Review: The ‘One Piece Show’ at CCIC’s Schwitzer Gallery
“Of the Earth” by Katrina Murray
On Nov. 14, 2011, I published a review in NUVO about the “One Piece Show” at the Dean Johnson Gallery, a show featuring a single work by a single artist, 30 works all together. It was one of many exhibitions I reviewed at the gallery, which had been hosting “One Piece” shows since 1996.
The gallery was housed in the design firm founded by Bruce Dean and Scott Johnson and located on Mass Ave. It was a fixture on the First Friday art rounds for good reason, as it regularly served up helpings by some of Indy’s finest artists. Since Dean Johnson no longer inhabits Mass Ave — the firm found new digs in 2012 — hosting the “One Piece Show” fell on the backs of the Schwitzer Gallery, which you can find on the second floor of the Circle City Industrial Complex. For this showing, there were 60 individual “One Piece” works, by 60 artists.
Fortunately, it felt less like a rehash and more like a timely survey of art being created right now in the Circle City. One of the works titled “Emmett Till” by Charlie Russell, pictures the graffiti sprayed on the base of the Robert E. Lee Monument in Richmond, Virginia. The monument was removed in 2021, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Officers. Russell, a self-described “graphic designer with a camera” juxtaposes a photograph of the eyes of a South African girl with the “Emmett Till” graffiti in this work, showing how racism transcends national borders.
The exhibition also felt current in how it showed where some of Indy’s most innovative artists are at in terms of their development. Katrina Murray’s wall-hanging ceramic sculpture “Of the Earth” consists of two precisely-rendered nude figures, a man and a woman, their hands intertwined as they face the elements. They could be Adam and Eve, they could be two indigenous people stepping into the sunlight in a newly-cleared patch of the Amazon Rainforest cleared for cattle ranching, or they could be a couple emerging from the rubble post-nuclear war. The wall-text reads, “We are made from the earth as flowers are, just as this sculpture is. We are as fragile as a ceramic sculpture, as delicate as a flower and in need of care just as our earth.” This work may come as a surprise to those who know Murray primarily as a painter.
Another painter who makes forays into sculpture, Orlando Peláez, also has a wall-hanging work, titled “Pueblo de Taos,” which depicts the Taos Pueblo, found in northwestern New Mexico, using cut-out foam board against a crepuscular horizon. It’s an interesting juxtaposition, come to think of it, using foam board to depict the adobe houses that form such an iconic skyline in the American landscape. You may have seen Peláez’s visionary paintings that were exhibited in the exhibit Under Western Skies, at Gallery 924 in April 2022, and reflect his travel in the southwestern United States courtesy of a Creative Renewal Arts Fellowship awarded by the Indy Arts Council and Lilly Endowment Inc.
Russell, Murray, Peláez and the other 57 artists represented here demonstrate the continuing vitality of the visual arts in Indianapolis.
The ‘One Piece Show’ will hang through March 26 at the Circle City Industrial Complex.
