Art to climb on: What to know about new immersive sculptures at Newfields' Fairbanks Park

Three large new sculptures are now installed at Newfields, with each playing on different viewpoints of home.

The series, called "Home Again," opened to the public in June at the institution's free Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park. The large-scale interactive artworks are the first new works of their kind at the park in almost a decade, according to a Newfields news release.

The art is funded by a $3 million gift from patron Kent Hawryluk and resides in and around the Hawryluk Sculpture Green, which is in the area of the iconic "Funky Bones." The funds also will fuel future art in the park.

Each sculpture — a white-filigree home-like structure, a gazebo that communes with nature and a roof that appears as if it has dropped from the sky — is designed so that visitors can sit in some part of it and contemplate a new perspective.

IndyStar asked the artists how their pieces came together and how they interpret them.

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'Oracle of Intimation'

The roof-shaped installation by Heather Hart offers new views for those who climb in and around it. The Brooklyn-based artist wants visitors to bring their own interpretations to their experience of the art.

"Every visit to the rooftop is new and unique," Hart wrote in an email to IndyStar. "The environment changes constantly, but more so, the visitors that you share space with change every moment."

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In Hart's view, the roof offers a way to contemplate contrasts: safety vs. danger, public vs. private, inside vs. outside. Ducking under the outer structure into an attic-like area can prompt people to recall their own memories of such a space.

"I think an attic in my family was traditionally a space to hold things safe, packing childhood toys, or heirlooms and storing them," she wrote. "But an attic space, the inside of a roof, also holds the tradition of holding people escaping enslavement safe as they journeyed North. And now, in the park, it may offer a social or private moment, it is a grounded space while the rooftop may feel risky or inaccessible. The identity of a space shifts depending on who experiences it."

'This is NOT a Refuge'

Indianapolis-based artist Anila Quayyum Agha created a white-filigree structure that's shaped like a house and holds layered meanings. Its ornate details and lush park surroundings contrast with its lack of protection from the elements. The installation urges visitors to think about the displacement refugees experience. The artist, who is from Pakistan, took the pattern from a memory of a stand that held her mother's Quran.

"My personal experience is part of this mix because when I moved here for a year, I lived quite comfortably without people looking at me like I was suspicious or something like that," said Agha, who came to the U.S. about 25 years ago. "But as soon as 9/11 happened, I immediately became very publicly visible, and it was not a good visibility because it was a lot related to the fear and the triangle of evil and that kind of stuff that started happening in our society."

The sculpture's door faces Fairbanks Park's lake, which is a reminder of the people who travel across water to find refuge, Agha told IndyStar.

"Our tendency is that we look at immigrants and refugees with suspicion," Agha said. "I'd prefer the focus to be on how we can settle them in, how we can make them included into our environment and into our society so that they can be valuable citizens and support our economy as well as our freedoms that we have."

'The Pollinator Pavilion'

Mark Dion and Dana Sherwood's almost-22-foot tall gazebo merges comfort and nature as the piece sits amidst native pollinating flowers and bird feeders. Original paintings showcase some of the stars of the nearby show, including hummingbirds, bees and yarrow.

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"The images speak not only to these they might encounter, but also things they won’t encounter (like pollinator bats) but it is important to highlight that bats are pollinators too," the artists wrote in an email to IndyStar.

The artists, who are based in the Catskills in New York, want the experience to be hospitable, supportive and inclusive.

"From our own experience spending time with this piece we notice how being in a slow situation, putting aside the devices for a moment and just being in the experience brings about a sense of openness, possibility and awareness that we just don’t seem to have much opportunity for these days," they wrote.

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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or d.bongiovanni@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @domenicareports.