Indiana Landmarks will host “Indiana Waterways: The Art of Conservation” during its First Friday art show.
The traveling art exhibition was created by five Indiana-based artists with the goal of raising awareness around conservation efforts and use of waterways around Indiana. The exhibition features 100 paintings and is on display at Indiana Landmarks from April 5 to May 3. The paintings will then be auctioned off at Wickliff Auctioneers.
“We all now are dealing with the misuse of our waterways, and this exhibition and its book tried to bring awareness to the need to help create green spaces, clean up the trash left when people used the banks of the rivers as dumps,” Avon Waters, lead artist on the project and the CEO of Art Nature Consortium, said in an email to the Recorder.
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Butler University professor and writer Jason Goldsmith penned an essay on the White River, which outlines the history of how the indigenous peoples, and then later minority communities, were displaced during the industrial revolution of the 19th century, Waters said.
In major cities during the 20th century, minority communities were subjected to the pollution of industries and municipalities, which dumped waste into the White River. With limited access to parks and public pools, members of those communities used the river for swimming and fishing, Waters said.
Today, many of Indiana waterways — including the White River — are rated unfit for human contact by the EPA.
“The paintings were used as a way to draw people to the beauty of the waterways,” Waters said. “But once the exhibitions were able to draw people to the subject, it was the book of essays and our public appearances that told the story for the need to improve our waterways and insist on legislation that gives all people more access to them.”
After the exhibition closes, each of the 100 paintings will be auctioned off at Wickliff Auctioneers as a way for each of the artists to continue finding ways to bring attention to the need for conservation, Waters said. Having worked with two of the five artists in the past, Darin Lawson, president of Wickliff Auctioneers, said it was an honor to be able to auction off these paintings for a good cause.
“Hopefully, we can get a lot of eyes on it because it is an important issue for the state of Indiana — our waterways, clean water,” Lawson said. “This is an issue that I think is going to bring, hopefully, this project will bring more awareness to.”
For more information about the exhibition, visit indianalandmarks.org. For more information about the auction or to view the catalog, visit bidwickliff.com.
Contact Arts & Culture writer Chloe McGowan at 317-762-7848. Follow her on Twitter @chloe_mcgowanxx.
