World Creativity and Innovation Week is an international initiative to promote Creativity as an essential and universal life skill. And in terms of Creativity, this is not just limited to fine and performing arts, but also includes creative problem solving, open thought and strategy, and idea generating. We all have the ability to be creative in our everyday lives, from figuring out how to get the kids to school in the morning, to meeting a task deadline. Everyone is born creative, however, at times our society and our own lack of confidence can place restraints on this essential and natural skill.

Hosted by Creative Indiana, WCIW will take place in Bloomington from April 15-21. This is an opportunity for our community to come together and celebrate its creative energy and potential. Bloomington has long been heralded for its arts community, as well as innovative and forward thinking, from local businesses to our prestigious Indiana University. Join the call to showcase our creative vibe by participating in the local WCIW movement!

See our list of events for WCIW events in Bloomington, and add your own at our website http://bloomington.wciw.org. A few organizations who have already committed involvement include My Sister’s Closet, The Tailored Fit, Bloominglabs, Thrive Health & Wellbeing, and more!

If you would like to get involved and/or make a suggestion, please contact me at [email protected] or (812) 219-4493.

An exhibit celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Rhino’s Youth Center will take place in the Atrium Gallery in Bloomington’s City Hall. The exhibit will be on display throughout April and can be seen from 8 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday, as well as additional evening and weekend hours when City Hall is open for meetings and events.

The Mathers Museum of World Cultures presents a new exhibit for the year 2013, “In The Kitchen Around The World”, which will be on display in addition to the already-installed exhibits from 2012. This exhibit will run until November 15, 2013.

“In The Kitchen Around The World”: an exhibit that presents objects used in preparing food and food service from different areas of the world. It breaks down into two categories: what the viewer perceives as familiar, such as plates, cups, and dishes, and what is unfamiliar, such as a Peruvian corn toaster and an Ecuadorian grater. The goal of the exhibit is to look at what other cultures have come up with as solutions to help them in cooking or eating food, allowing the viewer to make comparisons to the solutions that are similar or dissimilar to their own.

Other exhibits include:

“Picturing Archaeology”: Described in their words and illustrated by their images, the research and fieldwork of 13 Indiana University archaeologists is presented in Picturing Archaeology at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures/Glenn Black Laboratory of Archaeology.

“Rhythms of the World”: a free audioguide tour of musical instruments from around the globe featured in exhibits throughout the museum. The audioguide includes narration and musical clips of the highlighted instruments.

“The Day in Its Color: A Hoosier Photographer’s Journey”
This exhibit presents a survey of Charles Cushman’s extraordinary work, an archive of photographs that is the largest known body of early color photographs by a single photographer, 14,500 in all, most shot on vivid, color-saturated Kodachrome stock. From 1938-1968, Cushman—a sometime businessman and amateur photographer with an uncanny eye for everyday detail—travelled constantly, shooting everything he encountered as he ventured from New York to New Orleans, Chicago to San Francisco, and everywhere in between. His photos include portraits, ethnographic studies, agricultural and industrial landscapes, movie sets and media events, children playing, laborers working, and thousands of street scenes, all precisely documented in time and place. The result is a chronicle of an era almost never seen, or even envisioned, in color.

“Thoughts, Things, and Theories…What Is Culture?”
Thoughts, Things, and Theories…What Is Culture? examines the nature of culture through the exploration of cultural traditions surrounding life stages and universal needs.

“From the Big Bang to the World Wide Web: The Origins of Everything”
This exhibit examines history on a large scale, through the exploration of cosmic, biological, and human origins.

“Unfinished Business: One Hundred Years of Quilt Blocks”
An exhibit presenting elements from unfinished quilts will be presented in conjunction with the Indiana Heritage Quilt Show.

Museum is open Tuesdays through Fridays, from 9 am to 4:30 pm, and Saturdays and Sundays, from 1 to 4:30 pm. Check website to see all of the Mathers Museum’s exhibits.

The month of April brings new exhibits to the galleries of the Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center. Exhibits run from April 5 until 27, and include the following:

Stephan Petranek: It Came From Within
Herron School of Art and Design professor Stefan Petranek explores DNA as life’s underlying structure.

Thomas Harris: Vessels vs Vassals–Modern Takes on Function and Fantasy
Bloomington ceramicist Thomas Harris mixes sophisticated pottery with quirky figurines.

Ivy Tech Fine Arts Students: Spring Semester 2013:
Ivy Tech Fine Arts students display a semester’s worth of 2-D and 3-D art projects.

Ivy Tech Alternative Spring Break 2013: In Words and Pictures

Galleries are free and open to the public Monday – Friday, 9 am to 7 pm, and Saturday, 9 am to 5 pm.

“The Beautiful And The Good”, an exhibit of paintings by Jennifer Mujezinovic, will be on display at gallery406 from April 5 until May 31. Gallery is open from 9 am to 6 pm, Monday through Friday.

“Beautiful”—together with “graceful” and “pretty,” or “sublime,” “marvelous,” “superb,” and similar expressions—is an adjective that we often employ to indicate something that we like. In this sense, it seems that what is beautiful is the same as what is good. In fact, in most historical periods there was a close link between the Beautiful and the Good. – from History of Beauty by Umberto Eco

Beauty does not always correspond to what we see superficially. Socrates was notoriously ugly, but was said to shine with an inner beauty, and Plato believed that the sight of the “senses” must be overcome by intellectual sight.

In Jennifer’s portraits, she is seeking an ideal beauty through a synthesis of a pleasing physical body, and a spirit that is good. This synthesis expresses a Psychological Beauty that harmonizes body and soul. Each one illuminating the other.

Several new exhibits can be seen at the Indiana University Art Museum. The galleries are open Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm, and Sunday, 12 pm to 5 pm.

Paul Strand’s “Street People”
Continuing through May 5, 2013

Paul Strand’s revolutionary photographs, published in the final double-issue of Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Work, shocked the art world not only with their unadulterated approach to the medium, but also with their gritty, realistic subject matter. This installation features three close-up portraits of some of the “invisible” beggars, hackers, and passersby found on New York City’s sidewalks.

“The Many Faces of a Master”
Continuing through May 5, 2013

Pablo Picasso (1888–1975) was not only one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, but he was also one of the most recognizable. The IU Art Museum has a large collection of portraits of artists. This installation features several photographs of Picasso at work or play by Lucien Clerque, Robert Capa, and Brassaï.

Contemporary Explorations: Reviewing Nature in the 1980s
February 4‒May 19, 2013

Drawn from the museum’s collection of works by graduates of IU’s fine arts department (now the Hope School of Fine Arts), this installation examines the artists’ interpretations of the natural world. Reviewing Nature takes a look at the balance sought between structural composition and the role nature plays in co-defining the space we both share. This installation was organized by Emily Wood, graduate assistant for Western art after 1800 at the IU Art Museum.

New in the Galleries: Breaking the Gilded Ceiling, Women Artists of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
March 5-August 25, 2013

This installation will feature women artists—some former artist’s models, some wives and mothers, and some trailblazers—who worked in a variety of media. Included will be work by photographers Anna Atkins, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Laura Adams Armer, as well as prints and drawings by Mary Cassatt, Suzanne Valadon, Gwen John, and Käthe Kollwitz.

Three Remarkable Women: Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Margaret Chinnery, and Félicité de Genlis
March 23-September 1, 2013

The IU Art Museum will premiere a focused exhibition featuring Vigée Le Brun’s Portrait of Mrs. Chinnery (1803) and selected materials from the Lilly library. The exhibition presents an unusually rich opportunity to use a single artwork as a lens for an interdisciplinary study of the history, politics, art, literature, and music of its time.

This exhibit of artwork by Jim Halvorson at By Hand Gallery includes Ccut, welded, and forged steel sculpture and stoneware pottery with carved surfaces.

Gallery is open Monday – Saturday, 10 am – 5:30 pm. Exhibit runs until May 18.

Featuring paintings, installations, and videos by Australian artist and activist Richard Bell, this exhibition explores Aboriginal identity and its place in mainstream society. Uz vs. Them is at once powerful, confrontational, ironic, and beautiful, drawing on traditions ranging from Aboriginal desert painting to American Pop art. Though Bell speaks as an Australian Aboriginal, his work raises broader issues and concerns related to cultural and ethnic identity worldwide. The exhibition was organized by the American Federation of Arts.

Recurring daily at the IU Art Museum, Tue – Sat, 10 am – 5 pm; Sun, 12 – 5 pm. Runs until May 5.

“Civil Rights in Monroe County”

This exhibit at the Monroe County History Center focuses on the Civil Rights Movement and Monroe County’s role in it.

The Civil Rights movements, from the early 1900s to the late 1980s, are an important part of Monroe County history. Indiana University served as a stage for students to make change and voice their rights as African Americans, women and young adults making sense of the world around them. The exhibit follows individuals who had a direct impact in making change in the community and on campus, and the major demonstrations happening at the time.

Exhibit runs until April 27.

“Walking Through Gardens”

An exhibition of garden-inspired fiber art by local artist Martina Celerin hanging at the Monroe County History Center.
http://www.MartinaCelerin.com

Exhibit runs until June 23.

MFA 2 exhibits will be on display in the Grunwald Gallery and the IU Art Museum April 9–20, 2013. The exhibition will feature work from Jenna Jacobs (Textiles), Linda Anderson (Painting), Stacia McKeever (Painting), Peter Kenar (Sculpture), and Suzanne Wyss (Sculpture). In the IUAM, April 9-April 20, work from Jaclyn Wright (Photography), Daniel Mrva (Painting), Aiden Shapera (Painting), and William Fillmore (Sculpture), will be on display. An opening reception will be held at both venues on Friday, April 12, 6 – 8 pm.

IU Art Museum hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday, 12 pm to 5 pm. Grunwald hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 12 PM – 4 PM.