The arts center will have its first Friday gallery opening of September taking place from 5 to 8 p.m. today at the John Waldron galleries, 122 S. Walnut St.
The John Waldron Center has collaborated with the Lotus Education of Arts and Foundations for four years and this year it will sponsor the Lotus’ mission to promote cultural art.
This year’s gallery will contain five exhibits, with the center allowing the Lotus Institute to take over three of the galleries.
The Lotus Gallery will take place in the Miller and Treasurer’s Gallery in the building. The Lotus exhibit will be textile-themed, featuring nylon and silk Lotus Festival decorations and banners used from past festivals.
“The past three years Lotus has ethnographic text tiles, Asian, African and Indigo as museum quality ethnographic on world culture,” said Julie Roberts, the gallery director of this upcoming exhibit. “This year they are focusing on the festival itself with parade flags and stage backdrops that have been created by Lotus volunteers and public.”
Julie Roberts will introduce and host the gallery opening event, alongside Daily and other Ivy Tech Arts Center and Lotus Institute workers taking part.
“The selection of decorations the Lotus picked out is incredibly colorful with how they display vivid shades, patterns and colors,” Roberts said. “The flags have been previously interacted with, since the public has played with this stuff at parades and other events. This gallery is very ?community- centered.”
There will also be a printmaking and photography exhibit as a part of the gallery opening in the Education and Flashlight Gallery, featuring photography works from Robert Price, Brandon Gunn and Ellie Honl.
The gallery exhibit opening is free and open to any of the Bloomington public.
“There will be over 100 parade flags suspended from a grid throughout the gallery,” Roberts said. “It will be like walking through a nylon ?flo rist.”
