• Mike Swolsky's copper and steel "The Stutz"

My first destination was the One Piece Show at Stutz Art Space where a variety of Stutz artists' works were on display. I wanted to get some sense of direction, in what proves to be a difficult event to encapsulate in a short piece of writing because of the sheer number of artists displaying work.

Stutz Art Space, by the way, is a great gallery to visit during First Friday evenings because of the innovative curatorship by Andy Chen, a Stutz-based photographer, who has done a number of themed art shows, the most popular of which, Exposing the Art Nude, took place last November.

The success of these themed shows surely has something to do with the subject, of course. But it's also due to Chen's not being bound to pick from a palette of only Stutz artists. Being able to put out an open call for entries raises the bar for the Stutz, and it raises the bar for everybody.

It must be said that not all Stutz artists are interested in making the kind of work that fits in a cutting-edge gallery setting (you know; the kind of art gallery that art critics like to write about). Some are professional portrait photographers; some fancy themselves as Impressionists, or work in the tradition of the Hoosier Salon landscape. These folks have their fans and their clientele and that is fine.

It didn't surprise me that the artists' work that impressed me were the artists I'd heard of before. Joseph Crone's colored pencil on acetate "Age of Innocence," almost a wallet sized drawing within the confines of a handmade frame, portrays a young woman in a dress looking back at you from what looks like an ivy-covered university campus. There's a slightly indistinct quality to the work that comes across like a faded, and irretrievable, memory.

Crone is one of the Stutz Residents this year - and I made it a point, then and there, to pay a visit to the other Stutz Resident, Emily Budd, as well. Her bronze sculptures, many of which fit in your palm, remind me of the H.R. Giger-created creatures for the Alien series of films.

I also wanted to see something completely new and unexpected. If say, Travis Little (in Studio B-420 at the Stutz) had started on a series of staid portraits of Catholic priests at their altars - his subject is usually the female nude - I might be disappointed, sure. I have to confess, however, that I'd find this interesting to write about.

• Daniel Axler
• Tash Elwyn, president of Raymond James, presents a check to Stutz for their Saturday educational programming during last week's open house.

I wandered up and down the staircases for a bit - I didn't really care to take the crowded freight elevators from floor to floor - until I found Joseph Crone's studio. While I wasn't blown out of the water this time (because I'd seen much of his work before and knew what to expect), I enjoyed checking out his studio and seeing the way he composes his pictures on a more or less vertical surface.

(You must wonder how artists deal with arts writers who are continually craving new experiences like five-year olds craving candy or crack addicts … you get the idea.)

I passed by Michael Swolsky's "The Stutz" wall-hanging sculpture (copper and steel), which I didn't maybe appreciate it in the original context I saw it in at Stutz Art Space, but I love the way he depicts the old repurposed auto factory bulging out at a corner and the adjacent corners receding towards vanishing points as if depicted on a two-dimensional canvas. This was interesting but, again, I'd seen it before. Janett Marie's colorful paintings of happy cityscapes were lovely, but I'd seen them before……

This déjà vu stuff kept recurring for a while; I was losing my bearing like Odysseus in his boat being swept up in the whirlpool Charybdis. I was on the second floor when I ran into Susan Mauck, who used to be a Stutz artist before starting up her French Bleu Gallery on Carmel's Main Street.

"You have to go up and see Jim Gerard," she told me. "He's got this huge drawing up on the wall outside his studio and he's got paintings by his mother and father and students up. It's the most amazing thing. You have to see it."

Now, I recall talking with Jim Gerard before, during "Exposing the Art Nude," and I recalled his work, but somehow I had never made it up to his studio. But Mauck's recommendation had its effect, and I made my way - doing my best to avoid distraction - up to his studio on the fourth floor.

The first thing I saw was the larger in life self-portrait, in graphite on paper, by Gerard, outside his studio. Gerard had portrayed himself - this self-portrait was from 1972 - as a skeleton seated in a chair. (Topping the skeleton is the flesh-and-blood face of Gerard himself, presumably in his twenties.)

Inside the studio, there were sketches up on the wall by Gerard, and by his students. And every square inch of the wall-space seemed to be covered, salon style, by portraits in the nude, from life. (The Gerard Studio offers classes in painting, drawing and sculpture, and according to the brochure, "Is dedicated to art based on the human figure.) But there were also landscapes by Gerard's mother Allee and modernist paintings by his father Jerry, who ran a shoe store in Warsaw, Ind., during much of the 20th century.

The quality of the student work up on the wall by people of various professional backgrounds was quite good, including the work by one Chris Delaney. The work on the wall surrounded a bouquet of roses and a quote from Delaney herself from April 12, 2012, shortly before she succumbed to cancer: "It is foolish to mourn those who have died rather we should thank God that they lived."

This particular memorial to Delaney seemed appropriately to thank, rather than to mourn, and it echoed the sentiment that Gerard seemed to express towards his artist parents by displaying their work.
"Most people find my dad's work the most pleasing in here," Gerard told me. One painting on view by Jerry Gerard was a sort of surreal cityscape with hints of de Chirico and Escher and Dali. In it you see parallel sets of handrails eerily visible through the columns that block their view in what looks like an empty train station. In its strange stillness it reminded me of my favorite movie of 2010, Inception.

It was at that point, I guess, that I felt that I could finally indulge my palate while indulging my palette, as it were.
A loyal Gerard portraiture student was tending bar and he insisted that I could have a Guinness and veggie wrap. I did, and I figured that I would have to write about it too.

After getting out of the Gerard Studio, I wanted to see more. But it was late, and I was soon directed to the exit by a security staffer.

And then I realized, I hadn't yet made it to the studio of Emily Budd! Too late, I guess. May I live another day to see it.

• Ron Kern
• A wrecking ball hangs outside the Carmel grain elevator, one hour prior to the start of the demolition process.

By contrast, take a look at Carmel's Palladium, the main venue of The Center for the Performing Arts and the closest thing we have to a Roman temple in the metro area. Such neo-classical grandeur might have been fine back in 1899 as a demonstration of some Gilded Age industrialist's largesse. But in 2012 it comes across more like a Cheesecake Factory on steroids.

Carmel was on my mind that evening. Why not? I mean, I live there. I live within walking distance of a structure that some consider an architectural jewel, the Carmel Grain Elevator. As you read this, the structure's being pounded by a wrecking ball at the behest of the Carmel Redevelopment Commission (CRC), mayor Jim Brainard's vehicle for transforming Carmel into a ritzy arts mecca.

The grain elevator, built at a time when Carmel served more as an agricultural hub than a bedroom community, served to store grain until it could be emptied into train cars on the Monon Line (back when the Monon was a working rail-line and not the pedestrian footpath it is today).

In recent months, photographer and Carmel resident Ron Kern and others tried to make the case for preserving the grain elevator. He noted, on his blog, how the unadorned functionality of such structures was a major influence on modernist architects and artists. He even appeared before the Carmel City Council, as well as the CRC, arguing his case.

If Brainard had bought into this argument, there would've been a chance to save the Carmel Grain Elevator. There was no pressing need to demolish the structure from a safety standpoint; on Kern's blog, there's an executive summary viewable from 2007 from an assessment by Arsee Engineers, Inc., addressed to the CRC, stating that the structure was sound and basically in good condition. So the approach that Kern advocated - transforming the grain elevator into the centerpiece of an open air performance center or arts venue - was doable.

And Kern had his allies in this fight. On March 29, Marsh Davis, president of Indiana Landmarks, stated, "Carmel should keep the grain elevator as a piece of sculpture and interpret it as such."

But if you look around the Arts & Design District, with its layer-cake apartment blocks that evoke the ritzier districts of various European capital cities - think Paris meets Monaco meets Rome meets Dubai - you'll see why the Carmel Grain Elevator is being demolished. This unadorned structure, which sits (sat) on the outskirts of the Arts & Design District, just doesn't fit into Brainard's grand vision for the city of Carmel. Brainard has run into some trouble recently communicating this vision - and just communicating in general.

The CRC didn't handle the demolition well, to say the least. They gave just three day's notice to a small business - Club Canine Doggie Day Care - that the grain elevator, which it sits adjacent to, would be demolished, according to the business's owner. This wasn't enough time for Club Canine employees to inform their clients, let alone enough time to relocate. The CRC also apparently didn't do its due diligence either in finding out whether the demolition would pose a health risk for nearby residents and passersby.

• Ron Kern
• Demolition continues on April 22.

Partly as a result of the botched PR, a nasty e-mail war erupted recently involving Brainard and various small business owners regarding, among other outstanding concerns, the potential for demolition dust to spread histoplasmosis. (The low point? Possibly Brainard's huffy, parochial reply to one persistent questioner. "It is no secret that I do not like your approach, threats and insinuations," he wrote in an email copied to a long list of addresses, including NUVO, The Indianapolis Star and Current in Carmel. "That may work in your city of Noblesville but not in Carmel.") But all this is (almost) history now. When all is said and done, the longer-term question is whether or not there is, or will be, any public input in the decision-making process - especially with regard to the arts - in Carmel.

Brainard has a knack for taking models from other cities and applying them here. Sometimes that model works. The roundabouts that have been installed in Carmel to wide acclaim (and some distress) are basically a European innovation. Encouraging artists and designers to locate and do business together in the same area - as in the Carmel's Arts & Design District - is a time-tested model.

But in terms of architectural design, Brainard's approach - especially in the case of the Palladium - is downright backward-looking. He hearkens back to a time in American history when Americans looked to Europe for artistic inspiration rather than trying to find a more indigenous model.

No doubt, Jim Brainard deserves credit where credit is due. Thanks to Brainard, Evan Lurie came from Los Angeles to locate his gallery in Carmel, where's he's exhibited work by gifted, well-known artists, including Jorge Santos and Alexi Torres. The Palladium might be the gaudiest arts venue that I've seen in my lifetime, but there have been some fine performances there. And the Arts & Design District, for all its European pretense, is becoming an exciting place to spend an afternoon - or an evening. (You might not want to drink if you're driving home, however, because there are more police pullovers in Carmel than seem possible considering the current structure of reality.)

Maybe, just maybe, some good will come from all of this. I'm hoping that Ron Kern's having gone before the CRC and the Carmel City Council, with his unsuccessful plea to preserve the grain elevator, will open up the city of Carmel to a more diverse (and more local) range of opinion than Brainard is used to listening to. Maybe some new opportunities - to create artists' studio space affordable in Carmel, for example - will open up as a result. More practically, I'm hoping that Carmel's City Council will assert more control over the CRC.

I'm also hoping that Brainard's replacement for the grain elevator won't be as bad as I think it's going to be. The plan is to replace the grain elevator with a water tower straddling the Monon Trail. The water tower will apparently feed flowing fountains at the bottom.

Water towers are necessary things, and they often have a certain functional beauty, just like grain elevators that inspired modernist painters such as Charles Demuth. But, given Carmel's recent architectural record, I fear that this particular water tower might all be kitsched up in a manner resembling the excesses of Las Vegas more than anything that might have impressed Demuth.

Slideshow

Midwest Fashion Week at iMOCA [Slideshow]

Art and fashion collided Thursday night as the Midwest Fashion Week brought its traveling citywide fashion show to the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art.

By Paul F. P. Pogue

Click to View 14 slides

The week-long traveling couture roadshow that is Midwest Fashion Week ran headlong into two-dimensional art Thursday night at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art for “The Art of Fashion.”

“We wanted to improve fashion in Indiana by combining art with fashion,” said MFW guru Berny Martin at the event’s opening. “Now, fashion is already art, but this was bringing together two specific fields. Art influenced by art.”

Designs from Larry Fuhs, Rebecca Isaacs of 86 couture and the International Interior Design Association had a wildly theatrical sense of flair. Fuhs did most of his work with upholstery; Isaacs used plastics, metal and, in one case, stretched-out neon nylon to assemble the avante-garde designs.

“My theme is recycled materials; it’s a fun outlet,” Isaacs says. “Anything from plastics to metals to overalls. I really liked the concept of combining it with an art display. It’s an amazing backdrop and it makes the clothing itself even more exciting.”

Exciting is the right word. The event carried an air of fun about it; even the models who adopted pouty demeanors had a sense of genuinely enjoying themselves. DJ Stephan kept a steady and peppy beat throughout the night, and you haven’t seen fashion until a model does the robot in front of modern art. The crowd members themselves were so fashionable that you couldn’t really tell who the models were until you watched for a few moments to figure out who was milling around and who was staying in one place. Fashion piled upon fashion, art influencing art.

• Dan Grossman
• Paul Reynolds, Julie Musial, Andrea Swartz, Michael Gastineau

“Chairs are not just chairs when they’re broken into components and reassembled,” Wes Janz tells me as we watch a group of students and faculty breaking down steel frame chairs to reassemble them into sculpture. Janz, a professor of architecture at Ball State University, is leading a found object workshop at the Herron School of Art & Design on this Friday morning. Later in the day, he'll opening the doors to Couched Constructions, a show he curated featuring artwork made of repurposed couches.

The name of the game this morning is to turn items purchased from Goodwill into structural objects. I sit down with a group of five working with a pile of furniture — steel frame office chairs, lawn chairs and wooden stools, not to mention a plentiful supply of twist ties.

This crew is largely from Ball State. There's Andrea Swartz, a professor of architecture; Michael Gastineau, a third-year student; Julie Musial, a career-change student in interior design, Paul Reynolds, in his sixth year. Sherry Gruber, a community artist, is the only one who didn't drive from Muncie.

With its stem made out of broken-down chair steel and aluminum frame components and a crown of lawn chairs, one structure takes on a flower-like structure. Alternate names for the structure are proposed: "Material Dialogue,” “Flower Dialogue,” and “Make it a Dialogue.” A Disney Princess chair is soon added to the mix, and “Princess Dialogue” becomes the working title.

Then the group starts in on the wood stools, assembling the leg structures into a sculpture that quickly comes to resemble half of an arched bridge. The steel-based and wood based sculptures are then brought into proximity with one another. The team puts an umbrella between the two, bridging the gap between the half-bridge and the "Princess Dialogue."

Presto — the two bridges are in dialogue, meta-dialogue, maybe. Not bad for the fruit of two and a half hours.

• A rendering of Fred Wilson's rejected Cultural Trail project, "E Pluribus Unum."

Brian Payne, president and CEO of the Central Indiana Community Foundation and leader of the Cultural Trail project, made this announcement today at a noon press conference at 37 Place (formerly IPS School 37) on the near Eastside. Payne was joined by a number of leaders from the city's African-American community who were involved in opposition to the Wilson piece, including Imam Michael Saahir of Citizens Against Slave Image.

Payne said that after a series of community meetings in which 100 people took part, it was determined that 90 percent of those participants were against going forward with the Wilson piece because the proposed figure promoted a biased 19th century image that did not represent the contemporary African-American community. Payne said the Wilson proposal had caused members of the African-American community "great anxiety and pain," for which, he said, "I apologize."

The boards of the CICF and the Cultural Trail both voted unanimously to abandon the Wilson project, according to Payne. Mayor Greg Ballard, upon hearing of these votes, praised the decision not to move forward with the project.

Payne said this process had impressed on him the significant difference between public art and art in museums. He said CICF is now prepared to support a process led by African-American leadership to see if a memorial piece can be created. "We are at your service," he said, emphasizing that the CICF is "happy to help, but I don't want to get ahead of you."

Speakers on behalf of the African-American opposition to the project spoke in praise of the process that led to the abandonment of the proposed Wilson piece. Imam Saahir struck a common theme when he said: "Abandonment of the project is testament to what people can accomplish when they come together for the common good."

Payne reported that Fred Wilson was informed of the decision not to go forward with "E Pluribus Unum" last Sunday. He said Wilson was "disappointed" and wanted to know the nature of the conversations that took place leading up to the decision. Payne characterized Wilson as "a classy, gracious gentleman."

The CICF has budgeted $175,000 to support the development of a "public art/memorial" project, created in concert with representatives from the African-American community involved with protests against Wilson's sculpture. A kickoff meeting for the project will be held in early 2012, according to a CICF press release.

A $50,000 grant made by the Joyce Foundation in support of the Wilson project may also go toward the creation of an African-American memorial, according to Payne. He said the Joyce Foundation was aware of how things had played out and was "complementary" about the process leading up to the decision to terminate the Wilson project. The $50,000 is currently in a separate fund; the Joyce board will now vote on whether to ask for a return of funds or, as Payne hopes, put it toward the new initiative.

• Mark Lee
• The Big Car crew at the Service Center earlier this year.

Big Car will close doors on its Murphy Art Center gallery next week, ending a seven-year run during which the organization hosted a variety of programming in the space, including art openings, music performances, film screenings, readings, parties. But they won't drive off under cover of night: Big Car will celebrate its legacy — and preview the road ahead — with a closing party on Wednesday, Dec. 14, from 7-9 p.m.

The Big Car nonprofit organization and collective will live on and continue to serve Indianapolis in multiple ways and in multiple venues, including its recently opened Service Center in Lafayette Square.

“It’s going to be really laid back,” Big Car’s Shauta Marsh says of the party. “Anyone who wants to can bring an instrument and play. It’s going to be a really organic night, just going with the flow a little bit. We’ll probably make some art. People will be welcome to put whatever they want on the wall as long as it’s not spray paint.”

When Big Car Gallery moved into its second floor space in the Murphy Building in 2005, art tours were infrequent and storefronts in the surrounding neighborhood stood empty. But even during the first event that Big Car held — before there was an official Big Car Gallery — Jim Walker and his Big Car colleagues sensed that they were in the right place at the right time.

“People were there dancing in that room that very first night, before we had any lighting or even knew what we were doing at all,” he says. “It was just a matter of what felt comfortable and getting to know each other. I think we knew right away that we had something good.”

Big Car Gallery would go on to record 1500 people coming in through its doors during one particularly busy First Friday opening. The gallery's presence in the Murphy — and the impressive foot traffic it generated — helped to spark an artistic renaissance in Fountain Square.

In fact, the sense that Fountain Square has become an established commercial district like Mass Ave has led Big Car leadership to feel it’s an opportune time to close their Murphy space. The relocation will allow them to focus on other areas of the city that would benefit most from their innovative community-building programs, say Big Car organizers.

Big Car’s Service Center for Culture and Community, located in a former tire shop near Lafayette Square Mall, opened this summer. Big Car will also operate the Made For Each Other Community Art Space on 2807 E. 10th Street as a hub for its social-practice public art initiatives.

And for those people who might miss Big Car’s presence downtown, not to worry. The nonprofit organization will be moving its offices to Earth House, and it will collaborate with that organization on programming.

• John McNaughton's 'Twisted House' in the ARTSPARK

Applications will be accepted from March until May 2012 at the intuitively titled site callforentry.org. Artists will receive an honorarium, production budget, studio space and organizational support; the project is expected to cost $45,000 in total, according to the Indianapolis Art Center, and is funded by one of 863 grants totaling over $22 million awarded today by the NEA.

An earlier version of this blog noted that applications are now being accepted for this residency. However, the application process actually begins in March 2012.

• An empty Indianapolis Island; do with this what you will.

And now comes your chance — yes, you; given that you care about stuff — to spend six weeks in the Indianapolis Island space. The IMA is currently accepting proposals for the 2012 residency; according to a press release, "Graduate and undergraduate students and emerging professionals in the fields of art, design, architecture and performing arts are encouraged to apply to customize and reside on Indianapolis Island."

Residents will collaborate with Zittel to realize their plans, which need not pertain to environmental concerns, though both Ball and 2010 residents Jessica Dunn and Michael Runge (then-students at Herron School of Art and Design) were certainly concerned with issues of social justice and community; so your proposal, Hermit 2012: This Man Is an Island and Isn't Going To Talk To You Filthy People, may not go over well.

More details from the press release: "The 2012 Indianapolis Island resident will be awarded a $3,000 materials stipend to customize the structure. Additionally, materials from the two previous residencies on Indianapolis Island—such as furniture, bedding, and utilitarian objects—will be made available to the summer 2012 resident. Individuals, collaboratives, and groups are encouraged to apply. The selected application also will be awarded a personal stipend of $1,500 and roundtrip transportation for one to Indianapolis."

Head on over to imamuseum.org/islandresidency for more information.

• Kris Arnold
• Anderson in a 2009 file photo.

The IMA Board of Governors will establish a search committee in the coming weeks. In the interim period, the IMA's senior management team will work in concert with the Board of Governors to manage the museum.

A press release cited Anderson's achievement during his five-and-a-half years with the IMA, including the establishment of the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park; the opening of the Miller House and Garden in Columbus; the selection of the IMA as a commissioning institution for the US Pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale; and the organization of several traveling exhibitions, including this year's Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial.

NUVO's most comprehensive interview with Anderson came a year into his tenure; in it, David Hoppe chats with the director about his favorite museums, his vision for a 21st-century museum and his plans for the then-nascent Art & Nature Park. We'll have more on the story as it develops.