March 2020: We Wait.

The Harrison Center and Indiana Humanities join forces this month to present “We Wait.,” new work by Gigi Salij, in the Harrison Gallery.
 
Part of a year-long commemoration of the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, this show features screenprint portraits of women who are waiting—waiting in line to vote, literally, but also waiting to take their rightful, equal place in society.  “The patience of women is such an important subtext of the suffrage movement,” Salij explains.  “Women waited well over a hundred years for their right to vote to be recognized, but one hundred years later women are still waiting—for pay equity, for equal representation in legislatures and boardrooms, for the end of patriarchal culture.”  The show opens Friday, March 6, with an artist reception from 6:00 to 10:00pm.

It has been more than five years since painter Susan Hodgin’s tragic death at age 36, and her loss is still felt. The Harrison Center, where she was a studio artist, was pleased to learn that some of Susan’s early work has recently been rediscovered. This work will be on display in the Speck Gallery in March in the show, Susan Hodgin: Rediscovered. Also that night in Speck Gallery, see four Greatriarchs (long time residents of the Martindale Brightwood neighborhood) participate in a devised theater piece. This short theater performance tells the stories of women who have been influential in the neighborhoods surrounding the Harrison Center, and who have personally impacted the performers. Join Terri Taylor, Shirley Webster, Joanna LeNoir, and Pearl Carter for a play about power, courage, kindness, and strength. Directed by artist-in-residence, Ruthie Buescher.

The Clothesline Project returns to the Harrison Center in the Gallery Annex. Artist Mónica Mayer (México, 1954) first presented El Tendedero/The Clothesline at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City in 1978.  In it, she invited women to share their experiences with sexual harassment, an issue hardly talked about at the time. It is a kind of prehistoric #MeToo. She has since presented it in different places and contexts. It usually begins with a dialogue with people in each community to define the issues that are relevant for them.  

The City Gallery continues to celebrate urban Indianapolis with Kate Oberreich’s I Was in the Neighborhood, a collection of “watercolorful” maps of the northeast side neighborhood of Martindale-Brightwood.

Wave Forms opens in Hank & Dolly’s Gallery, a show of new work, completed in residence at the Harrison Center, by artist and architect Bruce Buescher. The show includes pieces from several of Buescher’s ongoing projects, which explore rhythm, repetition, arrays, gradients, and subtle color changes in paintings and drawings. The work calls to mind moire patterns, murmurations, effects of water and light, sound waves and the horizon, among other things. For the artist, delight and contemplation can be found in the way even the most minimal change in color or pattern can reorient awareness and perception.   

The Underground Gallery features Campfire Stories, new work by Leslie Dolin, Travis Owens, and Kent Brinkley.

The Harrison Center’s 35 studio artists open their doors for the first of four 2020 open studio nights.

Naptown Stomp brings live music and swing dancing to the gym.

The work hangs through March 27.

With support from: Indiana Humanities, the Arts Council of Indianapolis, the Indiana Arts Commission, Christel DeHaan Family Foundation, Allen Whitehill Clowes Charitable Foundation, the Indianapolis Foundation, and Sun King Brewery.