Irvington was recently designated one of the cultural districts of Indianapolis, an official recognition that Irvingtonians have known for decades for the name “Irvington” proclaims culture. For 150 years Irvington, once the site of Butler University, has been known as the Classic Suburb, the home of artists, authors, and musicians.
Named by Jacob Julian, one of the suburb’s founders, for American author Washington Irving because a Julian ancestor was mentioned in Irving’s biography of George Washington, Irvington has embraced its namesake especially with the annual Halloween Festival which evokes Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Hilton U. Brown, one of Irvington’s most distinguished residents whose home was at the southwest corner of Washington St. and Emerson Ave, was a career newspaperman with The Indianapolis News and president of Butler University’s board of trustees. In his book, A Book of Memories, Brown wrote about some of the early artists and writers who found Irvington as a place of inspiration.
Mellie Ingels Julian, an early artist, was one of the illustrators of Favorite Dishes: A Columbian Autograph Souvenir Cookery Book, compiled by her sister Carrie V. Shuman for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and Rachel May Blount painted one of the earliest known works of an Irvington scene, N. Arlington Ave. Bridge Over Pleasant Run. In 1900, Butler College began offering a course in art under the direction of Myrtle Lewellyn Taylor, an artist noted for her floral images and known as “The Hoosier Flower Artist.”
In 1906 Hoosier Group artist William Forsyth came to Irvington because of its proximity to Pleasant Run, one of his favorite landscape subjects where he often painted along the creek in the meadows bordering its banks. Other artists joined Forsyth in making Irvington their home and they began showing their works at an annual art show, becoming known as the Irvington Group, the only recognized art movement in Indianapolis. In addition to Forsyth, dean of the Irvington Group, other members were landscape painter Dorothy Morlan known for her December in Irvington, sculptor Helene Hibben, creator of the James Whitcomb Riley bronze bas relief, Forsyth’s daughter Constance Forsyth, his son-in-law Robert Selby, Clifton Wheeler and his wife Hilah Drake Wheeler. Clifton Wheeler painted murals, landscapes, and portraits while Hilah Wheeler was a water colorist noted for her floral and interior paintings.
The Irvington Group continued to grow with the addition of Frederick Polley, an illustrator, printmaker, and oil painter who was also a member of the Irvington Group along with portrait artist Simon Baus who amazed those in attendance at one of the Irvington Group shows when he gave a demonstration known as a “lightning painting,” completing a portrait of Hilton U. Brown in less than an hour. William Kaeser, Charles Yeager, and Carolyn Bradley.also joined the group,
Printmaker Herbert Brackmier and watercolorist E. Roger Frey continued in the tradition of the Irvington Group contributing to the rich heritage of Irvington art.
While Dorisjeane Spiess “Doe” Crapo was probably one of the most noted Irvington women artists of the last half of the 20th century, she maintained her home and “Artists Corner Studio” in Warren Park. She painted the contemporary world along with her companion women artists: Indianapolis public school teacher Gertrude Pagett, Thelma Crook an accomplished organist at Irvington United Methodist Church, Elizabeth “Betty” Burden, and Kathleen Biale.
Through community efforts, Irvington public art has also become prominent in recent years. Wayne Kimmell, known throughout Irvington for his poster designs of historic Irvington landmarks, added to Irvington’s public art with two murals, Celebration of the Heart and Circle of Lights, on the north side of the Audubon Court Apartments and Laura Hildreth’s A Glimpse of Irvington beautified Irvington’s busy intersection at Ritter Ave. and Washington St. with a painted design on the traffic signal box. Recently, an award-winning wall mural on the east wall of an optical store commemorating Madge Oberholtzer, the heroic victim of the Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, was completed by Andrea Light joining Irvington Seasons, an earlier mural painted by Doug Stanley on the back wall of the Irvington Flea Market and visible from the Pennsy Trail. Irvington sculptor Cheryl Lorance installed ten carved limestone benches along the Riley Arts Trail in Greenfield last month. Other members of this contemporary group of Irvington artists include Rita Spalding and her incomparable still lifes of roses, Justin Vining, who paints not only Irvington but the Indianapolis scene and maintains a gallery at 2620 E. 10th St, and Will Lawson, often seen standing before an easel on some Irvington byway wielding a brush, capturing on canvas a colorful moment in time.
The rich history of Irvington’s visual arts is complemented equally by the Classic Suburb’s tradition of the wordsmith and of the musician. One carefully crafting particles of language into prose and rhyme and the other crafting gentle notes together conveying thoughts of joy and sadness, truth and inspiration. More about these artists next.
