Amplify Art

Janelle Slone is the owner and operator of Relic Emporium, a community art studio in Angola, IN. She teaches classes in many mediums to all ages and skill levels. Her focus is pottery, handmade tile, murals, and darkroom photography. Janelle will be partnering with Carnegie Public Library of Steuben County to host relief sculpture classes for kids. They will be encouraged to capture their facial features with clay, and the final projects will be framed and mounted on-site as a permanent display.

Purdue University Fort Wayne Music Education students, led by Director Dr. John Okley Egger, will create a Spring instrumental program for middle school students from Fort Wayne Community Schools called The Fusion Band. These students will be hosted by Fort Wayne Community Schools and instructed in small and large ensemble settings after school every Thursday for twelve weeks. At the end of this twelve-week period, the students will present a concert to showcase their progress. This program will be of little or no cost to Fort Wayne Community Schools, and dinner will be provided to students at each rehearsal.

The third annual Fort Wayne Open Walls mural festival is a two-day that will showcase and celebrate Fort Wayne artists and visiting artists from all over the Midwest. Live paintings will take place across the 15 walls at the Central Drive location, alongside a space open for the public to engage and create their own art. There will also be an Open Wall collaborative mural project location situated at the corner of Miner and Poplar near the Poplar Community Gardens. Both locations will host live music, free food, local artists, niche vendors, bboy battles, and a low-rider car show to create a vast sensory experience of creativity and culture.

Jeff Myers is a Fort Wayne native who has been performing and teaching guitar for over 50+ years. He currently performs with Audiences Unlimited, bringing his music into facilities where individuals may not have access to the arts in the traditional way. Inspired by the joy of the students of Life Adult Day Academy (LADA), Jeff wrote an original song called “Happiness is Sharing.” Jeff plans to create a music video for this new song, which he’ll provide to LADA to use in their fundraising and marketing efforts.

Compost Your Internet is a solar science lab that will turn data collected from the compost piles at Dirt Wain into an interactive music experience, accessible via a solar-powered website. As the food scraps collected from this region break down, the data collected by various sensors will shift in tandem with temperature and moisture levels, the weather, the amount of sunlight, and even the presence of birds on the server, creating a new musical experience with each visit to the website. Every aspect of this system, from the computer and sensors that collect the data, to the server that hosts the website, will all be solar powered. By exposing people to the concepts of solar-powered media, and giving them an opportunity to engage with the data that’s being collected, we hope to start conversations about the sustainability of both our current food waste and website infrastructures.