What do we mean when we say “art,” or “engagement,” or “community”…?
Big Car Collective member John Clark transforming thrift store paintings with visitors to the Indianapolis Public Library.
The community I’m excited about isn’t one that typically frequents art institutions. It isn’t dominated by artists, patrons, and members of the creative class. The community, for me, is made up of regular people who should be able to enjoy the same kind of opportunities to express themselves as the arts community. But––too often––many in the broader community, especially in cities like Indianapolis, live in a world without art.
People in the community should be able to experience more than merely absorbing messages blasted out, most often about buying things we don’t need. Instead, we should––at least occasionally––experience the joy of doing and making things ourselves. We all should be challenged to think about things, and think for ourselves.
Everybody in the community deserves access to art, to creativity, to activities that challenge our minds. And artists and others who work in creative fields should be determined to make art democratic, to help it be an integral part of people’s lives. Better than anyone, we know the joy of using our imaginations to make something out of nothing. And we have a moral imperative to share this joy.
So I see the importance of prioritizing art projects that get to people where they are instead of challenging them to figure out how to find the art in some walled-off place. It’s crucial to eliminate roadblocks that too often keep this community on the outside.
In order to continue to be relevant and important to the broader community, we must invest in it directly. Rick Lowe, founder of Houston’s Project Row Houses, told the New York Times: “I was doing big, billboard-size paintings and cutout sculptures dealing with social issues, and one of the students told me that, sure, the work reflected what was going on in his community, but it wasn’t what the community needed. If I was an artist, he said, why didn’t I come up with some kind of creative solution to issues instead of just telling people like him what they already knew. That was the defining moment that pushed me out of the studio.”
And Lowe’s realization connects to the philosophy of Frances Whitehead, an embedded artist who works directly with the City of Chicago. She calls her work “post-normal” and doesn’t make things; she makes things happen. And, as a “double agent” working both sides of the system, she reaches and helps the broader community in Chicago. “I’m interested in the artist not as a trickster or activist, but as a cultural disrupter, as a change agent,” she said during a recent lecture in Indianapolis. “If culture is the problem, then who better to solve it but cultural workers?”
It comes down to a choice: Should we preach to the choir and make work that only point to our community’s challenges? Or do we use our skills as artists to do something about it?
About the contributor: Jim Walker is executive director and lead artist with Big Car Collaborative, a nonprofit arts organization based in Indianapolis. One of Big Car’s better known projects is Service Center for Culture and Community, a formerly vacant Firestone automotive shop repurposed as a creativity space with a garden on the front parking lot. Walker also works as a designer, public artist, photographer, and writer. He’s part of a family that includes Shauta Marsh, executive director of the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art and their two awesome kids, Vivien and Max. He’s a lover of cities, parks, walking and books. www.bigcar.org