Cultural Trail to get infusion of art

Large art installations have peppered the Indianapolis Cultural Trail since construction began in 2007. But on Wednesday, the trail gets its largest single infusion with the unveiling of eight large sculptures made of steel, bronze, aluminum and glass by noted New York artist Don Gummer.

The exhibition is called "Don Gummer: Back Home Again." Gummer is an Indiana man, a Marion County man. He was 7 when his family moved here from Louisville, Ky., in 1953. The Gummers lived in Bridgeport, a small west-side town that no longer exists. Bridgeport had a drugstore, a hobby shop and a Masonic lodge. But in the late 1990s it was leveled to make way for the expansion of the Indianapolis International Airport.

Gummer's mother and five brothers still live in the Indianapolis area. Gummer left in 1966, sort of in a huff.

"I wasn't kicked out. I was expelled for two weeks," Gummer said in a phone interview this past week. He was referring to his sophomore year at Herron School of Art at IUPUI.

He'd created a sculpture in clay and took it home to work on, a violation of school policy. Soon after his reinstatement at Herron, he transferred to the School of Fine Arts in Boston. Since then, he has lived in the East, though he often visits his family and attends the Indianapolis 500.

He got a graduate degree from Yale University, and then moved to New York City where, to supplement his fledgling artist's career, he got a job as a carpenter. He was hired to remodel the loft apartment of an actress who was just starting out in the movies. Her name is Meryl Streep. The two wed, had four children and 38 years later are still married.

The couple live in Manhattan, in the Tribeca neighborhood. Gummer's studio is 30 minutes away in an industrial part of Long Island City. He drives there in his BMW station wagon.  His studio is large — some 8,500 square feet. Gummer's work is large. "Southern Circle," for instance, his stainless steel and glass piece placed permanently at Meridian and South streets in Indianapolis in 2004 is 25 feet tall.

The eight new sculptures to be unveiled at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Indiana Repertory Theatre will be on display through August 2017. The sculptures, which will be placed along the 8-mile trail, belong to Gummer, who has waived the usual loan fee.

Gummer spoke with IndyStar by phone  this past week. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Question: Is it helpful for an artist to be married to an artist?

Answer: My wife has a good eye, and we talk about stuff. But I work alone. I'm not really a collaborator by nature. What's helpful is for the person you marry to be smart.

Q: Do you work from sketches, or do you get right to it?

A: I draw on a sketchbook a lot. I sometimes work from drawings, and sometimes get right into it. The majority of the time, I start with a drawing to get a sense of proportion and height.

Q: What's the first sculpture you ever saw?

A: I suppose the Monument Circle, the sculptures around it, the groupings of people and all that. I liked it.

Q:Describe your first success as an artist.

A: Where I lived, in Bridgeport, there was a big old house on U.S. 40, and two artists used it as a studio and would display work out front on U.S. 40, which was the main drag. And people would stop and buy things. I rode my bike over and checked out the guys' paintings and liked them. They painted landscapes and these strange-looking houses. They may have been taking mushrooms. I still have one of the landscapes. So one day I rode my bike and took my work and showed them.

They liked the work and wanted me to make pictures of clowns, and one of the guys would then paint them. I thought it was strange, but I made money. I'd get $30 for a work. Once I made a drawing of a Beefeater and I painted it — and he signed his name to it. I left. I was 15 or 16.

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Q:Would you say Bridgeport was an art-centric place?

Gummer: No, not at all. What I would say is that as kids back then, we did everything ourselves. We made our ball fields, our forts, our go-carts, whatever. There were no big-box stores to go to buy these things, and we didn't have much money, either. So by building these forts and all that, that gave me confidence I could construct things.

And I had a really good art teacher at Ben Davis High School. She thought of art as a profession. It wasn't just something you took a class in and made posters or whatever. She took me aside and gave me that confidence that I was a good artist and that art is a good thing and you can make a living out of it. Her name was Elva Strouse. She knew the point of art, she understood it, she knew there was this other world. She told me to put yourself out there and try to win art contests.

I was the artist for the school paper. I was in charge of the lettering on the megaphones for the cheerleaders and the banners for the high school band, which was often the state champion band. Growing up in Indiana provided the necessary common sense and grounding for an artistic career.

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Q:Robert Indiana did that same sort of thing at Tech High School in the 1940s, making drawings for the school paper and so on. Do you know him?

A:  Robert Indiana came to speak to the Herron students when I was there, so I might have met him. He said you have to leave Indiana to be an artist. I thought that made sense, but it didn't change my life — it just confirmed what I was already thinking. I would have left Indianapolis anyway, not as much for my art but for myself — I wanted to expand and grow, and travel and satisfy my curiosity.

Call IndyStar reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter: @WillRHiggins. 

Location of Don Gummer sculptures on the Cultural Trail. 

1. “After Rome” intersection of Massachusetts  and Park avenues.

2. “Open House” on the northwest corner of West and St. Clair street.s

3. “Minuteman” outside the Eiteljorg property at northwest corner of West and Washington streets.

4. “Desert House” on the northwest corner of Maryland Street and Capitol Avenue.

5. “Spanish Guitar” in front of Indianapolis Repertory Theatre, 140 W Washington St.

6. “Offspring” on the northeast corner of Monument Circle and East Market Street.

7. “Intersection” on the northwest corner of Delaware and Washington streets.

8. “Jack’s Column” in Fountain Square, northeast corner of Virginia Avenue and Shelby Street.

Go to dongummerindy.com for more information.