For release on March 14, 2005

Media contact: Jen Schmits Thomas, Hetrick Communications, 317.262.8080 or jen@hetcom.com


INDIANAPOLIS – Two local artists have won the city’s inaugural Public Art Great Ideas Competition. Patrick Manning, 32, of Indianapolis and Sean Derry, 26, of Bloomington will be commissioned to fabricate and install their projects in Indianapolis in 2005.

Manning’s project, titled Speak/Spoken, will be a video installation on the downtown canal underneath the West Street Bridge near the Indiana Government Center. Derry’s project, titled Charting Pogue’s Run, will be an installation and environment-based work that cleans up and highlights Pogue’s Run, a historic stream that extends from the city’s southeast corner through downtown.

The inaugural Great Ideas Competition was created as an opportunity for artists living in Indiana to compete to be commissioned to create a public art project in the state’s capital, Indianapolis. The competition’s seven-person Selection Committee comprised of local art experts heard presentations by the ten finalists, considered public input, and then recommended the two projects, which were approved by staff of the Arts Council of Indianapolis and the Indianapolis Cultural Development Commission.

“Judging from the more than 250 comments we received from the public, there’s a lot of interest in public art in our community,” said Greg Charleston, president of the Arts Council of Indianapolis. “We received valuable input, and many of the opinions were passionate. The Selection Committee very carefully considered the quality of these project proposals as well as their ability to positively involve, impact, and engage the general public before making its recommendation.”

Manning’s project consists of two randomly ordered video streams that will be projected onto specially treated translucent silk screens suspended under the West Street bridge. The video stream will provide an opportunity for Hoosiers to talk about and archive their histories, memories, and stories of Indiana. The sound bites will be intermingled with compelling images of historic and contemporary Indiana.

Pedestrians on the walkways, as well as people in boats on the canal, will be able to see the images on the screens and hear the voices of the participants. Two benches, commissioned from students in the Department of Furniture Design at Herron School of Art and Design, will be installed on the walkways directly opposite each screen. A plaque on the wall above each bench will inform people how they can submit their own image and/or video to Manning. He will create a database of videos and digital images and update it monthly. The installation will be on display for one year and is tentatively scheduled for installation in July 2005. He will issue a “call for participants” by placing advertisements in local media to recruit speakers.

The budget for Manning’s project, which includes video production, audio/visual equipment, security and advertising to recruit participants, is approximately $35,000.

Manning said, “Speak/Spoken is a public art piece that functions both as a record of us as a people and as a conduit to allow people to hear and see one another in an urban environment where we are so often isolated – in our cars, our offices or at home – even though we’re a community of hundreds of thousands.”

A few of the public comments about Speak/Spoken were:

•  “What a surprise! Enormous video screens with ever-changing images at waterside. Reminds me of Chicago’s Grant Park.”
• “Excellent project concept that will add to the canal environment….”
• “I love that people can actually become a part of Patrick Manning’s proposal and not just be a passive audience.”

Derry’s project, Charting Pogue’s Run, remembers the unassuming stream that once hosted the settlement that grew into the city of Indianapolis. The project is about the community’s collective memory and the understanding that there were people who lived here before us and there will be more who come after us. Therefore the city, like a natural body of water, will continue to grow and change.

During the first phase of the project, the artist will work with Indy Parks Greenways and other groups to organize volunteers to remove debris and invasive plant species from the above-ground portion of the stream, which extends north from New York Street through Spades and Brookside parks to the proposed Pogue’s Run Art and Nature Park. This community call to action will help involve and reconnect residents to their environment as well as providing them with their own stories and histories involving Pogue’s Run.

During the second phase, Derry will mark the 4.5-mile underground portion of the stream that now runs through an aqueduct below downtown by laying a thin blue line of the material used in striping streets across the concrete and asphalt surfaces that cover the original stream bed. This will likely require the cooperation of city, state, and federal properties as well as many private property owners that fall along the stream’s historic route. The semi-permanent material has a lifespan of approximately five years. At 30 spots along the blue line, the artist will install a 4-inch steel medallion to permanently mark the Pogue’s Run path. Derry hopes that people will happen upon the meandering blue line as they are moving through their daily routine and that it will cause them to stop and consider their environment.

The project budget, which includes labor and materials, is approximately $65,000.

Derry said, “In addition to furthering the aesthetic environment of Indianapolis, this project is intended to provide historical information and encourage the formation of associations between individuals and the surroundings in which they work and live.”

A few of the public comments about Charting Pogue’s Run were:

• “This project very simply illustrates the change and history of the city. I like that it is not set aside in its own location but lets you find it, or rather run into it….”
•  “By marking this line throughout the city, interaction and curiosity about one’s environment are encouraged. It is subtle and simple and does not aspire to the lofty goals and deeper meanings that other projects try to achieve. These intentions are too often lost on the average person and too often art is viewed as not for everyone….”

The Great Ideas Competition kicked off last summer, and more than 70 artists submitted their qualifications and statements of interest. In November, 10 finalists were selected and each given $1,000 to conceptualize, design and conduct community outreach in the development of their “great ideas.”

The public reviewed the 10 “great ideas” in January when the artists’ concepts, models and drawings were displayed at the Indianapolis Artsgarden and online at www.indyarts.org.

The inaugural Public Art Great Ideas Competition is being managed by the Arts Council of Indianapolis and funded by the Indianapolis Cultural Development Commission with support from Starbucks Coffee and the Efroymson Fund, a donor-advised fund of the Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF).

“I fully support anything that elevates the importance of contemporary art in central Indiana. These projects not only show creativity but achievement in bringing more progressive art to public spaces in Indianapolis,” said Jeremy Efroymson, vice chair, Efroymson Fund and executive director, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA).