November 29th, 2010
IUPUI Public Art
Prior to working on the WSPA-Indiana Statehouse project, I did notice public art and I'd even go so far as to contemplate works that stood out to me. But I frankly didn't realize how much public art was even in my own town. I guess I only noticed pieces that I liked, and everything else fell into the background. I kind of thought all of the art work around IUPUI campus was created by Herron art students. I really didn't notice much of it until Herron had its new building built on campus. So I assumed that having the art school on campus brought with it more public art. Imagine how shocked I was to learn the Indiana Limestone (Doddoli) sculpture was placed on campus in 1978! I've had countless classes at the IUPUI lecture hall, and barely even noticed it was there.
From the looks of things, the IUPUI public art project suffered from a similar issue that some of us seem to be facing with the Statehouse project; lack of sources. Some articles are shorter than others, but it does seem the IUPUI project had access to more sources than we do for the Statehouse. Its likely because some of those works are on loan from the IMA, which would have lots of info on the items in its collection. Also, the IUPUI works seem to be more recent than some of the art at the Statehouse.
Editing Existing Public Artwork Article
It's interesting for me now to think of my "long history" with public art. As a kid I met William E. Arnold and I was in love with his sculptures at the Indianapolis Zoo. I always looked forward to trips my family would take to downtown Indy. Living in Hendricks County it meant we'd have to drive past the zoo to get downtown, and some of his work was visible from Washington Street. I bought a barbed wire wreath from him at the Talbot Street Art Fair one year for my Mom for Christmas. (I wonder if she still has it....???) My Mom also talked to him about my assperations of becoming a sculptor. (I always either wanted to be a geologist or an artist... I took the geology path.) He was a nice enough guy to give my Mom pointers on how to shape me into a little sculptor. He advocated sculpting with clay, which excited me because I loved making dinosaurs out of clay! I still always stop to look at his American Bison (Arnold)on the east side of the zoo, that's why I tried to update its wikipedia article. When comparing it to the Cloud Gate article, I noticed there was a lot more information about the artist with the Cloud Gate article. I figured Arnold needed his own information out there as well! He was nice enough to me as a kid, I figure I owed it to him.
My first problem was trying to figure out how to put up some info about him. I like how some people put an Artist section in their public art articles, but Arnold has two different pages; his American Bison and the North American Plains Animals (sculpture). So should I create a new page for Arnold? I felt I really didn't have enough information to tackle that... but maybe some day. So I just added to the American Bison article. I added the weight of the Bison sculpture, the Artist section with a few tags, and two new references. It previously only had two references, and if I've learned anything in my undergrad as a science major its that you must have as many references as humanly possible! ;) I figured that this sculpure was pretty famous in Indianapolis, so it must have several news articles about it. And that is where I found my information. I think the article was well written and included all the appropriate tags and what-not... it just needs a little bulking up and could use some extra resources. (Remember, scientists like resources!) The two refs given were of websites. Call me old fashioned, but I like things in print. I have found a few wiki articles where website refs were dead links. So I don't trust the web-refs as much as I would books, journal articles, news papers, etc. Its not so much that I don't trust the information in the web-refs of this article; I just don't trust the links to always be active.
Creating my own Wiki Article
I now know why I never cared to start messing with Wikipedia in the first place! Its a little difficult for first time users. I spent a lot of time looking at the edit pages of the IUPUI public art articles. I didn't read ahead far enough on the assignments page to create a sandbox for the Indiana_State_Stone_(Sculpture) article, so I just wrote it in a word doc. I feel like that's a much better option that using a sandbox, if not only because Word has the ever important SPELL CHECK! If wikipedia has spell check, I have yet to find it. That would be something great for wikipedia to add to their tools. I didn't have much information on the artwork itself, but luckily the quarry from which it was extracted is pretty famous and had several sources of info. I also found out I shouldn't upload my photo into wikipedia prior to creating the article, they threaten to delete it! It is a little irritating when getting those warnings on something you've done. I've been watching the State Stone Sculpture; people have cleaned the article up a little, but no major changes have been made in about a week... so I feel pretty awesome so far. (We'll see how long that lasts!) I feel a lot of what I did was trial and error... and re-trial. The writting wasn't the difficult part, but rather getting used to the little quirky things about wikipedia. I feel more comfortable editing articles now, and even writting future articles. I'm glad I was "forced" to do this, because, like I said, its a little difficult for first time users. If I had been doing this on my own I probably wouldn't have looked up all the Help pages I did and my article would have likely been deleted and completely changed by someone who knew more than me... which would have ultimately drove me batty and I would have never tried to "Wiki" again! So I'm glad I got started with this project. I also must admit that I was proud enough in my article to send the link to my Dad. To which he replies, "I've always said that you're the smartest kid I've got." But that obviously lead to the usual "Why do you always have to compare me to my bonehead sisters!" argument. :)
Sorry for any misspellings here... if there's a spell check hiding somewhere, PLEASE someone let me know!
December 7th, 2010
I'm just putting some finishing touches onto my articles. I did use the "sandbox" feature to create my Wendell Willkie (Fjelde) article. It is easier to create an article that way, and probably less stressful for wikipedians to keep up with, seeing as all of my one million edits show on my talk page (which i doubt anyone is overly concerned with) rather than on the actual article. I still want a spell check though! I have found one discrepancy in information and I'm not sure if it should be changed or not. The Indianapolis Star Magazine states that the plaque was placed (approriately) across from "The American's Creed." Today it is across from the Sarah T. Bolton Relief... and that article states that it's been in the same spot since the 40's???? I haven't been able to go through and check the sources on that page yet. Perhaps my Star article is wrong. Once I have time (after the semester) I'm going to dig deeper into the Sarah Bolton refs and see which article was wrong. At that point, if my article is wrong, I'll update my page to show that as a misprint by the Star.
I'm also finding some discrepancies in where my Indiana State Stone (Sculpture) is located. Most everything states that it is between the senate and reps chambers, which are on the 3rd floor (depending who you ask apparently!). But some sources say the 2 chambers and the limestone are on the 4th floor. Grrrr! But it appears to have always been between the two chambers, and the mojority of the sources say that is on the 3rd floor (and I walk up 2 flights of stairs to see it) thus I'm keeping the article the way it is, saying that the sculpture is on the 3rd floor. I've also found a misprint in one of the Statehouse booklets. It says that limestone was made the official state stone in 1871!!! It says very clearly that it was 1971 right on the sculpture. Kind of funny, I think. I don't know what year that booklet was handed out at the Statehouse b/c whichever person put together the clippings file at the State Library rarely if ever wrote the date on anything in that file! (Which is a source for a serious headache for me. I know one of my Willkie news articles is from the Star Magazine, but there's no date. That librarian gets a big fat FAIL in my book! The searchable news index on their website doesn't cover the 1940's or 50's, so I can't just search for the title. I'll have to go through the microfilm and update my article with the date when I have a chance. Hopefully they have the microfilm for the Star in the 40's and 50's!) There was a ton of stuff at the State library cliping files. I found my two large Willkie clippings there... sadly they mostly talk about Willkie himself, which there's already a large Willkie Wiki page. But I still think it was enough to get a pretty OK article about the art work. I found bunches of stuff in that clippings file at the state library about all the artworks, but I didn't have the time to search it, take notes about what was available, make copies, etc. like I did at the IMCPL. Hopefully everybody made it there and found the info.
I've emailed several people about the limestone block, ie the Indiana Limestone Co. (which now owns the PM&B quarry) and no one has emailed me back. I honestly think that is the 2nd time I've tried to contact them about research projects and they never get back with you.... I think I'm going to write a strongly worded letter to the owners. They sould be willing to help out students, esp if they're researching their company or Indiana limestone! At least respond to people's emails! I'm still going to keep my eye out for more info on the LS block so I can hopefully put a date that it was created on the page at some point. Hopefully when I find the date of that Willkie Star article I can put the date the plaque was created up too. The Star article says the fund raising began in Jan.... but I don't know if that was 1949 or 1950??? or even earlier???
All in all, I'm pretty happy with my articles. Even tho there wasn't much info out there on either artwork, I think I did Ok. I am pretty interested in creating/adding to more wiki articles. Now that I know how all this junk works I'll be more willing to edit and add to pages. Before little mistakes on Wikipedia urked me, but now I know how to fix them! :) I'm also going to look for more information on Arnold and hopefully give him his own Wiki page some day. Like I said, he was a nice enough guy to me as a little kid, it's the least I can do. (BTW, my mom does still have the Arnold wreath I bought for her... she also has a bunny rabbit of his in her yard at her Tucson, AZ home. Pretty Awesome!)
Later December 7th, 2010 After talking to some classmates, I learned the basement is being counted as the 1st floor... so I changed my Indiana State Stone sculpture to reflect that it is on the 4th floor.