Walking into Gary Gee’s studio, you can glimpse a painting in progress, “Blue Corner Hustler.” The stylized, hip-hop vibe of the canvas might make you think of an old-school rap lyric.
You’ll be able to see Gee’s work on canvas, and some of his work in ceramic as well, in “Around the Corner: We Outside,” a group show at the Schwitzer Gallery — the main gallery located on the second floor — at Factory Arts District.
If you go
Around the Corner: We Outside
🗓️ 6-9 p.m. Friday, June 6
📍 Factory Arts District, 1125 E. Brookside Ave., Schwitzer Gallery
🎟️ Free
Gary Gee’s no stranger to Factory Arts District. Together with Kenneth Hordge, he runs the Corner Boys Gallery. “It’s really kind of like a showcase for his work and mine,” Gee said.
It was Hordge, 45, who started the ball rolling on the “Around the Corner” exhibition.
Hordge goes by “FINGERCREATIONS,” a name that might just have something to do with his artistic process.
“I do all of my work using oil pastels, and I use drywall for my canvas, and then I do everything using my fingers,” Hordge said.
Hordge achieves a dead-on realism in his depictions of African American icons. At “Around the Corner,” he will highlight his recent work depicting body parts.
Other artists included in the show are Kevin Nance-West, Rob Sloan, Will Woodrow and Omar Rashan.
“So it’s a lot of connections and energies and synergies where we are overlapping and entwined,” Gee said.
Some of those connections run through the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. Gee, along with Horge and Nance-West, exhibited work in the “We. The Culture: Works by The Eighteen Art Collective” that ran there from September 2022 to September 2023.
Each of those 18 artists helped create the Black Lives Matter mural on Indiana Avenue in August 2020, during the protests following George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police officers on May 25, 2020. Each artist painted one letter of the phrase “Black Lives Matter” and became known as part of the Eighteen Art Collective.
Street art that comes with a barcode
Another “Around the Corner” artist with whom Gary Gee is “overlapping and entwined” is Rashan, 44, who has a studio next door to Gee’s.
Some of his paintings on canvas, which incorporate what he calls “skilled traditional styles” and street art, will come with a barcode. Viewers can scan the barcode and participate in an augmented reality, or AR, activity.
“I’m just highlighting how I play with color palettes, the way that I use texture, and the way that I story-tell in augmented reality,” Rashan said.
Like Gee, Rashan is a teaching artist for children at Arts for Learning. He also works with ArtMix, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that works to transform the lives of people with and without disabilities through the creation of art, per its mission statement.
Another upcoming show where Gee and Rashan will display work will be the Hip Hop Anthology: Volume 6 at Central Library, which runs until June 28. There will be a curated walkthrough and conversation from 5-7:45 p.m. June 10.
It’s a show where Gee and Rashan get to see some of the young artists they’ve been developing display their work.
“We created the opportunity for them to get into entrepreneurship and make money for their passion,” Rashan said. “So this is definitely a heartfelt experience.”
‘We know Indiana’s history, right?’
Gee grew up in the Brookside area. “I grew up like four, four or five blocks from the gallery,” said Gee. “My mom also had a house off of 34th Street in the Forest Manor area when I was a kid. So I split a lot of time between my mother’s and my grandparents’, but I would say predominantly my grandparents’ house.”
Gee went to IPS schools, including Harshman Middle School and Arlington Tech. “I’ve pretty much been in art my whole life,” he said. Drawing on paper sacks and things.” He recalls going to Herron School of Art and Design’s Saturday School as a 7th and 8th grader.
He is not afraid of recent developments under the federal and state level that have filtered from the national level to Indianapolis. The removal of a prominent sign at the downtown campus of IU Indianapolis reading “Black Lives Matter” appears to be one example.
“We know Indiana’s history, right?” Gee said. “Some things could be just a show, and then some people are scared of Trump. Maybe they don’t think Black lives matter, or even our lives matter, or just a certain amount of lives matter right now. I don’t know where the rhetoric’s at, to be honest, but I know I still stand for today what I stood for yesterday.”
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Dan Grossman is a Mirror Indy freelance contributor. You can reach him at grossmandanieljames@gmail.com.
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