Irvington Artist Alson E. Wrentmore – A Life of Religion, Politics and Art

(no title given), A. E. Wrentmore, 1953

Arrival, Education and Extant Works.

Alson E. Wrentmore was born in 1872 near Cleveland, Ohio. As a young man, he would graduate from Hiram College in Northeast Ohio, and then study at the University of Chicago. 

His obituary in The Indianapolis Star on August 13, 1959, explains the middle years of his life before his arrival  to the Indianapolis area,

“(Wrentmore) held pastorates in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas, and Oklahoma...and spent about ten years as an evangelist in the Central States.

He later served as school superintendent at several northwestern Indiana towns and wrote seven books on English which were widely used.

(He was)...an outspoken foe of intemperance, and served as a president of several organizations, including The Landlords and Tenants League, The American Property Owners and Christian Dry Crusaders.” 

As he was nearing age fifty, in December 1920, Wrentmore bought a house in Irvington on the east side of Ritter Avenue north of University Avenue. 

From about 1925 to 1929, part-time, he would pursue a master's degree from Indiana University, Bloomington. 

Within a year of earning that degree, as he approached age sixty, he would begin pursing state-wide political office seeking election to the office of Superintendent to Public Education on the third party ticket, the Prohibition Party, in 1930. 

We learn Wrentmore was also an artist, when he entered and was accepted for exhibition at the 24th Indiana Artists show at John Herron Art Institute in 1931. 

Other Irvington and Indianapolis artists who were in that year's exhibition, many of whom have been covered elsewhere in this blog, are Simon P. Baus, Constance Forsyth, William Forsyth, Marie Goth, John Wesley Hardrick, Cecil Head, Emma B. King, Dorothy Morlan, Isaac Lane Muse, Frederick Polley, Robert Selby  Oakley E. Richey, Elmer Taflinger, Lucy M Taggart, Clifton Wheeler, Hilah Wheeler and Charles Yeager.

Old Sugar Camp, A. E Wrentmore

Wrentmore's picture in the 24th annual show is not described in the press at the time. However, we do know that he was also represented in the 25th Indiana Artists exhibit the very next year, 1932, because a photograph of his actual painting (and its reverse side label) can be viewed on Ebay, where the work is offered for sale. 

The Old Sugar Camp depicts a winter landscape scene of a rudimentary A-frame shelter at a work site at a wood's edge. 

A  dormant field stretches beyond the encampment to a faraway white farmhouse on the horizon. 

The drab color scheme is the maybe the point of the painting –  depicting what? – maple sugaring and a hint of sweet warmth in the dead of winter? 

Another painting by A. E. Wrentmore can be found online. (image top of page) 

Untitled, it is described as dated (and purchased) 1953, and shows a bend of road or river, you be the judge, in the fall colors of a hilly landscape. 

The painting, if the date is accurate, was painted when Wrentmore was past 80 years old, and displays a more dreamy, folky style than the earlier work. 

Politics, Painting, Tragedy and Poetry.

Wrentmore was a man of many passions, as newspaper coverage attests over the following decades of his life. 

Prohibition Party politics was a focus his entire time in the Indianapolis area. He continued to run unsuccessfully as a candidate for U.S. Senator in 1932, Indiana Secretary of State in 1934, U.S. Congress in 1950 and Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction in both 1956 and 1958. (The last campaign being just one year before his death.)  

In the 1940s, Wrentmore's shared  passions of politics and painting were joined by poetry. 

The Indianapolis Star reports in January 1945 that he gave a talk as a member of a group called The Poet's Rendezvous, to others in the group of  40 poets from counties around Indiana,  on “the choice of poetic words.”  The same event featured Miss Florence Marie Taylor speaking on “correct rhyming.”

A September gathering of the same group, affiliated with the Indiana Federation of Poetry Clubs, was held at the Indianapolis YMCA, and featured  a  portrait of the group's president, Miss June Winona Snyder, painted by A. E. Wrentmore.

A later annual convention of the group held that year at the World War Memorial Building in Indianapolis, featured another talk by Wrentmore, titled Sources of Inspiration for Writing Poetry.

That Wrentmore continued painting can be surmised more from public notice columns in the local papers than from seeing examples in exhibitions reported at the time. He rarely is at auction or hanging in museums today. 

Wrentmore's death was announced with the obituary on August 13, 1959, mentioned above.  He died at his longtime home in Irvington on Ritter Avenue where “he maintained a studio for landscape painting ” according to The Indianapolis Star.

Just a month later, in September, auctioneers L. C. Chandler and Marley Neal would hold a sale of “all oil paintings by Mr. Alson E. Wrentmore, deceased,” along with frames and other furnishings from his studio. The public auction was held September 30, and the terms were cash.

As a historical Irvington footnote, a tragic event in Wrentmore's life is that his daughter would lose her life at the hands of her husband in 1932, around the time of  the elder Wrentmore's U.S. Senate campaign and exhibition at the Indiana Artists shows. 

Both his daughter and son-in-law were former Irvington residents who had relocated to Illinois to pursue teaching careers. 

The sensation of the murder, arrest, trial and sentencing would fill the pages of Illinois and Indiana papers over the following months and year. The effect of such a monstrous occurrence on his art and poetry remains unknown and unreported in public sources of information.

Mark Diekhoff, July 2026

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

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

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

The First and Last 'Indiana Artists' in Indianapolis

Jurors Patterson Sims (left) and Kit Basquin interact with MXYZ/MIMOSA
 by Roger Laib, 70th Indiana Artists Show, IMA

The first Indiana Artists exhibition in Indianapolis was held at the Herron Art Institute in April of 1908. The 70th Indiana Artists Show biennial was held in June 1985 at Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

The show arose from earlier annual exhibits of Indiana Artists held in Richmond, Indiana in 1898 onward. For a period of time, after its establishment in Indianapolis until about 1925, it was the same show traveling between the two cities. After that time, each city would separately organize and host a distinct exhibit of Indiana Artists annually. In about 1960, the event in Indianapolis would become a biennial event hosted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

Not historical in nature, the Indianapolis exhibits, in their own time, would showcase the contemporary offerings of Indiana's premier and professional artists. The styles of the artists over time would range from academic, naturalist and impressionist at the beginning, all the way to minimalist, post-modern, and neo-expressionist by the end.

In between were periods of modern art, social realism and regionalism that were followed by surrealism, abstraction, pop and minimalism.  Throughout the run of the exhibition history, the capture and representation of the Hoosier local landscape, by various means, would be of preeminent concern to many Indiana artists.

Prelude to a Tradition.

Exploring the weeks and months around the start of the inaugural Indiana Artists exhibition at Herron  in April 1908, it is discovered that the show did not arise out of nowhere. The Indianapolis art scene of the time was not some creative nature abhorring a vacuum. The reputations of many city artists had already been established by then, and many young artists were following in their footsteps. The John Herron Art School and its museum, the John Herron Art Institute had been established in 1902, and was to host many varied art exhibitions, including some annuals, in its earliest years. 

For example, the 23rd Annual Exhibition of the Art Association of Indianapolis was winding up in January 1908. It featured national, regional and local art with pieces being lent for that year's exhibit by Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Cincinnati Museum Association, to name just a few. Of note were paintings by Frank Duveneck of Cincinnati, a talented artist and well-known art instructor in that city.  

Just a month later, the 12th Annual Exhibit of the Society of Western Artists which was held at Herron in February 1908.  This exhibit series had launched the wider recognition and further successes of Hoosier Group originals like T. C. Steele, J. Ottis Adams and William Forsyth. T. C. Steele was represented by the Brown County landscape, The Hill Country, and Adams presented several works from the area near his Brookville studio home, The Hermitage, such as the picture Winter Morning. The exhibit also included the painting, The Willows, by Dorothy Morlan. This picture was also painted in Brookville, by Miss Morlan, a resident of Irvington. The Willows was noteworthy by its acceptance for exhibition in the 103rd Annual Exhibit of American Art in Philadelphia for later that year. 

The First One (and the Second).

On a newspaper page shared with many ads showing the latest touring cars and automobiles on offer, some made by car manufacturers located downtown, an exhibition of Indiana Artists was announced for the first time in Indianapolis.  The March 21, 1908, Indianapolis News reads,

“Beginning April 4 and closing May 4 there will be an exhibition of original works in oil, water color, black and white and in sculpture by Indiana resident artists at the John Herron Art Institute. The artists of Indiana are invited participate. Works are to be submitted to a jury of selection and must be delivered at the institute on or before March 28...”

Lucille Morehouse, the art writer for The Indianapolis Star, was not yet on the scene. She would debut about 1913, so the exhibit lacks critical observation by local newspaper writers. However, an inventory of artists and some of their works is contained in an April 4 column in The Indianapolis News,

“There are thirty-seven of the home artists represented in the Indiana display, representing a total of 118 numbers in the catalogue.  A preliminary survey of the exhibit shows that Mr. Steele...has three studies rich with the warmth of autumn coloring and filled with the spirit of the State he loves and loves to paint. There is also a portrait of his daughter. William Forsyth has a group of nine works, two of which are water colors. Otto Stark is represented by six pictures. Emma B. King shows five. Dorothy Morlan also has a group, five in number. R. B. Gruelle exhibits three pictures...”

Other local artists are listed, ending with a note about a younger artist new to the scene at the time. Simon Baus, a future Irvington Group artist, the article writes, “shows two studies in oil.”

And so, the first Indiana Artists show in Indianapolis ended. Its success, or not, was not mentioned in the papers at the time, however it would return for an encore the next year.

That following year, the exhibit, not yet anticipating its future legacy, was not referred to as an annual event.  The February 4, 1909, Indianapolis Star, provides coverage of the show, with a bit more critical observation than the previous year's show,

“Paintings that form an interesting and surprising display of the accomplishments of Indiana artists were placed on exhibition yesterday...There are 164 paintings, drawings and pieces of sculpture...all of them by Indiana artists and most of them of high artistic merit...

The one thing thing which strikes a visitor first of all in looking down the long gallery...is the extreme freshness of color. It is a marked display of the trend of art during the last few years when painters have begun to give color and lights their true value and have ceased to soften colors down to a lower scale. The pictures, with few exceptions, are in unmixed, fresh colors,  and in the landscapes the brilliance of sunlight is given its true value, a piece of artistic daring that could not have been attempted a few years ago.”

Just one painting, and not a landscape, is described in greater detail in the article,

“A painting which is creating great interest is that of the late Herman Lieber by T. C. Steele. It was loaned by the German House and is given a prominent place in the exhibit.”

Portrait of Herman Lieber by T. C. Steele, 1908,
Athenaeum, Indianapolis

The article seems to reference the extraordinary Portrait of Herman Lieber by Steele that is still on display in the Rathskeller restaurant in downtown's Athenaeum, in the 'Vonnegut' dining room.

The Last One, from the Jurors.

Perhaps it was known by the powers that be at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1985, that the 70th Indiana Artists Show, was to be the last. Many local artists were caught off balance, though, when that turned out to be the case. That was two years in the future, though, out of sight and out of mind. 

As mentioned above, the exhibit, since about 1960 had become  a biennial event, showing in odd-numbered years, and wasn't set to happen again until 1987.

The show in 1985 was appearing in the summer slot, a slot shared by the IMA's other biennial, the Painting and Sculpture Today exhibit. That show was held in the off, even years. It was also a large group show, but it featured national trends in contemporary art, highlighting artists from New York and Chicago. 

Jurors statements regarding the Indiana Artists appeared at the fore of the catalog publication that accompanied the 70th Show. 

Kit Basquin, an art critic in Milwaukee, and a former Indiana art gallery owner, describes some parameters that guided her decisions as a juror,

“Qualities considered are compositional resolution, controlled technique, originality, risk, energy, and intensity.”  

She noted, among the artists and their work,

“A sense of isolation prevails. There seem to be few artists interacting in a visual dialogue with each other, and few constructing a dialogue with artists outside.”

Juror Hollis Sigler, an artist in Chicago, describes her decisions,

“I will say that tried to choose those that pushed their ideas successfully.  In good works, the viewer is not distracted from the spell of the work by either unrefined technique of by self-consciousness. The distraction caused by poor technique is self-evident. Though I would choose every time a work of poor technique, that was ambitious conceptually, over a work poorly thought out but expertly accomplished.”  

Specifically about paintings, she directed the following remarks,

“Many artists, I felt, needed to work on color. Color is absolutely basic. Until one understands the many aspects of color, one cannot communicate with paint.”

About the show in general, she sums up her observations, ending with a prescient question,

“The (70th Show) has a bit of everything, different styles, different media. I chose what I thought pushed ahead, showed originality and good, quality craftsmanship.  I think it represents what is happening in Indiana in the 1980s – a diversity, but within a growing national culture. Indiana, like the rest of the country, is becoming less regional in its thoughts about art.  For better or worse, the state is more connected with the large, major art centers. Sometimes I believe in the goodness of this, how it broadens all of us. But then, too, will we all begin to look, dress, think alike?”

Finally, juror Patterson Sims, Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, expresses himself in a more obtuse, even magical manner. He writes of the selection process itself, as if observing a seance, 

“There is a kind of trance intelligence that guides jurors as the selection process proceeds. Awareness becomes almost premeditated about what is wrong and what is right to an exhibition. A balance of media and attitude hovers at the edge of conscious thought to separate the affirmed from the rejected.”

He mentions that the processes and choices among the three jurors, himself included, 

“...were ripe with reservation and disagreement, yet they reflect – like an opinion poll made from the ideas of thousands  to mirror the views of millions – a vivid consensus about...(art)...in Indiana in 1984-85.”

Sims notes a particular common theme, mentioned by juror Sigler as an attribute of the Indiana artists themselves, here by Sims as an attribute of their art, 

“...though the isolation of the individual may be shared as a subject...(the) means of expression are radically different.” 

From a Critic, Like an EF5.

Two years prior, in 1983, the 69th Indiana Artists was reviewed critically by Indianapolis Star arts writer, Steve Mannheimer. Perhaps his measured and thoughtful remarks can be summed  up simply by saying that the exhibit was convoluted in whole and lacking in parts. Mannheimer ended his review with suggestions for possible future changes regarding the show. Perhaps someone somewhere was listening.

(Those observations are discussed in greater detail in an earlier blog about Patrick King and his pioneering Contemporary Art gallery on Massachusetts Avenue in the 1980s, and can be found here.)

With his review of the 70th Show, Mannheimer would have one last bite at the Indiana Artists apple, as it turns out. He finds a connective thread running through the show that was not noticed, or at least not mentioned, by the jurors of the show.  The headline of his Art World column in the Indianapolis Star on June 30, 1985, says it all –  Whirlwind of artistry hits museum galleries.

With exuberant, writerly finesse, Mannheimer's opening paragraph sets the tone,

“Look out Oz, here comes Indiana.

From Terry Copen's grand-prize winning Son Hero to the rambling shambles of Roger Laib's MXYZ/MIMOSA, probably the most controversial and certainly one of the worst works included, the 70th Indiana Artists Show spins with a tale of cyclonic energy.

The maelstrom or whirlpool or cyclone has been a pervasive artistic image in recent years, fluttering the neo-expressionist coattails with the same intensity it riles rural roadside cattails.”

Wow – mighty hard, the wind she blows, as Mannheimer notes. 

He relays in his unique and singular voice, a storm damage report, as he surveys the state of both the ruins and the firmer foundations in the aftermath of Hurricane Art. 

He starts with Laib's  MXYZ/MIMOSA,  

“There was mythic scale and allegory in pictures of clipperships crushed by icebergs or tiny mountain villages swept away by snowslides. Such grand drama. However, is precisely what's missing in works like Laib's huge, cantankerous conglomeration of suspended leaves and sticks, bark, lumber, shutters, canvas and a parachute.

Large as a mastodon, it resembles nothing so much as the forced crossbreeding of a house and a tree at gale-force velocity. Aggressive in its rawness, totally undeflected by considerations of craft or design intelligence, it has all the presence of a 300-pound left tackle with a high voice, which is provided by a radio in the center of the construction playing loud enough to be bothersome but not quite disruptive.” 

About the show's grand prize winner, Terry Copen, Mannheimer writes,

“In Copen's winning work, the Son Hero stands waist-deep in a whirlpool. Down by his side, he clutches a fistful of artist's brushes painted with sketchy linearity and suggesting a bouquet and/or an effusive physical release. 

Copen's other and actually better work, convenient for our purposes named Whirlpool, depicts a figure again half-submerged, reaching around to encircle then point to a smaller figure's eyes.”

Please see color images of Terry Copen's work,
including Son Hero here

Mannheimer sees the second painting as a pun, of artist as eye and seer, riding a whirlpool and recognizing it for what it is,

 “(a symbol of)...the modern quest for the steady-state pulse of the gyroscope, great inward acceleration without the fear of flying apart, excitement without risk.”

Perhaps a final two examples that most readily support Mannheimer's premise about a windy theme breezing through the show, would be work by Steve Paddack and Richard Burkett,

“Obviously, we hear the wind blowing through Steve Paddack's Monuments, Windy Day, a rather pretty skyscape half way between (Gianbattista) Tiepolo and a tornado. Two smokestacks bear a family resemblance to the funnel clouds Paddack has painted in the past.

Richard Burkett's two matching ceramic sculptures, Midwestern Vision (No. 2 and No. 3), both feature square little clay houses tipped up on a corner, pyramid roofs surmounted by funnel clouds.”

After discussing more examples that veer further off the Tornado Alley he drove in on, Mannheimer sums up his thoughts at the end,

“Of course the bottom line of all such shows is the futility of any grasping at interpretive straws. Any and all overarching theorizing must be done with the same running desperation which jurors, no matter how qualified, necessarily apply to the herculean task of making so many judgments.

Only 81 works by 64 artists are left from and initial submission of more than 2,000 slides by 681 artists. Pretty much the same effects, that is to say the same relative coherence within diversity, could be achieved by a lottery of every artist in the state with an art school pedigree.

Actually, come to think of it, we may still be in Kansas. It would probably be hard to tell the difference.” 

Controversial Aftermath and New (or Final?) Frontiers.  

Just as the first Indiana Artists exhibit in Indianapolis did not start in a vacuum, the last was not to be an end all and be all either.

Regionals, of the art exhibit kind, had been losing their luster for awhile by the mid-1980s. Certainly, turns out, that was going to be the trend in Indianapolis. 

Other trends and series would spring up and gain traction for awhile, such as the Indiana Artist of the Month series, and Forefront Gallery offerings, of local and national artists respectively, at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The Arts Postcard Series sponsored by Arts Insight, a monthly art magazine in Indianapolis, showcased Indiana artists in a new annual series that began in the early 1980s.   

Nevertheless, there was consternation in the local arts community as a result of recent developments in the local art scene. 

Two art collectives arose almost simultaneously that spring, and would join forces in the wake of the official announcement that the Indiana Artists exhibition had indeed been canceled for that year. 

Marion Garmel, in her Brush Strokes column in The Indianapolis News on April 8, 1987, notes the beginnings of one such group,

“Richard Nickolson is a small-boned, soft-spoken professor of painting, with a long, gnome-like beard. He doesn't look like the sort of man to start a revolution.

But he is angry and he's not going to take it any more.

'There is a need for us to have a voice, but not a voice that says the Indianapolis Museum of Art is the only voice for artists, or the Indiana Repertory Theatre is the only voice for actors,' Nickolson told a capacity crowd at the first meeting of the Coalition of Indianapolis Artists at the 431 Gallery Monday night.”

Garmel writes about some sources for the artistic community's displeasure,

“Among other things, they are 'dismayed' that establishment institutions got top priority at the recent forums called by the Indianapolis Arts Council to develop a long-range cultural plan for Indianapolis.

'It means individual artists will be given the shaft again,' said artist-writer Doris Hails.”

An April 12, Indianapolis Star article written by Anne Cunningham discusses the second arts advocacy group formed earlier that February, also present at the meeting,

“The United Artists and Media Exchange, representing 40 Afro-American artists...formed...to provide a voice for its members. Its chairman, Charles E. Tripp, attended the Coalition meeting. With 45 visual artists, actors, musicians and writers attending, the floor was opened to a rapid-fire discussion of problems the members in each artistic discipline face.”

Cunningham penned a later article, also in The Star, May 24, that focused on a major complaint of the local Indiana artists that spring,

“The biennial Indiana Artists Show, a juried exhibit which would normally be shown this summer, has been canceled. The Indianapolis Star has received and published several letters to the editor, written by local artists who are upset by the cancellation. They have charged that the IMA is shirking its responsibility to Indiana artists, and that they have been denied an opportunity to showcase their works for visitors who will attend the (Pan-Am) games.” 

Cunningham, to her credit, seems to have adopted the controversy as a personal cause celebre, and would continue writing about developments in her columns in The Indianapolis Star. 

On July 26, she provided an update on the activities and plans of the Coalition,

“...in July, 16 members of the Coalition's steering committee met in a Morris Building artist's studio to finalize details for A Creative Affair, an art exhibition and performance event that will open Friday night at the Goodman Building, 20 West Washington Street.” 

As a side note, the Goodman Building, at 20 West, was right next door to 24 West, built in 1897 for the H. (Herman) Lieber Company, which specialized in picture framing, bookbinding and art supplies up until 1979.

The Coalition pop-up show was reviewed with a caustic brevity by Marion Garmel, a normally cheerful and upbeat writer, in the August 8, 1987, Indianapolis News,

“Indianapolis artists, upset that , in order to house its Latin American show, the museum of art canceled its biennial Indiana artists show, have mounted a show of their own on four floors of the downtown Goodman Quad. The best thing about it is the colorful banner over the door proclaiming A Creative Affair. Nearly 90 artists are exhibiting everything from mock altar triptychs to a dark and shadowy copy of Rembrandt's Self Portrait.”

Cunningham would provide slightly more detailed coverage of the show, albeit critical as well, in her column in The Star on August 9, 

“The show affirms our respect for the work of artists like Richard E. Nickolson and Ed Sanders, and introduced us to the talent of other artists like Brian Fick. Yet, the depth of the city's art scene  remains at issue. Many viewers will leave the show with the feeling that this city has some good artists and a lot of work to do.” 

But perhaps Cunningham's most prophetic remarks are about the synthesis of artists self organizing their own exhibits and large, raw spaces downtown,

“A Creative Affair proves that city artists can organize and work together toward a common goal...It certainly suggests that the city's immediate downtown area is a perfect place for a large, noncommercial, contemporary art exhibition  space to compliment the existing commercial galleries.”

The Stutz Factory complex of buildings, was the birthplace of the mass production of the famous Bearcat automobile. Its founding at 10th and Capitol was near in time and place to the Indiana Artists Exhibition a little across town. The Stutz would become a showcase for  exhibits of the kind envisioned by Cunningham; large, raw and downtown.

In 1993, annual artists studio open house nights would begin at the Stutz, and grow into a local cultural phenomenon. 

The Faris Building, in south downtown, would hold similar events, even earlier, although on a more ad hoc basis, when it was still known as the Morris Building in the 1980s.  

Both large, sprawling warehouses would hold well-attended annual open house events throughout the 1990s.   

Contemporary Indiana Artists, in the calm after the whirlwind caused by the cancel and end of the longtime Indianapolis exhibit in 1987, were left drifting on a Sargasso Sea of sorts.  Like jetsam, then flotsam, they would self-organize in an effort to thrive, or at least not drown. 

But without the deeper pocket megaphones of the art institutions and non-profits, without the bandwidth of the official councils and forums –  in the echo of their large, raw and isolated space – would anyone hear them scream?  

Mark Diekhoff, January 2026

See also: A Homecoming for artist Terry Copen

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

127th Annual Exhibition of Indiana and Ohio Artists

St. Joseph's, Terre Haute, Michael Neary

Granddaddy of Indiana Art Shows in Richmond.

From the roots of a mostly self-taught group of artists in the Richmond, Indiana area from about 1870 onward, the Richmond Art Association was formed in 1896, and two years later, in 1898, this organization would establish an annual exhibit of Indiana artists. It has expanded to include Ohio artists over the years, and includes both advanced and amateur award divisions. 

The Indiana State Fair has hosted arts and crafts exhibits and competitions for over 170 years. The participation of Indiana's professional contemporary artists in the event have waxed and waned over the many decades, with the first half of the 20th Century being arguable to most relevant  period in which the exhibit stood as an equal pillar and mainstay with other annual events in attracting the state's best talent, including professionals, to its exhibition halls.

Other Indiana-related annual shows have come an gone. The 'Grand Circuit' rotating and traveling show of the Society of Western Artists. The original showcase for the works of the artists who would become known as the Hoosier Group, the annual exhibition had an eighteen-year  run from 1896 until 1914. 

The Indianapolis-based Annual Exhibit of Works by Indiana Artists was held from 1908 through 1969. Originally held as an annual event at John Herron Art Institute, it became a biennial event at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the 1970s until its last iteration, the 70th Indiana Artists Show in 1985.  

The newer old kid on the block, is the Hoosier Art Salon, which began in 1925 and was held at Marshall Field & Company in Chicago. It would move to Indianapolis for the 1942 show, and continues with the 101st Hoosier Art Salon being hosted by the Indiana State Museum last August.

Annual shows of the Indiana Artists Club,  began in  1917 and continued for many years at revolving locations such as the Union Trust Building and Spinks-Arms Hotel. It moved to L. S. Ayers and Company from 1935 -1989. After two years at University of Indianapolis, it has continued from 1992 to the most recent 93rd Annual in 2025 at Newfields (formerly IMA). 

Irvington Artists, later called the Irvington Group, held annual exhibitions in the east side community of the same name from 1928 through 1937. 

Two other exhibitions in Indianapolis that were held more than a few years failed to develop generational staying power. They included the Indiana Directions (and later Indiana Directions and Regional) held as a biennial from 1976 through the early 2000s at the Indianapolis Art League (later the Indianapolis Art Center), and the Indiana Arts Competition hosted by American States Insurance from 1987 through 1995. 

Another local art event and competition began in 1994 when Phil Campbell, artist, and owner of Hot House Gallery, started Masterpiece in a Day. The outdoor event began its run at the Faris Building and its environs and moved to Fountain Square and the Murphy Arts Center in the early 2000s. It continues to this day.

Harrison Center in Indianapolis has presented annual 'color-themed' shows every December since about 2002, with its latest, Golden Ticket, just ended. And the Indianapolis studio gallery run by Justin Vining has recently presented the Sixth Annual Vining Gallery Invitational at its East 10th Street location.

It is clear that a sustained duration of 127 years running for the Anderson show, hosted now by the Richmond Art Museum, is an amazing feat in the annuls of Indiana art history. 

Past and Present, Spread Over Four Rooms. 

The permanent collection room of the Richmond Art Museum (RAM), certainly sets a high standard of artistic achievement. William Merritt Chase's, Self Portrait (in the 4th Avenue Studio), is a glory to behold. He is a magician not only with paint but also bare canvas. And he portrays not only himself, but every painter, standing aside a blank canvas waiting for something to happen.  That moment at the start of a new work, is captured in the picture. It looks like maybe he used that bare space to clean off his brushes, and yet, the promise of those haphazard marks are just the first steps of any masterpiece. It is a picture, both inside and outside the picture, of an artist assured, aside the task at hand.

Amazingly, not to be outdone, is the museum's spectacular new acquisition,  Emma B. King's, Pic-a-Back. The canvas exists out of time, out of genre – outside any art movement – in a timeless moment of sunlit beauty –  in a real, yet dreamland, world.  That such a thing could have occurred or been imagined, let alone painted with such mastery, is beyond words. 

The room is loaded with great art and artists from the permanent collection, too numerous to describe in this preface.  Suffice to say, they will whet the appetite of the eyes, to see more wonderful things in the adjoining rooms and hallways of the 127th Annual show.

Landscapes Abound.

The Lake I Grew Up On, Justin Vining

The Lake I Grew Up On, by Justin Vining, is a large brooding landscape dominated by the inky waters of a large lake beneath a dramatic display of clouds and sky. With night fast approaching, the water appears choppy, but maybe it is reflecting the dark and turbulent spectacle above. The last mute pink and yellow daylight slips down at a horizon, ringed by a thin back-lit strip of land – the intermediary between lake and sky. That narrow band of terra firma is crammed with specks of bright yellow cast from windows of the numerous homes that hug the shore and stare at each other across the waters.

A Hint of Autumn, Donna Shortt

Donna Shortt has two contribution that display landscapes of a similar mood; darkness and water in one and twinkling light and night sky in the other. Her award-winning A Hint of Autumn is a pocket of wooded deep shade at the foot of a creek that trails away toward fewer trees and a brighter light. The green and gray of the scene shows just a few spots of orange-changing leaves almost too slight to notice, so subtle is their hint.  Her other piece, Community Stars, has a night sky so thickly populated with faraway planets and suns that the little domestic village beneath is like some faraway outpost, some western remote beneath the Milky Way. With our local light pollution, we rarely get our skies so full of stars.

Staying on the subject of dark, brooding and somber landscapes, are the two submissions of Curt Stanfield and one by Ray Hassard.  Stanfield's vertical Dawn's Embrace shows the winter beauty of high horizon sunrise in golden pink tones above and through a web of bare and skeletal branches of scrub and a bed of bright blue snow. One cannot argue with the prettiness of the moment, but somehow it seems a scene, in orange and blue, seen before on postcards in Florida. Those dawn or dusk photos, substituting beaches for the icy sand of Indiana winter.  

Solitude, Curt Stanfield

Stanfield's other picture,  Solitude is altogether more effective in portraying a frozen moment less seen. Shades of grayish white and whitish gray, make up the land and the sky of this picture. The precision and geometry of its square shape are accentuated by the minimalism and simplicity of the subject matter. The straight lines of pole and thinner wire, of muted horizon and diagonal and dormant vegetation. A wedge of lifeless woods, in dark winter brown. The painting lives up to its name.

Ray Hassard's Soggy field is also a nearly monochrome. He paints a wide, flat, green-gray field of muddy grass.  Large pockets of standing water reflects the severe winter sky off its puddles. One feels a chill and wet feet when looking at the picture. 

Less moody, are David M. Seward's two pictures. This artist was seen recently in the Hoosier Salon in Indianapolis with two landscape paintings of innovative composition. His submissions here are less so, but still effective in their ability to capture and direct the viewer's eye into the heart of his landscapes with his use of light and brushwork. The greatest contrast of light and dark and the most detailed strokes of paint exist together to create his centers of attention. They are offset from the actual center and balanced by the other elements he captures in the scene to direct movement. 

Afternoon Barn, David M. Seward

Afternoon Barn has a heave and a ho of pond and hedge to zigzag toward the white of cloud and black of a shady soffit on the side of the barn.  Bonita Springs Parking has the shade of three tree trunks, two of which out of frame of the painting, running in a parallel diagonal to the white sun soaked bark of a tree thrust forward from the shady roots near its base.

Less moody still, and more playfully vibrant, are two city scenes by Michael Neary. Painted in the gregarious greens and cumulus whites of high summer, his paintings display the most idiosyncratic brushwork of any landscapes in the show.  Entirely effective in capturing his scenes, the brushwork appears energized and excited. Both Gowyn's Back Yard and St. Joseph's, Terre Haute (top of page) exude an  intensity that vibrates. 

Both paintings possess a lovely clutter of domestic or civic deferred maintenance; overgrown grass, sagging sidewalks, crumbling curbs. Two light posts in the St. Joseph's picture lean away from each other in the foreground, while the twin church steeples in the background, seemingly of firmer foot, point straight as arrows, side by side, toward the sky. 

In the amateur division, four pastel by two artists showcase the differing temperaments of their creation. Betty Knapp's two pieces, Birch Gateway and Winter Surprise, depict intimate and seasonal corners of nature where trees dominate traditional impressionist compositions. Elisabeth Von Der Lohe in her two works reveals a nature more roiling and majestic. Her technique, not an impression, but a tangible reality, almost photographic.  The tumult and crash of a rocky coastline in Crushing Waves and the sublime merger of lake, trees and sky in Summerpeace. 

Two prize winners in the division are similar works by Victoria Pope and Jenelle Burris. Both western redrocks, of needles or spires. Pope's Bryce Sunrise and Burris' Garden of the Gods paint with pastel or oil, well known and loved park vistas, rock formations as they mingle with the sun.

Figures and Portraits.

Rope Swing, Brookville, Mark Van Buskirk

Back to the Advanced Division, Mark Van Buskirk's ambitious, large oil, Rope Swing, Brookville, merges landscape with  a multitude of figures. The young men and mostly women, in bathing suits,  dispatch from their kayaks and canoes at a riverside and gather at the base of an epic tree trunk.  The technique in the application of paint, the hues chosen – the result is a hazy mythology, as opposed to a snapshot narrative. Huge dollops of pure pigment in the canopy of leaves and sky. 

A simple scene of young people swimming and having fun on the river. But captured at the moment between on the river and swinging in the air. The figures climb carefully over tree roots and muddy banks in single file. NPCs in their anonymity, no one is the hero yet. They could be anyone standing in line, backsides and bikinis, seeking to up the thrill.

A prize winning portrait, The Break of Day, by Dianne K. Porter, could almost be surrealism. The profile of a bearded and bespectacled older man, in a loose and wrinkled flannel robe, stands in profile to meet a full face of sunlight from an out of view window. The background is a featureless and of total black. The dreamlike part is the gnarled bare branches of what looks like a walking stick tree between the man and the window. Almost like wisps of steam off his coffee cup. But whatever it is must be off to the side, because it casts no shadow across him whatsoever. 

There is something about a coffee cup. John Hrehov's Morning Nancy (Indianola) is in interesting composition that merges portrait, genre-scene, landscape and still life. An amalgam of uncomplicated lines and shapes, and restrained color fields. Even the flowers that dominate the right side of the picture do so with perfect manners. As a whole, it reminds of the symbolic emotion of Emile Bernard and his Brittany simplifications with Paul Gauguin.

The Gift of Seeing, Stephanie Spay

Stephanie Spay paints a woman holding a coffee cup in The Gift of Seeing. She conjures the woman standing amid a dissolving space of orange gown, gray floral wallpaper and diffuse natural light. What the woman sees is open to interpretation. The gift the artist sees is clearly shown.

Stephanie Paige Thomson paints portraits and figures in a recognizable way. Her Portrait of Mark Burkett won a 4th Prize overall award in the 101st Hoosier Art Salon in August and has been acquired by RAM and hangs in their collection room currently. 

Old Friend, Stephanie Paige Thomson

She has two works in the the current show, including Old Friend, that like the Burkett piece is a no-nonsense portrait head within a sketchy, unfinished background. Her method preserves the early brushstrokes and empty canvas that provided the foundation for the finished likeness –  her seated figure The Old Ways Endure has the same sketchiness. The manner highlights the painted portrait subject to be sure, but seeing all three works together, their overtly similar technique makes them less individually memorable.

Subtle Stare in Secondary Harmony, Erin Smith Glenn

Erin Smith Glenn's award-winning Subtle Stare in Secondary Harmony is a head portrait with a simple background created in colored pencil. Here, again, the relatively empty background surrounding the space of the head. But the background space is colored in a shimmering gold. A young woman looking forward through creased eyelids with her stare. The face has silvery highlights on forehead, eyelids, nose, cheekbones and lips that mimic the glimmer of the woman's earrings. The silver and gold are a stunning décor. The emotion portrayed is as subtle as the stare veiled through almost closed eyes, and the dare of the piece is left to the viewer. 

The Merit Award winning portraits and figures in the amateur division  are Anna (Connection) by Anna Marcum and Love Everlasting by Jessica R. Maxwell.  

Randy (Devotion), Anna Marcum

Perhaps Marcum's more visually lively piece did not win an award but does delight the eyes. Her Randy (Devotion) is a large, vibrant head and shoulders portrait. The busy geometry of a plaid shirt, the astonishing abundance of a bushy blonde beard, and a bright salmon colored stripe that divides the background, all vie for attention at once. Like Randy in the painting, I smiled amid the colorful mayhem.

Still Lifes, Florals and What May Be Conceptuals.

Samantha Haring's two pastel still lifes are quiet and modest. Each portrays a single object on a brown clothed table against a white wall. The scenes are enmeshed in a tan monotone, warmed by hits of orange. Etched shows a mason jar and Seasoned a rumpled brown bag. Folds, textures, shadows and highlights invite close inspection. 

Aaron James Pickens has also created a still life in shades of beige and brown with Dried Corn – June 10th 2025. The flame-like shapes of dried husks provide the matter for the subject of the picture's exercise in painting jagged shapes.

Two interesting floral compositions by Leslie Shiels are exhibited. In Plain Sight shows a robust bouquet of burgundy, yellow and pink. Birds perch among the woody stems also in the arrangement, in a perspective that teeters from on high, looking down on the birds in the foreground from above, to straight on with the birds in profile at the top. The flowers survive the hidden pivot, as do the birds, without rustling a feather. 

Palekeet Trio, Leslie Shiels

Her other floral, Palekeet Trio, depicts a jar of cut sunflowers, three large conch shells and two birds. The layout of the painting is like an Italian altarpiece, with transcendent sunflowers at the epicenter, attended by open winged birds that hover like cherubs overhead. The conch shells gather at the foot of the painting like weeping women with their sounding of the sea. The color and energy lean Rococo, though, with its pastel shades of pink and yellow and blue. 

What to make of the two works by Constance Edwards Scopelitis? They are from an ongoing series called Recovery Blankets. Precise colored pencil drawings of striped and rumpled blankets draping atop wood panels. There must be a concept behind their obsessive assemblage of imagery and title. They all are named after 1960s pop song hits. Here she presents Brown Eyed Girl (inspired by Van Morrison) and Dead Flowers (inspired by the Rolling Stones). 

The blanket colors often relate directly to the song titles. The meaning of the Top 40 oldies, the incessant stripes and the wooden squares though? 

Maybe there is a basis in some personal memory or loss, some echo of connection or triggered emotion.  Or perhaps the specific nostalgia of the components were more randomly chosen, post-meaning – a sentimental tip of the hat to the machine-like efficiency of the 60s pop art minimalists, with their neon lights and crumpled cars. 

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.