Sand, cement and Styrofoam: 5 Harrison Center artists mastering nontraditional mediums

Whether it be working with logs from a firewood pile, tar from the hardware store or Elmer's glue and sand, the Harrison Center is home to several artists making a name for themselves by using non-traditional mediums and materials to create something masterful.

Located at 1505 N. Delaware St. in the historic Old Northside of Indianapolis, the Harrison Center is a community-based nonprofit that aims to uplift local artists and musicians and foster a sense of love for the community through those creative outlets, said Joanna Taft, president of the center.

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The Harrison Center is home to several dozen artists who work with traditional mediums such as paint, pottery, and digital and visual art, however, the community arts center prides itself on supporting emerging and established local artists who choose to work with more nontraditional means to make art. Here are a few of those artists to be on the lookout for.

Eric Lubrick

During the day, Texan-turned-Hoosier Eric Lubrick is a senior photographer at Newfields. After hours, Lubrick is building sets, blowing up flowers and spending hours on Photoshop to create photography that combines the natural world with the constructed world.

Lubrick said his inspiration comes from photographers such Irving Penn and Sally Mann in addition to influences from shattered still-life imagery and Renaissance paintings. However, one theme that flows through Lubrick’s work revolves around the idea that photography inherently speaks to nostalgia as a subject matter.

"I don't necessarily want it to be a pretty image but this idealized version of pretty,” he said, “and then disassemble that idealized version of what beauty is."

Lubrick’s latest exhibition, “Deconstruct, Reconstruct,” is currently on display in the Harrison Gallery — the very same gallery he and his wife were married in — and includes pieces he has been working on over the span of the last two years.

"I've literally run a marathon," he said. "This is so much harder … I think so much because my heart was so put into this in a lot of ways but also, like, just all the fine details."

A few of the older pieces in Lubrick’s show depict flowers in the midst of an explosion, which took approximately 200 to 300 layers — or multiple images — and more than 40 hours to "deconstruct them and painstakingly reassemble them in Photoshop," Lubrick said.

Lubrick said the exploding flowers are meant to be a visual representation of the social unrest and intense pressure facing the country in the last two years as well as his thoughts during that period, he said.

"I can honestly say there hasn't been a body of work that I haven't felt and just continually thought about non-stop," he said. "This is a visual representation of all those thoughts happening."

“Deconstruct, Reconstruct” is open to view at Harrison Gallery Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through July 29.

Lubrick's show will be available to view in the Harrison Center's online gallery until Aug. 26 at harrisoncenter.org.

Willard Johnson

Artist, painter and educator Willard Johnson — or Mr. Johnson to his Oaks Academy middle school art students — was born in South Korea to Christian missionaries andhas since lived in places like Egypt, Lebanon, Germany and Japan. However, living and teaching in Indianapolis is where he’s developed his own definition of success.

“Teaching middle schoolers kind of keeps things real in a way,” he said, “and you kind of realize that success is being true to who you are as an artist.”

On Aug. 5 from 6-9 p.m., Johnson will have a show called "And | Now | This" in the Harrison Gallery. He said the pieces in the show deal with themes of travel, nostalgia and social justice issues within the U.S. such as politics, identity, religion and culture.

“Some pieces are heavier, some pieces are lighter and more playful,” he said. “Some pieces in the show are really about me almost being nostalgic or, like, wanting to travel during lockdown.”

Although Johnson typically uses paint for most of his work, he said he for this show he gravitated toward more “construction materials,” or things that can be found at Lowe's, such as Styrofoam, caulk, binders, house paint and rigid wrap.

One piece, in particular, explores Johnson’s fascination with the idea of words and contexts getting “lost in translation” using Google Translate for words such as "gentrification," "insurrection," "privatized prisons," "corporate greed" and "gerrymandering" and paint. Although this piece is more politically charged than some of the others, Johnson said it’s meant to be a critique of whiteness and his own social and political identity within Indianapolis.

For this piece, Johnson said his interest in the slippage between a place and its contexts and meaning intentionally caused him to throw specific words from languages he learned growing up in different places around the world into Google Translate knowing there would be a disconnect.

“It’s like, ‘Welcome to America, here are these things, here are these issues,’” he said. “And like, just stirring it up and trying to wrestle with those things in work.”

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Rebecca Robinson

Indianapolis native and artist Rebecca Robinson attributes her artistic freedom to having attended the Children’s House Montessori School. She said growing up in an environment that encouraged creativity and embracing individuality helped shape her into the artist she is today.

Robinson said she started out with vivid and colorful mediums such as acrylic and watercolor paint but felt as if it wasn't authentic to her. She decided to explore a monochromatic art style with grittier materials, and in 2015 went to the hardware store and came home with cement, tar and caulk.

“I literally just went to the hardware store and I said ‘I want something that's gritty and the texture to be really powerful.’” she said. “I didn't know how it would work, how long to execute it, but I think I liked the chemistry of things.”

Robinson said most of her work is figurative and aims to convey an emotion or feeling of some kind such as love, passion or sorrow. The first piece she made with her signature materials is a portrait entitled “Kendrick Lamar,” and is a still from Lamar’s music video “Alright."

Robinson said most people assume it’s difficult to work with things like cement and tar, but it’s gratifying for her and she doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty.

“It’s therapeutic for me,” she said. “Time is of the essence when I work with it because certain things dry pretty fast, but I've mastered how to do it.”

Although most pieces take her anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to complete due to the drying process, Robinson said she learns from her mistakes and enjoys the artistic process of working with cement, tar and caulk.

“I wish I would have known that it was gonna be this expensive,” she said. “But I’d rather have invested in myself and my work and be happy at the end of the day than making, like, all this money and just miserable.”

Robinson has several upcoming shows: at Indiana Landmarks, 1202 Central Avenue, on Aug. 5 from 6-9 p.m.; at Newfields, 4000 N. Michigan Rd., Sept. 22 from 7-9 p.m., at Herron School of Arts and Design, 735 W. New York St., from Sept. 28 to Jan. 15, 2023; and another at Indianapolis Art Center, 820 E. 67th St., opening Nov. 10. Robinson's work is currently on display at the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, 543 Indiana Avenue.

Allison Ford

Northern Indiana native Allison Ford took her first jewelry-making class at the age of 11. Years later, she’s an artist in residence at the Harrison Center, owns a company and is about to attend IUPUI to get her master’s in fine arts.

“Having a creative outlet was always something super necessary in my life,” she said. “I stumbled onto the wood because I was using found pieces in the very beginning and just putting bits together, like, assembling things.”

Ford said she quickly fell in love with wood as a medium and makes environmentally inspired jewelry out of different types of native wood, metal and found objects. Using art, Ford’s goal is to be a representative of both the time and place she lives in and the world around her.

One of Ford’s more recent pieces was a set of Brood X Cicadas that she crafted out of wood and metal. She said her goal for the piece was to create something that could be easily replicated and affordable while still looking and moving the way she intended it to.

“All the things look like I’ve made them and they all have lots of different influences by my history, the world around me, current events that happen,” she said. “All with this idea of trying to find a shared human experience.”

One of the biggest influences in Ford’s work is her skill set, which she said is limited compared to her studio mate, who also works with jewelry. She said there are certain jewelry-making techniques she can’t use due to her skill level, which forces her to get creative and find unique workarounds.

“When there is a boundary, it forces you to think harder about how to create something,” she said. “I just don’t have the skill set to do it, you know, it forces me to come up with something that I can do in my own way.”

Derrick Carter

Derrick Carter’s journey into working with sand and glue began in 2005, after a near-death experience in his junior year of high school. After being hit by a car, Carter said he suffered from a traumatic brain injury in addition to all the bones on the right side of his body being crushed — except for his right arm and hand.

“I’m a right-handed artist, nothing happened to my right arm or right hand,” he said. “God gives you a gift and he will never destroy that gift, he will never take that gift from you, and that’s when I came to the realization that art is my gift.”

For his senior final project, his high school art teacher challenged him to work with a nontraditional medium. The first of what would become many portraits was a monochrome portrait called “Brothers” depicting five boys hugging. Carter said he used only a glue stick and sand.

After several years of researching and working with all kinds of sand, gravel and dirt, Carter said he now uses a simple Elmer’s liquid glue and various grains of colored sand to create his portraits, often hiding words and faces within his work.

“I started to research and learn about different colors of sand and how to merge that into my pieces,” he said. “So I went from monochromatic to colorful, color-saturated pieces.”

Carter said he taught himself how to mix sand the way painters mix paints to create colors that weren’t readily available to him.

Each piece can take Carter anywhere from a week to several months to complete. When working with multiple colors, Carter said he has to go one section at a time, often waiting 12 to 24 hours for each section to dry.

Currently, Carter is working on several commission pieces for Gainbridge Fieldhouse creating typography art using the words “fieldhouse” and “cultural.” He said each of the Gainbridge pieces incorporates different events that take place and artists, comedians and musicians such as Garth Brooks, Cardi B and Dave Chapelle who have performed there.

“My job was to create a story that was beyond basketball,” he said. “Meaning everything else that comes to the stadium.”

Contact IndyStar reporter Chloe McGowan at CWilkersonMcGowan@gannett.com. Follow her Twitter: @chloe_mcgowanxx.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Harrison Center: 5 artists mastering nontraditional mediums