Bookmark Indy is a one-of-a-kind literary exploration of Indianapolis through the eyes of the writers who’ve called it home. Explore the city while encountering points of inspiration for Hoosier authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, John Green, Mari Evans, Booth Tarkington and more. With BookmarkIndy.com as your guide, learn about Indy’s rich literary culture, experience local art inspired by Indy’s writers, and find creative prompts to make your own mark.
A project of Indiana Humanities, Megan Bogard Gettelfinger and Mindy Taylor Ross of Art Strategies served as the not-for-profit’s curator and project manager. To bring the client’s vision to life, our team selected and worked with creative brand agency SmallBox and story telling agency BlueLine while also raising additional funds to support the involvement of locally based contemporary artists.
An example of the physical markers at locations in Indianapolis that inspired award winning writers. Viewers can interact with the markers, flipping them up to find a QR code and other information that drives them back to the website.
Kurt Vonnegut is one of the best know authors from Indianapolis.
Artist Pamela Bliss painted the Kurt Vonnegut mural on Massachusetts Avenue as part of the Arts Council of Indianapolis’s 46 for XLVI mural initiative, a program designed and implemented when the city hosted the Super Bowl in 2012.
Art Strategies commissioned Martha Graham trained dancer, Xin Ying, to interpret an excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions where he describes a syphilitic man he witnessed at the Crossroads of America (intersection of Washington and Meridian streets) beneath the clock his father designed. Xin Ying’s improvisational dance captures the robotic, glitchy, and uncontrollable body language of humans as machines.
Poet and Spoken Word performer, Manon Voice, in front of a mural of Mari Evans by Michael Jordan (ALKEMI). Voice is holding a autographed copy of I Am A Black Woman by Evans. She performed the poem for Bookmark Indy to show how these authors, their work, and these spaces continue to inspire artists of all disciplines today.
The author Dan Wakefield giving an interview at the Red Key Tavern—a location that inspired his 1970 novel Going All The Way and the 1997 movie of the same name.
Booth Tarkington is one of the best known historic writers from Indianapolis. He lived and wrote in this North Meridian Street home from 1923 until his death in 1946.
The Woodruff Place neighborhood served as inspiration for the setting in Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1919 and widely considered one of his best works. However, the book is fraught with ugly racial stereotypes and offensive racist language. Spoken word artist Tatjana Rebelle responds with their original work Magnificent Who, which prompts us not only to critique and question Tarkington but also asks us to imagine an alternative.
A visit to the Catacombs—approximately 20,000 square feet of hidden space that lies beneath Indianapolis’s City Market—inspired Maurice Broaddus’s underground world in his novel Pimp My Airship—an outstanding Afrofuturist novel. Hear him talk about his inspiration, read a passage from the novel, and watch pianist Joshua Thompson and dancer Vae Savage respond to Broaddus’ work and the space.
The Pyramids, noted for their modern architecture, appear in the poetry of awarding winner author Adrian Matejka, who grew up nearby. Hear from Adrian by clicking here.
Designed by the famed architect Kevin Roche for the College Life Insurance Company of America, The Pyramids have become a landmark in Pike Township’s College Park neighborhood since their completion in the early 1970s.
Garfield Park is home to two literary places. Author Alan Helms, raised on Cruft Street, writes about his upbringing in his novel Young Man from the Provinces: A Gay Life before Stonewall, and the Tube Factory is home to the above MuckRock mural of writer Marguerite Young.
Artist and curator, Kyle Herrington, created this artwork in response to Garfield Park and Alan Helm’s novel Young Man from the Provinces: A Gay Life before Stonewall.
Night Scene (After Alan Helms)
Mixed media and collage on Canvas
www.kyleaherrington.com | Kyle’s Instagram
Night Scene touches upon the duality of author Alan Helms’s upbringing in Indiana and subsequent life in 1950s New York City. Set in the darkness of an invented nightscape, artist Kyle Herrington’s painting mixes the iconography of New York City streets with the suburban visual hallmarks of the Cruft Street neighborhood in Indianapolis. This juxtaposition of Middle America’s sensibilities with “Big City” ambitions echoes not only Helms’s personal story but also the journeys and narratives experienced by countless midwestern LGBT+ youth, both past and present.