Free Opening Reception: Friday, April 5, 5:00-8:00 pm

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.

Churchman-Fehsenfeld Gallery and Basile Exhibition Corridor

Image: Patti Barker, Sea Crone

Free Opening Reception: Friday, April 5, 5:00-8:00 pm

“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

Sarah M Hurt Gallery

Image: Jennifer Crupi, Tools for Contact

Free Opening Reception: Friday, April 5, 5:00-8:00 pm

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

Community Gallery

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.

Basile Gallery

Image: Will Lawrance, Glistening and Joe Lawrance, Painting in the Den