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Saturday’s preview party for 100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park doubled as a music festival. And just as visual artists created sculptures in response to the woods and water next to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, musicians kept their surroundings in mind.
An all-star trio of female vocalists Dayna Kurtz, Shara Worden and Liz Janes even debuted park-themed material in a meadow near the “Funky Bones” installation.
Their multi-phased a cappella piece titled “Instill” told the story of 100 Acres and also offered advice for park visitors.
Different perspectives emerged throughout the performance, with Janes launching a first-person invocation of “Let me by your waters.”
Thousands of floods created the White River oxbow that borders much of 100 Acres. American Indians likely fished at the site, which was a farm and later a gravel quarry before the museum acquired it as a donation in the early 1970s.
Kurtz adopted a soulful tone when suggesting to a companion, “In stillness, we’ll sit and watch the waters roll.”
Next came commentary directed at the park itself: “Years will pass like seconds,” Kurtz sang in a jaunty, East European arrangement. Mother Nature will do her thing, and “your chest will burst” with plant life.
Worden, better known by stage name My Brightest Diamond, finally offered a message to all who enter the latest incarnation of 100 Acres: “Remember, we had to stop and see.”
The night’s true rock stars were seven artists and architects whose work is represented in the park: Los Carpinteros, Alfredo Jaar, Tea Makipaa, Type A, Joep Van Lieshout, Andrea Zittel and Marlon Blackwell. They’re expected to stick around for today’s public opening of the park
On the experimental side of Saturday’s performances, Arrington De Dionyso played free-jazz bass clarinet in the underground walkway of “Park of Laments.” While it was jarring to hear his calamitous honk within a sculpture designed to be a quiet refuge, that element of “Laments” is found in trees and shrubs at the walkway’s end.
Artist Jaar says his installation is a place to ponder human atrocities of our time. De Dionyso’s echoes of mayhem enhanced that experience.
Jaar, a native of Chile who’s based more than 20 projects on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, endorsed the festive mood of Saturday’s preview party.
“We are alive,” Jaar said. “Life is beautiful. But we should work for everyone to be able to celebrate life.”
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