Black Legacy Project at The Concord In 2019, Midtown Indy invited a creative team to use the 2nd Floor gallery in The Concord Building to create a site-specific installation. Together, designer Wil Marquez and local resident Sabae Jones-Martin collaborated to inspire the next Black Legacy Project. The project includes quotes from Madam C.J. Walker, Wes Montgomery, and Mari Evans as well as portraits of Butler Tarkington’s black heroes, doctors, and journalists.
Wil Marquez is the designer and owner of W/purpose, a creative design studio curious about the built environment and its future—neighborhoods, buildings, streetscapes, and the spaces where people shop or spend their time.
Sabae Jones-Martin is a community advocate who serves on many boards and committees in Indianapolis, including The Butler Tarkington Neighborhood Association, The Martin Center Sickle Cell Initiative, The Community Resurrection Partnership, The Indianapolis Public School 43 Alumni Association, and The Team Tarkington Association. Jones-Martin is a certified paralegal and a life-long member of the NAACP.
Concord Building Murals In fall 2020, Midtown Indy commissioned three artists from the We Are artist group to create new murals for the ground floor windows of Midtown’s Concord Building. The theme of the murals is “investing in the community,” with each mural representing a different kind of investment, including knowledge and love. Participating artist Gary Gee says he hopes the artwork brightens up peoples’ days. “Public art is relevant, especially since there’s a lot going on right now and people are feeling darkness and despair. We’re hoping the murals can bring positive impact and spark some conversation.”
Gary Gee is a painter, sculptor, and graphic designer. He received his associate’s degree in Fine Art from Ivy Tech Community College and his B.F.A. in Integrated Studio Practice from the Herron School of Art, IUPUI. He has received numerous awards and shows his work regularly in Indianapolis.
Omar Rashan is a figurative illustrator and fine artist, creating paintings, design projects, and community interventions. He has been a featured artist at Tea’s Me Cafe and appears in the Meet the Artist, Flava Fresh, and We Are group exhibitions on a regular basis.
Latoya Marlin is known for her paintings of strong, voluptuous women that speak of love, friendship, sisterhood, and appreciating the skin you’re in. She studied art at Indiana University Bloomington and relies on her family’s history of creativity to keep her energized in her work.
Crown Hill Equatorial Sundial The Equatorial Sundial was commissioned by Crown Hill in 1985, fabricated at Woolery Stone Company in Bloomington, Indiana in 1986 and 1987, and completed on site in 1987 by designer and sculptor David L. Rodgers. At the time, it was declared Indiana’s largest equatorial sundial. “We wanted to build something that would catch the interest of the public,” explained Stewart D. Tompkins, then executive vice president of Crown Hill Cemetery. “We also wanted the structure to be educationally stimulating.”
The sculptor incorporated several site-specific factors in his design. A dominant form in the sculpture is the circle. Its presence derives from its appearance in the late art deco style mausoleum, designed by D. H. Bohlen and Son, before which it stands.
The artist concentrates on the themes of man’s orientation in time and space and the natural order of things. By designing a sculpture that is a functional sundial, he establishes for Crown Hill Cemetery a visible relationship between human time and cosmic time. The sculpture, therefore, relates the cyclic birth, maturation and conclusion of each day to the beginning, development, and fulfillment of individual human life.
(the above text is quoted from http://crownhillhf.org/inmemoryof_sundial.html)
David L. Rodgers was a limestone sculptor based in southern Indiana, active in the 1980s and 1990s.
Crown Hill Neighborhood 1 When designing this box, the artist considered what “community” means to the largely Black Crown Hill neighborhood. He opted to use photographs of residents acting communally: picking up litter, enjoying each other socially, attending meetings to decide as a group what happens in their neighborhood. The result is a vivid portrait of the people and activities that makes a place a neighborhood, and just might turn people’s thinking around who believe that “nothing happens” in Crown Hill.
William Rasdell is a photographer and graphic artist based in Indianapolis. His images examine the ways that ethnic convergence can enrich cultures with foods, religions, languages and the arts, and he focuses on the impact of the African presence throughout the diaspora seeking to understand how these cultural relationships have evolved into contemporary societies. In addition to working in Black neighborhoods in his hometown, he has created pictorials that bear witness to the path of influence and retention in daily life and custom in Uganda, Israel, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Mexico, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad/Tobago and across the United States.
Crown Hill Neighborhood 2 When designing this box, the artist considered what “community” means to the largely Black Crown Hill neighborhood. He opted to use photographs of residents acting communally: picking up litter, enjoying each other socially, attending meetings to decide as a group what happens in their neighborhood. The result is a vivid portrait of the people and activities that makes a place a neighborhood, and just might turn people’s thinking around who believe that “nothing happens” in Crown Hill.
William Rasdell is a photographer and graphic artist based in Indianapolis. His images examine the ways that ethnic convergence can enrich cultures with foods, religions, languages and the arts, and he focuses on the impact of the African presence throughout the diaspora seeking to understand how these cultural relationships have evolved into contemporary societies. In addition to working in Black neighborhoods in his hometown, he has created pictorials that bear witness to the path of influence and retention in daily life and custom in Uganda, Israel, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Mexico, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad/Tobago and across the United States.
Social Attachments In 2004, as part of the cemetery’s 140th anniversary, a group of ten sculptures were temporarily displayed in the “Gallery” section of Crown Hill as part of the Hoosier Artists Contemporary Walk. This piece was purchased for permanent placement just south of the 38th street underpass.
According to the artist, his intention in creating Social Attachments was to illustrate different relationships. Some are solid; some are passive; others are tenuous at best. The non-objective nature of the artwork leaves the specific interpretation up to the viewer.
The Learning Tree Mural This mural of a tree with day on one side and night on the other was painted by Jamahl Crouch, an artist part of The Learning Tree community. The Learning Tree is an association of neighbors that specializes in Asset Based Community Development, learning and education that improves the quality of lives of people, communities, schools and businesses.
Jamahl Crouch has been working as a freelance artist since he was 16. He takes inspiration from stories and people around him. One of his recent series portrays predominantly Black children as Kings and Queens in more modernistic regal outfits as a reflection on his own upbringing.
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