Ivelisse Jimenez – 'Campo de Resonancia' at CAMi

Campo de Resonancia (detail), 2026, Ivelisse Jimenez

A playful installation of hanging painted fields of  color by artist Ivelisse Jimenez, is the first exhibition in the major, and most central, gallery space in the newly established Contemporary Art Museum Indianapolis (“CAMi”). 

The expansive CAMi building, on an enlarged campus adjacent to the earlier and ongoing Big Car and Tube facilities at the site are in a quiet and conveniently located Garfield Park neighborhood, near the Conservatory, just off Shelby Street on the near southside of Indianapolis.

Jimenez, who has lived and worked in New York previously, and now in Puerto Rico, describes her interests, generally, in the exhibition materials that accompany the show, as an exploration of

“...how experience exceeds language, how what is sensed, felt, or intuited often resists being named.” 

The exhibition statement further describes the artist's intentions regarding the name of the piece, her choice of materials and the layout of the installation. 

The title of the piece, translated as Resonant Field, is an installation that has been”built from hand-painted transparent and colored vinyl and reclaimed plastics.”  

Plastics are chosen for a reason, as described,

“The materials are not neutral. Plastics are 'deeply entangled with human survival, convenience, and innovation, yet inseparable from from environmental degradation.'  Jimenez doesn't resolve this contradiction – she works inside it.”

The gallery visitor is invited to enter the “permeable labyrinth” and become a moving vantage point, within the work's tapestry of color. 

The sprawling work that fills the large central Jeremy Efroymson Gallery of CAMi, does indeed resist words of explanation. It is more experience than idea. 

It is an attraction – a ballroom-sized, 3d maze. And as mazes go, it is much more happy and casual as opposed to cornered or claustrophobic.  You can easily imagine a gleeful, family-friendly atmosphere running amok with a good-size, opening-night crowd.

Campo de Resonancia is festive, and a harmony of complimentary hues. There is no free-for-all or clash in the artist's choice and tint of paint – mostly oranges and blue, but some yellow and greens as well. 

Pleasing not only in color, there is a serene organization to the right angles and straight lines of the hanging installation. The overall rectangular geometry is amplified by Jimenez painting additional smaller rectangular areas on some of the plastic sheets.   

Some of the delicate panels, that sway and move as one walks around them, have the further decoration of large overlaying brushstrokes, and some are mottled with a haphazard and organic distribution of markings that could either be related to a prior patina from an industrial use or perhaps from any of a number of techniques by the artist to vary the surface effects. 

Some panels are more transparent and allow an effect of layered color and texture when moving through the work.

Overall, in interacting with the installation, there is no feeling at all that you might be looking at or walking through reclaimed refuse. You might think of shower curtains, just because of the size of the sheets and their colorful plastic, and the fact that they are there hanging in front of your face.  But ideas of waste and of landfill do not really come to mind.  

There has been a transformation.

The Sprawl of Modernity.

It might be that earlier in the artist's career, her materials' origination as scrap and refuse were more front and center and on display. 

Jimenez participated in the 2004 exhibition None of the Above, which was a group show of younger Puerto Rican artists working in non-traditional media. 

Held at the Real Art Ways gallery ('RAW') in Hartford Connecticut, the show was covered in the (Connecticut) Record-Journal newspaper on April 25, 2004, in an article by Ralph Hohman. 

A photograph of a mixed media piece installed in a gallery corner on two walls by Jimenez, Ten con Ten #2, accompanied the article.   

Ten con Ten #2, Ivelisse Jimenez

This piece is more obviously an amalgam of found objects and scrap items of plastic than the artist's current installation at CAMi. 

Although difficult to know for certain from just a newspaper photo, some of the plastic components seem distressed and stained by an earlier industrial use, and appear taped together and painted, and dotted with rods projecting through the plastic into the wall. 

We see the beginning of a sprawling effect of the work moving from an original two-dimensional center out toward the edge and beyond.  In this case, onto an adjacent wall, and with the rods, projecting into three-dimensional space.

A few years later, Jimenez would pair with artist Lorri Ott in the two-person show Description Without a Place.  

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported on the artist's methods and motives on March 14, 2008. The article indicated that according to her web site, Jimenez,

“...builds layered constructions  on wall surfaces to 'deal with the idea of simultaneity and contradiction.' ” 

Elsewhere in the same paper on the same day, writer Dan Tranberg previews Jimenez' exhibition in general terms,

“Over in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood, a new two-person show, Ivelisse Jimenez and Lorri Ott: Description Without a Place...will...kick off...today at Exit (a gallery space)...

Both artists explore the idea of applying painterly sensibilities to three-dimensional constructions using a wide variety of found and manufactured materials...

Jimenez taught art at New York University until 2006, when she joined the faculty at the University of Puerto Rico.”

A full review of the show by the same writer would appear in the Plain Dealer two seeks later, on March 28, and include a photo of Jimenez's Ten con Ten 03exit. 

Ten con Ten 03exit, Ivelisse Jimenez

Tranberg's observations on the historical vein of the work in the show are relevant to Jimenez' current installation in Indianapolis,

“From the mid-1960s on, many artists have explored the elastic boundaries of painting as a unique form by abandoning its most obvious conventions.

Traditional materials such as canvas and rectangular wooden stretchers were among the first to go. More recently, like-minded 'painters' have made use of an array of commercially manufactured materials such as vinyl and acrylic glass in lieu of paint.

In some ways, by stripping away material conventions, these artists are homing in on fundamental conceptual and experimental aspects of painting.”

He continues by discussing Jimenez in particular,

“Jimenez...produces large-scale wall-hung installations that use notions of abstract painting as points of departure.

Variously colored sheets of translucent plastic are cut out to create most of the shapes in her four works in the show. Sheets of frosted plastic veil some areas, blurring and obscuring shapes below.

The optical effects of the configurations...often arranged in loose grid formations, recall a long list of early abstract painters, most notable Hans Hoffman, famous for visually pushing and pulling space with his use of brightly colored rectangles.

Freed as they are from the confines of rectangular canvases, Jimenez's works become actively engaged with the physical space of the gallery (and consequently with viewers)...

In a sense, they are like abstract paintings that have escaped from the two-dimensional realm.”

In 2010, the ideas of abstraction's infiltration into space seem to continue for Jimenez in her solo show at Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts in Miami. A preview description for the exhibition Blind Enough to See  in the March 18, Miami Herald, reads,

“Contrasted with the traditional considerations that the abstract is a negation of space, this body of work by Ivelisse Jimenez reflects upon both the absence and exteriority (the outside) as presences (as opposed to negations).”

Finally, the CAMi exhibition card that accompanies the show depicts the Jimenez wall work, also called Resonant Field, created in 2025. 

It seems a continuation of the wall constructions and installations of the artist's 10 con 10 series. Layers of plastic and industrial material such as vinyl tarps and tape, and paint. The work has irregular outward edges, although, by and large, it is made of  geometric and rectangular forms. It also has the infiltrating effect of reaching round the corner to start on a new wall.

The artist discusses plastics that wash ashore from the ocean onto the beaches of her current island home of Puerto Rico. 

There is something inevitable, something ceaseless and tireless, something restless in the push and pull of tides.

Via her recycling, throwaway raw materials are changed and ultimately transformed.

Jimenez has recycled and transformed a bit of her world, from painting and its two-dimensions to three. From surface to multi-layered and hanging in an ever expanding space. Somehow, she seems to achieve a new level of resonance with each new expanding reach. 

From the reclamation of trash from a seashore to an artwork on a gallery wall. From an artwork on a gallery wall to one intruding into the space of a gallery visitor. An now at CAMi, to gallery visitors, strolling amid the happy hallways of her work. 

Reaction to Campo de Resonancia is not easily put into words. What one feels or has a sense of is indeed more intuition than explanation. 

Of things that wash up on the beach, perhaps driftwood, as opposed to seashells, is an apt metaphor for the work of Jimenez.  Broken trees bleached and made more elegant by the relentless action of water and wave. 

Mark Diekhoff, August 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.

Theodore Clement Steele – Indiana's Master Impressionist from Munich to Brown County – Part Two

On the Road, 1909, T. C. Steele

To Seize the Beauty of Earth.

That T. C. Steele remained active and productive until the end of his life is indisputable. A February 25, 1926, Indianapolis News article about a then current exhibition in Bloomington at his Indiana University studio verifies his most recent batch of works,

“A special exhibition of winter landscapes painted from the window of his cottage (on campus) this winter by Prof. T. C. Steele...will be on display in the university studio next week. About twenty-five pictures will be shown for first time, including a number of autumn landscapes.

...Professor Steele has completed about fifteen pictures this winter, which season, he says, has been favorable for his work.”

One such work, possibly, is the painting The Bridge Over the Jordan River, 1925, included in the current Brown County Art Gallery show. The work is the latest in date of all the artworks presented in the current show, and the only painting from 1925.

It shows a winter scene with a stream and a few trees in the muted fogs of the season. Its colors are cool, almost moist, a lavender and gray, a soft green, and some warmer browns.  

The Bridge Over the Jordan River, 1925, T. C. Steele

(The exact view of the Jordan River, renamed Campus River in 2020, on the I. U. campus can be seen today in this image taken recently although in the spring or summer. The three trees most in the foreground have grown in size and survive the years.)

T. C. Steele view of Jordan River as it appears today
photo: https://williamscreekmgt.com/project/iu-campus-river-restoration/

In May 1926, just after the death of his fellow artist, and Hoosier Group member, Otto Stark on April 14, in Indianapolis at the age of 67, T. C. Steele was to have a final one-man exhibition. Held at the H. Lieber Company gallery in Indianapolis, the show was reviewed by Lucille Morehouse in The Indianapolis Star and an unnamed writer in The Indianapolis News in the first weeks of May.

from May 15, 1926 Indianapolis Star

The News article appeared first on May 8, and reads, in part,

“Not for some time has there been hung a group of paintings containing such variations of emotions, both gentle and grim, as are evidenced in the nineteen canvases by Theodore C. Steele on exhibition in the H. Lieber Company gallery. Each picture holds before the spectator a mood which expresses itself with definite intent. The artist was not satisfied with the portrayal of a few of these moods. He has swept with his brush a wide horizon and with quiet power has captured in paint a throbbing individuality.

The veteran artist, now in his seventy-ninth year, seemingly has poured into this group of pictures the accumulated knowledge  and skill acquired in a long apprenticeship to the beautiful.”

The writer then describes the span of the creation for the paintings, and their overall effect on the viewer,

“...the majority of the paintings are of recent creation. Twelve were painted in 1925, one in 1926, and of the remaining six, four are undated, one completed in 1923 and the other in 1912. The pictures give the impression that the artists is at peace with himself and the world and that he has launched himself  into a new and vital phase of production.”

The writer describes several of the works included, and also quotes the artist from a recent talk on art appreciation at the Fort Wayne Art School one year before. Steele said, in part,

“I often speak of appreciation both of nature and art, as it is the art of seeing beautifully. There is such an art. It is an attitude of mind. It is not a matter of intellect so much as of sensibility, feeling rather than thought. A work of art is not created in cold blood. There must be the fire of emotion to warm the life of art, and then not a literal representation, but a much greater thing. It is the scene plus the emotion of the artist. Happy is the painter if he can convey to the observer the joy he feels in creation.  To him the beauty of earth is real. He is happy if he can seize and make permanent that which passes so quickly.”

The writer concludes with brief descriptions of some of the paintings, including Autumn Gold, Across Country, From Dewar's Hill and The Big Oak, writing that all the works possess great decorative charm, but something more,

“Unlike most decorative art...they appeal to more than the senses. There is present (in the paintings) poetry of thought as well as beauty of color and simple balance of design.”

from the May 8, 1926, Indianapolis News

In her column the next day in The Indianapolis Star on May 9, Lucille Morehouse contrasts Steele's most recent paintings, which predominate the exhibit, with his earlier Brown County style,

“(The latest works)...have a serenity and calm that impress us with the meaning of a long life  spent in the pursuit of beauty. Running through all there is, too, the same gentle dignity that has always marked Mr. Steele's work. In the color there is a mellow richness of tone that speaks of long years of loving companionship with brush and palette. A feeling of wide, open spaces, where one looks far across the fields and into the sky high overhead, is the result of a skillful handling of atmospheric effects and of perspective...”

Morehouse also comments on several works individually while naming others in the show including Stormy Weather – Salt Creek Valley, Winter Afternoon – Jordan Field, Wild Roses and Larkspur, On Axtell Road and In June.

In the same column, Morehouse writes that T. C. Steele recently visited the Indianapolis exhibit of Richmond-area painter, John Elwood Bundy at the Fine Arts Studio on the top floor of the Pierce Building in the city. 

Her remarks document that Steele, in his old age, in addition to his considerable productive prowess, possessed a continuing curiosity in the overall art world, and a sympathetic and generous nature,

“T. C. Steele paid a visit to the gallery last Tuesday and expressed his admiration for the landscape with patches of snow, entitled Winter Haze also for On the Old Homestead the canvas that won the ...Foulke prize... at Richmond.”  

Lucille Morehouse was also compelled to ask a question in her column. A question that arose as a result of T. C. Steele's always evolving art. She is pondering the changes she has observed in the most two recent exhibits as compared to the past few years,

“The paintings that represented Mr. Steele in the Hoosier Salon earlier in the spring, seemed to emphasize a different phase of his art than the one which we have been familiar for several years; and a large number of the pictures now on display at Lieber's...(share the same characteristics as those in the Hoosier Salon). Whether it means an entirely new period of his art, or is reminiscent of earlier work before he began to paint in Brown County, might be best decided by a retrospective exhibition. And that raises the question, why not have a retrospective exhibition of the art of T. C. Steele?” 

  

True Blue.

Days before T. C. Steele was to die, he was mentioned in what would be his last Indianapolis newspaper coverage of his life.  In the July 18, 1926, Indianapolis Star, in the recurring column From Down in the Hills o' Brown County by Frank M. Hohenberger, T. C. Steele is quoted from the same Fort Wayne Art School address on art appreciation the previous fall mentioned above. 

Morning, 1917, T. C. Steele

As Hohenberger introduced, 'T. C. Steele, dean of Indiana artists, said,'

“Man is by nature a materialist – an artist is one who can see through this materialism and discover the spirit of things.”

Hohenberger continued his summary of the talk, which included a startling, and turns out, accurate  prediction by Steele,

“Mr. Steele predicted that the United States would soon become the art center of the world, saying this country already excelled in contemporary architecture.” 

And the final words in the column, and about T. C. Steele while he was still living,

“He expressed approval of the movement to teach art in the school, saying he believed every child has an inherent sense of beauty which may be drawn out under proper tutelage.”

Less than a week later, the same paper, on page one above the fold, would be carrying the sad news of the death of T. C. Steele at age 79,

“In his home among the hills of Brown County, the House of the Singing Winds, Theodore Clement Steele, honorary professor of painting at Indiana University and one of the leading Hoosier artists, died at 8:30 o'clock (last night).” 

July 25, 1926 Indianapolis Star

The obituary and tribute continued over two pages of the paper and included a detailed biography and the reactions of fellow artists.

Just a day later, news of his burial service and internment at his Brown County Singing Winds property were reported. Lucille Morehouse provides a long eulogy in her column in The Star on July 26. 

About his life's work in painting. She writes,

“He was faithful always to nature, to our native hills and valleys, with their woodlands and meadows and winding streams. He would never twist out of shape a bit of landscape for the sake of decorative pattern. In fact he seldom cared to make his landscapes compositions of the so-called decorative type, other than being true to nature.”

About his skies, Morehouse writes,

“Tragic skies, with great sweeping cloud masses, made little appeal to his brush. In an occasional painting one finds the sky to be almost unbelievably blue, but to those who know Brown County year in and year out, this is true to nature.”

The House of the Singing Winds, Winter Afternoon, 1922, T. C. Steele

 About Steele's distances and the atmosphere in his paintings, and the use of figures, she observes,

“The mists that hang over distant hills were seen by Mr. Steele in predominant violet tones... 

Always there is a fine feeling for light and atmosphere in Steele's pictures. In all seasons and at all hours of day it is a play of light through atmosphere that gives vibrancy and beauty to his landscapes.

Not often did he introduce figures into his landscape compositions. Occasionally there are groups of cattle that stray through the wood pastures...

Mr. Steele was fond of wide, open spaces. One never has the feeling of being shut in among the hills; instead, there is always the feeling of freedom as one looks out or across or up...”

 

detail of The Whitewater, 1904, T. C. Steele

The Greater Thing.

One can see in the current show at Brown County Art Gallery, that 'greater thing' T. C. Steele was speaking about –  the feeling rather than thought, the fire of emotion, the warmness of life and the joy.   

Steele's soul must have quivered when he stumbled upon certain scenes of beauty at particular moments of light and atmosphere, bathed in the striking colors of nature at particular fine moments.  Those certain scenes live and breath yet, on the walls in this exhibit. 

There is a darkness and mystery, a chill, in the early picture The Rocky Stream, 1884. A brooding hope in After the Rain, 1890, with its open, albeit muddy, road and green fields beneath roiling gray storm clouds with just a bit of lightening sky.

Winter Scene (Chicago River), 1900, T. C. Steele

Around the time of the death of his first wife, a somber poetry pervades works such as A Quiet Forest  and Winter Scene (Chicago River), both 1900. 

The Forest shows a foggy morning in winter devoid of  most color, in a meadow clearing in the woods amid a stand of sycamore. The waning green of weeds, the leaching red/brown of beech tree leaves seem wrapped in a blanket of winter gray of both sky and receding hillside. 

A similar fog persists in the nautical Chicago River scene, but with a preponderance of sky and water, it refracts of lilac blue hue overall, an interplay of the misty atmosphere, the emission of smoke from the boat's stack and the play of sky on water's surface. A somber solitude is felt in these paintings.

With the new century, and several changes in scenery, one can sense a new joy in T. C. Steele. His paintings shimmer and vibrate with color and radiate light to dizzying effect. 

Just three such examples of the many in the show from this euphoric period of about ten years are Rancho Cucamonga, 1902, The Oregon Coast, 1903 and Brookville From Across the River, 1905. 

It is almost as if Steele bottled the West Coast and brought it back with him after his journey. But in truth, he had already seen such light, in Indiana, before the trip, as evidenced by such works as Brookville and Brookville Landscape, Sycamores, both 1901. 

 

Brookville Landscape, Sycamores, 1901, T. C. Steele

Perhaps Steele is best known for the Brown County scenes he painted in the last decades of his life. The exhibit has many examples of several sub-genres of work he produced during those years. Autumn and winter scenes, of course, in stunning pictures such as On the Road, 1909 (top of page), Autumn in Brown County, 1914 and The House of the Singing Winds, Winter Afternoon, 1922.  

Floral Still Life, 1921, T. C. Steele

High summer scenes and garden and flower pictures are also plentiful as depicted in Country Road in Summer, 1914, Garden's Bounty, 1915 and Child with Flowers, 1918.  

Of particular interest in the show, and only possible in a major retrospective of such number and quality of works, the viewer can begin to see the working methods of the artist as evidenced in both spontaneous preparatory works and later, larger versions of a same or similar scenes. 

There are at least three pairs of such works included in the Brown County show.

Afternoon at the Ford, 1898, T. C. Steele

On the Whitewater Sands, 1897, and Afternoon at the Ford, 1898, present a nearly identical view of the Whitewater River near Brookville, Indiana. It even seems nearly the same time of year that is painted as the distant hills in both pictures possess nearly the same colors. The earlier piece is the smaller and the sketchier of the two. It has an overall diffuse effect and lacks any particular highlight or splash of light and dark. The larger piece possesses more drama, more color, more reflection on the water and more focus for the eye.  

The Grist Mill and The Old Mill, both 1901, each present the same building on a sunny day, but this time from slightly different angles. The smaller piece again appears the more spontaneous sketch of the scene, with the larger work being more thought out, composed and possessing addition areas for the eye to focus as it moves around the larger canvas.  

And finally, the earliest pair, both named September, both created in 1892. 

September, 1892, T. C. Steele
the smaller work

Again the compositions and dimensions of the scene are almost identically proportioned between the works. Even the cloud formations have many shared features perhaps indicative of a single view of the scene that was later perhaps enlarged, or edited or elaborated upon. 

Whether a true blue rendition of a real scene, or one infused with the essence of some greater thing, the larger work appears born of destiny and would be exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair the next year. 

There is something about this painting that is magical. Reproductions do not do it justice. A combination of bravura handling of the paint, a novelty of soft color combinations amazingly balanced and a pleasing decorative design. Steele achieves a dreamy peaceful harmony born of a direct sketch from nature.

Upon viewing this wonderful show, one sees the unbridled energy of a master at work. The record of his swift brush, from sketch to masterpiece.

A wily, seasoned virtuoso, for whom no holds were barred in his search for the spirit of things.

September, 1892, T. C. Steele
was exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 1893

Mark Diekhoff, August 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.

Theodore Clement Steele – Indiana's Master Impressionist from Munich to Brown County – Part One

Over the Hill, 1914, T. C. Steele
in both 1926 and 2026 memorial exhibits 

 

Apex at the Center.

One hundred years ago, in 1926, a memorial exhibit for an original Indiana art legend and founding Hoosier Group painter Theodore Clement (T.C.) Steele occurred in the winter months just past his summer death that year. The John Herron Institute of Art in Indianapolis hosted the event on that somber occasion so long ago.

To mark the centennial of his death, and that original career-spanning show of his work, the largest memorial exhibit of T. C. Steele's work since that time is now at the Brown County Art Gallery in Nashville, Indiana.  

Theodore Clement Steele – Indiana's Master Impressionist from Munich to Brown County is on view from July 18 through September 21, 2026, sponsored by Bob and Barbara Stevens.

Seventy works in total make up this blockbuster of a show of important works.  

It contains works created, first, as a young student of art in rural, small town Indiana, then through his Munich, Germany studies period. Later, his long portraiture phase and works upon returning to Indiana and living in Indianapolis. 

And finally, the impressionist works, for which he is most known and revered, created in Brookville and southeast Indiana around the turn of the last century and finally in Brown County until his death there in July, 1926.

To recognize with certainty Steele's standing as a foundational and pivotal figure in Indiana's art history, one need only attend the show and examine the numerous works he created over this span of about fifty years. The works really say it all and speak for Steele – his talent, his hard work, his vision and his singularity.  

The exhibition is not to be missed. It is an extraordinary survey of great works, among his best. The show contains an large number of very large, salon-sized works, created for the prestigious art exhibits of his day.

Ambitious pieces glowing with light and color, many with esteemed exhibition histories. A scattering of smaller, dark and turbulent studies of brooding weather or fog. 

Each painting tells a tale or sings a song, with a repeating chorus of an overwhelmingly beautiful, or beautifully overwhelming, natural world.

Too many wonderful things to take in all at once. The exhibition almost demands repeat visits.

Meridian Street, Thawing Weather, 1887, T. C. Steele
exhibited at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1888 and
current Brown County Art Gallery exhibit

Aside the individual story of each picture, taken as a whole, they speak of Steele's eye for transcendent beauty, but also his enlivened soul. 

His paintings are stirring, you feel them. They evoke emotion. They record a virtuosity of the brush in his hand, as trembling as the wind, as scattered as the light and air, as centered and firm as the earth beneath his feet. One can sense the skill of his knowing glance, the speed of his decisions at the easel. 

A close look at his brushwork must be seen to be believed. Random splashes of contrasting color, or stray trickles straight from the tube, are lost in the tumult of a nature released before his eyes and then swiftly reorganized on his canvas for us to see.

Standing before his works, one experience his colors, our colors, our familiar Indiana. And looking at his dashing strokes, you feel his delight and joy and it becomes your joy as well.

No change in the weather or season was too fleeting or minute to elude his keen observation and deft handling of paint. 

Altogether, he paints a symphony as grand as Beethoven. And in this monumental exhibit, a  record of a life's work second to none in the history of our state.

His history as an artist in Indiana perhaps heralded the end of the beginning of the pioneer days and styles of earlier artists, and the beginning of his own art, a blending of European innovations with the light and color unique to our region. 

T. C. Steele would affect the appreciation of art in our state.  He would have a founding influence on not only a region's art, western art as it was called at the time, but also art education in Indianapolis. 

His presence and talent would be the  formative lifeblood of the entire Brown County Art scene. His artworks and his noble example inspired those around him in life, and have sparked generations of artists since his passing.  

To round out our understanding of the man, T. C. Steele, the context of a career so overwhelming in its thorough presentation in the show, we can also look to the last few years of his life, the end of the beginning of the Indiana art we all know today.

Under a Brilliant Sky, 1915, T. C. Steele
in current Brown County Art Gallery exhibit

Proven by His Pictures.

On Memorial Day 1920, Indianapolis Star art writer, Lucille E. Morehouse, described her journey and visit to T. C. Steele's home and studio in Brown County, Indiana. Some of her picturesque remarks about the memorable day are as follows,

“It was blue skies overhead, the fresh green of May-time on the hill and meadow, and joy in the heart of each occupant of the little motor omnibus that sped along the hill road from Bloomington to Belmont...to a range of hills where you go up and up to the highest hill of all, where you follow the road along thickly-wooded  sloping sides and then follow the curve around a level stretch until you suddenly lift  up and astonished eye to an unexpected upward slope, to a flower-crowned summit  and the House of the Singing Winds.

...It was my pleasure to spend a few days at the House of the Singing winds last October. The place was taking on the color of autumn – that color which Mr. Steele has painted into so many pictures. The beauty of it then brought great delight and invigoration. But now – oh, what joy to be there at Iris time! In the time of the blooming of the rose and purple columbines!

...Mrs. Steele has planned and planted with such thoughtful care that the tints and shades afford as lovely harmonies and as pleasing contrasts as do the color tones on the canvas of the artist. It seemed as if all the iris in the land had opened its buds on either side of the driveway from the front entrance – wonderful clear blue blossoms waving like silken banners from their tall stalks; and there were velvety deep purple ones, and rich yellow and maroon, and deep cream, and pale lavender...”

Morehouse is quoted at length to provide an eyewitness account to the beauty to be seen and the joy to be felt at Steele's Brown County house and studio at the time. It is the exact same iris season, just one year earlier, that Steele painted, that same flowered driveway, in a wonderful canvas that is included in the current Brown County Art Gallery show – The Iris Road, 1919. 

The Iris Road, 1919, T. C Steele
Brown County Art Gallery postcard, 2026

The painting was chosen for the postcard and catalog of works that accompany the current Brown County Art Gallery Exhibit. 

As Steele painted, and as Morehouse described, the work shows an uplifting, curving drive through cascades of iris on either side, blooming in those creams and yellows and maroons and purples.  

In the same article, Morehouse describes another nearby scene captured by Steele in his paintings, one such magnificent example appearing in the current Brown County show,

“Adolph Shulz, whose studio is at Nashville, led a short walk through an uncleared part of the estate, the path leading down to the little stream in the ravine which has suggested compositions for several well-known winter landscapes that have been frequently exhibited.”

Morehouse may have been indeed been thinking of the large work, Winter Sunlight, 1912, created in the first year of Steele's full-time residency at his Singing Winds Belmont property. The piece was widely exhibited in its day, at the Cincinnati Art Museum, the annual Society of Western Artists exhibit, the John Herron Art Institute and in Richmond, Indiana.  

Winter Sunlight, 1912, T. C. Steele

This painting was also seen in the original Steele memorial show in Indianapolis at Herron Institute, as an Indianapolis News article on December 4, 1926, attests with its accompanying photograph.

Mystery of the Hill Country.

Lucille Morehouse describes a painting by Steele, perhaps much in the same mysterious style of a prize winning work that included in the current show. It was a painting called From the Hilltop that was exhibited in the 19th Indiana Artists exhibition at the Herron Institute in late winter of 1926. Her March 6, Indianapolis Star article describes the work, 

“From the Hilltop contains the misty poetry of the hill country. A tree-clad and swiftly sloping foreground bears away toward faint and distant ridges. Mr. Steele has sacrificed color for the veiled and gentle beauty of his surroundings”

That same veiled and misty poetry is seen in the large prize-winning canvas, The Hill Country, 1913, which was also on display that late winter of 1926, but in Chicago, at the 2nd Hoosier Salon exhibit. Shown there, as The Hill Country –  Brown County, it won the Best Indiana Landscape by an Indiana Resident and a $200 prize in that show. Its image, title and winning ways are documented in the March 8, 1926 Indianapolis News.    

The Hill Country, 1913, T. C. Steele
widely exhibited from 1914 through 1926

The Hill Country presents a similar muted and ever so slightly stylized and modern approach to landscape that stands apart in the current show. There is a dreamy handling to the background that seems a subtle nod to if not expressionism, then at least symbolism, as practiced by younger local artists of the time such as Dorothy Morlan and Clifton Wheeler. 

Fine detail in the foreground and the haze of suggested space toward the back. Perhaps there was a wildfire or a burning going on the area on that sunny day, but whatever the case, or whatever Steele's reason, the resulting picture is stunning.

A painting by Steele of a similar subject but clearly a separate and distinct work, in the Indiana State Museum collection, was included in the 2024 exhibition Stories of the Salon that celebrated the 100th year of the Hoosier Salon. 

That exhibition showed a painting it claimed to be The Hill Country, a winner at the 2nd Hoosier Salon. However, the painting exhibited in 1926 in Chicago, and shown in The Indianapolis News that year, and now on display at the Brown County Art Gallery, is not the same painting that was in the State Museum show in 2024. 

The Hill Country (?), T. C. Steele
was exhibited in Stories of the Salon, 2024, Indiana State Museum

As Steele had only one painting called The Hill Country in 1926 at the Hoosier Salon, according to the reference book Grand Tradition (aka 'the green book,' by Newton and Weiss, that documents the Hoosier Salon from 1925 – 1990), we must conclude that both the State Museum piece and the current Brown County Art Gallery piece cannot both be the 1926 prize winner.  

Part Two will discuss the discernible periods of Steele's long career and ponder his working methods in examination of the many works included in the current Brown County Art Gallery show, Theodore Clement Steele – Indiana's Master Impressionist from Munich to Brown County.

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 Public Sculpture of James Wille Faust

Arch, James Wille Faust

Wille in the Wild.

Within a few days of each other earlier this month, I came across two works by James Wille Faust from the early 2000s. First I stumbled across a framed print of his at the Southport Antique Mall on the city's south side, and then a few days later, when going to the Peg Fierke's show at Herron Galleries, I couldn't help but see his public sculpture at a corner outside the art school. 

What struck me was the close relation of the vocabulary of imagery and color between the two pieces – triangles, circles, arcs, teardrop shapes and bright poster colors. A little research revealed that the two works were indeed related in time and impulse, and to a concurrent event, the relocation of the Herron School of Art and Design from 16th Street to the IUPUI campus (as it was called at the time).

A Sculpture is Born.

In February 2003, Faust had an exhibition at the Domont Studio Gallery near the Eli Lilly campus on the city's near south side. The show was called Earth Air Fire and Water and contained both new paintings and sculptures and was previewed by S. L. Berry in The Indianapolis Star on February 3.

The art feature writer discussed the show with both Faust and gallery owner, John Domont, in a long pictorial column that discussed the inspiration for the paintings, and a background to Faust's 3D works included in the show. Berry relays Faust's explanation that preparation for the paintings began with sketching clouds, quoting the artist, 

“While I was drawing, a horizon line came into play...Then the shapes started working together. I began moving the horizon line forward and the cloud shapes back. I tried out different arrangements.”  

Berry writers further,

“To the shapes, Faust then began adding patterns. By the time he began painting, what he had created was a series of images that evoke the elements, sometimes individually, sometimes in various combinations. 

...The pieces...display his love and concern for the natural world.”

Again, Berry quotes Faust,

“From the cloud shapes, I started working with plumes...That led me to think about fires...Pretty soon, I realized that what I was dealing with were the elements.”

The article provides background to the sculptural works,

“In addition to the paintings, Earth Air Fire and Water features several sculptures. Actually models for larger-scale works that Faust dreams of constructing someday, they incorporate some of the same shapes and patterns that appear in the paintings.

Though he has earned a reputation as a painter, Faust majored in sculpture as an undergraduate at Herron...(class of 1971).”  

Faust is photographed peering through the negative space of one such model that appears of an overall horizontal design.

When looking at Faust's work from this show, it is hard not to think of Robert Indiana and his colorful, if not pop, signage-inspired works that often include circles and triangles and arrows. But whereas Indiana often imposed words and images to jar the emotions, and confront placidity, in the otherwise somewhat staid geometric compositions, Faust's abstractions with neo-geo colors and shapes seem an opposite performance. Although they are incredibly brightly colored, there is a soothing pattern to his shapes and harmony to his hues, as they distribute across his surfaces.  

A year later, Faust would have another show in October 2004, again at Domont Studio Gallery, Painting and Building Visions.  A September 9 preview in The Indianapolis Star included an image of Faust's Being Part of the Moment, which was included in that show.

And one year following, in an A&E (Arts and Entertainment) section front page that featured news of Herron's move to the IUPUI campus, S. L. Berry covered Faust's dream come true, with the permanent installation of his large-scale outdoor piece Arch.

Appearing in the May 29, 2005, Indianapolis Star, Berry's article begins,

“For James Wille Faust, the payoff came when a young girl leaned out of a passing car and yelled, 'Hey, that's cool!' 

She was referring to Arch, a 20-foot-tall brightly-colored aluminum sculpture that Faust and a work crew had just spent eight hours installing on cold, windy day. The sculpture, which stands outside the new Herron School of Art and Design...is Faust's first permanent piece of public sculpture.”

Berry explains the genesis of the piece, which cost $145,000 for fabrication and installation,

“Faust...has been creating maquettes (models) of sculptures he'd like to build for several years. When Valerie Eickmeier, Herron's dean, saw some of them in an exhibition, she asked if he'd be interested in creating a full-scale piece for installation in front of the art school's new facility...”   

Originally, additional outdoor pieces by local, national and international artists were placed around the grounds of the new building in a temporary invitational exhibit. Artists included Herron faculty members Greg Hull, Eric Nordgulen and Katrin Asbury. Other artists included Tom Otterness, Don Gummer, Judith Shea and Wim Delvoye. Those pieces were up for 18 months, whereas Arch remains to this day.

Time Capsules, Either Way.

Both antique malls and public art spaces share the characteristic of preserving the past. They both seem a counterweight to the inexorable heft of time's push forward. 

And so, James Willie Faust's Arch stands today as it did 21 years ago at the corner of Blackford and New York streets. 

Physically, it presents as nearly new, still fresh and eye-catching, a monument to not only Faust's vision, but the fabrication techniques or the expertise of its maintenance. And perhaps, also as a monument to Herron's arc in time, from 16th Street to IU Indianapolis.

Being Part of the Moment, a signed, 3/4 printers proof  copy, similarly, is well preserved under its glass within its frame. It loses something being amid all the homely clutter of the antique mall booth. But it is easy to imagine it more free and less confined, in its natural element, with some adequate light and a modicum of plain wall around it.

Being Part of the Moment, James Wille Faust

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.