"Southern Circle" (Indianapolis, Indiana)

 sculpture, artwork, draw only border

 Upload a photo

The sculpture is a 25 foot fabricated stainless steel construction with inlaid stained glass, designed by artist Don Gummer. Gummer was born and educated in Indianapolis and has made his living for the last several decades as an artist living in New York and exhibiting his work internationally. It is most appropriate that Indianapolis support this outstanding artist in recognition of his successful career and his roots as an Indianapolis native.

In 1970, upon obtaining a BFA from the Boston Museum School, Gummer went on to graduate studies at the Yale School of Art. Gummer began to build room-size environments with windowlike openings and structures. He then incorporated films and photographs of diverse sections of the environments into the pieces themselves. The totality of his pieces can not be perceived in a glance but rather with multiple views. Gummer's projects are those that spectator-participants would have to remember as they walked about, connecting clues and discovering a sense of the whole.

The first non-memorial sculpture on Meridian Street; "Southern Circle," is located on the The Meridian Street Plaza, in front of Eli Lilly and Company's Faris II Building. The plaza has become a park-like setting, a social gathering place and a downtown attraction. This site is also a gateway for people entering the city from the south side of downtown.

The spiral shaped work is wider at the top than it is at the bottom. That's the opposite of the peice that inspired it: the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, a few blocks north. In honor of the inspiration, Gummer named his work "Southern Circle." There are blue glass circles inside the stainless steel spirals, alluding to such landmarks as Monument Circle and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The sculpture is the result of more than two years of effort, led by Valerie Eickmeier, dean of Herron School of Art. With Gummer's in-kind Artist donations, Eickmeier began fundraising efforts totalling $200,000.

"It was an honor to come back here and do this piece. It's one of the things I'm most proud of in my career." says Don Gummer.