Last month I went to Paris. I didn’t go to do research at the Louvre, or to attend a special exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, I went to the POPArt Conference, an international symposium on the conservation of plastic materials.  The conference was the culmination of a European Union funded initiative, and like Contemporary Art: Who Cares?, it is another example of the way that European governments are supporting the conservation of contemporary cultural heritage in a way that the U.S. government does not.  The goal of POPArt was to improve the conservation of plastic objects in European museums and to establish recommended practices for exhibiting, cleaning, and restoring these artifacts .

Tara Donovan, "Untitled (Mylar)," 2010. Commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Frank Curtis Springer & Irving Moxley Springer Purchase Fund, Anonymous IV Art Fund, Deaccessioned Contemporary Art Fund. 2010.218A-D. Courtesy of the Pace Gallery.

When people think about plastics, their minds don’t typically jump to museum collections.  But in reality museums are filled with plastic artifacts and artworks made with plastic components.  Artists and designers choose them for their working properties and aesthetic qualities that cannot be achieved with other materials.  Some works in the IMA’s collection that are made with plastics include Tara Donovan’s Untitled (Mylar), Valentine Typewriter designed by Ettore Sottsass II and Perry King, and Rudi Gernreich’s wool and vinyl Dress.  These are just a few examples and our holdings are only growing as we are rapidly acquiring many new objects in our Design Arts, Textile and Fashion Arts, and Contemporary Art departments.

King and Sottsass, "Valentine Typewriter," 1969. Gift of Eugene D. Silver, Rydal, Pennsylvania. 2009.57A-B. © Ettore Sottsass.

These artworks are essential additions to our collection, because they are important to the history of art and design, but the materials present unique challenges for conservators like myself.  There is a common perception that plastics last forever, but this is simply untrue.  They do last longer than other packaging materials that go into landfills, like paper and cardboard.  But in a museum environment, exposed to light and oxygen, plastics deteriorate faster than almost any other material from which artworks are made.

Rudi Gernreich, "Dress," 1968. E. Hardey Adriance Fine Arts Acquisition Fund in memory of Marguerite Hardey Adriance. 2008.211.

Until recently, relatively little has been known about how plastics degrade and how they should be safely exhibited, stored, cleaned and repaired, whereas we have had centuries to understand how to care for more traditional materials like wood, metals, paint, and paper.

Because of this need in the conservation field, the POPArt conference brought together international experts on the conservation of plastics to share their knowledge with one another.  Many of the lectures and workshops focused on ways of identifying plastics, because this information is not always known when museum objects are collected.

Workshop participants examining plastic objects at POPArt.

Knowing the exact polymer an object is made from is essential for determining how to properly display, store and treat plastic artworks, because different types of plastics present different challenges.  Depending on the type of plastic an object is made from, over time it may become brittle or lose its rigidity, turn yellow or fade, exude acids and/or sticky materials, and crack and/or deform.  Some plastics even emit harmful substances that can speed the deterioration of other objects kept nearby.

Identification can be done by observational methods, or more reliably using analytical instrumentation. As part of one of the workshops, I came away with a small kit of identified samples of different types of plastics. These can be used as reference materials for identification and even testing conservation treatment methods.

Samples from Plastics Identification Kit.

Most of the POPArt lectures that focused on treatment were about cleaning, because this is the most common type of treatment needed by artworks made from plastics.  owever, surface cleaning is not as straightforward as it may sound. Many plastics are very sensitive to solvents and even water, especially when deterioration has already begun. An inappropriate conservation treatment can result in irreversible damage and speed deterioration. For this reason, many different cleaning techniques on many different plastic types were tested and the results of these tests were shared.

All of the work discussed at POPArt contributes to the establishment of reliable protocol for prolonging the lives of plastic objects.  Despite all of this good work, the conference made it very clear that more work, especially on practical conservation treatment of plastics, is still needed.

They’re sea captains and big-game fishermen. They’re explorers. They’re adventurers.

They learn so much about the world around them in just one muggy, summer afternoon. Every year, I watch them grow, become a little bolder, skip stones just a little further than ever before.

Water. Yes, we need it for basic survival, but it means so much more to us.  It shapes the way we speak (when was the last time you were “in over your head” or “all at sea”?), the way we play, and where we build our cities and homes.

Water affects our lives on so many levels. The ancient Egyptians knew just what I’m talking about. The flooding of the Nile brought life to the Egyptians by making their land fertile. Because of this, they worshipped the river.  Do we still hold water in such a high regard today?

Worldwide, approximately one in eight people lacks access to safe water. Nearly four million people die each year from water-related illnesses, including one child every twenty seconds. Women worldwide spend 200 million hours a day collecting water. But corporate control of drinking water, the growth of the bottled water industry, pollution, and water shortages from droughts are all part of a growing global water crisis.

March 22 is World Water Day, a global day to remind us that we all share the same water. From the White River to rainwater harvested in Africa, all water is part of the water cycle. Around the world, events are held to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources, on both global and local levels.

Bringing awareness to our local water system is just what artist Mary Miss is doing. Miss’s project, FLOW: Can You See the River?, reveals key aspects of our White River water system through a series of installations (marked by oversized, shiny red map pins) along the river and the canal.

Mary Miss, "FLOW: Can you See the River?" 2011.

FLOW shows us how the ordinary activities of citizens like you and me affect the health and future of the White River water system.

Projects like FLOW and World Water Day remind us that water is a resource. It’s finite. It has to be cherished. I’m committed to living a sustainable lifestyle, doing what I can to make sure our rivers, lakes, and streams are clean for future generations.

We all have a special connection with water. I want my boys, now and when they’re grown, to be able to keep theirs.

What’s your reason for protecting Indiana’s water? The world’s water? Visit water.org to find out what you can do to raise awareness and help preserve one of our most precious resources.

Sadie performing the routine during "Gloria" at the U.S. Pavilion in Venice.

Body in Flight (Delta) is currently situated in the IMA’s Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion for an exhibition opening today, and will be on display through April 22. Local gymnasts Taylor Brown, Caitlin Marlow, Kelsie Sexton, and Adrianna Spiteri will conduct ongoing performances in Efroymson for the duration of the exhibition. See the Body in Flight (Delta) exhibition page for further information and a schedule of performances.

USA Gymnastics, the governing body for the representation of American gymnasts at the Olympic Games, is based in Indianapolis and helped recruit gymnasts for this exhibition. Through the organization’s network of athletic clubs, we were able to recruit these talented gymnasts for the exhibition.

First our volunteers started training with Sadie on the prototype for Body in Flight (Delta). The routine was initially developed on this model by choreographer Rebecca Davis, gymnast David Durante, and artists Allora & Calzadilla in collaboration with the four dancers/athletes who performed in Venice (Olga Karmansky, Chellsie Memmel, Rachel Salzman, and Sadie).

Sadie training with Adrianna Spiteri on the model for "Body in Flight (Delta)" in a closed gallery at the IMA.

For the last week, the gymnasts and Sadie have been working in public in the IMA’s entry pavilion to hone their performances on the actual artwork.

Sadie and works with local gymnast Kelsie Sexton to perfect the routine in the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion.

I hope that you’re able to join us over the course of the exhibition to see local talent showcased in our lobby. If not, you can view the performance as it was filmed in Venice from a far.

Also in the galleries and opening today is Allora & Calzadilla’s Vieques Series, a group of three videos filmed on and about the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art is issuing a call for proposals for a summer 2012 six-week residency on Andrea Zittel’s Indianapolis Island within the IMA’s 100 Acres. Graduate and undergraduate students, as well as emerging professionals in the fields of art, design, architecture and performing arts are encouraged to apply to customize and reside on the Island.

Anchored in the 35-acre lake within 100 Acres, Indianapolis Island is a habitable “off-the-grid” structure accessible by rowboat. The 2012 residency will be the third to take place there. During the artwork’s inaugural summer in 2010, Herron School of Art and Design students Jessica Dunn and Michael Runge activated the installation with their project Give and Take, which consisted of a series of visitor interactions based on a system of exchange. The 2011 island resident was Katherine Ball, a student of Portland State University’s Art + Social Practice MFA program. Over the course of her residency, titled No Swimming, Ball initiated a series of ecological interventions in the lake and engaged a local audience through a series of public programs centered on the topic of water.

At about twenty feet in diameter, the Island serves as an experimental living structure that examines the daily needs of contemporary human beings. Residents collaborate with Zittel by adapting and modifying the structure according to their individual needs. The project blends elements of environmental art, sculpture, design and performance in a unique way, offering a challenging and experimental forum for exploring ideas about individualism and self-sufficiency.

If you’d like to be the 2012 Indianapolis Island resident, visit www.imamuseum.org/islandresidency for more information, including photos and renderings of the structure and to learn how to apply. Proposals are due Friday, January 13, 2012.

If you’d feel more at ease watching the residency unfold from the 100 Acres lake shore or online, stay tuned to the IMA’s blog in spring 2012 to find out who will be the next person to call Indianapolis Island home.

Flight:  This is the first project you see as you enter the museum and the last project to be installed in the galleries. It was a hair-puller.  As you may or may not know, my business, Indianapolis Fabrications, built the sculptural works in my exhibition, as well as built and installed the Mary Miss Flow project, which opened to the public two weeks after my opening. If building two monumental exhibitions wasn’t bad enough, my business partner, Randy Domeck, had a wedding to attend that kept him out of the shop the two weeks before my opening. Add to that, my teaching contract at Herron School of Art and Design also started around that same time. Most of my work was installed by this point, but I was in a panic trying to manage everything going on. Luckily, we have responsible employees at iFab and Randy found time to handle some management of the business projects remotely.  He arrived in Indianapolis the day before my opening and we installed Flight in one day – the Wednesday before the preview and artist talk.  Phew!

Space Suits:  I had every intention of making these suits myself, but the scope of the exhibition quickly made me realize that in order to complete the work on time, I needed more help. Kyle Perry and Adam Buente of PROJECTiONE offered to help make a model of the space helmet. They found a 3D model of the space suit on the NASA website and were able to use that file to CNC cut the foam model, making my helmets very accurate reproductions of the original. Once I had the model, I made the mold and cast the helmets. Patrick Fitzpatrick had been a graduate student of mine at the School at the Art Institute of Chicago and he CNC cut a form for vacuum forming the visors. Meanwhile, I wasn’t home enough to do the sewing and knew that many of the parents at my son Angus’ school (IPS #84 CFI) were gifted craftspeople, so Donna and I started asking around if anyone would want to take on the project of sewing the suits.  Thank goodness Beth Hannan stepped up and said she could do it. I gave her my reference material and she did the rest in awesome detail.

Phoom: I built this project while at Sculpture Space in Utica, NY. Once I made the sculpture and it was ready to be painted, I was nervous about getting a finish that approximated flesh as closely as I wanted, never having airbrushed something like this before (this was also my first figurative sculpture).  The administration at Sculpture Space suggested that I go to the Golden Paints headquarters, which was only 45 minutes away in New Berlin, NY.  At Golden, Michael Townsend spent the afternoon training me to use Golden products and instructing me on using an airbrush. The other thing I needed help with was hair.  Yvonne at Yvonne’s Hair Designs in Whitesboro, NY makes custom wigs for cancer patients and was game to help get my sculpture wigged. It was a pretty funny moment to haul the sculpture into a typical hair salon for its first and only haircut. I often get curious looks when making my work.

Altered Self-Portraits: My wife Donna hates these. They were early in the process of developing the exhibition – even pivotal.  There was a point when she was stomping around the house yelling at me, insisting that “They are not art!” She thought I was insane to think of exhibiting them in the museum. I often talk to my students about artists whose work was met with contempt, or who were discouraged when they did something that was outside of the establishment of the time, and then somehow managed to persevere with an idea. I don’t especially imagine myself as that radical, but sometimes I gauge the value of an idea by how much my wife doesn’t like it.  Shhh – don’t let her know.

Brian McCutcheon "Capsule," 2011. Commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art Courtesy of the Artist .

Capsule: Now that I think about it, this project really came together without much drama. It did have two important moments. The first was the chair. Randy (my business partner) has a tendency to order 20 parts when we need one.  That same attitude had us building two lawn chairs instead of one for Splashdown as a back-up in case something unexpected happened to the finished work. To determine the floor height in the capsule, we put in a lawn chair that was used as a reference for the aluminum one.  That is when it occurred to me that it should be a lawn chair in the capsule, which would help tie it to the backyard and to Splashdown in the final room of the exhibition. The other moment was painting the back panel. There was some argument in the shop about how that might be painted (or let’s call it discussion since ultimately it was my work). The decision to paint the alternating stripes came at 3am, right when they were going into the booth. I am a little resistant to tell this, but earlier in the week I followed a fire truck down College Avenue and was amazed by the striped design on the back that was made from different colored reflectors.  That is where the pattern came from.

Donut:  Everyone asks – so here are the answers. Yes, we did more than one take. I think we did six takes. I limited it to two donuts per outing – there are only so many donuts that should be given to an eight year old at a sitting. No one got nauseous. I did the filming – I have a small travel tripod that I held in place by stuffing Zone: Fragments for a History of the Human Body Part Two along with a couple other art texts in between the dash and windshield of my 1963 Ford Falcon Ranchero. I ended up using the first take. I bought an audio recorder and captured the sound separately and Daniel Beyer did my editing.

 Orbit:  Imagine completing the sculpture, pristine and freshly painted, and then having an eight year old climb into it in a space suit, also just completed and flawless, and start to shake and hop it around the shop to simulate liftoff. A priceless moment. The space suits have many aluminum parts including cuffs, so we had to tape up anything that might rub between the suits and the capsule. We just happened to have green tape. Angus really took on each “role” with great focus. I had the camera screen flipped so he could see himself and told him to keep his helmet centered in the image and stop us if he saw any green parts in the frame. As I watched him reenact the flight through a crack in the door, he was flipping imaginary switches and who knows what, stopping us once because he noticed there was green in the frame. Daniel dropped the green from the video so it really ended up not being a concern. Also, we could only do short takes so our helmets didn’t fog and I found myself holding my breath for most of the take. Try to look natural, but don’t breathe….

Probe:  Mike Lyons at !WowHuh? CNC cut one pie section of the dish, then made the mold and cast 16 parts to make the dish form. And it all fit. The other thing that is pretty cool is that Colors, Inc. anodized the aluminum in grey tones to simulate black and white TV. Mostly people question the film clip. It is an excerpt of a 1938 Clark Gable film called Test Pilot. In the clip, Myrna Loy is at her wit’s end as each of Clark Gable’s flights become more and more dangerous.  She chants “still living” which I looped to mimic a clock ticking (I considered “tic tock” as a title). The film is about recklessness and risk taking to achieve new standards in flight – but maybe it is more about irrationally pursuing an idea at the cost of normal human relationships (a parallel to art practice should not be lost here).  The probe is based on the Pioneer probe, which was the first manmade vehicle to leave the solar system and is still traveling in deep space. Pioneer carries a message from humankind, including a plaque designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake and prepared by Sagan’s wife Linda Salzman Sagan.  My project straddles several generations because it is digitally produced, handmade, includes an early film reference, and the video runs mechanically, not digitally.  If you spend a little time with the project the “still living” chant will sync and un-sync because the dvd players do not run at the same exact rate.

Brian McCutcheon, "Splashdown," 2011. Commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Courtesy of the Artist.

Splashdown:  Mike also did the casting for the balloons. This was the first big project to be completed and I think of it as something I did single-handedly, though that isn’t exactly the case. I had a student, Heather Mathes, ask if she could work for me when I first started fabrication on the museum projects. Once the parts were prepped and glued, it took us eight months of sanding 40 balloons multiple times to get them to the standard I wanted them at before painting began. As it turns out, Heather had a natural gift for sanding a continuous surface – something I wouldn’t have thought I could let someone else help me with. A friend, John DeFosse, jumped in to help sand, too.  I did not see this project assembled until it was in the museum. It transformed when I added the strings and looked as though the concept drawing had come to life.

Brian McCutcheon, "Alien Landscape Series," 2011. Commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art Courtesy of the Artist.

Landscapes: Every one of these was pretty comic – we were quite a spectacle out in the world in our suits – but all in a normal day for Angus and I. Gabe Mass took the photos. He stood in the passenger seat of a Miata, top down, at 65 MPH to take the Cruise photo out on 74W.  Angus hit him several times when he made contact with the wiffle ball in Play.  And it is still a mystery to us all what Angus was doing at the La-Z-Boy store. Maybe the best story is this – after we wrapped shooting the Shop photo, Angus and I were not far from Lisa Freiman‘s home. Angus is close to Lisa’s daughters so we decided to surprise them in our suits. It was humorous to see the flummoxed look on the neighbors’ faces as Lisa, Ed and I chatted on the front porch, me and Angus fully suited up, with Angus and the girls running around the yard as if nothing unusual was going on.

I hope that this might give you some insight into the work, and stories that you might not know unless you were there.

Maya Lin, "Above and Below," 2007.

The Viewing Project, which is in its final year, is a three year series of small-scale educational installations providing innovative ways to reactivate the IMA’s permanent collection.  The Viewing Project’s main goals are to encourage new ways of looking at artworks by mixing up the collection in unexpected ways and supporting an enjoyable visitor experience. This includes but is not limited to: hands-on models, comparative artworks across time and culture, videos, flip-labels, technology, and thoughtful questioning.

Typically the Viewing Project installations are located directly next to the artwork they are referring to. With Above and Below, the Viewing Project team bravely took on the challenge of placing the installation in a separate location from the actual work. This method of separating the informational from the experiential aspect of an artwork allows not only new educational connections to be made but also helps visitors make the journey to the sculpture, which is something that hosts its own set of navigational challenges.

The museum has previously experimented with way-finding methods such as arrows on the floor, the walls and posted signage. For this particular project, the team brainstormed about using GPS mapping methods with verbal descriptions, but in the end, they decided the most user-friendly guide would be a handout using photographs of distinct views leading upstairs. This process, along with an overview of the project, is explained by Annette in the video below:

Maya Lin was chosen for this project because her sculpture was not found readily in the museum and certainly deserves more attention.  She combines her unique background in both art and architecture to create forms that quote both industry and nature in a complex way. The sculpture is loosely based on the Indiana Blue Springs Cavern system, which Max Anderson talks about here.  Above and Below was a commission-based project by the IMA in 2007 and is currently on view on the 3rd floor balcony.

We are now a few months into the Biennale and the Gloria installation at the U.S. Pavilion has maintained a consistently high level of attendance, with over 250,000 visitors since the opening.

Working from Venice for the past two and a half months, I had the chance to assist with the performances and meet some of the athletes. Two of them, Sadie Wilhelmi and David Durante, have kindly agreed to answer some of my questions about their experience at the Biennale.

Dave was a member of the USA Gymnastics team for six years, including a participation in the Olympic games in Beijing.  Sadie is a gymnast with extensive dance and circus background. Before coming to Venice, she performed as a freelance aerial artist with a company in New York and took part in other dance and choreography projects.

Here is what they have to say about their experience at the Venice Biennale:

How did you get involved in this project?

Dave: The IMA and USA Gymnastics are both in Indianapolis. When the project was selected, I was asked to participate based on my background and experience with the U.S. team. Besides performing myself, I am the athletes’ coordinator for the whole project and in charge of the logistics, including finding the performers and runners. I worked with the choreographer and performers who were selected to create the routines. We trained in New York for about four months before coming to Venice at the end of May.  I’ll be here in Venice for the entire run.

Sadie: I got involved through my friend Olga Kaminsky, who is good friends with Dave.

 How long did it take to create the choreography?

 Dave: The choreography took a little bit of time. Initially we did not have the sculptures, so we worked with mats and foam blocks.  Rebecca Davis, the choreographer, was instrumental in putting it all together and bridged the gap between the gymnastic and the dance world.  The performers also had input here and there.

 Sadie: It took us months to put this together. We started in January of this year and it came together during lots of hours of training and rehearsal.

 How many people have performed these routines since the opening of the show in early June?

 Dave and Sadie: We’ve had three guys and three girls for the gymnastics, as well as five runners.  At the opening, we also had Chellsie Memmel, who was part of the team in Beijing, and world champion runner Dan O’Brien.

 Were the artists involved in the choreography?

 Dave and Sadie: They gave us some guideline parameters to work with. They wanted gymnastic movements that one could see during a routine at the Olympics.  The real challenge for me was to take gymnastics and push the limit on what is physically possible on these sculptures, while staying safe and not get injured.

 The routines are much longer than what you are normally used to. Is this difficult?

Dave: Initially the artists wanted the performances to be about a half an hour long. Gymnastic routines are usually between 60 and 90 seconds, while circus routines are normally between six and seven minutes. So to push this to a much longer extent of time (the routines are now fifteen minutes) was a real challenge.  The artists came to New York for a week and we put together a series of little sketches for them. They really liked certain pieces and did not like others, so we cut certain things and started to work with them over that week to put their final stamp on the pieces.

How does it feel to perform so close to the public?

Dave:  It has been the best part of performing, because when you are competing in an area with 15,000 people, it’s just you and the apparatus and the judge watching you. You feel such a disconnection with the public. Here their energy is what you use. They are not speaking, but their eyes are speaking. There is such a connection, you can feel them holding their breath.  They can see you sweat and breathe heavily. That part is really cool for me.

 Sadie: It is such a new feeling for me.  Both with dance and the aerial work there is much more distance between you and the public, so it is really really intimate to have the public so close. Sometimes I kick people or the sweat is flying around. My toe started bleeding one time. It makes it very real when people can see everything that is going on.  It brings people in. They can really follow you once they can connect with that.

 How does it feel to be part of an artwork?

 Dave: I love art and I do a bit of art myself, mostly drawings and pastels. But this is a whole new realm for me as an artist. This is something that I do not think has ever been done from an athletic side of things.  To be a first in that sense is special. The whole ride has been scary at times, not knowing if we could pull everything together in time, and making sure that the pieces were what the artists and the museum wanted.

Sadie: The more I learned about the Biennale and the more involved I was getting with the project, the more honored I felt about being part of it and how we are basically inscribed in art history.  It’s really unique to be part of a performance in a contemporary art piece.  We have had such interesting and good feedback from the audience.

What about your experience in Venice?

 Dave: I had been here a couple of times but living here is a completely different experience. Not too many people get to live in Venice. Being able to come here and perform has been great. Sadie and I have our own blog where we tell all of our adventures and stories here in Venice: http://www.daveandsadie.blogspot.com

Sadie: I had never been to Italy before and it has been an incredible experience. Coming to work by boat every morning and working in a museum in the middle of a garden is magical. We have been doing the most amazing things. It has been truly the most amazing project I have worked on in my life.

What’s next for you?

David and Sadie: We will be here until the end of November. We are currently in the process of putting together some acts of our own. We have some other gigs around Italy and hope to possibly extend that to New York. We will also be in Indianapolis to perform in March.

A few weeks ago, the opening night for Brian McCutcheon’s exhibit Out of This World was, in fact, a little out of this world. And it wasn’t the last-minute change of venue (due to pesky rain showers) or the presence of corn hole inside the Deer Zink Pavilion that made it unusual – it all started with McCutcheon’s artist talk, which was about as interesting and complex as his stunning new exhibit. To gauge everyone’s reactions to the work and his talk, I talked to guests and made a video for the blog – be sure to watch out for one very special appearance!
 

During the talk, McCutcheon’s son, Angus, who is featured in (and served as the inspiration for) much of the exhibit, was seated at a drawing table in the middle of the stage. While his father discussed his successful career, Angus sketched on giant sheets of paper, sipped water like a true performer, and engaged charismatically with the audience. When images of Angus came onto the screen, he pointed emphatically and radiated pride. It was sort of like live art – and considering Brian and Angus were in matching orange space suits, we’re thinking this was intentional. In fact, the marriage of life and art was a major – if not the main – theme of Out of this World.

Angus’s fascination with space travel is what originally inspired the exhibit, and McCutcheon took the extra step by turning Angus into a main subject. He photographed, filmed, and even sculpted images of Angus, giving the contemporary exhibit an unmistakably warm and inviting feel. By including Angus in his work, McCutcheon was able to fuse fatherhood and artistry to see everything in a different perspective. With such a change in context, he was able to trust his instincts and create strong, emotional art worth seeing. In fact, the case could easily be made that without Angus, Out of this World may never have been conceptualized.

Equally pertinent to the exhibit’s completion was the fact that McCutcheon created each and every detail in each and every piece. Nearly everyone at the party spoke about his seemingly endless skills; from a room full of fiberglass balloons to a massive floating satellite, McCutcheon studiously mastered the various techniques necessary to could create such a diverse exhibit. Even the lawn chairs (placed in the middle of the balloons and inside the red capsule) were crafted by McCutcheon and his team with thin sheets of metal painted and stretched to look like dense woven fabric.

In fact, that gleaming red capsule was one of McCutcheon’s most talked-about pieces. Not only does it perfectly embody his conceptual mission – a harmonious mixture of masculinity, space travel, and playfulness – but even this industrial work became human when Angus took part. What at first looks like an impenetrable piece of metal becomes completely unexpected and remarkable when you walk around and see the small hatch door propped open. Inside sits the lawn chair, where a spacesuit-clad Angus sat and was filmed while the capsule was rocked and shaken to simulate a real spaceship. The final video is projected onto a gleaming glass screen, giving a sense of movement and exhilaration to the entire space. In fact, it’s hard to imagine the exhibit without that background noise and flickering image of Angus in his spaceship. The infusion of life with art is unbelievably present, making it the perfect final touch to Out of this World.

Mary Miss has decidedly sparked many Indianapolis residents’ curiosities with the installation with her newest citywide project, FLOW: Can You See the River? with her unmistakable markers. Miss’s project hopes to make the local community aware of the White River’s functions, history and most notably, what we can do as area residents to be more aware and environmentally friendly. This project showcases the river, its watershed and how it sustains us. Mary Miss, who hails from New York, has done many projects of this scope that focus on the environment, history and sustainability.

The red fiberglass balls, juxtaposed against nature, serve as markers for points of ecological importance. The balls and mirrors (on certain markers) are complete audio descriptions that are accessible by cell phone, and links to the the project’s very own mobile app, Raindrop.  The descriptions inform and encourage visitors to recognize how their daily lives affect the White River, and conversely, how the White River and its history affects us.  (Coincidental note, the red balls were fabricated locally by artist Brian McCutcheon’s studio.  An exhibition of his work just opened at the IMA entitled, Out of this World featuring himself and his adorable son and muse, Angus).

This project extends beyond the markers with talks from Mary Miss herself and other local environmental groups. Through these collaborations, this exhibition moves beyond the museum for a truly citywide effect.

This project came upon me, an intern, in a very ambiguous form and in bits and pieces at the beginning of the summer –I did not know how these complex pieces would fall together.  Very quickly did my small part in the project become clearer as the spreadsheets and countless Word documents that I stored on my desktop had a course of action. The Mary Miss team had detailed the exact latitude and longitude of each of their markers.  Through the course of a few weeks, I input each individual marker into FLOW’s website, learning a lot a lot about a city I had recently become a new resident of. The end result is a map of Indianapolis covered in these red dots, these ecological points of importance. You may find one very close to your home or your workplace.

Come and mark the opening of Indianapolis’ very own ecological scavenger hunt (in a way) by participating in the Flow: Can You See the River? festival beginning today, along with the launch of the interactive map (and be sure to visit the website!).

Come to the IMA this evening for a talk by Mary Miss at 7pm in celebration of the opening. Join us earlier at 6pm for a reception in the lobby.

Jarred Alterman, Director of "Convento."

A few years ago, I was traveling in Portugal with friends, driving along the southern coast in search of good, cheap eats and local wine.   On the road, you meet people.  We heard rumors of a secret monastery in the Alentejo region, converted into an artist retreat and nature preserve.  Feeling adventurous, we decided to check it out.  I had this strange feeling there was something there waiting for me, beckoning me, but at the time I had no idea it would be the focus of my first feature film.

We made the drive from a coastal touristy backdrop to the barren countryside.  The green hills slowly became orange and tan and you could begin to hear the hissing sun.   The Alentejo is brutal in the summer, and we felt this intensity as we arrived at The Convento Sao Francisco, in the village of Mértola.

My first impression was an impressive gate daring me to swing open and explore.  It was so quiet, except for the hum of winged insects and the faint crescendos of clicking storks in the distance. There was no one to greet us and I felt like an outsider immediately, of mythological proportion.

After what felt like an eternity, I slowly lifted the latch on the gate, feeling the warm rusted surface on my fingers. As we slowly made our way up a long winding path, the background shifted before our eyes. Tall trees, exotic flowers and hidden stone sculptures suddenly replaced the once dry earth.  As we made our way deeper into the grounds, an oasis in the middle of this desert-like region surrounded us.  The sun’s rays, now dappled through the tall trees, illuminated a falcon circling above us.

We heard the calls of peacocks, ducks and the sounds of a rider on horseback.  We began to hear water running over stones traveling in the distance, and we could all feel the air around us cool down.   Only for a brief moment I saw the silhouette of a woman tending to bed sheets on a line, and she was gone.

As we approached the final path leading towards a door, a sudden rush of happy shouting dogs came running towards us.  They circled around us, checked us out, and made no complaints of our visit.

We were somewhere beyond time and you could feel it.  The monastery was over four hundred years old, but Romans, Arabs and Phoenicians once walked upon the grounds thousands of years ago.  I felt a connection to this frequency immediately as if something from the past was trying to communicate with me, so I listened…

I followed reverberated voices down a long corridor that lead me to a chapel, and it is here where I was introduced to the world of kinetic artist, Christiaan Zwanikken.  Once a place of worship, this chapel now functions as an open art studio where skeletal parts and deceased wildlife are wakened from the dead with servomotors and computers.

What drew me in to Christiaan’s work immediately was the shocking juxtaposition of his dancing, talking and robotic skeletal beasts against the serene backdrop of this quiet monastery.  It was completely unexpected; a robotic snake-eagle of hybrid skeletal remains and steel claws perched high on a wall, reanimated, drew you in closer.  A pair of stork skulls clicks and clacks at each other provided an avant-garde soundtrack.  An array of steam pumps, engines and acrobatic gears perform a mechanical dance, transforming this chapel into a science fiction installation – I was breathless.

Leaving the studio, I followed a different path through a field of lavender that lead me into the heart of the garden.  Thriving vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers and squash, were being tended by Geraldine Zwanikken, who danced her way through the brush.   She was smiling of course, as if she expected me.  I was soon introduced to her other son, Louis, on horseback, who greeted us weary travelers with an open heart.

I spent two weeks at this home, as a guest, and over the course of many meals, starry nights and exciting conversations fueled by local red wine, I became very close friends with this family.  Of course at the time I was not prepared to make a film, but I soon returned to capture what I experienced.

My film Convento attempts to transport the viewer to this magical place and experience what I felt on this journey.  I wanted to create a film immersion, using texture and movement as the main ingredients.  There is very little narration and interviews to fill in the blanks. I didn’t want to say too much; it’s the silence in between that I wanted you to meditate on.  So when you watch the film, you should explore within the frame with the same curiosity as I did on foot.

Come see Convento this Friday, September 9, at 8:15pm in the Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion.  For more information, click here.