Textile Transformations will focus on themes of grief and loss, transformation, and empowerment through textile work. Using textiles related to a late child (crib sheets, clothing, colors associated with the nursery, etc), mothers will create their own textile work to memorialize their child and to provide a process-based approach for containing and transforming thoughts and emotions.

Textile work has been found to be beneficial in trauma work, allowing women to cope with grief, depression, and other physical ailments. Working in textiles provides sensory stimulation, promotes a feeling of centeredness or grounding, and can be used as a coping mechanism that can improve mood. This grant will support two iterations of Textile Transformations. Any mother who has experienced loss of a child due to miscarriage, birth trauma, post-birth complications, or any other means will be invited to participate. Sessions will be led by an art therapist and practicing artist alongside a

licensed mental health counselor. There will be an optional exhibition for the participants.

Kelsey Simpson: Railroad City Book

Sosa will produce and exhibit a dozen multimedia artworks — portraits, dioramas, and textile pieces — with accompanying text in Spanish and English. The work is based on decades-old photos of Hispanic individuals and families with roots in Latin America who chose to call Indiana their home. The artworks will be displayed in high-traffic areas in multiple parts of Indiana. Also, during scheduled discussions and public meetings, these images will foster dialogue to address issues of identity and immigration, migration and borders in our own lives.

Sosa’s goal is for these works to help us think more about identity, survival, energy, and movement. Today’s Júziers will hopefully connect with “their” origin stories: a collection of faces and narratives that is easy to explore and make their own. His approach is focused on the belief that images will reflect or provide access to a period’s views and actively participate in acknowledging those views de vida in the first place. A history of images has an impact on remaking, which itself constitutes a valuable record and purpose of people’s lived lives.

This collaboration engages a form of Filipino storytelling through abstract patterns found in ancestral body art, or tatak. By engaging stateside practitioners, ancestral objects, colonial-era manuscripts and contemporary texts, Jackson and Knauber see their ultimate goal to be creating space for collective remembrance and understanding of an artform nearly lost to hundreds of years of religious and political subjugation of the indigenous peoples of the islands now known as the Philippines.

Prior to the creation of new sculptural and video works, the project will consist of the formation of a cohort of Filipinos interested in researching their lineage and sharing their findings and personal experiences, continuing a long tradition of cultivating collective memory through oral history, which will inform a tailored curriculum through which the group will learn about the archetypal symbols central to various Filipino tattoo traditions. Jackson and Knauber will research and share individual histories, the islands from which their families migrated, the languages spoken within their families, and the roles family members held within their communities.

Reimagining the Hardrick Home: Public Art as Heritage Preservation engages the little-known history of Indiana's first African American painter, John Wesley Hardrick, born 1891 in Norwood on the Southeast side of Indianapolis. Working with the recently identified Hardrick Family collection and in collaboration with his descendants, my end goal is to replicate a Lost Mural that was painted at Crispus Attucks in the 1930s to be installed in the Pride Park in Norwood at its re-opening celebration. This grant will allow Austin to use the Hardrick Family Collection to do studies of his work, read his diaries, learn about his techniques, and research other artists working during the Harlem Renaissance. All of this to replicate a mural that was never seen and to which there are no known photos of.

https://www.instagram.com/kailataustin/

https://www.instagram.com/theroguehistorian/

Hidden World is a spatial and interactive sound art collaborative exhibition series & residency focused on sound and its relation to ecology, community, and accessibility.
This project builds on the work of Caldwell’s previous project ‘Everything I hear will outlive me’, a spatial composition that was presented at Hidden World along with another work, an interactive sound sculpture titled ‘Touch me so I know I’m still here’ at Gethsemane Green Space on the Eastside of Indianapolis.

http://www.landoncaldwell.com

https://www.instagram.com/landonscaldwell/

From Me to You is a series of six handmade, art quilts (or security blankets) that will be exhibited in the Horizon House and then presented to patients at the Pedigo Clinic who are experiencing homelessness and in recovery from a substance use disorder.

Each security blanket will be a unique combination of new fabrics combined with recycled textiles. “I deconstruct used clothing to make most of my work. Using this as a metaphor for healing ourselves: Sometimes in the process of repairing things that have broken, we actually create something more unique, beautiful and resilient. This tool is the process of recovery. “

www.instagram.com/philipcampbell

The Women In Between will be a new body of work that explores printing dark skin tone hues on canvas and amplifying detail with acrylics. Historically, the chemicals used during this process were not adequate to capture a diversity of darker skin tones. Racial bias was systematically embedded through the color calibration process for printing with the use of "Shirley Cards" developed by Kodak as reference photos for technicians to balance hues that became an industry standard. This lacked range for dark skin, resulting in poorly printed photos. Despite advancements in technology, printing dark skinned hues still lacks details. Boxx the Artists’ collection will focus on the diversity of dark skin tones through canvas printing capturing the details through print and explore this systematic bias within printmaking using acrylics as a solution.

www.boxxtheartist.com

www.instagram.com/boxxtheartist

Stitches of Presence is a space for gathering, recognition, and offering through hand embroidery. Suarez will convene Latina women living in the East Side Indianapolis to get together. During the gathering time, the women will recognize the value of knowledge and wisdom and share this knowledge among themselves and with our community. The gatherings will take place at the Irvington Public Library. The library is a symbolic place par excellence where the knowledge generated by humanity converges and circulates. For this reason, the intention of this project is to build presence in this public place through diverse symbolic gestures, contributing to the convergence of knowledge.

https://silviavimos.blogspot.com/

https://www.instagram.com/willkaypacha/

Masquerade Americana is a fusion of peoples and traditions. It is grounded in the American quilting tradition, which is about piecing together disparate parts and leftover things, weaving these fragments into a new whole. Like many healing rituals, in order for the community to benefit, multiple individuals must take part in its construction. The complete work of art includes three distinct, but united components; the installation, poetry crafted for the series, and community-based activities. The public exhibition will include various community events such as poetry readings, dances, and discussions, community altars to name a few in order to expand the circle of healing. Masquerade American dances so that Black American women can remember, honor, cherish, and reclaim their ancestral power, as well as access and use it.

Everything I Hear Will Outlive Me, led by Landon Caldwell, is a mobile sound installation designed for pop-up installation in outdoor green spaces. “The piece is centered on a philosophy of connection to the environment as a means of empowerment; through design, through placemaking, through community, through presence and mindfulness. The mobile nature of the piece frees the piece of the limitations and the vacuum of the venue and opens the piece up to the happenstance of the real world”. Learn more here.

Jandernoa’s work centers around the relationship between the body and uncertainty through the use of sugar. This work was originally inspired by her own daily experience of unpredictability as a diabetic. However, the metaphors that exist within her work can be applied more broadly to our universal experiences of uncertainty in the body. With this grant, she will develop new sugar forms that invite audiences to express their own experiences of uncertainty and create meaning through interaction. Learn more here.

Barb Stahl’s “Free Little Pantry and Shelter (LFP)” will be working with the community to build and install an artistic/sculptural structure that will house the new LFP. It will offer shelter for commuters waiting on the bus as well as a bright creative greeting for those who are going to the park. This structure will also offer an artistic moment for all those who will be using the planned connector trail being developed by IU Health.

A thoroughly researched print publication and online platform that includes new writings, graphics, and maps depicting 20th-century queer histories of Indianapolis by Ozzy Graham brings stories from the underbelly of queer life in 20th-century Indianapolis up to the surface of contemporary conversations on LGBTQ+ history in this city; these histories include the mass disappearances and murders of queer men, some of whom participated in sex work, between the 1970s-1990s; Stonewall Democrat and poppers manufacturer Joe Miller and former Marion County Prosecutor James Kelley; and Larry Eyler. The fruit of this arts-based research will consider the implications of former gay spaces being razed or rebuilt with an unrelated purpose, like the current rebuilding of the former Varsity Lounge. Learn more here.