One Piece from Indy’s Best
40 of Naptown’s best and brightest display one singular work at CCIC’s Schwitzer Gallery
First Fridays are always marked on my calendar, and the Circle City Industrial Complex was top of my list. A massive labyrinth sitting on the northeast corner of downtown, it is the newest hotspot for local artists seeking refuge from the chaos of Fountain Square and the price tag of Indy proper. And hotspot it is.
My first stop was the Dream House, owned and operated by my lovely small business neighbor Sara Baldwin. Vintage is her thing, and I spent a happy 20 minutes browsing her beautifully curated collection of classic (and fantastic) clothing. But I couldn’t stay long, because I had heard through the grapevine that in a gallery on the second floor, Indy’s best and brightest artists were showcasing their masterworks at the One Piece Show.
Hosted by Bruce Dean and Scott Johnson, 40 artists from Indianapolis each brought one piece to display in CCIC’s Schwitzer Gallery. A daunting task for any seasoned curator, to take a broad selection of works in every medium and make it flow. At first glance, it was a lot. At second glance, I began to put together the narrative. There were no two artworks alike; everything from tonalist landscapes to AI generated Magic cards all sitting together in one space.
I was looking for the thread, the theme that connected these Indy locals together. Each piece was singular, yet familiar. Many tugged at my inner child, calling some memory from my younger days. A painting of a precariously balanced pile of rocks reminded me of my high school Physics course, where we learned about center of mass by creating cairns exactly like the one portrayed. Or the architectural rendering of a eco-brutalist office suspended among a grove of trees, taking me back to the summer my father moved his science lab to the treehouse during the first year of COVID.
While some pieces spoke to me more strongly than others, I noticed that all were calling back to the child’s imagination. A place of wonderful refuge where wars and disasters and political dramas have little impact, and days are spent in a fantastical world of play and creativity.
Much of contemporary art is a direct reflection of the state of the artists’ soul. In more metropolitan cities, the state of the world is ever-present, and naturally works are created to address the mounting distress. But in a small urban village like Naptown, where the Midwestern way of passive hospitality reigns, art reflects the desire to hold onto the ideals of yesterday. The hazy dreams of a world where bedtime stories and grandma’s doilied couches take the forefront, while the adults sit at the kitchen table to discuss Matters of Great Importance.
It is important to be angry at the failed state of affairs, but I cannot hold one ounce of contempt for art that brings me back to the golden days of my childhood. There is art that brings me to tears, and there is art that fills me with nostalgia, and there is plenty of room in this world for both.