Home is Where The HeART Is

Home Is Where The Heart Is

 We are almost HOME!  When Lynne and I moved to Indiana, Pea-Aay in 1995 to begin teaching at IUP we knew that we wanted to buy a house. To have a place with room for a garden and some pets that we could call "home." Ironically, one of the first places we looked at was in Home, PA. But it wasn't quite...ahome. We finally found what we were looking for, facing the western horizon of blue-purple hills blazing with sunsets. It isnearHome, PA. For a while I called it our "home away from Home," until Lynne's eyerolls turned into pitying looks that told me my humor had expired. Maybe it was never really fresh. At any rate, "Jones Mountain" as we call it has become what holds us in a much larger sense of home. A place in our hearts that includes The Artists Hand and too many other places to mention. 

 The role of art in "creative placemaking" improves communities. It is why I started this gallery. As a theater professor looking at the prospect of someday day retiring in Indiana I mused on how I could get more deeply involved in Indiana's "arts and culture" scene. I found opportunity in theIndiana Arts Council. I discovered rich veins of art and culture that were connected to the university, and independent of it too. I observed artists and their art-works bringing people together in many ways. Gathering around music circles and concerts. Holding visual arts events like the New Growth Arts Festival and the Potters Tour. And I realized that there was no gallery where artists could display their work (and patrons could acquire it) regularly. Day in and day out. Thanks to some like-minded folks capable of investing we established The Artists Hand Group, developed a building, and opened Indiana's first gallery in decades.  (In my role as a recovering academic I refer you to see Note 1)

   Local artists transform the place we live by being in it.Recently I got the opportunity to discuss the installation of art in Indiana's new Welcome Center with directors of the organizations that are housed in it. An art work of substantial quality was proposed to hang in the main hall, but there were objections because it didn't look like any particular place or hold any specific theme relevant to Indiana County. But WAIT. The artist!Theyare relevant to Indiana County. They are particular to Indiana County. And sometimes, like JonelleSummerfield's exhibit this April at The Artists Hand, they look closely at our shared geography, ecology and architecture, and show us scenes of what they see through their eyes. This place called "Home". Other times they bring subjects, topics and points of view from elsewhere that lend to our fair town a wondrous beauty expressed through their brush...or violin.These citizen artists are the loving beings that make us whole.

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*NOTE 1: Art in creative placemaking is featured in the National Endowment for the Arts'"Our Town"program. Some people with big brains believe it is the most important innovation in arts and culture policy in the early 21st Century. In a lovely way it applies as well to rural places as it does to urban neighborhoods. At its essence, creative placemaking assures that artists and designers are central to community planning. We see creative placemaking in the Indiana Borough's "INDIANA2030: Tomorrow Together" planning process. The big idea without too many fancy words is to involve artists and designers in creating places where people want to gather and interact, thereby making resilient, diverse communities.

-Brian Jones, Gallery Owner