BY TRACY ZOLLINGER TURNER
As founder and director of the annual Indiana Limestone Symposium, stone sculptor Amy Brier has taught people of all skill levels how to rough out ideas and carve them from local bedrock. In 2000, student Sharon Fullingim came from New Mexico to learn, then returned every summer, eventually becoming the symposium’s director and an instructor of adult hand carving, as well as Brier’s collaborator.
The two women collaborated on two pieces that were installed in the summer of 2016, including a major work — Millersville Marker — in the Fall Creek Preserve of Indianapolis’ Millersville neighborhood. The other, titled Constant Gardener, now resides in the community garden of Bloomington’s Arden Place neighborhood.
“It’s like we have one artist’s brain in two bodies,” says Brier. “So it’s a very easy process where we talk and we email sketches back and forth and we just seem to be in agreement about what we want to do and what we want it to look like.”
The group of Indianapolis organizations that commissioned Millersville Marker, headed by Keep Indianapolis Beautiful, had specific ideas in mind for its concept.
“Historically, there had been mills in the area, and the committee wanted the piece to reflect that history,” says Brier. “We have three broken sections representing mill wheels with symbols of wheat, water, sky. … We wanted to refer to the mills, the function of the mills, and the nature surrounding them.”
Brier, who teaches at Ivy Tech Community College–Bloomington, has other sculptures in public spaces in Bloomington, including The Human Brain at Indiana University, her collaboration with carver Michael Donham; and Impression on the Ivy Tech campus. Some of Brier’s smaller works will be on view in display cases on the B Concourse at Indianapolis International Airport from March through June.
