Peg Fierke Art – Part Four

Face Gut Rhythm, 1989, Peg Fierke

World View Mirrors.

Peg Fierke would continue to create art and exhibit often during the latter 1980s and all through the 1990s and beyond.  In might be said, that in these years, the second half of her career forward from about 1985 on, she would create the works that are most signature of her name and art today.  

Works from this period possess a timelessness devoid of fad or fashion. Fierke has developed an organic intricacy all her own – regardless of medium – paint, graphite or ink.

Concurrent to her artistic evolution, the first rumblings of tectonic movement in the local art scene and the overall art world in the upcoming years and decades are first sensed, we imagine, and then seen. 

Issues-oriented art exhibitions and related symposiums would continue to register and occur with greater frequency in the local scene.

From about 1985 onward, exhibitions to draw attention to dangers of nuclear proliferation, the need for environment protection, the long overdue equal representation of women and minorities in the arts and other pressing issues were held at various venues in the city, both in private galleries all the way to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

Perhaps new ideas would not necessary triumph over earlier approaches. Not at first. But the ideas would at least get their foot in the door, and once inside, make their presence heard. 

A 1986 show would introduce Indianapolis to the eye of Holliday T. Day, the first curator of contemporary art at the the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  She would curate the show, the 6th Indianapolis Art League Regional exhibit that fall.

Marion Garmel would cover the show in her September 25 Brush Strokes column in The Indianapolis News. The writer first discusses the parameters of the show, and then adds some of observations, as well advising of the prize winners, as follows, in part,

“The Art League Regional is open to artists residing within a 250-mile radius of Indianapolis, but is advertised mainly to area universities and art schools. 

That accounts for its trendiness and also, in a way, for its warmed-over New York look. Too many of the paintings smack of the East Village, say, or are bogged down in art history.”

Garmel cites a couple of works as examples of the type she characterizes in a somewhat dismissive way. The writer seems a bit at odds with the curatorial taste of Ms. Day, as she leads her article with those remarks, but does not really explain these feeling with any detail. 

Garmel does mention additional award winners such as  third prize for Eric Schuster's Figure with Carpet, and merit awards for and untitled figure-based oil by Ed Sanders and “Peg Fierke...for Octopus, an obsessively painted large oil of repeated dot-filled ovals.” 

The reader is left to wonder of all the works shown which ones Garmel considered warmed-over, bogged down, or something else altogether.

Just a couple of months later, Fierke along with Indianapolis painter Lois Main Templeton, would exhibit paintings at the Wilson Gallery of the Krannert Fine Art Center of Anderson College in Indiana. 

Here and There, Peg Fierke

Fierke is described in the preview/press release that appeared in the Anderson Daily Bulletin, December 7, 1986, as follows,

“...Fierke...believes an artist's work reflects his or her world view and serves as a mirror to help direct ...growth and change...

Fierke tries to use very few boundaries in her work. She works with a flexible means of expression to accommodate natural deviations and imperfections. Fierke's work also reflects a great amount of spontaneity, which comes as a result of the process of doing rather than preconception.”   

The article contains an image of Fierke's large oil on canvas included in the show, Here and There, and another blurb a few days later included an image of her oil painting, Huston St., also in the show.

Huston St., Peg Fierke

The following year, a show Peaceworks was mounted at Ruschman Art Gallery on Massachusetts Avenue. An Indianapolis News article on April 8, discussed the exhibit,

“Peaceworks (is) an exhibit dealing with the nuclear arms issue...Mark Ruschman, owner of the gallery, is donating space for the exhibit.

The hope is to raise $10,000 toward expenses of the June 28 Indianapolis Concert for Humanity at the Circle Theatre.

The concert itself is a donation and time and talent by central Indiana classical musicians in support of Indianapolis Nuclear Weapons Freeze and Indianapolis Physicians for Social Responsibility.”

Over 25 artists participated, including Peg Fierke.

News writer Garmel would again cover Peg Fierke the following year in her column of May, 20, 1987. The writer reviewed her two-person show with Karl F. Michel on Mass Ave at the time. She writes,

“431 Gallery, the 'alternative space' artists-cooperative gallery...continues to be the least polished of gallery spaces (on Massachusetts Avenue). But its current show of pastel drawings by Karl F. Michel and oil paintings by Peg Fierke...is one of its strongest. 

Fierke, who puts great dabs of paint all over her canvases, has moved from tiny leaf-like ovals to explosive patterns of large sail-like forms converging on one another.”

The following year, 1988, would bring three important exhibitions for Fierke in Indianapolis and the surrounding area.

Marion Garmel would again be the art columnist to cover the first show in question from that year, July's Omnibus Exhibit at Herron Gallery. Her July 14 column explains the rationale for the show, 

“Robert Roman, who has been temporary director of the (Herron) gallery and recently became permanent, decided that it would be beneficial for gallery-goers in Indianapolis to see how their own artists compare with artists in other parts of the country.

He also thought it would be nice to see a 'body of work' by each artists. Since most newcomers have yet to build a 'body of work,' he settled on established artists in 'mid-career.' ”

Artists from outside the area included Millie Wilson - Los Angeles, Herman Costa - New York and Barry Hehemann - Chicago and Rebecca Krinke - Boston. Area artists included Carl Pope, Ellie Siskind and Peg Fierke. 

Garmel considered the show as among the best in Indianapolis that year, and began her review generally speaking and then specifically about Fierke,

“It's an extremely strong exhibit, with as many different styles and visions as there are hours in a day.

The Indiana artists hold their own very well, thank you.

Most exciting is Peg Fierke...whose expansive canvases are ordered with patterns and lines and leaf shapes through which organic, growing forms emerge. With titles like Opulent Entropy and Spiral Jungle, they throb with color and life.”

The 34th Annual Drawing and Small Sculpture Show was presented at Ball State University a month or so later.  Artists from over 40 states entered for consideration of inclusion in the show, and twenty artists were chosen from the almost 400 entries by juror Charlotte Kotik, curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum in NYC.

Behavior Sediment, Peg Fierke

Fierke was among the twenty, and an image of her large oil crayon work, Behavior Sediment, from the show, was printed in both The Indianapolis Star on September 11, 1988 and Arts Indiana magazine in the October 1988 issue.

Another important exhibit to end Fierke's exhibition year in 1988 was the Indiana Directions '88 show at the Indianapolis Art League's Churchman-Fehsenfeld Gallery that fall.

It was again Marion Garmel who was to cover the show in the local press, and her article appeared in the September 28, Indianapolis News.  The show was a first for the venue, and Garmel explains the inception's conception in the opening lines of her article,

“The Indianapolis Art League had the great idea of stepping in when the Indianapolis Museum of Art dropped its big Indiana Artists Show by staging and Indiana Artists Show of its own. 

But the Indianapolis Art League is not the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It has neither the prestige, the space, nor the resources. 

So Indiana Directions '88, the competitive exhibit for Indiana artists...is a very nice but sparse show...”

Fierke was included, as were Omnibus artists Carl Pope, Pamela De Maris, and Ellie Siskind – and others including Mae Engron (covered elsewhere in the blog here), Ed Sanders (with his painting Torso, covered elsewhere in this blog, here), Valerie Eickmeier for her sculpture, Shark's Tooth, and James Wille Faust for his Best of Show award winner, Illusionist.

Garmel referred to Fierke's work only briefly under a section of  “familiar” works near the closing lines of her review, providing the name of Fierke's piece in the show, Radiomordmous. 

On the Side of Art and Earth.

The next year, Peg Fierke would move from 431 Gallery to a new art enterprise, Goldberg & Feldman Fine Arts, located on the city's north side. Her first show there, High Tolerance for Ambiguity, would be reviewed by Marcus Chandler in The Indianapolis Star, October 8, 1989.  In the review, Chandler also reviews the latest, then current, iteration of the Omnibus exhibit at Herron. 

Chandler contrasts the two exhibits, in so far as artistic motivations inherent in the artworks produced and shown, 

“All in one unsettling afternoon, I traveled...from one end of the artistic spectrum to the other, as I visited the Omnibus '89 exhibition and Peg Fierke's exhibition of paintings and drawings...

The 10 artists exhibiting...(in Omnibus '89) are highly intellectual and, for the most part, deadly serious painters, sculptors and photographers. Each of them uses his or her work to express a point of view.

Fierke, on the other hand, paints pictures that are beautiful. For her, art is an end unto itself. Fierke's paintings and drawings are not vehicles for expressing ideas.”

Thinking about the contrast he experienced, the writer goes on to explain his point of view, regarding the current contemporary art milieu. 

“Suggesting that someone's paintings are 'merely' aesthetically pleasing is damning criticism in many art circles. Art which is not coupled with a message is not 'serious,' so say some critics.

The energy and excitement Fierke invests in her paintings and drawings reveal commitment and purpose on a much higher plane than the high-minded sloganeering and posturing that all too often propels self-proclaimed 'serious art.' ” 

That Chandler is enthusiastic about Fierke's techniques and results is obvious, as he continues,

“Fierke creates frantic energy and movement in her paintings, a feat...challenging in abstract painting. 

She uses an elongated oval...to form patterns.  The repetition of the small figures and the slight differences among them makes her paintings appear to vibrate, often accelerated by Fierke's masterful sense of color.”

He describes two paintings in greater detail, Spiral Jungle and The Ritual, then sums up his observations about the lack of narrative in Fierke's work, despite some occasional referential imagery, observing,  “...it is clear that Fierke is not suggesting a narrative line or trying to drive home a point.” 

Chandler's remarks about Fierke's work and motivating factors seem valid. It's easy to recognize her and her generation as being a part of that mid-Century movement of artists in our city for whom abstraction was a respected foundation of an evolving modern art. The beautiful art for art's sake approach we see in not only Fierke, but Terry Steadham, Steve Redman and James Wille Faust, for examples, who also came of art school age in the '60s.

But back to Chandler and his article, he proceeds to write of the bi-polar shock at seeing Fierke's show first, and then the Omnibus exhibit, on the same afternoon,

“Leaving Fierke's visual playground for the Omnibus exhibit...is like leaving the arms of a sensuous lover to join William F. Buckley's Firing Line.

(In Omnibus,) One is assaulted on all sides by artists with an urgent story to tell.” 

Power Box, 1989, Peg Fierke

Chandler's review is especially helpful in covering Fierke's work in the late '80s, in that time of shifting tastes and oppositional forces in the overall art world. By way of his colorful criticism, he simplifies a nuanced amalgam of major trends and forces affecting the art world of the time to a mere couple of players, two easily understood factions. To a bout or contest, a war of wills, between archetypal energies, as he lays out – the lover and the fighter.  

A contest for, a conquest of, the hearts and minds of artists' brains, galleries' walls and the awestruck applause of the  audience, from that time until today. 

Indeed, as early as the following year, 1990, such a tussle would play out in a series of art shows and a symposium of talks and presentations that would explore these issues of art in great detail in our city, as we shall see in Part Five of this series to follow.  

Also in Part Five, Peg Fierke's later years as an artist through the lens of her current retrospective exhibit at Herron Galleries is discussed. The show has many examples of her work from the 1990s and 2000s and portrays  the substance of Fierke's lifelong efforts – her many years teaching, her lifetime of learning. Her career of creating her Evidence of Things Unseen.  

Mark Diekhoff, July 2026

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