Big Car Collaborative

On Tuesday, we at Big Car Collaborative celebrated with an amazing group of supporters — including Mayor Joe Hogsett — the groundbreaking of our expansion into what we’re calling Big Tube on the Tube Factory artspace campus in the Garfield Park and Bean Creek neighborhoods.

This 40,000-square-foot adaptive reuse project is planned to open in the fall of 2025. Big Tube will embrace art in all its forms — visual, sound and performance, literary, and culinary — to become a space that welcomes everyone.

Big Tube — expanding on what we offer at Tube Factory today — will be a contemporary art museum with seven gallery spaces. We’ll continue to commission work — like Rachel Leah Cohn’s project in our main gallery now — on the themes of community, memory, and mythology.

We’re building on what Tube Factory has been all about since 2016 and what we’ve teamed up with others to bring to our city over the last 20 years.

What’s new in Big Tube that we don’t have space for at Tube Factory:

• An expansive gallery for larger 3-D work and installations
• 18 long-term, affordable studios for artists
• a culinary center with a cafe and bar
• a large performing arts and event space
• five business incubator storefronts
• a home for our arts-focused radio station,
• and dedicated offices for our staff

Big Tube will help us:

• further support artists from Indianapolis and beyond
• strengthen our community by helping build civic pride and social connections
• and entertain and enlighten visitors from across the street and around the world.

We believe everyone deserves access to the joys of creativity. We know that art can encourage empathy and support happiness.

And, in these challenging times, art is crucial as a universal language that can help bridge divisions. And we know that people are often more open to art than each other.

We’re very excited about this place for art and people. And we’re deeply grateful to all of our donors, partners, board members, neighbors, and staff artists for helping us make it happen!

Two new shows featuring Garfield Park neighbors will open on June 7, 6-10pm at Tube Factory artspace: Kelley Jordan Schuyler: A Portrait of Motherhood and Wu-Bad Paint Ju**ie. Hert's BBQ will be onsite for food options.

More about "A Portrait of Motherhood"
"Through this work, I hope to create more space for the complexities of the motherhood experience, to give more room for the fierceness of the love, the depth of the overwhelm, the pain of the isolation, and the true joy that can be found in mothering in community. I share these photos to validate the role and experience of all mothers. I hope this particular view of motherhood offers a sense of solidarity to all, especially those who feel alone in this monumental, mundane endeavor."

More about "Bad Paint Ju**ie"
A Garfield Park resident and artist, Wu started painting in 2012. He was walking down the street when he saw a fellow neighbor, Sharon, had a sign up on her porch that offered lessons on color theory.
By day, Wu creates specialty floor covering and concrete underlayments that he describes as “walking on artwork.” Doing this since 1977, Wu has always wanted to keep fresh, learn, and improve. “I wanted to learn color theory,” Wu said, “so I figured, how else better than by painting? I picked up the paintbrush and put down the toolbox.”

Yesterday, Levitt Foundation CEO Sharon Yazowski was in Cincinnati for the Congress for the New Urbanism, an annual event focusing on building better places.

She spoke alongside Lisa Wagner, Executive Director of Levitt Pavilion Dayton, as well as Shauta Marsh, Co-Founder and Director of Programs & Exhibitions, and Jim Walker, Co-Founder and Executive Director, both of Big Car Collaborative, the nonprofit arts organization that produces Levitt VIBE Indianapolis, on the topic of “Leveraging Arts Investments for Restorative Urbanism.”

Big thanks to Emily Scott for organizing World Collage Day this year at Tube Factory artspace! An annual, international celebration of collage, people can join her and Beth Guipe Hall in making collages tomorrow from 12-3pm.

Some collage basics and supplies will be provided, but you are encouraged to bring materials of your own as well to contribute to the group effort! Magazines, old books, paint swatches, miscellaneous ephemera, stamps, string, and other trinkets along with glue, rubber cement, scissors, are all good items to consider bringing.

This is a free event and Normal Coffee is open with all sorts of drinks and food options.

Initiated by Kolaj Magazine in 2018, World Collage Day encourages artists and art venues to hold events on that day to celebrate collage. World Collage Day is about artists connecting across borders against a global context of entrenchment and separation. And the day is about an art medium that excels at bringing different things together to create new forms and new ways of thinking. Ric Kasini Kadour, the editor of Kolaj Magazine, writes, “We created World Collage Day because we wanted to honour this community of artists and to remind the world what a spirit of cooperation, mutual support, and creativity can look like.”

We are open tonight for First Friday!
May 3, 6-10pm at the Tube Factory campus with four galleries of art & food from Bay Area Bistro, 6-9pm.

We are excited to be a stop on the Hatis Noit “Aura” USA tour! 🌞

Tickets go on sale today (April 18) at 12 p.m. 🌤️

There isn’t a more unique entry into a musical journey than that of Japanese voice artist Hatis Noit. Her musical awakening took place at the tender age of sixteen during a trek to Buddha’s birthplace in Nepal. One morning when staying at a women’s temple she came across a female monk singing Buddhist chants whose otherworldly sounds moved her so intensely that she was instantly aware of the visceral power of the human voice; a primal and instinctive instrument that connects us to the very essence of humanity, nature and our universe. From that moment she knew singing was her calling.

Her newest album, Aura was inspired by the German philosopher Walter Benjamin who used this term to describe the fundamental essence of art, which he believed is strongest in its original form, only happening once. Hatis agrees with this particular aspect as she realised, “during the pandemic, I really struggled. As a singer, I’m not very good at working on the computer. I much prefer doing live performances in physical spaces. Being with people, sharing the same space with them and feeling the atmosphere and energy of that moment, inspires me every time. To me art is that — that shared moment.”

Join us tomorrow at Tube Factory artspace💎

We first learned about the work of Julian Jamaal Jones when he submitted a proposal for Guichelaar Gallery in 2019. When the pandemic happened the show was sidelined but we watched through social media as his work expanded from photography to sculpture. We decided to commission a solo exhibit of his work.

Sketches are very integral to his process. And our chief curator is very partial to works on paper. Paper comes from a living thing as are the materials that he uses to makes his quilts, cotton-even synthetic material come from something that was once alive. Materials and mediums matter to me when it comes to the meaning of works. It figures in.

Julian's works are currently abstract. There is protection for the artist in abstraction. Artists of color need access to that protection, they don't need to fix all the broken things in the world through their art unless they really want to.

There is storytelling in abstract works. Sometimes the story is in the titles or process. But mainly it's a feeling you get looking at them. No matter where Julian pulled from himself to make the work, there's something there in the work recognizable in yourself.

Julian Jamaal Jones: Take Me Back is at least four years in the making for us at Tube Factory artspace. But for Julian, it's his lifetime to this point in the making.
Hope to see you tonight or anytime through March 24.

A new episode of Create Hear with Julian Jamaal Jones airs Christmas Day at 1pm with an encore December 30 at 2pm on 99.1 WQRT FM.

His exhibit “Take Me Back” with us opens on January 5, 6pm. .studios

About the artist: Julian Jamaal Jones is a multidisciplinary artist and educator born and raised in Indianapolis, IN. Jones received his Bachelor’s degree in Photography in 2020 from the Herron School of Art + Design (Indianapolis) and a Master’s in Photography in 2022 from Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI), under the tutelage of Chris Fraser. Jones was the recipient of the 2023 CICF Artist Ambassadors Travel Grant, awarded ArtsConnect’s “Artist to Watch” in 2022, the recipient of the 2022 Playground Emerging Artist Fellowship, supported by the Knight Foundation and the recipient of the prestigious Museum Purchase Award from Cranbrook Art Museum in 2022. Jones’s works are in the permanent textile collections of Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), Richmond Art Museum (Richmond, IN) and The Book Tower Detroit (Detroit, MI).

Holiday music on WQRT starts tonight/December 24 at 6pm and will run all day on Christmas Day except when we air Create Hear.

December 25 is also Julian’s birthday 🎉!!! Happy Birthday Julian & Happy Holidays to everyone from all of us at ☀️

Photo from

Hope you can join the the Asad Family for a Kwanzaa celebration at Tube Factory artspace on December 30. We are so grateful that Uzuri Asad & Bashiri Asad are part of Big Car Collaborative's long term artist residency, APLR. They are a family of amazing artists, 🤩.

About Kwanzaa

As an African American and Pan-African holiday celebrated by millions throughout the world African community, Kwanzaa brings a cultural message which speaks to the best of what it means to be African and human in the fullest sense.

During the holiday, families and communities organize activities around the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles): Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity) and lmani (Faith). Participants also celebrate with feasts (karamu), music, dance, poetry, narratives and end the holiday with a day dedicated to reflection and recommitment to The Seven Principles and other central cultural values.
Learn more at https://www.officialkwanzaawebsite.org

Season’s Greetings from all of us at Big Car!

We’d love your help during this holiday season as we transform an overlooked spot along Bean Creek on our Tube Factory artspace campus into a place for peaceful reflection, socializing, and learning about nature — a perfect gift for the ecosystem and humans alike!

Now through Jan. 13, we at Big Car Collaborative are raising $50,000 matched — dollar for dollar — through CreatINg Places, a program of the Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority (IHCDA) that utilizes funds from the State of Indiana. We can accept donations of up to $10,000 toward this campaign!

With this project called Water World: Creekside Social and Educational Space, artists at Big Car are teaming up with experts in landscape design and horticulture, neighbors, and other partners to restore and reconnect a section of Bean Creek behind Tube Factory as a beautiful and natural public asset.

You can donate online at www.patronicity.com/waterworld

All of these tax-deductible donations will be matched by IHCDA through Jan. 13. We can also accept offline donations via check sent to Big Car at 1125 Cruft Street, 46203. And we give back fun and artistic thank you gifts for your donations!

With your support, we’ll:

Remove a section of asphalt along Bean Creek and relocate dumpsters and parking to create a green outdoor classroom and gathering area. This intimate space will feature landscaped paths surrounding native pollinator plants.

Build a path down to Bean Creek, allowing visitors access to this year-round waterway enjoyed by fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals like muskrats and mink.

Clean up trash in the section of Bean Creek that borders our campus.

Program the area on First Fridays and with special small events to bring social and educational activities, conversations, and performances from commissioned artists.

Collaborate with our neighborhood organizations (Bean Creek and Garfield Park) and Reconnecting to Our Waterways on social, educational, and arts-focused gatherings.

Repair the parking lot adjacent to the new restorative space and paint murals on the pavement. This improved lot will also be easily closed to cars and used for events.

How else can you help? Share the word about this opportunity with friends and family and through social media using the link www.patronicity.com/waterworld

And join us for a donation-optional art opening and fundraiser celebration as part of our Jan. 5 First Friday with Julian Jamaal Jones: Take Me Back at Tube Factory artspace. All proceeds and in-person donations from that day will go toward this campaign. As always, we thank our friends at Sun King Brewery for their ongoing support.

We’re honored to have received a grant from Glick Philanthropies to support our affordable artist housing program, expand our short-term visiting artist residency, and help with planning for our 46,000-square-foot exhibition and studio building now in the midst of renovation — all on our Tube Factory artspace campus.

We’re so grateful to Glick Philanthropies for all they do to build community and create opportunity in our city!

Child Care Answers & Glick Philanthropies… | Glick Philanthropies Glick’s latest grant round totals more than $2 million to 39 nonprofits INDIANAPOLIS, December 5, 2023 – In partnership with Glick Philanthropies, Child Care Answers launched its Strengthen Indy Child Care grant program to increase the availability and quality of early childhood care and educati...

Today, on Giving Tuesday, please consider donating to help us bring art to people and people to art, sparking creativity in lives to support communities.

Click here to donate : https://www.bigcar.org/donate/

As a community-based and artist led nonprofit organization about to enter our 20th year, we utilize tools of culture and creativity to build community and social cohesion — connecting people as a way to boost quality of life.

Much of our work happens on a single block in the Garfield Park and Bean Creek neighborhoods where we own or co-own more than 20 properties — including a long-term affordable housing program for artists and Tube Factory artspace — a contemporary art museum with a the Normal Coffee cafe, and community space.

At our growing campus of adaptive reuse buildings and public greenspace, we host community and cultural programs to promote social connectivity, cooperation, and creativity.

We also facilitate people-focused placemaking and place keeping projects across the city and beyond — with much of this work at Monument Circle through Spark Placemaking .

Tune in to our experimental, community-focused radio station, 99.1 WQRT FM— also streaming at wqrt.org.

Please join us for “An Ode to Norwood” at Tube Factory artspace for our closing reception for “Process as Practice: Reimagining the Hardrick Home” on November 30th from 6 – 10pm.

November 30th will mark the 160th anniversary of Indiana’s 28th Colored Infantry, our African American soldiers from the Civil War. Norwood is one of the communities founded by these Veterans after their return home in 1865 and was the epicenter of Black Cultural life in Southeast Indianapolis from Reconstruction era (1870s) until the Harlem Renaissance (1920s). This exhibit honors one of Norwood’s first descendants, John Wesley Hardrick, and the work that he did to uplift his working class African American community through his paintings.

During this reception, enjoy gallery tours with artist Kaila Austin at 6:30pm and 8:30pm. Renowned Indianapolis Pianist Joshua Thompson accompanied by vocalist Okara Imani will be performing a suite of songs from the Civil War period, including a rendition of “An Ode to the Colored Troops that Died for our Freedom”.

We hope to make this an opportunity to honor the US Colored Troops and their descendants who carry on their legacy today. Please bring flowers to decorate the exhibit hall.

Project Sponsors:
Ganggang Culture Black Joy Fund, Indiana Landmarks Black Heritage Preservation Program, Southside USCT Coalition, Kheprw Institute Integrated Fund

Costume Pet Parade! Today 12-2pm at Spark Placemaking!

Congratulations to the 2023 Power Plant Grant recipients! Made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts based in New York, the program funds visual artists producing public-facing work that’s experimental and brings new energy to the city’s arts community.

This year’s awardees were selected by past Power Plant winner Andrea Jandernoa, Indiana-based artist Kelvin Burzon, and Cierra Rembert of SPACES in Cleveland, Ohio.

These are the funded projects for 2023:

Zola LaMothe: Ransom Place-Unveiling a Forgotten Legacy.
This project will center around recreating household and community scenes on the Indiana University Indianapolis campus where people’s homes, churches, and livelihoods once stood. Lamothe’s goal is that viewers will be able to not only witness the juxtaposition of what the land housed then and now but also bear witness to what was lost and wonder what could have been. The work will be released and shared with the community along with information about Indiana laws and future reform to avoid gentrification and displacement. In addition to the public gallery exhibition, Lamothe also plans to donate prints to the Through 2 Eyes organization that offers Indianapolis walking tours on the city’s history.
Lamothe hopes to release a photo book of the project that includes quotes and interviews from those who used to live in Ransom Place and their descendants. Her goal is for the book to be available in public libraries, the Indiana University Indianapolis bookstore, and the Indiana State Museum gallery shop.

Lauren Daughtery: Transformal Textiles

Textile Transformations will focus on themes of grief and loss, transformation, and empowerment through textile work. Using textiles related to a late child (crib sheets, clothing, colors associated with the nursery, etc), mothers will create their own textile work to memorialize their child and to provide a process-based approach for containing and transforming thoughts and emotions.

Textile work has been found to be beneficial in trauma work, allowing women to cope with grief, depression, and other physical ailments. Working in textiles provides sensory stimulation, promotes a feeling of centeredness or grounding, and can be used as a coping mechanism that can improve mood. This grant will support two iterations of Textile Transformations. Any mother who has experienced loss of a child due to miscarriage, birth trauma, post-birth complications, or any other means will be invited to participate. Sessions will be led by an art therapist and practicing artist alongside a licensed mental health counselor. There will be an optional exhibition for the participants.

Kelsey Simpson: Railroad City Bookmobile

Railroad City Bookmobile is an extension of the work that the locally based Gluestick group does within the Indianapolis community including teaching workshops, distributing free art supplies, publishing collaborative zines, and hosting an annual festival. As the digital world takes over, books and zine making are becoming more like art objects. Our plan is to fill a small vehicle with zines, comic books, and general interest books and distribute them across Indianapolis. In the long run we would love to make connections with community representatives and make return visits to certain locations. We envision ourselves having an item for everyone. We would love to connect with Hoosiers and ask what they would like to read or share with others. We want to see the bookmobile become a collaborative project with all who encounter it.

The Power Plant Grant will be used to purchase a vehicle and transform it into the Railroad City Bookmobile. This mobile workshop will make its public debut at a Read-in event with workshops and other creative opportunities for visitors at the Major Taylor Skatepark on the near westside of Indianapolis. Gluestick plans to document the Read-in experience and publish it as a zine to promote the Railroad City Bookmobile.

Bryn Jackson and April Knauber: Markings of Remembrance.
This collaboration engages a form of Filipino storytelling through abstract patterns found in ancestral body art, or tatak. By engaging stateside practitioners, ancestral objects, colonial-era manuscripts and contemporary texts, Jackson and Knauber see their ultimate goal to be creating space for collective remembrance and understanding of an artform nearly lost to hundreds of years of religious and political subjugation of the indigenous peoples of the islands now known as the Philippines.

Prior to the creation of new sculptural and video works, the project will consist of the formation of a cohort of Filipinos interested in researching their lineage and sharing their findings and personal experiences, continuing a long tradition of cultivating collective memory through oral history, which will inform a tailored curriculum through which the group will learn about the archetypal symbols central to various Filipino tattoo traditions. Jackson and Knauber will research and share individual histories, the islands from which their families migrated, the languages spoken within their families, and the roles family members held within their communities.

Carlos Sosa: Reflexiónes de Los Júziers: A New Visual Ethnonym and A New Consciousness Portrait Series

Sosa will produce and exhibit a dozen multimedia artworks — portraits, dioramas, and textile pieces — with accompanying text in Spanish and English. The work is based on decades-old photos of Hispanic individuals and families with roots in Latin America who chose to call Indiana their home. The artworks will be displayed in high-traffic areas in multiple parts of Indiana. Also, during scheduled discussions and public meetings, these images will foster dialogue to address issues of identity and immigration, migration and borders in our own lives.

Sosa’s goal is for these works to help us think more about identity, survival, energy, and movement. Today’s Júziers will hopefully connect with “their” origin stories: a collection of faces and narratives that is easy to explore and make their own. His approach is focused on the belief that images will reflect or provide access to a period’s views and actively participate in acknowledging those views de vida in the first place. A history of images has an impact on remaking, which itself constitutes a valuable record and purpose of people’s lived lives.

Evren Wilder Elliott: Imagining Home: Liberatory Theatre and Speculative Solutions for Housing Justice

Elliott’s social practice and performance art project, "Imagining Home: Liberatory Theatre and Speculative Solutions for Housing Justice" aims to utilize critical dialogue, art and liberatory theater to examine the housing crisis in Indianapolis, specifically among the experiences of Black, Latine, Indigenous, LGBTQ2S+, and other historically marginalized communities.

By gathering community members affected by housing insecurity, as well as partnering with local organizations within the Indianapolis Housing Continuum of Care, we will engage in play, improvisation, imagination, and storytelling practices to collectively envision solutions and policies that can drive meaningful change. This project will employ a participatory approach, inviting individuals to become co-creators and active agents in the exploration of housing issues. Through a series of workshops, participants will be encouraged to develop their narratives through story circles, written accounts, performance, image-making, and other creative mediums.

Meet our Spark fellow Dailyn Eades! Over the next few weeks, she plans to do a variety of activities at Spark!
Eades will be doing sessions of live painting, creating videos on spark, as well as hosting an artist networking event.

About the artist:
Creating art has always been a form of self expression for Dai. She uses a menagerie of different textures and mediums, but her primary medium is acrylic. Dai doesn’t minimize the tools that she uses in her process. Creating has been healing for her inner child and allowing herself to just be while not overthinking. Dai values creating through trusting the process by allowing every color choice, brush stroke and texture to speak for itself. Dai has reflected a lot on her art and her central message. Every time she paints it’s a reflection of her self love journey, and is about her choosing herself over and over again. She utilizes art as a coping skill to navigate the world around her. She’s very intentional about the projects, collaborations and partnerships she takes on. Dai has partnered with different local nonprofit organizations to promote community, equitability, upliftment and support through art.

About SPARK on the Circle: This is an inclusive, artist-led, site-specific partnership between Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy and The City of Indianapolis for free daily programming, arts activities, games, live entertainment, and recreation. SPARK is made possible by the Capital Improvement Board. Learn more at circlespark.org

SPARK on the Circle has a new Artist in Residence, Brittany Fukushima! Over the next 10 weeks, Fukushima has plans for works that will be centered around our five senses—focusing on smell.

Fukushima has planned an on-going scavenger hunt, working with found materials like leaves, coloring pages and even scratch and sniff stickers. Plans will grow as Fukushima spends time at the Circle. So be sure to continue to check back on circlespark.org as they add to the menu of fun to be had at SPARK on the Circle.

About the artist: Brittany Fukushima is an Indianapolis-based painter and teaching artist who uses their practice to interpret their environment. Drawing and painting become a means to investigate the natural world, express the intangible, and to present alternate ways of seeing. Recently, they have experimented with paint making using foraged pigments. Teaching is an integral part of their process as it keeps them in community and provides fresh perspectives. Brittany currently teaches at the Indianapolis Art Center and is a graduate of Herron School of Art and Design. They have exhibited throughout Indianapolis and Chicago and their work has been featured by Butter, WFYI and Pattern Magazine.

About SPARK on the Circle: This is an inclusive, artist-led, site-specific partnership between Big Car Collaborative, Downtown Indy and The City of Indianapolis for free daily programming, arts activities, games, live entertainment, and recreation. SPARK is made possible by the Capital Improvement Board. Learn more at circlespark.org.

So happy to host our TeenWorks friends for their Field Day fundraiser at Tube Factory artspace today!

So much gratitude to High Alpha for painting the north and west exterior of Big Tube Factory artspace. Our new 46,000 square foot building will add 8,000 square feet of commissioning contemporary art galleries and 18 artist studios to Indianapolis.

With all this growth to our campus, we are adding to our incredible team at Big Car Collaborative.

We are hiring a Grants Fundraising & Data Manager--- a writer and communicator who oversees and leads the planning (including maintaining a list of opportunities), prioritizing (ranking opportunities and proposing choices as needed); scheduling (including updating calendars and sending invites); setting budgets, writing, editing, submitting, thanking, tracking (including maintaining grant tracker); reporting, and managing relationships related to all aspects of our grants, fundraising, and development work; and thanking and recognizing our donors in timely and impactful ways. This work includes all types of grants, sponsorships/corporate donations, annual and capital campaigns, board donations, and individual fundraising.

Status: 40 hours salaried — exempt

Pay: $45,000-$52,000 per year + benefits

You can apply here: https://lnkd.in/gvZnpaQs