![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789485261/xyqnhngcfgkawxbswbcx.jpg\")
A rendering of the exterior of the main building of CAMi
This interview is from CGN's Spring/Summer 2026 issue. Purchase a print copy or subscribe.
By BIANCA BOVA
More than 20 years in the making, the Contemporary Art Museum Indianapolis is finally preparing to open its doors, just as the festivities of May get underway in the city.
“We didn’t intend on becoming a museum when we started out,” says Shauta Marsh, CAMI’s Director and Chief Curator. She is also the museum’s co-founder, along with her husband Jim Walker, a longtime journalist and teacher who serves as its Executive Director.
“We were just working as part of a group of artists living in Indianapolis, and there were certain things that weren’t happening here that we wanted to see happen. So we tried to make them happen.”
To say that the couple has made them happen is an understatement. In 2004, they started Big Car Collaborative as an artist-led nonprofit focused on active programming in public spaces, creative placemaking for communities, and socially engaged art. They operated in the city’s Fountain Square neighborhood for nearly a decade, before expanding to neighboring Lafayette Square, where they opened Service Center. Their first major adaptive-reuse project site, it was situated in the former automotive tire service center of a defunct Sears department store.
“The tire center had been empty for several years,” notes Marsh. “We talked to the landlord and were able to use the space in exchange for covering operating expenses like lights and trash removal, and fixing the space up. Of course, it was still a tire center, so it was less about white box shows, and more about social practice art projects. Being in Lafayette Square–which is less residential than where we were in Fountain Square, more of a business district–we became kind of a destination space. So we naturally became more event-driven, though we did continue to have exhibitions. We did a show with Found magazine, we had more music and performance-related events, we had, at one point, a bunch of skateboarders who came in and built all these ramps and did their thing, all at Service Center. We also built what we called the Pizza Garden. We installed a pizza oven, and built this big raised-bed garden where we grew everything you would need to make a pizza. We held this end-of-the-year harvest, where we made the pizza from scratch, ground our own wheat for the crust and everything.”
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789485262/lpmo4xhmqpwcf9uigmhc.jpg\")
CAMI co-founder Jim Walker
In 2014, as Big Car Collaborative reached the milestone of a decade in operations, Service Center closed its doors. The property was to be returned to use as a commercial business unit. Around the same time, Marsh and Walker moved their family to the Garfield Park neighborhood, a historic residential community situated along a 150-acre park south of downtown Indianapolis.
“We started thinking about a new place that we could have the organization again, this time in our own neighborhood, because that was the other thing–if you’re working with community, it goes better if you’re working in the neighborhood you live in, and if a majority of the artists that work with the organization are living in the neighborhood you’re working in. When we started looking, we came across this building that was boarded up and we were like, ‘What’s going on with this? It doesn’t look too bad. We could do something like we did at Service Center with this, it needs only a moderate amount of work to be usable,’” Marsh continues, conceding “We were also tired of moving Big Car around. We really wanted our own space.”
They found it on Cruft Street, in what would become Tube Factory Art Space. With the support of noted cultural philanthropist George Seybert, President and CEO of Tube Processing Corporation, a manufacturer in the aerospace and energy sectors, and his wife Diane, Big Car was able to realize their vision of a new kind of art space, opening the following year with a series of commissioned exhibitions.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789485262/yzopxak5nxk2hod3wyck.jpg\")
CAMI co-founder Shauta Marsh during site construction
“George and Diane, they are long time supporters of art in the city, they had helped build the Indianapolis Art Center. George had grown up in the neighborhood, and he was excited to see what we would do at the space. We had a proven track record at that point, and they had faith in what we were doing.”
After getting Tube Factory up and running came Big Car’s first long-term and short-term artist residency homes, which made use of vacant properties that neighbored the building along Cruft Street.
“Artists are, a lot of times, blamed for gentrification, but they’re also victims of it,” acknowledges Marsh, “They’re really just looking for somewhere affordable. Other people see what they’re doing and say, ‘These people are really cool. I want to live around these cool people, too.’ and then the cycle starts all over. We saw that happen a few times, and we were a part of it. We don’t have the ability–or the money–to fix those problems, we can’t stop or solve gentrification ourselves. But we felt we could do a little bit of something, which is how we ended up developing the artist housing. Artists fill out a survey–we don’t do income or credit checks–and we gauge if they’re a good fit based off of their answers about working in the community. Part of participating is committing sixteen hours a month to the community. That 16 hours can be almost anything: reading a book about social practice art, researching the history of the area, volunteering, attending neighborhood meetings. This helps, as we really want to demystify contemporary art. A lot of the general public have this idea about artists, that they’re standoffish, that they’re unapproachable, that they’re moody and all these things. That’s not always true. So we also wanted to help ensure the public, when they’re in contact with artists, have this experience that’s positive. People are more open to art than each other a lot of times. When you have an artist out there sharing their work, people become curious, and they’ll talk to each other. Then they start to see each other as a person, and it can help reduce the polarization that we’re seeing in society. It makes them more open to the idea of people that they might have thought they don’t like.”
Tube Factory also became the home of WQRT 99.1FM, a low-watt radio station.
“The opportunity actually came along for us to have the station when we were between physical spaces,” recalls Marsh, “We were always interested in sound art and in experimental radio, and we think of the radio station as another type of space, as another means of exhibition.”
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789485263/qyojsk0br78z5krsk9mo.jpg\")
Chicken Chapel of Love, window view
From there, Marsh and Walker continued to develop their vision for a holistic arts campus on the property. Finally, in 2023, construction began on the 40,000 square-foot main building that would become the Contemporary Art Museum Indianapolis. Accompanying it on the surrounding five acres are the original Tube Factory Space; the radio station’s headquarters; eighteen new artists’ studios; six new exhibition galleries; a suite of five storefronts available to owners of creative small businesses; eighteen affordable homes for long-term and visiting artist residents; a performing arts space; a culinary arts area; a sculpture park; and The Chicken Chapel of Love, “a sacred art project” initiated by Marsh that includes works by Nasreen Khan, Julie Xiao, Justin Cooper, Jason Gray, and, Rachel Leah Cohn, with its own commissions of art, performance, music, and poems on-going.
Taken as a whole, the campus represents thirteen million dollars in total investment on Cruft Street, making it one of the the most significant culturally-driven adaptive reuse projects in the city. With this dramatic increase in space, programming, and financial commitment came the decision to formalize a name change, and establish the campus as a museum.
“I’m a lover of museums, first of all, I want to say that,” acknowledges Marsh, “but museums have problems, they’re imperfect, they always need improvement. We are–we have always been–artist-run. To this day, our staff are artists and we try to ensure that they have opportunities to exhibit and continue to be artists. We don’t want artists to have to take jobs to make a living and then give up what maybe they went to school for, or what they wanted to do initially, what gives meaning to them. We are an artist-run space, but one that’s decided it’s time to institutionalize.”
With that institutionalization, the Contemporary Art Museum Indianapolis takes its rightful place in a legacy that has been establishing itself in the city for years. It is a legacy of generous attitudes towards defining what a museum space can be; and one that has yielded sprawling, highly activated institutional campuses throughout the entire city.
Newfields, perhaps the best known of these campus museums, on the North side of the city, is home, most prominently, to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, a well-respected one hundred forty-two year old collecting institution. Also situated on its one hundred fifty-two acre compound is Fairbanks Park, which encompasses a thirty-five acre lake, woodlands, wetlands, and the largest native pollinator meadow in the region; The Garden, a fifty-two acre horticultural park; the historic Lilly House; and the Elder Greenhouse, an active conservatory dating from the 1920’s.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789485264/xpqre3y9csuq0zxlamtl.jpg\")
Yvette Mayorga's work installed at CAMI
In the city’s Broad Ripple neighborhood, the Indy Art Center sits along the White River. Founded in 1934 as the Indianapolis Art League through funds from the Works Project Administration, it has long been an access point to both art and nature in the heart of the city. Today its campus is anchored by a Michael Graves-designed building, which houses the Marilyn K. Glick School of Art, complete with an auditorium, classrooms and studios for adult and childhood education programs, exhibition galleries, a library, and a sculpture garden that follows the river trail.
Meanwhile on the near eastside, the city’s younger and more experimental artists find purchase in the Factory Arts District, the onetime home of legendary automotive engineering and manufacturing giant Schwitzer, sited on a sixteen acre industrial complex. The complex contains commercial galleries, artist studios, private car collections, restaurants, event spaces, and vintage shops, oriented contiguously in a labyrinthine series of open-ended industrial corridors that themselves play host to monthly parties and social events.
Even the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, fresh off of a 60 million dollar renovation (and as much if not more of destination for visitors to the city than all of the aforementioned institutions combined) is, in its own right, not just an archival repository for the sport that made the city famous, but a kind of campus museum, sitting as it does in the shadow of the track’s pagoda control tower.
This context, when lent to CAMI on the eve of its grand opening, leaves the new museum poised to cement itself as a cornerstone of this uniquely Hoosier model for the placement of modern cultural institutions in civic life. It is a model that draws on a natural tendency towards granting the broadest possible latitude to defining the scope of an institution; a nimbleness that allows for adaptation to the resources at hand, itself born of a kind of Midwestern pragmatism; and a legacy of labor, with that labor itself rooted in a legacy of love for work worth doing.
“You know,” reflects Marsh, “everybody here always says, ‘We don’t have the ocean, we don’t have the mountains,’ you know, all that stuff. But we have this cultural landscape, and maybe that’s the thing we have that sets us apart–regionally–in this world.”
Fall offers a full slate of exhibitions across galleries and museums throughout the Midwest. Behind the scenes, many people in the community are working tirelessly to support artists and bring fresh perspectives to the public. We spoke with five insiders about what excites them now and what they anticipate next.
The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in CGN's Fall 2026 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition click here.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789517637/noxz9olp47gfneafz8xg.jpg\")
“I’m thrilled to further expand my artistic and design practice by introducing other mediums into the mix. I’m looking forward to watching the seasons change and devoting a lot of time in the studio as well. Fall/winter is my favorite time to create new works.
I have an upcoming solo show with VSG Contemporary that I am excited about. The work will delve further into the topics of cultural mythology and how these tales and narratives have helped shape my worldview.
Also, it wouldn’t be right if I left out my excitement for this upcoming season of Chicago sports.”
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961823/s3lp0uull2s8mvd8funj.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher
This interview is part of CGN's Fall 2026 issue. Purchase a copy or subscribe.
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Andi Crist
BY ALISON REILLY
Andi Crist’s warm, engaging demeanor is evident in the first few minutes of our conversation. Generous with her time and forthcoming in her observations, she cares deeply about building relationships through her art making. Crist grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, devoured art classes, wrote songs and played music in high school, and moved to Chicago to study visual art at Columbia College. In 2024, she received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a woodworker, sculptor, ceramicist, and conceptual artist, and she teaches at Illinois Institute of Technology. We discussed her multidisciplinary practice, her experience working as an art handler, preparator, and fabricator, and how she thinks about labor, creativity, and value in the art world.
CGN: You grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. How did that environment shape your point of view as an artist?
Andi Crist: That’s such a funny question. Nobody’s ever really asked.
CGN: Oh, really?
AC: Yeah, maybe because I never was super connected with the arts community down in Birmingham. I moved to Chicago in 2007, so it’s been 20 years since I lived in the South. I was definitely one of those art kids—one art credit was required in high school, and I graduated with like seven. I was surrounded by artists who had a big impact on me, because they were working artists. All my art teachers were trained in Alabama and then continued to teach and work in Alabama, which gave me this desire to try to expand my community outside of what I was familiar with.
CGN: Do you identify as a Chicagoan?
AC: My family still lives in Alabama, and I go back every year. I love being in Alabama. Maybe now being in Chicago for almost 20 years, I identify as a southerner living in the city. I carry on the social qualities of a friendly southern person [laughs].
CGN: You have a varied art practice—woodwork, ceramics, mold making. What drew you to those types of fabrication methods and that type of art making?
AC: My dad is a carpenter and a hobbyist woodworker, but his career was psychology, and my mom was a professor and an incredible craftswoman. I absorbed my mom’s model of creativity, which is to try a bunch of different things and not necessarily finish them but to try to learn as much as I can by just going for it. My practice over the years has become an exploration of conceptual elements of what makes art art and not just craft. Do you have to be a master craftsperson or a professional artist in order to make something that resonates with people?
I make a lot of work that references the mode of making and requires a variety of different media. I just finished teaching a ceramics production class where students learned how to produce molds, think about positives and negatives, and get into a level of production rather than just handicraft as a way to multiply their output.
I got into fabrication because I’ve always liked working with other artists. I have a background in theater and gallery work. I’m a voracious learner, and I like being able to share those skills with my community. Then I end up making work about that. It’s a self-feeding cycle.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961825/zzejqwibga5f5wk6einh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Artist’s Ladder, 2023. Photo: Jeff Perlman
CGN: Thinking about your background as an art handler and preparator—how did you get to the point where you were making work about that experience?
AC: In 2010, right before I graduated from Columbia, I was living in a storefront in West Logan Square with my partner at the time. We started a gallery called Autotelic in the space and had to build it out using the worst tools with very minimal resources. Then we started curating shows there and that meant helping other artists figure out how to install their work in our unusual space. Eventually, I gained the reputation for knowing how to do that type of work. I started getting invited to work in museums and galleries.
The Holocaust Museum was the first museum I worked at, and as difficult as that subject matter is, that experience was really important to me because I was learning more about the larger world of gallery work. As an artist working as a preparator, you’re straddling both sides of that space. You’re really seeing how the sausage is made. You’re hearing all the conversations about artists, curators, the process of exhibition making. There is a lot of information you can gather about the economics of the art world by just being the person that has the know-how to touch and handle artwork. Eventually that started feeding into my art practice because I wanted to make work that was contributing to a conversation around art as a type of job. It fueled a methodology of seeing everything in the world as the result of a long line of processes that required effort and thoughtfulness by many hands.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961826/uv5bysb5fbne30gr5czh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Fair Warning, 2025.
CGN: The title of your recent exhibition at the Cleve Carney Museum—Live, Laugh, Lo—sorry, not Live, Laugh, Love—Live, Laugh, Labor.
AC: [Laughs] That’s what everybody does.
CGN: I love the title—it’s perfect. You incorporate humor along with thoughtful critiques about labor and value in your work. What role does humor play? How does it help you connect with your audience?
AC: One of my biggest criticisms of art with a capital A is how easily it can be overly intellectualized. I think that’s why I end up making a lot of work that references things that already exist or have some kind of real purpose. It’s important to give people a foothold so there’s an obvious place to board that train of thought. As an artist—maybe this is me getting into a sweeping argument about what artists should be—but I personally believe in intellectual accessibility. Humor is a swift way to drop defenses and allow people to come in without feeling like they are not getting the joke or not understanding. I like to make work that can hold both of those things at the same time—it’s funny on the surface level, it’s kind of cheeky, but there’s also another way to look at it that is intellectually clever. There is a joy in the attempt to “get it”. Like the satisfaction of grasping how a crossword puzzle actually works.
It’s also so much a part of my personality. I take myself seriously as an artist, but my ego isn’t at the heart of it. It’s really something that I do because I love to make things, and I love to connect with other people. My parents raised me on puns, creating those language relationships between things and people and space. Understanding a joke is the same way that we understand art, and while neither of my parents would consider themselves artists, they taught me how to think about art.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961828/gnotyfijabr7e15kb6hm.jpg\")
Andi Crist, 69 Bananas
CGN: Your work, Artist’s Ladder, explores hierarchies, workplace cultures, and institutional values. What experiences shaped your reflections on these themes?
AC: The ladder piece distinctly represents the complicated relationship between front of house, back of house, and the hierarchy of labor. Who is the artist in those relationships? How much does another person’s knowledge and expertise contribute to the success of another artist?
There are enormous, industrialized art practices out there, warehouses full of people making things, and those people are also artists. When you make work that involves other people, it’s important to acknowledge their contributions. I’ve had complicated interactions with other artists who are like, ‘Hey, do you want to collaborate with me on this thing?’ but really they just want me to make their idea. I made Artist’s Ladder while I was in grad school at UIC, and it really represented my relationship with a lot of other artists, because I could be an actual support structure for them. Then it turned into this absurd physical thing. It’s extremely overbuilt with inlaid racing stripes made of exotic hardwood, and a butcher’s block-style plaid top. It’s not really like an FU as much as it is asking for acknowledgement of my skills and the essential support structures that exist.
CGN: I want to ask you about another piece, Five O’Clock Somewhere, a wool rug that resembles a children’s play mat. I work at a library, and it reminded me of rugs I see all the time. It’s a peaceful image of an office park with a large fountain surrounded by a parking lot. I’m curious why you chose a rug as the medium to depict that image.
AC: To me the heart of that joke was that it was a landscape. I wanted it to be physically traversable. And that was, I don’t want to say controversial, but it was something that I had to talk about a lot. The critique of that work was the fact that I didn’t want to hang it on the wall and turn it into a tapestry. I really wanted it to be a rug that people could walk on. When I showed that work at Chicago Artists Coalition for the New City Breakout Artists show. There was a lot of pushback about having it on the floor and allowing people to walk on it.
That, to me, was such an important conversation, because, in my mind, the fact that you could walk across it and traverse it was part of how I was thinking about the object. Rugs are utilitarian–they are floor coverings. When you make art that doesn’t do anything, you don’t get to participate in that part of the conversation.
I enjoy sparring around art like that. I am totally tickled by the pushback. The critique of display is exciting, and sorting through the politics of utilitarianism in art spaces is fun to me. And then—it was so crazy—we ended up showing it halfway on the wall and halfway on the ground.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961829/r1zylkwfw9rkw191skdl.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Five O’Clock Somewhere, on display at Live, Laugh, Labor: Thoughts on Usefulness and Other Myths at The Cleve Carney Museum of Art, 2025.
CGN: Oh, wow.
AC: I was like, this is the epitome of compromise! I had to build a structure so that it could hang that way safely.
CGN: I would say just put it on the ground if that’s what you want to do. It’s interesting that there are still very fixed ideas about the way that art should be displayed.
AC: That preparator part of it, that’s what I’m all about. I was having that conversation about what physically supports the work or what conceptually supports it in the way that it’s shown.
CGN: Have you always been a writer? How do your art and writing practices work together?
AC: I can’t say that I’m a writer, it’s probably the same way that it can feel weird to call yourself an artist. But I feel like I’ve always been relatively good at writing. The first time I ever did any kind of professional writing was contributing, a long time ago, to a website called eHow. The editors would send me a title, and then I would have to research how to do that thing. Then I would write out step-by-step instructions for how to do that.
I think that’s how I had to make myself think through my conceptual practice—I had to do the research, coagulate that into some kind of document, and then I would have stream-of-consciousness conversations with myself. “Why are we interested in this? Why would we make it this way? What would I want to talk about if someone were to ask me about this?” It’s almost like I was pre-interviewing myself.
I think the writing is just another way for me to process that idea before I put in all of the time and energy to actually accomplish it.
CGN: What are you working on right now? What projects do you have coming up?
AC: The biggest project that I have right now is my house. My family and I suffered a major house fire on New Year’s Day. We’ve been displaced since then and are navigating rebuilding our house. It was a total loss.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961830/kekfqzf9f87fq48juogh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Single-Use Fireplace, 2025. Photo: Mikey Mosher.
CGN: I’m so sorry to hear that.
AC: Thank you. We’re all okay, but it’s been a really tumultuous year. I moved my studio into a storefront last summer, and so most of my, at least relatively recent, work is safe, and I still have all of my materials, but my home life is starting over. I just had my first full year at this space, and it’s got a little gallery built out in the front called Coming Soon. It’s beautiful with floor-to-ceiling windows on Division and Central Park. I’ve been inviting people into the space to try things out.
After teaching the ceramics class, I came into a bunch of nice slip casting molds, and I’m making some really playful, weird, ceramic stuff. I want to be open and not put too much pressure on myself. Having a big studio by myself is very expensive, so it’s easy to want to make it feel like it’s worth it. But if for now all I can do is make it a resource for other people, then that will be the thing I do. Be less selfish, but more selfish with my time. Saying I can’t do that, or I don’t want to do that. It’s not my nature to say no—I’m such a yes man. I’m learning how to be a yes man for myself.
CGN: That makes sense after going through something so traumatic.
AC: I have an amazing support system. Our friends started a GoFundMe. It was incredible. I’m so humbled and floored by how held I felt by Chicago. I can’t help but throw a little shout out to my Chicago people. I can see how people’s lives get totally ruined by this kind of tragedy. I feel so lucky. Chicago definitely showed its love back.
CGN: For your project Coming Soon, are you bringing in other artists?
AC: My philosophy is that I want to be involved as little as possible. I am thinking about it more as a hosted than curated space. I’m actively soliciting proposals or ideas for workshops, meetings, book clubs—I’m down for making it a resource, whatever that means. I don’t want to over-think it, I want it to be an intuitive and organic thing, which is why I call it Coming Soon—it can be a placeholder for anything. It’s exciting. Taking my hands off the reins is a good exercise for me.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961831/gno5dhliwfnzpuaim78s.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher
Fall offers a full slate of exhibitions across galleries and museums throughout the Midwest. Behind the scenes, many people in the community are working tirelessly to support artists and bring fresh perspectives to the public. We spoke with five insiders about what excites them now and what they anticipate next.
The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in CGN's Fall 2026 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition click here.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789516769/izokunnmrufdyjbjnypk.jpg\")
“Intuit Art Museum’s renovated, expanded spaces give audiences the chance to connect with art through daily art-making, third Thursday Art After Work, group Slow Looks designed to provide a mindful experience with a single work and upcoming conversations with sculptor Bill Brady (Oct. 3) and Dr. Mary Trent (Oct. 15), who curated our current exhibition on the role of scrapbook-making in Henry Darger’s art.
On view is the thought-provoking Monumental: The Sculpture of Dr. Charles Smith, which encourages guests to consider the lack of historical representation of African Americans and Black people in America. Dr. Smith’s memorials champion Black history and stories of everyday life he sees missing in mainstream narratives.
This fall we’re opening an exhibition of paintings by Karla Wong, an artist who immigrated from Oaxaca and who explores themes of life and death, gender identity and self-discovery.”