Big Car Collaborative

Six artists based in Indianapolis have just received $10,000 each to create new, often risk-taking visual art projects through Power Plant Grants — made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, based in New York — fund visual artists and artist groups producing public-facing work that is experimental and brings new energy to the city’s arts community. Big Car is one of 36 organizations across the United States working to support artists via funds from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ Regional Regranting Program. Indianapolis artists are brilliant. It’s exciting to read the Power Plant Grant proposals each year and see six of them move from an idea into reality. We so appreciate the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts seeing the potential and investing in our artists! Funded Power Plant projects for 2024: Dailyn Eades: “Hopawaaka: A Vision Quest of Contemporary Indigenous Art” Eades’ project focuses on her personal connection to the Shawnee Tribe and tying it to Indiana history through a new body of abstract paintings paired with ceramic sculptures using clay from the Shawnee Reservation in Oklahoma. Gina Lee Robbins: “On the Count” Lee Robbins will create a meditation on the number of individuals incarcerated in the United States through the creation and exhibit of a ceramic installation. The work will include 2,000 hand formed torso-shaped ceramic pieces individually pierced 1,000 times by Robbins, to represent the almost two million people currently incarcerated in all 50 states. Miracle Hall: “Ecology UNKEMPT” Hall’s “Ecology Unkempt” is an art and media project which highlights resilience in urban environments by drawing parallels between native plants and individuals who live in the city and at times under challenging circumstances. Quinn Tailor: “Stitching Together Queer Generations” Tailor’s “Stitching Together Queer Generations” will be a co-created public art display consisting of five quilts representing attitudes towards the present and future, across generations within the LGBTQIAA+ community. Tanía Michelle Wineglass: “Curiouser and Curiouser” Wineglass will create a series of 30 pieces illustrating classic fairy tales using African American people as the central focus. Using a collage of colorful imagery surrounding each character, the subjects will appear in black and white creating a stark contrast between background and foreground, enhancing the artistic juxtaposition of story and subject in each piece. Michael Runge: “Echo House”: Runge will create a polycarbonate sculptural installation visible from the I-70 overpass at the 65/70 split on the near east side of Indianapolis. The sculpture will reference the houses that were demolished and the families that were displaced during the highway’s construction in the late 1960 and early 1970’s.

Meet the facilitators and speakers of our signature #??????????????????????: ???????????? ???? ???????????? training! Learn placemaking essentials for creating a thriving #PublicSpace from instructors who will help you turn your vision into an actionable plan. Hurry and register today—there's just ONE WEEK left to sign up! https://bit.ly/3Xnew95 ? Elena Madison, Director of Projects, Project for Public Spaces ? Emily Putnam, Senior Associate Projects, Project for Public Spaces ? Nathan Storring, Co-Executive Director, Project for Public Spaces ? Alessandra Galletti, Landscape Architecture Consultant, Place+Scape ? Melissa Lee, CNU-A, Principal of Community Health, Public Works Partners, LLC ? Jim Walker, Founder & Executive Director, Big Car Collaborative

Indianapolis has emerged as an art and culture hub of the Midwest within the last decade, and the Levitt VIBE Indianapolis Music Series is one recent addition to this cultural vitality. The inaugural year of this series has brought a burst of energy and community to the Near Southside neighborhood every Sunday afternoon, activating the city’s oldest public green space, Garfield Park. With the goal of bringing art to people and people to art, Big Car Collaborative is the team behind Levitt VIBE Indianapolis, in partnership with Arte Mexicano en Indiana and Indy Parks and Recreation. We’re excited to share more about their story on our Levitt Now blog: https://lnkd.in/enF4AWsN #LevittVIBEIndianapolis #BigCarCollaborative #ArteMexicanoenIndiana #IndyParks #LevittFoundation #LevittVIBE #Indianapolis

Check out the coverage by Domenica Bongiovanni in The Indianapolis Star of Mary Jo Bayliss's "The Village,"?a 9-foot-tall, 24-foot-wide fabric art sculpture that the public/ Taylor Swift fans will help create. We commissioned the work from Bayliss and it is influenced by fan iconography from Swift's work. This is part of our creative placemaking program, SPARK Placemaking. SPARK on the Circle is a partnership with Downtown Indy, Inc., Inc., City of Indianapolis, and the Indiana War Memorials Foundation Commission — and funded by the Capital Improvements Board. https://lnkd.in/eyVSJWnf Located in the Northwest Quad of Monument Circle, November 3 is the last day of SPARK on the Circle this year.

It’s a big year for SPARK on the Circle! Thanks to YOUR support, the park in the heart of the city took home “The People’s Choice Award” at the Indy Chamber Monumental Awards! SPARK is made possible by so many great partners including Downtown Indy, Inc., Big Car Collaborative, City of Indianapolis - Department of Metropolitan Development, and Merritt Chase with support from the Capital Improvement Board and Indiana War Memorials Commission.

Congratulations to Wendy Red Star on her MacArthur Foundation Fellowship! So fortunate to have curated an exhibit with her in 2014. I had first seen her work as part of the The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art Contemporary Art Fellowship show.?And when I worked with Red Star, Jennifer Complo McNutt was a great supporter and mentor for me—she facilitated the artist talk. As true today as much as then, Brose Partington ensured the art entrusted to us is well presented to the highest standards. It’s difficult to get attention for artists, curators and projects working outside the high art world centers. So I’m excited and sharing— even if it is a decade after our show together that she receives accolades—-it proves we Big Car Collaborative Tube Factory artspace are moving in the right direction to focus on contemporary art with our new campus.

Can't make it to see our Tube Factory artspace exhibit, Elisa Harkins: Ekvnv (Land), the Sacred Mother from Which We Came? Check out this new video of it. With this exhibit, Elisa Harkins looks at land in two different ways: a path toward healing due to the desecration of burial mounds in?New Harmony, Indiana?and how the Land Back movement addresses climate change. Harkins draws attention to settler desecration of Indigenous mounds in the unmarked “Harmonist Cemetery” in New Harmony. When the?Harmonists?purchased the land in the early 1800s, they dug up the Indigenous burial mounds, collecting what they considered interesting items for their?Cabinet of Curiosities. They then buried their dead over the native people’s remains. When the Harmonists sold the town to industrialist?Robert Owen?for his rationalist utopian attempt, the Harmonists took apart their church and used the brick to enclose the mounds with a wall. Today, the burial mounds are not acknowledged on signage for the cemetery. Harkins brings light to this history and offers healing through the Spirit Houses. These are structures built that provide a protective shelter over the grave of their deceased relative.?Harkins tells the story of the mounds in New Harmony to demonstrate not only settler violence against Indigenous land and bodies but also the presence of multiple tribes at sacred burial sites across time. The?Tear Dress?on the north wall of the gallery is one Harkins wears in many photos and in her work in the video room. Cherokee women traditionally wore this dress in the Southeast in the early 1800s. Indian Removal began to take place during this time period in Indiana (land of the Indians). This is also around the time Harmonists sought to build a sort of religious utopia in the town they named New Harmony. In the video room, Harkins shares a piece on the 200-year-old song,“Hesaketv Meset Likes?or The One Who Gives us Breath.” Though the singing takes place in the present, Harkins seeks to move the audience through time, preserving culture by bringing this new knowledge of ourselves to the forefront. In the Jeremy Efroymson Gallery, Elisa Harkins shares images, sound, and sculpture that invoke definitions of tribal sovereignty — centering land and its protection. Harkins often encounters tornado shelters for sale alongside the roads in Oklahoma. By using the image of these Tornado Shelters, she aims to raise awareness about the increasing destruction and loss of life caused by climate change. The shelters, placed in the ground or Ekvnv, serve as a metaphor for the Muscogee origin story, symbolizing their emergence from the earth at the beginning of their civilization. The exhibition is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Efroymson Family Fund, Ruth Arts, Institute of Museum and Library Services, and a printing partnership with Aurora PhotoCenter.

We at?Big Car Collaborative?are incredibly humbled to be nominated by a member of our community for the Neighborhood Impact?2024 ARTI Award presented by?Indy Arts Council and supported by the Central Indiana Community Foundation. The ARTIs honor people and organizations who are advancing equity and innovation in Indianapolis arts?+ culture. Thank you to Woodward Visuals for capturing our work so beautifully! #ACreativeLifeforAll #artistrun #creativeplacemaking #contemporayart

Excited to partner with Arte Mexicano En Indiana & Indy Parks and Recreation for this free music series kicking off September 1. Big Car Collaborative, Arte Mexicano en Indiana, and our partners are excited to be part of a national program of the Los Angeles-based Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation to bring FREE, family-friendly, live concerts to Garfield Park in Fall 2024 — and continuing in 2025 — as part of the new Levitt VIBE Indianapolis series! When: Sept. 1, 8, 22, & 29 + Oct. 6, 13, & 20, All on Sundays noon to 3 p.m. Where: The lawn behind the Garfield Park Art Center, on the near southside of Indianapolis. 2432 Conservatory Dr., Indianapolis, IN 46203 What: Seven Sundays of free multi-genre outdoor concerts and creative community gatherings in September and October. Why: To bring additional liveliness to an underused area of our neighborhood park with free outdoor music experiences and neighborly, inclusive, fun, and creative social gatherings. Who: Arte Mexicano en Indiana and Big Car are collaborating with our partners at the City of Indianapolis/Indy Parks, local and national musicians, local vendors, artists, and poets — with the Bean Creek and Garfield Park neighborhoods and the Friends of Garfield Park. Who is playing on what date? Scheduled performers include a wide range of local, regional, national and international acts: Sept. 1 Sylvia Thomas El Mirambaso The Roundups Mina and the Wondrous Flying Machine Sept. 8 Regan Shalome Mffred Mariachi Sol Jalisciense Forgotten Tribe Sept. 15 – No VIBE concert, go to El Grito: Mexican Independence Day at the MacAllister Amphitheater in Garfield Park, 2345 Pagoda Drive. Sept. 22 Indianapolis Metropolitan Youth Orchestra La Máquina del Tiempo Lasana Kazembe Native Sun Sept. 29 Giselle Montoya Jordan Munson Rock E Bassoon Allison Victoria Oct. 6 Giselle Trujillo Caldwell/Tester Eli Winter Trio Elisa Harkins Oct. 13 Clint Breeze Quartet Juan William Chavez Sarah Grain and Billions of Stars Girl Ultra Oct. 20 Rodrigo Hernandez Light Study Gamelan Mojomanis Nathaniel Russell Bitchin Bajas Thanks to Efroymson Family Fund, Citizens Energy Group, and the Levitt Foundation for their generous support of Levitt VIBE!

On Tuesday, we at Bg Car Collaborative celebrated with an amazing group of supporters — including Mayor Joe Hogsett — the groundbreaking of our expansion into what we’re calling Big Tube on the Tube Factory artspace campus in the Garfield Park and Bean Creek neighborhoods. This 40,000-square-foot adaptive reuse project is planned to open in the fall of 2025. Big Tube will embrace art in all its forms — visual, sound and performance, literary, and culinary — to become a space that welcomes everyone. Big Tube — expanding on what we offer at Tube Factory today — will be a contemporary art museum with seven gallery spaces. We’ll continue to commission work — like Rachel Leah Cohn’s project in our main gallery now — on the themes of community, memory, and mythology. We’re building on what Tube Factory has been all about since 2016 and what we’ve teamed up with others to bring to our city over the last 20 years. What’s new in Big Tube that we don’t have space for at Tube Factory: ? An expansive gallery for larger 3-D work and installations? ? 18 long-term, affordable studios for artists ? a culinary center with a cafe and bar ? a large performing arts and event space ? five business incubator storefronts ? a home for our arts-focused radio station, @wqrtfm? ? and dedicated offices for our staff Big Tube will help us: ? further support artists from Indianapolis and beyond? ? strengthen our community by helping build civic pride and social connections ? and entertain and enlighten visitors from across the street and around the world. We believe everyone deserves access to the joys of creativity. We know that art can encourage empathy and support happiness. And, in these challenging times, art is crucial as a universal language that can help bridge divisions. And we know that people are often more open to art than each other. We’re very excited about this place for art and people. And we’re deeply grateful to all of our donors, partners, board members, neighbors, and staff artists for helping us make it happen! Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/gbmeNPjc