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Birds of Indiana

Category: Mural

This mural showcases, in grand scale, three common birds native to Indiana: the blue jay, the goldfinch, and Indiana’s state bird, the cardinal. The birds are set in a lush landscape of native Indiana flowering trees. The mural was commissioned by Buckingham Companies, the owner of the building, and was installed in summer and fall 2019. French by birth, Mantra (Youri Cansell) is an international street/graffiti artist who began painting in 2008. His work frequently features insects, animals, and birds in tribute to the natural surroundings that he grew up with, and is characterized by hyper-realistic detail and deep color. His nickname comes from the repetition of his style, which he and others see as a spiritual connection to the unique universe he has created. Mantra also works under the names Youri Mantra and Mantra Voz.

Books Alley

Category: Mural

As part of the development of their Library Square community, the Buckingham Companies commissioned murals from artist Mantra to frame their “living alley,” a courtyard space shared by Library Square’s several properties. The mural at the entrance to the living alley references the nearby Central branch of Indianapolis-Marion County, and presents an oversized vision of an old-fashioned library with books and curios on its shelves. As pedestrians walk north on Meridian Street, their attention is caught by the colors, the hyper-realistic painting style, and the view into the landscaped, comfortable space. French by birth, Mantra (Youri Cansell) is an international street/graffiti artist who began painting in 2008. His work frequently features insects, animals, and birds in tribute to the natural surroundings that he grew up with, and is characterized by hyper-realistic detail and deep color. His nickname comes from the repetition of his style, which he and others see as a spiritual connection to the unique universe he has created. Mantra also works under the names Youri Mantra and Mantra Voz.

ClusterTruck Mural

Category: Commercial ; Mural

This mural is a fun take on ClusterTruck’s business, which is to provide a central preparation and to-your-door meal delivery service on behalf of its food truck partners. The mural was designed by Phanomen Design, an Indianapolis-based interior design, architecture and marketing creative team with the mission to make environments more attractive and profitable. It was painted by Pamela Bliss, an Indianapolis-based muralist and sign painter. Learn more about the painter and her other work at https://www.facebook.com/PamelaBlissArt/

Dynamics 04

Category: Mural

This mural is painted on the south facing wall of the building that at the time of creation housed the ‘Indy Hound’ doggie daycare facility. The design is informed by nearby architecture, city planning, urban infrastructure, and is an attempt at capturing the visual experience of being a human within a massive modern city, through the artist’s own perceptions. The design features stark teals and oranges to complement one another, and certain tones were chosen to liven up the nearby area while representing abstracted urban structures lit with warm summer light. Nick Smith, who paints under the name Nick Abstract, is an Indianapolis-based artist who is colorblind. Specializing in urban abstraction, Nick dedicates his works to his younger brother Sean who has an autism spectrum disorder. His works are inspired by architectural geometries in contemporary infrastructure with stylistic nods to graphic design and style writing.

Good Vybes

Category: Mural

The idea for this mural’s design was inspired by a mid-century modern style, with soft-edged forms and waves of cool colors overlaid by line drawings of faces. The mural is intended to enhance the chill and welcoming vibe of The Cabaret, which the artist felt from the moment he encountered the space. The faces represent the audience enjoying performances and the wide variety of performers appearing in The Alley. The artist’s intention is for people to appreciate the combination of the images and the music during performances, and when there isn’t a performance, for the alley space to have a fun and friendly energy. Michael “Kwazar” Martin is an Indianapolis-based painter, muralist, and street artist. He is self-taught and counts popular culture, Black and African heritage, and sports among his artistic influences.

Library Square Sidewalk Poetry

Category: Outdoor Sculpture

In 2016, the Buckingham Companies began to brand their collection of properties between 9th and 10th Streets and between Meridian and Pennsylvania Streets as “Library Square,” in honor of the nearby Central branch of the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library. To reinforce this connection to the library, Buckingham staged a literary competition with the Arts Council of Indianapolis and the Indiana Writers’ Center for short poems that could fit into a standard sidewalk panel. Poets were instructed to limit their submitted poetry to no more than 10 lines long and no more than 40 characters per line, and no more than 255 characters total. The poems are inscribed onto steel panels and set into indentations in the concrete sidewalks around Buckingham’s development called The Congress at Library Square. The first four poems were installed in early 2019: “Reading for Pleasure” by Chris Forhan; “Mathematics” by Helen Frost; “Night Kayak” by former Indiana Poet Laureate Karen Kovacik; and “Portrait of a Poet” by Vienna Bottomley. More poems are scheduled to be added in 2019 and 2020.

Papillons

Category: Mural

While visiting Buckingham Companies’ Library Square development to execute a commissioned piece, the artist Mantra created small murals of butterflies (papillons in French) on the garage doors of 924 North Pennsylvania St., another building owned by Buckingham. While stylistically similar to his well-known “specimen box” butterfly murals, these works are more casually executed: presented as a gift to the neighborhood. The species depicted are the Karner Blue butterfly (Lycaeides melissa samuelis), which is native to Indiana but is endangered, and the American Painted Lady butterfly (Vanessa virginiensis), which is also native to Indiana but is extremely well established both here and throughout the continent. French by birth, Mantra (Youri Cansell) is an international street/graffiti artist who began painting in 2008. His work frequently features insects, animals, and birds in tribute to the natural surroundings that he grew up with, and is characterized by hyper-realistic detail and deep color. His nickname comes from the repetition of his style, which he and others see as a spiritual connection to the unique universe he has created. Mantra also works under the names Youri Mantra and Mantra Voz.

rise up

Category: Digital Art ; Mural ; Temporary

“rise up,” by artist Liz Wierzbicki, conveys the idea of the sun rising on a new day through a progression of personal pronouns. Liz Wierzbicki is a printmaker, performance artist and video artist, and is a co-founder and the current Program Director of Cat Head Press Printshop and Artist Collaborative. Learn more about Wierzbicki here. Previous Murals 2020 – 2021 | Phoenix: Exhaled | Abdul-Shaheed Aaron & Adreia Hawkins Read an interview with artist Abdul Shaheed-Aaron here. Phoenix (Exhaled) centers on a real, of-our-time Black woman who is both emblematic and individual at the same time. The complex and layered imagery brings in a local focus with its images of Indianapolis in the background, and includes a visual reference to Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” The artists wanted to show one “one woman’s escape from her cage and how, once freed, she takes the instrument used to cage her to enjoy her freedom.” 2018 – 2020 | Moon Sisters | Tasha Beckwith Moon Sisters uses an Afrofuturist aesthetic to explore the universal feminine through a stunning combination of patterns, colors, and figuration. 2016 – 2018 | Junonia ACI | Tam Hildreth Hildreth’s paintings in her “Junonia” series are inspired by the distinctive eyespot markings on butterflies of the genus Junonii, commonly known as buckeye or pansy butterflies. Hildreth isolates and magnifies the eyespots, and renders each iridescent “cell” as a round dot of color. 2014 – 2016 | 3 Drawings | Jessica Hancock Hancock’s meticulous pen and ink drawings take medieval graphic patterning, with its attention to mathematics and the religious significance of number recurrences, to the next level of intricacy. 2012 – 2014 | Mountain, House of Breath and Straw, Shell | Susan Hodgin Hodgin’s later abstracted landscape-based paintings, of which these are three, were influenced by her understanding of the sublime – finding beauty in fear. 2011 | Mud and Twigs, Branch Weaver, Stilled Stream | Wug Laku Through the manipulation of traditional landscape photography, Laku created three dynamic images that challenged the viewer to explore new shapes and patterns. 2010 | Patterns in Flight Triptych | Rachel Steely Steely’s Patterns in Flight series is about the journeys of both butterflies and herself. The oil on canvas series reflects on the artist’s thoughts on time, refined beauty, and overcoming struggles. It contains a variety of butterfly species: painted ladies, a blue morpho, malachites, a citrus swallowtail, postmans, a variable cracker and a zebra longwing.

thinmanlittlebird

Category: Outdoor Sculpture

This two-part sculpture was created by internationally-recognized artist Peter Shelton, in response to a commission offer from the private Indianapolis-Marion County Library Foundation. Shelton was selected by a curatorial team who combed through lists of artists and invited several to interview with them. Although he had never made bronze sculptures in his life, Shelton partnered with a foundry and engineering consultants to design and fabricate the piece. Both artworks are made of cast bronze reinforced with stainless steel. thinman is on the west side of the south face of Central Library’s Cret Building, and is in the form of a 40-ft-tall, very thin, headless human figure. littlebird is on the east side of the south face of the Cret Building, and is a plump torus resembling an inflated inner tube with a life-sized sparrow perched on its outer edge. Both figures seem to defy gravity, and their surfaces are rich and textured. According to the artist, the figures have no agenda, no narrative and no symbolism: they are simply forms that the artist liked. The sculpture’s design was controversial: members of the public expressed anger that the neoclassical-style facade of the Cret Building, previously constructed with empty sculpture plinths that were never filled until thinmanlittlebird was commissioned, did not receive artwork that was more traditional-looking. Nevertheless, thinmanlittlebird won a prestigious mention in the Public Art Network’s national Year in Review compilation, in 2010. Read more about the artist and the artwork at http://www.lalouver.com/resource/shelton_indianapolis/nuvo-thinmanlittlebird.pdf and http://www.lalouver.com/resource/shelton_indianapolis/shelton_hoppe.pdf

Untitled (Jacks)

Category: Archive ; Mural

Scattered across the south face of the building are five larger-than-life jacks that evoke nostalgic imagery of a favorite childhood pastime. Schlough painted the jacks on metal and then bolted each structure to the wall to give the jacks a more life-like shine and texture. This mural is one of the few in Indianapolis to incorporate a sculptural element. The mural was one of 46 murals commissioned by the Arts Council of Indianapolis as part of its nationally renowned 46 for XLVI mural initiative. The artwork was removed in June 2016 to accommodate new construction on the site. The mural is currently awaiting relocation to a new site.

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