Companion Projects

Somehow it’s been five days since we closed Coordinates of Belonging. Thank you for a bountiful blur of a summer start. Thank you for getting curious and trusting us. Thank for waking up with us, for getting muddy with us, for coming back again and again. Thank you for yearning with us. This is one we’ll be holding on to for a long, long time.

Aleyah Austin
Chris Merritt
Dana Lynn Harper
Danicia Monét Malone
Ellery Diaz
James R. McKenna
Kevin Allison
Kim Beck
Lalana Fedorschak
Maura Jasper
Max Trumpower
Meris Drew
Rebekah Nolan
Seneca Weintraut
Shamira
Stephanie Barlow
Stuart Hyatt

Until we’re under the sun together again,
Braydee ☀️

We kiss Coordinates of Belonging goodbye this weekend, and we hope to have you with us!

OPEN HOURS
Saturday, June 18th  |  12 — 5pm  

CLOSING RECEPTION
Sunday, July 19th  |  12 — 5pm
Program:
CURATORIAL TOUR  |  12:15 — 1:15pm
GUIDED GARDEN WALK  |  1:30 — 3pm
FLAG LOWERING CEREMONY  |  3:30 — 4:30pm

Admission is by ticket only.
Location and arrival details are shared upon booking.
All artworks on view are included in the exhibition and available for sale.

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REBEKAH NOLAN
Night Kiss No. 1, 2025
Acrylic and oil pastel on canvas
26 x 26 x 1.75 in
[ sold ]

View full list of works online.

For sales and inquiries, please contact: [email protected]

Ever grateful to Mirror Indy for telling some of the best, emergent stories about the artists and galleries making Indianapolis better, one project and one exhibition at a time. So glad to be in their mix this week with Coordinates of Belonging!

Heartfelt thank yous to Amanda Kingsbury & Jennifer Delgadillo for their slow time with us this summer.

Coordinates of Belonging presents a group of artists and land-based practitioners who share bodies of knowledge celebrating slow, curious relationships with land, with spacetime, and with each other. We recommend meandering through the exhibition for at least 90 minutes.

MERIS DREW
arrangement, 2024
Oil on panel
16 x 12 x 1 in
courtesy s t e l l a r h i g h w a y

This third annual group exhibition for the summer solstice is both an invocation and an invitation to encounter new agency in our lives. It calls attention to acts of personal and collective reorientation, with artworks and public programs that position yearning and abstract storytelling as critical compasses for belonging.

MAURA JASPER
In Like A Lion: Observations, 2014
Single-channel video
37:03

CLOSING RECEPTION PROGRAM

Guided Garden Walk | with Merritt Chase
1:30 — 3pm

Join landscape architects from Merritt Chase for a guided walk of White River Farm. Explore the outdoor spaces including the Orchard, the Pond, and the Meadow while learning about the history of the location, the original garden design by Jens Jensen, and current efforts to preserve and reinvigorate the landscape.

The tour will begin promptly at 1:30pm. Included with Closing Reception tickets

DANA LYNN HARPER
Golden Window, 2025
Rice, imitation gold leaf, cyanotype print, photo on tissue paper, glass beads, pressed flower, watercolor paper
7 x 5 in

SENECA WEINTRAUT
Snowblind [E88-1819213], 2023
Encaustic, oil on woodblock, curly maple artist frame
11.75 x 9.25 x 1.5 in, 13.25 x 10.875 x 2 in framed

CLOSING RECEPTION PROGRAM

Curatorial Tour | with COMPANION Gallerist Braydee Euliss
12:15 — 1:15pm

Join COMPANION gallerist Braydee Euliss for a guided tour of Coordinates of Belonging. Explore five exhibition spaces and while learning about the contributing artists, the ideas that shaped this year’

A most favorite series by Stephanie Barlow, featured in Coordinates of Belonging and on view through the closing reception this Sunday, July 19th.

STEPHANIE BARLOW
Great Patch of Grass: No.1, 2026
Grass, dandelion
23 x 22 in

Great Patch of Grass: No.2, 2026
Grass, purple clover
24 x 24 in

Great Patch of Grass: No.3, 2026
Grass, dandelion, white clover
24 x 24 in

Stephanie Barlow explores our connections with the natural world and brings into focus the endlessness of time and change in the everyday. Material curiosities lead her present and playful practice through drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, bookmaking, and sculpture. Barlow works behind the scenes as a welder, fabricator, and installer with and for other artists. She holds a BFA from Southern Utah University and an MFA from Herron School of Art and Design. She currently lives and works in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Play is an important part of my artistic practice. I am often inspired by the uses of common materials found in my environment. I collect discarded materials from my workplaces (safety toes, earplugs, sandblasting medium) and forage for what I can find on my neighborhood walks (walnuts, pokeberry, grass). I am in conversations with materials. Observing my surroundings and striving to remain open to moments of wonder is something I’ve cherished since childhood. I try to pay attention to the quiet or often overlooked moments, seeking beauty and value in the ordinary. To be present... perhaps it’s a type of meditation.
— Stephanie Barlow

Photos: Anna Powell Denton
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Join us for the final weekend of Coordinates of Belonging — 

OPEN HOURS
Friday, June 17th |  12 — 5pm  
Saturday, June 18th  |  12 — 5pm  

CLOSING RECEPTION
Sunday, July 19th  |  12 — 5pm
Program:
CURATORIAL TOUR  |  12:15 — 1:15pm
GUIDED GARDEN WALK  |  1:30 — 3pm
FLAG LOWERING CEREMONY  |  3:30 — 4:30pm

[ Admission is by ticket only — book online ]

For sales and inquiries, please contact: [email protected]

SCULPTURE FROM MY BACK YARD 
Figurative Vessel-Building and At-Home Glaze with Max Trumpower
Saturday, July 18th | 2 — 4 pm

Join ceramic artist Max Trumpower for an artist talk and workshop. He will show-and-tell accessible options for making found slips or clay, pinch pots, ancient glazes, oxides, and stains. Participants will learn the basics of collecting soil for surface treatment on sculpture work. Max will provide a tutorial on creating figures that also function as vessels for holding liquids or objects and demonstrate how to make textured surfaces using collected soil samples.

Designed for artists, sculptors, ceramicists, and anyone interested in alternative ceramic processes. Limited to 30 participants. Registration includes day-of ticketed admission to Coordinates of Belonging as part of our closing weekend programming.

Coordinates of Belonging features two large, figurative ceramic sculptures by Max Trumpower who describes the works as “monuments to both our ancestral past and our collective future.”

Mile Marker (Pointing Girl), 2026
Ceramics, glaze
38 x 17 x 10 in

Water Tower, 2026
Ceramics, glaze
39 x 28 x 26 in

“I make objects and sculptures that tell everyday stories and warn of cautionary tales. The politics of folk parables and their relationship to q***rness drive the narratives in my ceramic work. I am intrigued by the fluid boundaries between Mexican folklore, Southern traditions, and their complex relationship to craft that are representative of my childhood. In this body of work, figures shape-shift beyond the boundaries of gender, plant, and animal into an existence of their own. They provide context for another possible world—where trans liberation and ancestral knowledge collide. These altar-like objects
possess world-building capabilities and create a transcendental space. Variations in glaze and surface design impart the capacity for transitions between the past, present, and future.”

Max Trumpower is an artist from the foothills of North Carolina. He is an MFA candidate in Ceramics at Indiana University Bloomington.

For art sales and inquiries, email [email protected]
Images by Anna Powell Denton

We have two special events this week for Coordinates of Belonging 🌿

WriteShop for Artist Statements
Thursday, July 9th | 6—8pm
Co-hosted by COMPANION gallerist Braydee Euliss and Canopy founder Lauren Day, the gathering offers artists a guided, low-intensity invitation to think and write about their own work and arrive at newly developed artist statements.

Community WriteShop
Friday, July 10th | 8—9:30am
Join Lauren Day for a special Community WriteShop, a reflective writing group she convenes biweekly and has been meeting with since 2018.

My love of collective introspection and how the written word connects, heals, and keeps us curious is what propels me to continue this gathering. It’s evolved over the years: sometimes I start us with a meditation with our feet in the grass, or we have a guest host, or we take a field trip of sorts to a nearby coffee shop or park. WriteShop is alive because of all those who write and listen and are curious together.

Happy writing,
Lauren Day
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Reservations are required to attend the WriteShops. We’ll share light refreshments at both and quiet, early evening or early morning hours with our summer solstice exhibition.

Event details and reservations at thisiscompanion.com

Image 1: Anna Powell Denton, Coordinates of Belonging Exhibition Catalog. Designed by James Sholly
Image 2: Hadley Fruits, White River Farm, Orchard, 2025

We’re all so grateful for our first two weeks of Coordinates of Belonging. Thank you all for being with us, in the big moments and the small moments, and in the galleries and in the meadow 🌿

We’re taking a break this weekend to be with even more family and friends. We hope you’re also with loved ones, under the sun, and keeping cool.

Exhibition Assembly programs pick up again next week with two WriteShop gatherings with Lauren Day, a lumen printing workshop with Aleyah Austin, and another guided garden walk with Chris Merritt and Danica Liongson. Info, appointments, and registration for all online.

Images by Hadley Fruits Anna Powell Denton & jack!

Aleyah Austin [ b. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1998 ] is an emerging, multidisciplinary artist based in Indianapolis. They received an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in the Spring of 2025 and hold a BFA in Studio Art from Bennington College. They have exhibited across the Midwest, including at Dream Clinic Project Space in Columbus, OH; Old Friends Gallery in Chicago, IL; and Forum Gallery in Bloomfield Hills, MI. In the summer of 2025, they were awarded the Ox-Bow School of Art Summer Fellowship for ceramics. Other awards include the Stewart Thomson Fellowship at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in 2025 and the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Materials Award in 2024.

Coordinates of Belonging includes one sculpture by Aleyah, pictured here. On Saturday, June 11th, they will lead Conjuring The Sun, a lumen printing workshop in our exhibition Assembly offerings. The 3-hour afternoon with the artist includes a guided nature walk and collection of foliage, light, and shadow to create ephemeral “photographic drawings” under the summer sun.

Aleyah Austin
Speak the color of my organs, 2026
Ceramic, glaze, cast glass, water, fountain pump, plywood, mortar, epoxy, beeswax
Fountain: 20 x 15 x 15 in
Plinth: 16.75 x 23.5 x 18 in

[ Coordinates of Belonging admission is by ticket or assembly registration only — event details and tickets at thisiscompanion.com ]

For sales and other inquiries, email [email protected]

Photography by aleyah austin and Anna Powell Denton.

On Speak the color of my organs, Austin shares —

“You speak of the color of m/y organs. I cannot see them. I hear your voice hissing in m/y ears.” From Monique Wittig’s The Le***an Body, translated by David Le Vay.

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“I respond to the vessel and its associations with function, fluidity, sustenance, and the q***r body. I obsess over fountains and grottos as representations of dualities: the internal and external body, public and private pleasure, all that is natural and artificial. Proximity to water, or other fluids, seeps into my work. Speak the color of my organs addresses themes of interconnection, post-humanism, q***rness, and the erotic.” 

[ scroll for more ]

“A cas

The American Chestnut | Past, Present, and Future with James R. McKenna

Join us Saturday, June 27th at 1:30 pm for a conversation about the American Chestnut with James R. McKenna, founder of A Breed Above Timber and current Chief Science Officer for the Indiana American Chestnut Foundation. This Assembly is a program of our annual summer solstice exhibition, Coordinates of Belonging.

What was the American chestnut, and why bring it back?

A summary of the historic and ecological value of the American chestnut tree, its demise through an invasive exotic pathogen, and the work over decades to develop chestnut blight resistance provided by James R. McKenna. Jim will conclude his talk with a tour of the chestnut planting in the White River Farm orchard, which includes pure Americans, Chinese, and hybrids. Attendees will learn how to identify each type of chestnut, and examples of grafting, nut collection, and cracking will be demonstrated. Examples of American chestnut wood will be on display.

The American Chestnut Assembly is included with open hours viewing appointments. We recommend the 1pm booking. Space is limited to 30 guests.

View exhibition events and book appointments online.

[White River Farm, Orchard, 2025, Image: Hadley Fruits Hadley Fruits , Courtesy of Merritt Chase]