Past Exhibitions

Ignite is an exhibition of artworks created by students enrolled in the Indy Art Center’s glass studio classes. Artworks range in process from flameworking, fused glass, blown glass, and more with artists ranging from youth to professional level artists.

Image: Parker Winters, Red/Orange Bottle, Black Bottle, Colorful Bottle

“Welcome to Healing HeARTS, a testament to the power of art in fostering healing and growth. This exhibit showcases the work of more than a dozen individuals who have been impacted by gun violence. Through a transformative program facilitated by the Indy Art Center and Brooke’s Place, in partnership with the Indy Peace, participants have embarked on a ten-week journey of artistic exploration and peer support.

During the program, participants expressed their feelings using various art techniques. With the help of instructors and grief support leaders, they found comfort and strength in creating art together. This experience became a safe space where they could share their emotions and connect with others who understood their journey.”

Image: Collection of ceramic mugs made by program participants

The objects we adorn our bodies with are central to signaling identity, status, and even social belonging. Artists have always played a vital role in defining, challenging, and redefining trends in fashion- intimately influencing the very fabric of these concepts of identity. Artists featured in Garbled Guise explore various themes including gender, race, and class through wearable art. Some works explore the fantastical transformation of identity through costuming while others are honed examples of traditional craftsmanship. Viewers are invited to consider their biases and preconceptions that are often unconsciously tied to external signifiers like clothing.

What kind of person would wear the objects displayed here? Does the object aid a specific activity or function? In turn, what does the clothing you currently wear say about you? After all, we’re all born naked, the rest is an actively constructed form of identity.

Image: Patti Barker, Sea Crone

“A hand on the shoulder to offer comfort, an elegant gesture reminiscent of old masterwork paintings, body language that reveals pent-up frustration or anxiety—Collective Gestures addresses the ways we communicate with each other visually, through body language.  Studies show the majority of our more honest communication is non-verbal. With so much of our dialogue today being through digital means, face-to-face connections are diminishing and our more authentic feelings are being overlooked. My pieces point out various gestures or postures and their associated meanings, in the hope viewers will realize the importance of how our bodies speak for us. Although my work may have a machined look, every part, down to the screws and rivets, are made entirely by hand. Each is a one-of-a-kind piece that is carefully designed, hand fabricated and formed, soldered and/or cold connected, using traditional jewelry and metalsmithing techniques. An old proverb rightfully claims, “actions speak louder than words.” Through this exhibition, I invite the viewer to ponder the reasons and implications of our seemingly casual gestures.” -Jennifer Crupi

Image: Jennifer Crupi, Tools for Contact

What makes a community? At the Indy Art Center, we build community through art. Every year, the Art Center’s ArtReach program provides community-based art education to youth ages five to eighteen across Indianapolis. Through weekly classes at local schools, community centers, and shelters, ArtReach brings students together to explore the power of creativity and self-expression.

The Biannual ArtReach Exhibition is a celebration of the exciting creations and personal discoveries that take place during a semester of ArtReach. Last fall, students centered their work around the concept of community. Using a wide range of mediums, each project expresses a sense of community that is uniquely inspiring, colorful, and beautiful – just like the city we live in, love, and serve. Through programs like ArtReach, the Art Center is committed to building a more vibrant and inclusive community with access to arts experiences for all who wish to engage in creativity.

Major funding for the Biannual ArtReach Exhibition supported by the Katharine B. Sutphin Foundation

Image: Collaborative ArtReach Work

The JoeWill Series: Inseparable is a two person exhibition of artworks by twin brothers Joe and Will Lawrance. Through diverse media, themes, and subjects this series tells the stories of two burgeoning Indianapolis-born artists whose lives tragically ended as young adults. Joe and Will Lawrance, born in 1985, were identical twin brothers that shared a deep, powerful bond to one another. The two were so interconnected and inseparable that their names morphed into the compound name, JoeWill, as a means of referring to their collective identity.

Here you will find a collection of artwork that begins to illustrate the complex identities of JoeWill through photorealistic portraits and surrealist expressions of their own bodies. While the portraits are remarkable for their craft and honed technique, a portrait can also be much more than the captured physical likeness of its subject. Portraiture wields a transformative power that allows us, the viewer, to see ourselves in reinvented form. Both Joe and Will depict their likenesses with a raw honesty, never omitting blemishes and often opting for angles and lighting that, while visually striking, are not conventionally flattering. Free of any egoistic ambition, we see reflections of the very way Joe and Will saw themselves.

Image: Will Lawrance, Glistening

Artworks included in this exhibition are evidence of the varied, explorative nature of instruction at Herron. The emerging artists included in this show are a premonition of a future-art world resounding with booming, Hoosier voices. Thank you to Professor Danielle Riede for her help in organizing this exhibition.

Student Gallery

Image: Katie Dorman, Reaching Out 

The 2023 College Invitational exhibition is a disparate, wide ranging, and often unwieldy collection of artworks. With students from over 25 universities across 20 states represented, this exhibition represents a survey of art school ecosystems across the country. Art school offers makers a unique environment to explore, play, make mistakes, and receive critical feedback. This is the formative time in an artist’s career in which they discover their visual identity. Art students are often granted studio spaces by their university to make these investigations and discoveries. This dedicated space affords freedom to the students to work at large scale and in cumbersome or particular media that may not be suitable in a home-studio environment. 

It’s also important to consider the landscape of higher education in America as you move through the galleries and examine the pieces made in these academic environments. The cost to attend college is higher than ever, often leaving students burdened with massive student loans. The economic reality of the job market upon graduating is often bleak. And yet, students continue to enroll, continue to pursue art degrees, and continue to make truly amazing artworks. This perseverance is a signal of hope for the future. The commitment to an arts education is a testament of resilience and strength innate to artists. Artists, and art, will persist.

Frank M. Basile Exhibition Hall

Image: Frankie Malafronte, Apologetics

Dan Cooper has been an instructor at the Indy Art Center since 2006, teaching a variety of media ranging from painting to video, to digital art. ‘Illusion of Reality’ is a multimedia solo exhibition and culmination of travel, research, and inspiration that came from being selected for the 2023 Skip McKinney Faculty of the Year Award.

Allen W. Clowes Gallery

Image: Still from “Dimensions”, a video by Dan Cooper

Permaculture is an approach to land cultivation that adopts methods naturally found in a given ecosystem to find harmony and sustainability between human settlements and nature. Permaculture, as a philosophy, is an embrace of the cycle of life and a recognition that ecological resilience is inextricably connected to the environment in its natural state.

The natural world is an unmistakable, unshakable interest for contemporary artists. The work in Permaculture taps into the deep, historical traditions of landscape and still life painting while pushing those traditions beyond their typical contexts. The pieces here range widely in media but all, ultimately, reflect the connection between the natural and man-made world. 

Some works in this exhibition harness materials sourced directly from the natural world. Artists tap into the intrigue, detail, and textures of these raw materials that become landscape-microcosms in and of themselves. This collection of works leaves us to consider what we leave imprinted upon our landscape and, in turn, what it imprints upon us. What does a harmonious relationship with nature look like? Can art be an effective tool in reconsidering environmental sustainability?

Churchman-Fehsenfeld Gallery + Frank M. Basile Exhibition Hall

Images: Dawnice Kerchaert, Luna & Marcia Couet, Iris Garden

Reorienting Space–Time is a multimedia work that is exploring changing perceptions of space–time, dimensionality, and the future. In making this piece I was considering ideas about what it means to decolonize space–time, the future, and how one might start recontextualizing notions of science and science fiction through a queer lens. 

Allen W. Clowes Gallery

Making an Impression is a wide-ranging collection of artworks created by students enrolled in printmaking classes across all levels. This exhibition includes lithography, etching, screen printing, wood block, and letterpress. Join our print shop and make multiple prints from a single plate, block, or screen as you explore the many inks and tools used in this diverse medium. Learn more at  indyartcenter.org/print

Student Gallery

Image: Alana Hess, Reality is Infinite Love

Starting from nowhere and ending anywhere, this book crawls, folds and blooms. Every turn of a page takes on a new shape. Life is full of moments like this and it can be difficult sometimes to accept the unknown paths that unfold. The structure of this meandering book is an exercise in the exploration and willingness to let a path unfold. As interesting as it is to see how this book expands and collapses, we must also examine our own lives with the same excitement for the unknown.

Frank M. Basile Exhibition Hall

The Fine Art of Fiber is an exhibition of works by students taking classes in the fibers studios at the Indy Art Center. Techniques and media include felting, weaving, sewing, knitting, and more!

Student Gallery

Image: Megan Wright, Felted Critter, Knitting + Felting

To view this as a virtual exhibition, click here.

JoeWill: BetterTogether is a two-person exhibition of artworks by twin brothers Joe and Will Lawrance. Joe and Will were deeply connected, expressed through their mutual devotion to art-making. Through diverse media, themes, and subjects BetterTogether tells the stories of two burgeoning Indianapolis-born artists whose lives tragically ended as young adults. BetterTogether traces the creative prowess of the Lawrances, the significance of art-making as a means of self-expression, and the profound impact these two artists leave behind.