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Posts from the ‘Sky Blue Window’ Category

25
May

Screening for Relief: ‘Highway to Dhampus’ at ArtCraft Theatre

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on defunct, Central Indiana arts website Sky Blue Window on June 8, 2015. Some content and formatting changes differ from the original version. 

Earlier this spring, a massive earthquake struck Nepal, killing more than 8,000 people and injuring tens of thousands more. Around the same time, Pastor David Schreiber was in a meeting, prepping materials for vacation bible school at Resurrection Lutheran Church in Indianapolis. Coincidentally, the theme for the class was Everest.

“So, there are scenes of these happy kids climbing the mountain and meeting these smiley, cartoonish characters that are wonderful and teach virtues and things that are related to the bible school,” Schreiber says of the vacation bible school materials. “But here’s Everest, this happy shiny place in vacation bible school, and yet it’s a place of utter devastation in the news.”

As Schreiber and his team at Resurrection brainstormed on ways to bring the theme of Everest to their students, he recalled a film he had seen at last year’s Heartland Film Festival.

In 2014, Highway to Dhampus earned Heartland’s “Best Premiere Award” in the narrative feature category. The film centers on a British celebrity’s trip to a Nepalese orphanage with the intent of repairing her public image. Along the way, Nepal emerges as a major character in its own right.

Courtesy of Julie Ahlander

Courtesy of Julie Ahlander

“The delight about Heartland is so many of these filmmakers come and not just for Q&A, but they hang out in the lobby afterwards and have conversations,” Schreiber says. “I kept bumping into Rick McFarland, who’s the director, on a couple of occasions. We had some conversations about film, but also about Nepal and also about themes that are in the movie — generosity, cultures connecting, and all of that.”

After the festival, McFarland and Schreiber remained connected through Facebook.

He noticed McFarland had organized a benefit screening in his hometown of Salt Lake City in response to the earthquake. Schreiber reached out to McFarland about hosting a similar screening in Indianapolis in connection with the service portion of his vacation bible school. McFarland agreed and also vowed to attend the event along with the film’s star Raj Ballav Koirala.

“We gathered a few nice connections and friendships as we were there at the Heartland festival,” McFarland says. “It seemed like that would be hopefully an additional draw, rather than just the screening–to have part of the filmmaking team there.”

highway-to-dhampus-screening

Courtesy of Julie Ahlander

 

Organizing a fundraiser for disaster relief can prove a complicated task. For evidence, look no further than ProPublica and NPR’s recent coverage on Red Cross’s mismanagement of funds following the earthquake in Haiti. The best intentions often get lost in a sea of red tape and middlemen.

highway-to-dhampus-sohoWith this in mind, Schreiber and McFarland wanted to do everything in their power to ensure that the funds raised for Nepal will not go to waste. A member of Schreiber’s congregation donated frequent flyer miles to cover the cost of Ballav Koirala’s flight. Another member of the church covered the cost of booking Franklin’s historic Artcraft Theatre for the screening.

“There’s literally almost no expense here,” Schreiber says. “So, everything that comes in will go to the aid effort in Nepal.” Proceeds from the benefit screening will go directly to Mind the Gap Worldwide and Lutheran World Relief. Both organizations are currently involved in relief efforts in Nepal.

McFarland admits he had no intention of creating a film that would serve as a fundraising vehicle for Nepal when he set out to make this film nearly five years ago. He just wanted to create a good film. Nevertheless, he is excited about the film’s potential for a greater good.

“It could help, and maybe in some small way it could be of legitimate help — not just an emotive piece, not just something that tugs at that the heartstrings, but something that connects people with the people of Nepal and with the sense of helping them,” McFarland explains. “That’s a new and unexpected thing that the film has taken on, and I’m enjoying that aspect of it.”

Tickets for Wednesdays screening of Highway to Dhampus are available for free. Donations are strongly encouraged. To learn more about the event, visit Resurrection’s website or connect with the event on Facebook.

Written by Rob Peoni

25
May

Student Assembly: Preview of Installation Nation 2015

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on defunct, Central Indiana arts website Sky Blue Window on June 24, 2015. Some formatting changes differ from the original version. 

One of the most difficult challenges when organizing an established annual event is the pressure to keep things fresh while staying true to the vision that made the event a success in the first place. This dilemma proves constant for arts organizations, which rely heavily on events for funding and attracting audiences to wider programming efforts.

“When I joined the board, there was discussion that they were going to table Installation Nation,” Indianapolis Art Center President Patrick Flaherty says of joining the team at Primary Colours a couple of years ago. “I was really surprised to hear that, because it was one of the things I was excited about when I came on board.”

Courtesy of Laura Harris

Courtesy of Laura Harris

In his first year as Chair of Primary Colours’ board, Flaherty transitioned Installation Nation from the industrial confines of the shipping containers that defined the parameters of the event’s early iterations to the spacious grounds of IAC’s ArtsPark.

“What’s neat here in the park, is that you can see multiple installations at once,” Flaherty says. “As you’re interacting, experiencing or checking out one, you’re subconsciously, or consciously, looking at the next one. They overlap and talk to one another.”

Courtesy of Kim Thaxton

Courtesy of Kim Thaxton

On Friday, Primary Colours will switch the format for Installation Nation again. For the first time, students from two IPS schools will contribute an installation to the event alongside the 12 contributing artists.

“I don’t feel like artists with a capital ‘A’ should be something intimidating to people,” says Installation Nation board member Laura Harris. She led the charge to incorporate students into the mix this year.

“I just like the idea of all of them coming together to be part of something and then seeing where they fit — or even that they do fit — in a larger artistic community, and that it’s out there for them,” Harris says. “Just seeing those connections … the community to the schools and the schools to the community, I think it’s just such a win-win situation to make everybody more aware of what’s out there, and how they can be part of each other’s lives.”

Students at IPS 91 will contribute a peace pole that coincides with the school’s Montessori curriculum, one which promotes peace within the students themselves, the school, the community and the world at large. The structure stands 8 feet tall and is adorned with about 40 ceramic plaques with different words and symbols representing the kids’ interpretation of peace.

After its two-week stay at the Art Center during Installation Nation, the peace pole will return to IPS 91 to reside permanently in the school courtyard.

“I have what I call my ‘Lunch Bunch Kids.’ They’re intermediate kids that don’t like recess,” says IPS 91 art teacher Kim Thaxton. “So, they’ll come to my room during my lunch period. Then they stay in for recess. So, we’ve been doing a lot of things for our courtyard. I’ve been calling it the ‘Courtyard Club’ … because the courtyard is in the center of the school and it had been looking really bad.”

Courtesy of Laura Harris

Courtesy of Laura Harris

The other student-led installation was created by Sidener Academy. Sidener’s contribution centers around a 4×4-foot plywood board with the word “life” cut out of the center, serving as the installation’s negative space. The second part of it features hundreds of crayons upon which students wrote words that are important to them about life. “A lot of them wrote ‘family’ or ‘mom,'” Harris says. “Not as many ‘dads,’ unfortunately [she says laughing], but some, definitely some.”

The crayons were then glued onto the board. The goal was to place the structure in the sun, causing the crayons to melt and their colors to drip into the word “life.” Unfortunately, the crayons proved stronger than Indiana’s late-spring sun, and blow dryers were needed to start the melting process. The installation should continue evolving during the next two weeks in the hot summer sun.

Flaherty hopes the potential for the installations to evolve throughout its run will serve as an incentive for visitors to return beyond Installation Nation’s opening night. “We’re hoping that a lot of people will come back,” he says. “Maybe come to the opening, check out the party, have a good time, meet some of the artists, but then … come back 10 days later when it’s less crowded and see what happened to them.”

Photo by Stacy Kagiwada

Photo by Stacy Kagiwada

Installation Nation will open in the ArtsPark on Friday, June 26 from 6 p.m. until 10 p.m. The 12 contributing artists, as well as students and teachers from the participating schools, will be on hand to discuss their installations with visitors. The event is free and open to all ages. Deejays from A-Squared Industries will curate the musical backdrop, and food trucks will be parked outside.

“It’s just so cool for the Art Center to be able to collaborate in this way, because it allows us to activate our park in a perfect way,” Flaherty says of IAC’s partnership with Primary Colours. “So you turn our nine and a half acres of beautiful land on the White River into something that echoes what we’re trying to do (which is promote the arts). It’s a really good example of the partnerships that I would love to see more of in this community.”

Written by Rob Peoni

25
May

Jonathan McAfee’s last hurrah

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published on defunct, Central Indiana arts website Sky Blue Window on July 7, 2015. Some formatting and style changes were made since the original publication. 

Jonathan McAfee made a big splash last summer with his What People Like About Me Is Indianapolis exhibit at Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. The show featured 15 portraits of Indy’s most famous author. Half of the paintings sold during the exhibit’s opening reception, and the rest sold within a couple of months afterward.

“I had painted him a few times, and people would buy him. He’s got a great look to him. He looks like a cartoon,” McAfee says. “Indianapolis, in general, is just really all for Vonnegut. They just really like Kurt.”

The success of his Vonnegut exhibit — his first sold-out show — gave McAfee the confidence to quit his job in PR at Bohlsen Group. So in January he began to pursue painting full-time. He believes the work he’s producing now is the best of his career, as he focuses full attention on furthering his style and technique.

Photo by Matt Beuoy

Photo by Matt Beuoy

“I’m taking way more time on my pieces,” he says. “I still paint pretty quickly, but I won’t say a painting is done now until I am 100 percent happy with it. Before, I would not wait until the last minute, but I’d book a lot of deadlines and have to get things done. I wouldn’t give it the same attention that I’m giving things now.”

jonathan-mcafee-oreo-jones-chreece-portrait

On Friday, McAfee will debut 16 new paintings in a show at 3 Mass Gallery for Emerging Artists. The show will feature four portraits of local hip-hop musicians Oreo Jones, Sirius Blvck, John Stamps and Grey Granite. The idea came to McAfee as a cross-promotion of Chreece – a hip-hop festival in Fountain Square that Jones is organizing as a benefit for Indiana music archive and nonprofit Musical Family Tree.

“I had painted a bunch of different celebrities and icons over the years,” McAfee says. “I had grown pretty tired of doing that. I didn’t feel like I was getting to the spot where I was growing as an artist. I still enjoy painting people, and I had been interested in what these guys have been doing locally. I just feel like they have a really neat aesthetic going on. I like their style; I like their music.”

McAfee often listens to hip-hop music while painting in his home studio near Garfield Park. He prefers to paint along with music that has a strong backing beat. He says the music occasionally bleeds into the color choices in his work. “When I hear music, I see colors,” he says. “I don’t know if that’s influenced by the album art itself, but, typically, whatever I’m listening to I focus on those colors because of the album or maybe a music video associated with it.”

Beyond the appeal of McAfee’s new subject matter, Friday’s show is significant, because it will be his last solo exhibition as an Indianapolis resident. McAfee will move to Denver with his wife at the end of the summer. “I feel like I need a change,” he says. “I’ve grown complacent over the last several months to where I need to go somewhere and start fresh, make new contacts. It’s scary, because I don’t know anybody out there really.”

Photo by Matt Beuoy

Photo by Matt Beuoy

McAfee and his wife chose Denver after falling in love with the city during a visit in March. His wife has a background in parks and recreation management, and the couple was looking for a city with more outdoor amenities. While visiting Denver, they stopped in a gallery at the suggestion of friends. McAfee introduced himself to the gallery’s curator, and told her he was a painter from Indianapolis who was considering a move. Much to his surprise, the girl enthusiastically confessed to being an Indy ex-pat. McAfee showed her a few postcards featuring some of his work, and that’s when things got really weird.

“I showed her the postcards and she looked at it for a second and she goes over to her computer and says, ‘Is this you?'” McAfee recalls. “I look at it, and it’s an image I painted — a portrait of the painter Basquiat. It was hanging at the restaurant Pure in Fountain Square. Her dad, who must still live here, snapped a photo of it, sent it to her and said ‘I think you might be interested in this guy.’ It was really kind of serendipitous, because this was the only gallery that I went into, and she kind of had heard of me in a sense.”

jonathan-mcafee-sirius-blvck-chreece-portrait

Though McAfee is scared and intimidated at the prospect of starting from scratch in a new city, he’s hoping the move forces him to kick his painting into high gear and work even harder. In the meantime, he is excited about sharing his latest work and celebrating some of Indy’s most talented, up-and-coming rappers. “Maybe I am painting some icons that are in the works right now,” he says. “Contemporary icons. I think they’re going on to do some pretty rad sh_t. Who knows, maybe I’m the first one to paint their portrait?”

Stop by 3 Mass Gallery on Friday (July 10th) at 6 p.m. for McAfee’s exhibit entitled Peace-key Whees-key. The event is free and open to all ages. Or find out more info via Facebook. For more info on Chreece, follow along with updates from the Aug. 29 festival via Facebook and Twitter.

Written by Rob Peoni

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