelor’s degree in Photography in 2020 from the Herron School of Art + Design (Indianapolis) and a Master’s in Photography in 2022 from Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI), under the tutelage of Chris Fraser. Jones was the recipient of the 2023 CICF Artist Ambassadors Travel Grant, awarded ArtsConnect’s “Artist to Watch” in 2022, the recipient of the 2022 Playground Emerging Artist Fellowship, supported by the Knight Foundation and the recipient of the prestigious Museum Purchase Award from Cranbrook Art Museum in 2022. Jones’s works are in the permanent textile collections of Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), Richmond Art Museum (Richmond, IN) and The Book Tower Detroit (Detroit, MI).

Photo :Untitled, 2023, Photo collage from Julian Jamaal Jones’s personal collection

Key Dates
Opening reception: Jan. 5, 6-10 p.m.
Artist talk with Julian Jamaal Jones and Kat Gotfnett, Assistant Curator of Collections, Cranbrook Museum: March 23, 1pm
Closing reception: March 24, 5 p.m.
This exhibition was made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Ruth Arts Foundation, Herron School of Art and Design, Arts Council of Indianapolis and the City of Indianapolis, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, Efroymson Family Fund and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences.

NIGHTJAR, a poetry series
2024-01-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Featured poet: Natalie Solmer
Open mic based on the following prompt: Write a poem or short piece that engages with origin stories.

Natalie Solmer is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Indianapolis Review, and is an assistant professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. Born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, she is the granddaughter of immigrants who came to the US as children from Eastern Europe. Her poetry, which often reflects on origin stories, has been published in a wide variety of literary journals, including North American Review, Pleiades, EcoTheo Review, The Literary Review, and Colorado Review.

317 words is the maximum length for open mic contributions. Creative takes on the prompt are fine, but this must be new writing in response to the prompt!

The Tube factory will be open before the reading; come grab a drink at Normal Coffee and sign up for the open mic!

NIGHTJAR creates an inclusive space for all by bringing together spoken-word performers and page-based poets writing in narrative, lyric, and experimental forms. Every third Wednesday, C.S. Carrier, Michelle Niemann, and Big Car Collaborative host a reading at the Tube factory and invite audience members to share their own poetic responses.

IG: @n_i_g_h_t_j_a_r
FB page: Nightjar

Giselle Trujillo: Hogar Dulce Hogar
2024-02-02 18:00 - 2024-03-17 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Jeremy D. Efroymson Gallery
February 2-March 17
Program for Feb 2 Hogar Dulce Hogar
7pm Music/Performance by “Mi Hermano y yo” (My Brother & Me) Clockwork Janz & Phillip Janz (integrants)
8:00pm Music/Performance by “Mi Hermano y yo”

Hogar Dulce Hogar (Home Sweet Home) is an immersive experience that transports visitors to a timeless realm and invites them to engage with the artwork and touch, feel, and even dance with the pieces. Trujillo’ screen paintings contemplate making a home where you are — without losing the richness of your background. The houses symbolize the beauty of diverse experiences and merge to form a tapestry of identity. This echoes the importance of preserving cultural roots while embracing new surroundings. Trujillo also offers subtle commentary on emigration and the essence of “home.”
A notable facet of this installation is Trujillo’s inclusion of works by other members of the Indy Latina Artists group. They include: Mayra Espino, Ana Escalante, Vanessa Monfreda, Mary Mindiola, Rosa Maria Díes, Frances Ruiz, and Nettie Viera. Their pieces further enrich the overarching narrative and cultural tapestry woven by Trujillo’s vision.

About Giselle Trujillo
Giselle Trujillo is an-Indianapolis-based artist known for her evocative and immersive installations. Her work often transcends conventional boundaries, inviting viewers to engage with art in innovative and thought-provoking ways.
About Arte Mexicano en Indiana
Arte Mexicano en Indiana (AMI) is an arts non-profit organization that encourages and promotes Mexican art, music, and culture in Indiana through collaborations and the organization and promotion of public cultural events. AMI’s vision is that Hoosiers develop a new perspective on the Mexican people and see the value of the culture we contribute to Indiana. Arte Mexicano en Indiana exists so that Hoosiers can experience and enjoy this rich culture in context, and first-hand.
This exhibit is made possible by Efroymson Family Fund, The Arts Council of Indianapolis and the City of Indianapolis, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

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

En colaboración con Arte Mexicano en IndianaGalería Jeremy D. Efroymson Del 2 de Febrero al 17 de MarzoPrograma para el 2 de Febrero Hogar Dulce Hogar7pm Presentación musical de “Mi hermano y yo” (My brother and Me) Clockwork Janz Y Phillip Janz (integrantes)8pm Presentación musical de “Mi hermano y yo”Hogar Dulce Hogar es una experiencia inmersiva que transporta a los visitantes a un espacio sin tiempo, y nos invita a involucrarnos con el trabajo artístico a través del tacto, el sentimiento, e incluso la danza con las piezas artísticas. Las pinturas deTrujillo contemplan la posibilidad de crear un hogar donde tú estás, sin perder la riqueza de tu entorno. Las casas simbolizan la belleza de experiencias diversas y se fusionan para formar un tapiz de identidad. Esto refleja la importancia de preservar las raíces culturales y al mismo tiempo abrazar nuevos entornos. Trujillo también ofrece comentarios sutiles sobre la emigración y la esencia del “hogar”.Una faceta notable de esta instalación es la inclusión por parte de Trujillo de obras de otros miembros del grupo Indy Latina Artists. Incluyendo a: Mayra Espino, Ana Escalante, Vanessa Monfreda, Mary Mindiola, Rosa María Díes, Frances Ruiz y Nettie Viera. Sus piezas enriquecen aún más la narrativa general y el tapiz cultural tejido por la visión de Trujillo.Sobre Giselle TrujilloGiselle Trujillo es una artista radicada en Indianápolis conocida por sus instalacionesevocadoras e inmersivas. Su trabajo a menudo trasciende los límites convencionales, invitando a los espectadores a involucrarse con el arte de maneras innovadoras y estimulantes.Sobre la organización Arte Mexicano en IndianaArte Mexicano en Indiana (AMI) es una organización artística sin fines de lucro que fomenta y promueve el arte, la música y la cultura mexicana en Indiana a través de colaboraciones y la organización y promoción de eventos culturales públicos. La visión de AMI es que los Hoosiers desarrollen una nueva perspectiva sobre el pueblomexicano y vean el valor de la cultura que aportamos a Indiana. Arte Mexicano en Indiana existe para que los Hoosiers puedan experimentar y disfrutar esta rica cultura en contexto y de primera mano.Esta exposición es posible gracias a el Fondo Familiar Efroymson, el Consejo de las Artes de Indianápolis y la ciudad de Indianápolis, la Fundación Benéfica Allen Whitehill Clowes y el Instituto de Servicios de Museos y Bibliotecas.

Lunar New Year Celebration
2024-02-10 18:00 - 22:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
The Year of the Dragon is coming! Celebrate the lunar new year with traditional dance performances, fireworks, activities like cut paper art, lantern/fan painting, origami & more.

Food available for purchase.
Indianapolis Chinese Performing Arts Inc (ICPAI) at 7pm.

Lunar New Year is one of the most important celebrations of the year among East and Southeast Asian cultures, including Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean communities, among others. The New Year celebration is usually celebrated for multiple days—not just one day as in the Gregorian calendar’s New Year. In 2024, Lunar New Year begins on February 10.
China’s Lunar New Year is known as the Spring Festival or Chūnjié in Mandarin, while Koreans call it Seollal and Vietnamese refer to it as Tết.
Tied to the lunar calendar, the holiday began as a time for feasting and to honor household and heavenly deities, as well as ancestors. The New Year typically begins with the first new moon that occurs between the end of January and spans the first 15 days of the first month of the lunar calendar—until the full moon arrives.
Artwork by Julie Xiao

Crime of Pa$$ion
2024-02-11 12:00 - 13:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Bank Robberies, Love triangles, and a “Sex Change” Take your Valentine on a date to learn about one of the most compelling and fascinating Queer love stories ever told.
Sylvia Thomas is a Big Car Artist and Public Life Resident with a BA in History from Indianapolis University. In writing a new project, a play about John Wojtowicz and Liz Eden, Sylvia will share her research on the story of what she has learned so far.

Love Is Love
2024-02-16 17:00 - 22:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join the Damien Center at Tube Factory artspace for Love Is Love on February 16, 5-10pm

NIGHTJAR: A Poetry Series
2024-02-21 19:00 - 21:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Featured poet: Emily Banks

NIGHTJAR open mic guidelines: 317 words is the maximum length for open mic contributions. Share new writing in response to the prompt!

Prompt for February 21, 2023: Write a poem about a fuzzy memory or something you may be misremembering.

NIGHTJAR creates an inclusive space for all by bringing together spoken-word performers and page-based poets writing in narrative, lyric, and experimental forms. Every third Wednesday, C.S. Carrier, Michelle Niemann, and Big Car Collaborative host a reading at the Tube factory and invite audience members to share their own poetic responses.

IG: @n_i_g_h_t_j_a_r
FB page: Nightjar

Justin A. Carney: Because I Live
2024-03-01 - 2024-03-30 | Guichelaar Gallery, 1125 Cruft Street, Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Because I Live looks toward images of Justin A. Carney’s late grandmother from his family album to question how one’s relationship to photographs change after the death of a loved one, and to show the effects of forgetting. When looking at images of her, there is an opposition of a closeness within his mind and a distance within his heart. Although the photograph is a visual representation of her, there is a disconnect between image, memory, and feeling. The photograph exists within a limbo of familiarity and unfamiliarity; it is of his grandmother, but it is not her.
Because I Live visualizes these feelings of disconnection, forgetting, and grief by using photography, sanding with sandpaper, incomplete photo transfers, and layering with transparency paper. Carney shares this work to show that lives are knotted together beyond photography and beyond memory; there exists a spiritual connection – when one passes, the Spirit does not disappear, it continues everywhere and in everything. The ones we love never truly leave us and we never truly forget. Even when a photograph becomes a foreign object, the connection does not fade. Death is not the end.
www.jacarneyphoto.com
@joule_zei

Guichelaar Gallery
Opening: March 1st 2024 6-10pm

Artist Talk with Giselle Trujillio featuring artists from Indy Latina Artists
2024-03-17 18:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join Giselle Trujillo at the Tube Factory artspace for an artist talk about her latest art installation Hogar Dulce Hogar. In this event Giselle will talk about her start in her arts career, the materials used in her arts practice and the importance of the collaborative process to create her work. In this event members of the Indy Latina Artists will join Giselle Trujillo in a small panel conversation about the experience of being members of a latina women’s group and working to elevate and support each other.
Hogar Dulce Hogar (Home Sweet Home) is an immersive experience that transports visitors to a timeless realm and invites them to engage with the artwork and touch, feel, and even dance with the pieces. Trujillo’ screen paintings contemplate making a home where you are — without losing the richness of your background. The house symbolize the beauty of diverse experiences and merge to form a tapestry of identity. This echoes the importance of preserving cultural roots while embracing new surroundings. Trujillo also offers subtle commentary on emigration and the essence of “home.”
A notable facet of this installation is Trujillo’s inclusion of works by other members of the Indy Latina Artists group. They include: Mayra Espino, Ana Escalante, Vanessa Monfreda, Mary Mindiola, Rosa Maria Díes, Frances Ruiz, and Nettie Viera. Their pieces further enrich the overarching narrative and cultural tapestry woven by Trujillo’s vision.

Julian Jamaal Jones & Kat Goffnet in Conversation
2024-03-23 13:00 - 14:30 | IN
Join us for a conversation between multidisciplinary artist Julian Jamaal Jones and assistant curator at Cranbrook Art Museum, Kat Goffnet.
The two will discuss his work, exhibit Take Me Back currently on view at Tube Factory artspace and take questions at the end of the conversation.

Keren Cytter: Ocean
2024-04-05 - 2024-06-24 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
April 5-June 23
Ocean resembles a soap opera, but with the eerily calm, disembodied voice-over of a guided meditation: “If you don’t want to drown, be an ocean.” The video begins by instructing the viewer to adjust her posture in relation to the screen and finishes by likening the viewer’s smile at her reflection to “the embarrassment of a blind date”—a playful take on Brechtian Verfremdung. The story, whose fractured plot is told from different voices and individual viewpoints, takes place in a beach house. It involves a few characters, some of whom are lovers; a lonely boy; a bit of sex; several dialogues; and passionate kissing next to a bonfire, accompanied by the sticky romanticism of Leonard Cohen’s song Undertow. The voiceover, at one point coupled with the same pulsating binaural beats as Constant State of Grace, repeats instructions on what to do and how to feel until the circular logic of the video closes in on its last words: “Concentrate, look at your reflection. You are relieved. Your mind is empty. Your thoughts are public. […] You recognize your reflection and smile with the embarrassment of a blind date. Relax. Your mind is now an ocean.”
About the artist
Keren Cytter studied at the Avni Institute for Art in Tel Aviv between 1997 and1999. She was based in Berlin between 2005 and 2012, since then she has lived and worked in New York. The artist is well known for her video works, theatrical pieces and drawings. In 2012, she founded the D.I.E NOW (Dance International Europe Now) dance company. She has also written five novels and three children’s books. Her works has been displayed in, amongst other places, the Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen (2022) the Kunstmuseum Winterthur (2020), Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2019), Museion Bolzano (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2015) and the Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2014) In 2021, Cytter was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship.
This exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Efroymson Family Fund, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Arts Council of Indianapolis and City of Indianapolis

Jessica Dunn: Particular Fragments
2024-04-05 - 2024-05-27 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Most of us live in a world of constant noise and overstimulation, fragmenting our own perception and memory. Information (and misinformation) overload has forever changed the human experience thanks to constant access to the Internet. Instead of living in the moment, we are constantly challenged by the temptation of filling the void with seconds-long dopamine boosts reinforced by our personal algorithms in our artificial digital worlds.

The past few years, I have felt stuck in a technological loop with the hypnotic Pavlovian itch to check notifications while absorbing more and more data for better or worse. Now more than ever, it is difficult for me to cut through the noise. I feel as though I am constantly pulled in a million directions all at once. As an artist who both loves and loathes technology, I have been examining my connection to devices and the ways I filter reality through screens. The rapid influx of information I face daily seems to blur reality, leaving me with a longing for a simpler past.

While challenging my own tech-dependency, I have been reconnecting to nostalgic devices and media from my childhood and incorporating them into my practice. The first time-based content I ever experienced and created as a child was all on film and tape – 35mm film photography, VHS, and cassettes. Lately, I have been creating cassette tape loops, filming and distorting VHS tapes, and manipulating 35mm film to produce animations. Working with these tactile processes unlocked an explosion of memories, from those more distant and abstract to others more recent and clear. For this exhibition, I present this collection of memories as “Particular Fragments.”

“Particular Fragments” invites viewers to explore themes of time, memory, and consciousness through multisensory installations incorporating video and sound. With projection mapped videos, soundscapes, and interactive art, Dunn embeds personal moments inspiring the viewer to unlock and share memories of their own.

About the Artist
Jessica Dunn (sesseka) is a multimedia artist known for her immersive, dreamlike worlds combining video, sound, and physical installations. With a scientific curiosity, she finds inspiration by investigating the natural world as well as psychological realms of consciousness. Dunn graduated from Herron School of Art + Design with a double major in painting and sculpture. Caught between 2D and 3D practices, she found her calling in 4D art including experimental animation, performance, and experiential works. With a medium-agnostic mindset, Dunn utilizes a wide variety of materials allowing the concept to drive the process. Lately, Dunn has extended her practice into filmmaking including short documentaries and narrative animations. No matter the format, Dunn’s work invites the viewer to open their perception to explore new realms of reality.

This exhibition was made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Herron School of Art and Design, Arts Council of Indianapolis and the City of Indianapolis, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, Efroymson Family Fund and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences.

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

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

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

Booth Release Launch Party
2024-04-06 18:00 - 21:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States

J Dunn & M Moskaliuk - Total Eclipse Performance
2024-04-08 13:00 - 15:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join us for a live musical performance by Jessica Dunn and Michael Moskaliuk to commemorate the eclipse event April 8th, 2024.

NIGHTJAR: A Poetry Series
2024-04-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Third Wednesday, 7:00pm.

NIGHTJAR open mic guidelines: 317 words is the maximum length for open mic contributions. Share new writing in response to the prompt!

Prompt for April 17, 2024: Create a new poem from a line in your favorite poem or story, and then erase that line and add a new title.

Preview of featured poets:
(skipped dates TBA)

April 17 Chantel Massey
June 6: Special guest Ariana Reines
July 17: Curtis Crisler, Indiana poet laureate
September 18: Thomas Kneeland
January 15: Alessandra Lynch

NIGHTJAR creates an inclusive space for all by bringing together spoken-word performers and page-based poets writing in narrative, lyric, and experimental forms. Every third Wednesday, C.S. Carrier, Michelle Niemann, and Big Car Collaborative host a reading at the Tube factory and invite audience members to share their own poetic responses.

IG: @n_i_g_h_t_j_a_r
FB page: Nightjar

Artist Talk & Walk: Jessica Dunn
2024-04-20 13:00 - 15:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Jessica Dunn will be at Tube Factory on April 20 at 1 p.m. to discuss her multi-sensory installation Particular Fragments.
About the Artist: Jessica Dunn is a multimedia artist known for her immersive, dreamlike worlds combining video, sound, and physical installations. With a scientific curiosity, she finds inspiration by investigating the natural world as well as psychological realms of consciousness. Dunn graduated from Herron School of Art + Design with a double major in painting and sculpture. Caught between 2D and 3D practices, she found her calling in 4D art including experimental animation, performance, and experiential works. With a medium-agnostic mindset, Dunn utilizes a wide variety of materials allowing the concept to drive the process. Lately, Dunn has extended her practice into filmmaking including short documentaries and narrative animations. No matter the format, Dunn’s work invites the viewer to open their perception to explore new realms of reality.

Intro to Grant Writing for Creatives with Reyes Ramirez
2024-04-21 13:00 - 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Are you starting to apply for grants or looking for a way to streamline the grant writing process? Join Reyes Ramirez, a recipient of grants, residencies, and fellowships for his writing and curatorial projects as he discusses best practices and tips to use when applying for grants. This workshop will focus on writing project proposal summaries and what to consider when beginning a grant, fellowship, or residency application.

Reyes Ramirez (he/him) is a Houstonian, writer, educator, curator, and organizer of Mexican and Salvadoran descent. He authored the short story collection The Book of Wanderers (2022), a 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award Finalist, from University of Arizona Press’ Camino del Sol series and the poetry collection El Rey of Gold Teeth (2023) from Hub City Press. His latest curatorial project, The Houston Artist Speaks Through Grids, explores the use of grids in contemporary Houston art, literature, history, and politics. Reyes has been honored as a 2020 CantoMundo Fellow, 2021 Interchange Artist Grant Fellow, 2022 Crosstown Arts Writer in Residence, 2023 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow, 2023 Dobie Paisano Fellow, 2024 Speculative Play and Just Futurities Fellow and awarded grants from the Houston Arts Alliance, Poets & Writers, and The Warhol Foundation’s Idea Fund.

The Current State Music and Arts Festival
2024-04-27 14:00 - 20:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
The Current State Music and Arts Festival is an inspiring extravaganza that features marathon live music performances, an art sale, and more from Herron School of Art and Design students.

Hosted by Big Car Collaborative at the Tube Factory artspace, this event will feature Herron student works throughout the day including:

Live performances from music technology students
Featured art from photography, visual communication design, and sculpture/3D students
A student art sale
Talks from Tube Factory gallery exhibition artist Jessica Dunn
Herts BBQ food truck to provide the eats
Big Car’s Normal Coffee for the drinks (coffee, tea, beer, wine)
Guest DJ sets from Mark Tester and Sweater Disco

Special thanks to event sponsors Big Car Collaborative and All Good Apps.
This site will be regularly updated with a festival schedule, so keep it bookmarked!

Region Ninety: Uncensored
2024-05-03 - 2024-05-31 | Guichelaar Gallery, 1125 Cruft Street, Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Region Ninety
Group Exhibition: Twenty three artists participating from Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.

After Hours at Tube Factory
2024-05-03 18:00 - 22:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Tube Factory artspace and four galleries are open until 10pm.
Bay Area Bistro on site for dinner options.

Curator Conversation Series - Audra Lambert
2024-05-04 13:00 - 14:30 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
What is the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art? What are they looking for in shows from artists? Learn more about curator Audra Lambert. Why & how she came be be a curator, different exhibits she curated that she is most proud of, what she is focusing on at the New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art and more!
Q&A to follow.
Audra Verona Lambert is a curator, arts contributor and art historian with over a decade of experience. She’s organized 60+ exhibitions in partnership with multicultural nonprofits, such as WCAPS, Upwardly Global and Fountain House Gallery, Art in Odd Places Festival, FIGMENT NYC and others. She has independently curated exhibits at the Yeshiva University Museum, Brooklyn Art Haus, and New York City Department of Parks and Recreation’s Arsenal Gallery. Her writings have featured in Texte zur Kunst, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, The Culture Trip and more. She served as Director of Amos Eno Gallery in Brooklyn, NY from 2020-2022, and currently serves as Curator of the University of Southern Indiana’s New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art located in New Harmony, IN. Verona Lambert holds an MA, Art History and Visual Culture from Lindenwood University in St. Charles, MO and graduated from Undergraduate studies at both St Peters University (Jersey City, NJ) and Kansai Gaidai University (Hirakata City, Japan.)

World Collage Day
2024-05-11 12:00 - 15:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
World Collage Day is an annual, international celebration of collage on the Second Saturday of May. Join artists Beth Hall and Emily Scott in making collages in Indianapolis on May 11th from 12-3pm.
Some collage basics and supplies will be provided, but you are encouraged to bring materials of your own as well to contribute to the group effort! Magazines, old books, paint swatches, miscellaneous ephemera, stamps, string, and other trinkets along with glue, rubber cement, scissors, are all good items to consider bringing.
This is a free event and Normal Coffee is open with all sorts of drinks and food options.
Initiated by Kolaj Magazine in 2018, World Collage Day encourages artists and art venues to hold events on that day to celebrate collage. World Collage Day is about artists connecting across borders against a global context of entrenchment and separation. And the day is about an art medium that excels at bringing different things together to create new forms and new ways of thinking. Ric Kasini Kadour, the editor of Kolaj Magazine, writes, “We created World Collage Day because we wanted to honour this community of artists and to remind the world what a spirit of cooperation, mutual support, and creativity can look like.”

NIGHTJAR: Samantha Fain
2024-05-15 18:00 - 21:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Doors at 6 pm, reading at 7 pm
Samantha (Sam) Fain is a Best-of-the-Net and Pushcart-nominated poet from Indiana. Her debut full-length collection, Are You There, releases April 25, 2024 with Bad Betty Press. She co-edited Kiss Your Darlings: A Taylor Swift Anthology with Olney Magazine in 2022. Sam’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Indianapolis Review, A Flame Called Indiana: An Anthology of Contemporary Hoosier Writing, SWWIM, Peach Mag, 8 Poems, and Non.Plus Lit. Sam loves her family and friends, bad jokes, pop culture, the em dash, and vinyl records, deeply and in no particular order.
Open mic prompt: Write a poem inspired by your favorite song, celebrity, internet meme, or tweet. (317 words max!)
Creative takes on the prompt are fine, but challenge yourself to write something new in response to the prompt!
NIGHTJAR creates an inclusive space for all by bringing together spoken-word performers and page-based poets writing in narrative, lyric, and experimental forms. Every third Wednesday, C.S. Carrier and Michelle Niemann host a reading and invite audience members to share their own poetic responses.
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Community Sound lab 1: Listening and Recording
2024-05-18 09:00 - 12:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Sound artists Rob Funkhouser and Landon Caldwell will start with a basic overview of intentional listening and field recording, and then lead participants on a sound walk through Garfield Park where everyone will get a chance to record sounds that they find to be interesting. For the second half of the workshop, there will be an opportunity for hands-on play with a modular synthesizer, as well as lessons on how to handle files, and prepare them to be used in your own personal projects.

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

Hoosier Asian American Power Celebration
2024-05-29 17:30 - 19:00 | Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi), 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN, 46203, United States
Join us as we celebrate the power of Asian American Hoosiers and their work to build a more just and equitable Indiana.
The event will take place at the Tube Factory, 1125 Cruft St., in Indianapolis on Wednesday, May 29, 5-7 p.m. and will feature a lively panel discussion with three community leaders who will explore Asian American perspectives on three issues: voting rights and civic engagement, racial equity, and gender and reproductive justice.

Ellen Wu, Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at Indiana University – Bloomington and member of the Indiana Advisory Committee for the United States Commission on Civil Rights
Ami Gandhi, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Midwest Voting Rights Programs, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights
Maria Douglas, Commissioner, Monroe County Women’s Commission

RSPV Here: LINK
We’ll also have food, giveaways, and opportunities to learn about Asian Americans in Indiana and Hoosier Asian American Power’s work in this critical election year.
This event is sponsored by Hoosier Asian American Power and the Big Car Collaborative.
If you have any questions, please contact Melissa Borja at email hidden; JavaScript is required or Michelle Dahl at email hidden; JavaScript is required.

Indy Gay Market
2024-06-01 11:00 - 15:00 | Monument Circle, 50 Monument Circle, Indianapolis, 46204, United States
To celebrate Pride, Indy Gay Market has been invited to launch Big Car Collaborative’s Spark on the Circle event series. We want to recognize the historic meaning behind setting up our grassroots pop-up market in this space especially due to its unique history for the Indianapolis community.
Some history:
“In 1984, police harassment and surveillance of gay men in Indianapolis spurred hundreds to gather at Monument Circle in a show of solidarity against discrimination. It was the first large public gathering of queer individuals in the state that some dubbed ‘The Gay Knights on the Circle.’”
This year marks the 40th anniversary of this first pride gathering and we are so proud to have Indy Gay Market occupy this space.
Event details:
We will be hosting 50 unique vendors each day the first weekend in June.
June 1st, 11:00am-3:00pm
June 2nd, 11:00am-3:00pm
1 Monument Circle
Indianapolis, IN
SPARK is a partnership with Downtown Indy @downtownindy the City of Indianapolis @indy_dmd and the Indiana War Memorials Commission – and funded by the Capital Improvements Board. It is a continuation of our work last year and in 2015 on the Circle.
At Big Car, we approach our work at the Circle as a site- and community-specific socially engaged art and creative placemaking project. The SPARK on the Circle pop-up park was collaboratively designed with Indianapolis-based Merritt Chase to be a restorative public place where people of all walks of life can relax, play, socialize, and engage with art and artists in the heart of our city.
