Taking concepts from philanthropy and social activism, entrepreneurship, the Underground Railroad and the music of Naptown, to The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Nascar, going green, public art, gas prices and a hypothetical mass transit system, artist Chakaia Booker has ignited conversation pieces on Indianapolis’s sidewalks. By cutting, twisting and weaving together rubber tires, Booker has fashioned a temporary urban art exhibition specifically for Indy, removing the road block between the city’s past and present.

Chakaia Booker: Mass Transit is a project of Public Art Indianapolis, which is managed by the Arts Council of Indianapolis. I asked Mindy Taylor Ross, Director of Public Art for the Arts Council, to share her favorite sculpture from the exhibition:

I have three works in the running at the moment - “Gridlock” at the Simon building, “Take Out” on Market Street and “Holler” at iMoca. I believe they are all good examples of the incredible texture and form artists can make with material. You can see Booker’s unique voice in the material. They are also interactive so you can look or move through elements of these pieces.

Pick your favorite work of art in the poll below, and share your connection to it in the comments section of this post. Be sure to visit iMoca to see Chakaia Booker: The Making of a Public Art Exhibition.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Photo credit: “Cross Over Effects” image courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York.

This winter, the IMA will debut Winter Nights, a counterpart to the IMA�??s popular Summer Nights film series. Winter Nights will feature classic films with familiar names. All films will be screened in the IMA’s Tobias Theater (aka The Toby) which will open this fall. (Which means…unlike Summer Nights, the IMA will provide the seats AND climate control.)

Below are some of the films that you will get to see this winter on The Toby’s big screen:

• The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston, 1941, 101 mins, B & W)
• La Dolce Vita (dir. Federico Fellini, 1960, 180 mins, B & W)
• The Bank Dick (dir. Edward F. Cline, 1940, 72 mins B & W)
• Blade Runner: The Final Cut (dir. Ridley Scott, 1982, Color)
• The General (dir. Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1927, 75 mins, B & W) with live accompaniment by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra.
• Lolita (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1962, 152 mins, B & W)

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL FOLKS! Back by popular demand - the IMA’s Film Poll. We want to know what you want to see. Polls close on July 18 and at that time the movie that has the most vote in each one of the categories below will be chosen for the 2009 Winter Nights Series. You can vote as often as you like, so vote every 15 minutes, every day or just once. It’s up to you, my friends!

Here are the categories:

AntiWestern/Revisionist Western/Acid Western (January 2)
AntiWestern, Revisionist, Acid. Call ‘em what you will, but these counter-culture Westerns favor realism over romanticisim.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Rough & Tumble Action Epic (January 30)
Nothing beats a great car chase. Except maybe deception, betrayal, gunfights, escapes and explosions. But no, nothing beats a great car chase.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

French New Wave (February 6)
In true esprit de francais, New Wave directors snubbed their noses at classical cinema by experimenting with unique editing and narrative styles.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

A couple weeks ago, Daniel gave you a prompt to submit ideas for a new IMA Blog t-shirt slogan. We had a couple dozen contributors, many of which are IMA employees. So before you get all worked up about the unfairness of our contest, we decided to go ahead and be the good guys and give every person who submitted a comment(by April 15th) a free t-shirt with the winning slogan.

That being said, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try harder next time. I mean, c’mon, 3 out of 5 of the best slogans were submitted by IMA employees, and 2 of them were mine! To be fair, we might have chosen some of the other submissions if we could have reconciled the concerns surrounding them. An IMA favorite was “Lose 30 pounds in 30 days,” submitted by Ben, but we figured there was no truth in that advertising. Another fan favorite mentioned some names in a certain CEO’s title. We feared this might leave those outside the IMA circle clueless and that we might have some explaining to do if we selected that one.

I expect that you are reading this post and thinking, “My submission was SO much better than what they picked!” and that is okay. You can disagree, but we just want you to know that we took this assignment really seriously, and had an hour-long meeting to argue about which slogans should be selected as finalists. So, without further ado, please have at it. Vote for your favorite slogan and we’ll make a t-shirt with the winning phrase.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

The poll closes on May 5. You can only vote once (sorry, but it is the only fair way!).

We’ll be in touch soon to collect info to distribute free shirts.

The tradition continues in 2008 with one twist. This summer we want your help in choosing the films. 3 of the 13 films screened for Summer Nights will be selected based on an audience vote.* That’s right, we’re doing this American Idol style, and we need your help…

Below are four categories of films with 5 choices each. Vote for your favorite film in each of the categories. Vote once, vote daily, vote hourly, it’s up to you. In the IMA’s version of American Idol, not only do you get to vote, but you also get to be Simon, Paula or Randy (but not William Hung). Feeling like you can diss it Simon Cowell style? Leave a response to this blog entry. Tell us what film you voted for and why. (If you need to learn more about the films listed below, I suggest visiting my favorite online film resource imdb.com.)

Oh, and to make this even more official, the polls will close at midnight eastern standard time on February 8. You’ve got 10 days to make your voice heard.

America, the choice is yours! Liffick out.

VOTING IS NOW CLOSED. RESULTS WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT THE END OF FEBRUARY. STAY TUNED!

*Licensing fees and restrictions may prohibit certain selections from being screened. However, the IMA will do all that is possible to secure and show all winning films.