Whether it be working with logs from a firewood pile, tar from the hardware store or Elmer’s glue and sand, the Harrison Center is home to several artists making a name for themselves by using non-traditional mediums and materials to create something masterful.
Located at 1505 N. Delaware St. in the historic Old Northside of Indianapolis, the Harrison Center is a community-based nonprofit that aims to uplift local artists and musicians and foster a sense of love for the community through those creative outlets, said Joanna Taft, president of the center.
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The Harrison Center is home to several dozen artists who work with traditional mediums such as paint, pottery, and digital and visual art, however, the community arts center prides itself on supporting emerging and established local artists who choose to work with more nontraditional means to make art. Here are a few of those artists to be on the lookout for.
Eric Lubrick
During the day, Texan-turned-Hoosier Eric Lubrick is a senior photographer at Newfields. After hours, Lubrick is building sets, blowing up flowers and spending hours on Photoshop to create photography that combines the natural world with the constructed world.
Lubrick said his inspiration comes from photographers such Irving Penn and Sally Mann in addition to influences from shattered still-life imagery and Renaissance paintings. However, one theme that flows through Lubrick’s work revolves around the idea that photography inherently speaks to nostalgia as a subject matter.
“I don’t necessarily want it to be a pretty image but this idealized version of pretty,” he said, “and then disassemble that idealized version of what beauty is.”
Lubrick’s latest exhibition, “Deconstruct, Reconstruct,” is currently on display in the Harrison Gallery — the very same gallery he and his wife were married in — and includes pieces he has been working on over the span of the last two years.
“I’ve literally run a marathon,” he said. “This is so much harder … I think so much because my heart was so put into this in a lot of ways but also, like, just all the fine details.”
A few of the older pieces in Lubrik’s show depict flowers in the midst of an explosion, which took approximately 200 to 300 layers — or multiple images — and more than 40 hours to “deconstruct them and painstakingly reassemble them in Photoshop,” Lubrick said.
Lubrick said the exploding flowers are meant to be a visual representation of the social unrest and intense pressure facing the country in the last two years as well as his thoughts during that period, he said.
“I can honestly say there hasn’t been a body of work that I haven’t felt and just continually thought about non-stop,” he said. “This is a visual representation of all those thoughts happening.”
“Deconstruct, Reconstruct” is open to view at Harrison Gallery Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through July 29.
Lubrik’s show will be available to view in the Harrison Center’s online gallery until Aug. 26 at harrisoncenter.org.
Willard Johnson
Artist, painter and educator Willard Johnson — or Mr. Johnson to his Oaks Academy middle school art students — was born in South Korea to Christian missionaries andhas since lived in places like Egypt, Lebanon, Germany and Japan. However, living and teaching in Indianapolis is where he’s developed his own definition of success.
“Teaching middle schoolers kind of keeps things real in a way,” he said, “and you kind of realize that success is being true to who you are as an artist.”
On Aug. 5 from 6-9 p.m., Johnson will have a show called “And | Now | This” in the Harrison Gallery. He said the pieces in the show deal with themes of travel, nostalgia and social justice issues within the U.S. such as politics, identity, religion and culture.
“Some pieces are heavier, some pieces are lighter and more playful,” he said. “Some pieces in the…
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