New sculptures featured along Art on the Trail

<p>The vibrant yellow configuration of steel beams spikes off in all directions, capturing the attention of everyone who walks, runs or bikes along Greenwood’s Polk Hill Trail.</p><p>Nearby, an octagonal rest stop comprised of stop signs and other highway markers invites people to stop and interact with it. A rough sculpture of two people intertwined peers down from a small rise along the trail, while a curving wooden wall offers a window to the community.</p><p>A new crop of artwork has emerged on one of Johnson County’s busiest trailways this summer. Greenwood’s Art on the Trail program has added four new sculptures along the Polk Hill walkway, with this batch of public artwork set to be on display for the next two years.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery<p>Organizers have recruited artists from across the country to submit proposals to be included along the trail, with the winners’ work seen by an estimated 18,000 people every day.</p><p>The goal of the program is to expose more people to the arts and creating new interactions between the artists and the rest of the community.</p><p>“It’s an opportunity to have a conversation with more people that I know and don’t know,” said Kimberly McNeelan, a Whiteland Community High School graduate and Indianapolis woodworker who created “Community Windows” on the trail.</p><p>Art on the Trailway has been in place since 2012. Every two years, new sculptures from regional and national artists are leased and installed along a stretch of trail east of Craig Park.</p><p>The idea for the art trail came from Rob Taggart, director of Greenwood Parks and Recreation. He worked with the Greater Greenwood Arts Council to come up with a plan to attract finished artwork from throughout the country to install in Greenwood. Submitted sculptures are juried by a committee that looks at durability in the outdoors, relevance to the history and culture of the city and size and scope.</p><p>After two years, new artwork is installed along the trail. The only permanent piece is “Strider II,” an imposing sculpture depicting a lean figure walking into the wind. Greenwood purchased the piece after it was included in the first round of the trailway program.</p><p>Organizers of the art trail advertised requests for submissions across the country, and a committee selected to rent sculptures from four artists: McNeelan, Indianapolis resident Patrick Mack, Greg Mueller of Lutsen, Minnesota, and Nathan S. Pierce of Cape Girardeau, Missouri.</p><p>“Public art has blown up into this really big cultural phenomenon that’s been happening over the past six to eight years. It gives me a great opportunity to do what I do and still make a living doing it,” Pierce said.</p><p>Pierce uses his background in construction to create structural steel sculptures that reflect architectural forms as well as the role communication plays in our lives.</p><p>His artwork has been on display in public settings such as Atlanta, Chicago and Knoxville, Tennessee. In Indiana, his pieces are permanently featured at Lutheran Health Network in Fort Wayne and Haskell Pullman Shopping Center in Michigan City, among other places.</p><p>The setting along the Polk Hill Trail enticed Pierce and impacted his decision to submit a proposal for Art on the Trail. His piece “Bright Days” seemed like a fitting addition to the natural landscape the trail offered.</p><p>“I focus on public art, so I’m always working in a big environment. One cool thing about doing something that seems a little unnatural is, it brings an awareness to a natural space that you may not see the beauty in it until you add that unnatural juxtaposition into that space,” he said.</p><p>Mueller also finds energy in melding sculptural forms to the surrounding area. Born and raised in Minnesota, he has focused on transforming items and materials into cohesive sculptures that make a statement about the world around us.</p><p>Putting those pieces in visible, well-traveled areas not only benefits him as an artist, but helps impact the communities the art is located in.</p><p>“In recent years, communities are looking to transform themselves through the arts. Sculpture plays a big role in that — participatory art, sculpture walks, where it brings a little more spirit to the community,” Mueller said. “Instead of making 10 pieces and having a gallery show, I’d rather engage with community members and get the work out to the public.”</p><p>His sculpture “Pod Stop” uses steel, de-commissioned highways signs and tires to create a resting point along the trail.</p><p>“As the public encounters a piece, can it be participatory? Can it play an active role? Increasingly, I’m just trying to make pieces where the composition is completed by human activity,” he said. “It plays off that idea of vehicular traffic and pedestrian traffic, asking people to stop, with it all coming together in one cohesive statement.”</p><p>Form and composition have always been important to Mack. He got his start as a photographer, eventually transitioning to sculpture. Though his major was in telecommunications marketing and advertising, he minored in art. Those art classes each week enthralled him, standing out from and balancing his other class work.</p><p>“It was what kept me sane. I took way more than I needed to graduate, but I loved the three- or four-hour time slots where I was just out working on projects in Bloomington. That kept me balanced,” he said.</p><p>Mack has done commissioned work for private collectors, but he also has taken a great interest in public artwork. That has been his focus recently.</p><p>His piece “Two Become One” emerged from a relationship of his that had ended. He was inspired to create a sculpture showing the duality of relationships, both becoming one while maintaining individuality.</p><p>“Every piece I do, there’s usually something behind it that inspires it,” he said.</p><p>McNeelan first tried her hand at woodworking as a child, helping her father make a playhouse for her and then crudely assembling chairs and tables for the house from leftover scrap.</p><p>That experience set the Whiteland native down a path towards creative expression through woodworking. But it wasn’t until she studied sculpture and industrial design did she discover the possibilities that woodworking allowed her.</p><p>“I studied industrial design at Purdue, and I finally got to a shop class. I wasn’t exposed to many woodworking tools prior to that,” she said. “When I used a band saw, I was blown away by how quickly you could create curves and cool shapes.”</p><p>Her sculpture “Community Windows” is a curving bank of red wood, with gaps cut into it to show the landscape around it.</p><p>“A lot of people, even on the trail, are really attracted to their phones, so that by creating window spaces like that, people will see things a little differently,” she said.</p>[sc:pullout-title pullout-title="&quot;Bright Days&quot;" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]<p>Artist: Nathan S. Pierce</p><p>Home: Cape Girardeau, Missouri</p><p><strong>What was the idea behind &quot;Bright Days&quot;?</strong></p><p>&quot;I did a lot of bring color, playful, on-the-nose but still somewhat abstract versions of satellites and communications things. There’s a meaning on the surface, but also a meaning in the background. It’s about communication and the idea of communication, in the aspect of how we communicate ourselves to the world. But also about communication that is happening between the piece of art in the landscape.&quot;</p><p><strong>What drew you towards this kind of public art in the first place?</strong></p><p>&quot;At the college level, I wanted to be a sculptor. It made a lot of sense for me coming from a construction background. I knew how to use a bunch of power tools, so to be able to use that and then bring that creative aspect to that just made a lot of sense to me.&quot;</p>[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title="&quot;Pod Stop&quot;" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]<p>Artist: Greg Mueller</p><p>Home: Lutsen, Minnesota</p><p><strong>What was the idea behind &quot;Pod Stop&quot;?</strong></p><p>&quot;The pod is an architectonic form. It’s kind of a resting place, a place of gathering, a place of community.&quot;</p><p><strong>What drew you towards art in the first place?</strong></p><p>&quot;Growing up in the river valley behind my house, building tree houses and forts, finding salvage and putting things together, was always a second nature to me. I went to school thinking architecture, but as I dove deeper into it, I found there was an overlap with art and sculpture, and saw the freedom of making from there.&quot;</p>[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title="&quot;Community Windows&quot;" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]<p>Artist: Kimberly McNeelan</p><p>Home: Indianapolis</p><p><strong>What was the idea behind &quot;Community Windows&quot;?</strong></p><p>&quot;Most of my work is trying to encourage the community into some sort of action. This piece is about looking and seeing your environment, maybe in a different way. Framing something so you could really look at it.&quot;</p><p><strong>What drew you towards art in the first place?</strong></p><p>&quot;I’ve always made things. It’s always been a part of my life; not even as a choice, just something that I’ve been drawn to. It was just kind of a natural path. My mom was creative in the kitchen and as a pianist. My aunt always made things. At a young age, my aunt got me started making things, she did stained glass. I was drawn to it because it’s rewarding to see things completed that you’ve done.&quot;</p>[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title="&quot;Two Become One&quot;" ][sc:pullout-text-begin]<p>Artist: Patrick Mack</p><p>Home: Indianapolis</p><p><strong>What was the idea behind &quot;Two Become One&quot;?</strong></p><p>&quot;It came out of a relationship, where we had broken up. It was kind of how I had lost myself in that relationship, and then I think about other people I talked to, they had similar things happen to them. You have to have that balance where you become one they say, but you also have to have your own identity. If you lose that, it becomes kind of wacky sometimes.&quot;</p><p><strong>What drew you towards art in the first place?</strong></p><p>&quot;Since I was kid, both my mom and my dad were artists, so I was always around it. We had a blackboard in our dining room, and my siblings and I always used it. My dad was an art director for a sign company, and mom met him at the Art Institute of Chicago. They were very creative, and did a lot of do-it-yourself work. I saw how creative they were in a lot of ways, and absorbed it as an adult.&quot;</p>[sc:pullout-text-end]