Photo courtesy Ben Rose/Big Car Collaborative
Big Car’s name reflects its nomadic early days.
Co-founders Jim Walker and his wife Shauta Marsh formed the organization in 2004 in Fountain Square, where its quirky art programs helped spark the neighborhood’s revival. The group also resided for a while in an old tire shop near Lafayette Square. Big Car is known for here-today-gone-tomorrow art installations ranging from Spark on the Circle to an art museum on wheels called the Wagon of Wonders.
It was priced out of the area it helped turn around.
So Walker and Marsh decided Big Car should actually own its headquarters—and the Garfield Park neighborhood, where the pair lived, seemed like the logical place.
That’s a problem common to arts communities, especially in Indianapolis.
An original case study of this is Broad Ripple, which saw most of its commercial strip emptied by the arrival of nearby Glendale Mall in the 1960s. Rent prices plummeted, which attracted artist studios and galleries. This infusion of culture revived the neighborhood, driving up rents and, ironically, forcing the artists to go elsewhere.
But Big Car had a plan to keep that from happening in Garfield Park.
The campus includes 18 fully reconditioned homes for artists, made available to local creative types and their families at below-market rates. In exchange, they agree to help with neighborhood-level cultural projects. Since Big Car manages the program, economic factors can never force the artists they partner with out of the area.
Big Car’s headquarters, aka Tube Factory Artspace, was a fixer-upper.
Much of the group’s 6-acre campus, including a manufacturing plant, was acquired for a song from the previous owner, the Tube Processing Corporation. It cost nearly $4 million to transform the plant into Big Car’s headquarters, with most of the cash provided by a bevy of donors, including a $3 million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. “This is a very long-term investment by our donors, who are giving us security by letting us have control of our future,” shares Walker.
Big Tube is gestating.
Ground was broken in June 2024 for the next phase of the property’s development, focused on a 40,000-square-foot former industrial building not far from Tube Factory that’s already been nicknamed Big Tube. When work finishes sometime next year, the structure will host, for starters, a 4,800-square-foot performance space; five business incubator storefronts; two recording studios, including facilities for Big Car’s own radio station, WQRT-FM 99.1; and 20 studios for visual artists.
But it’s proving a bit complicated.
The structure that will become Big Tube is more than a century old and was originally a dairy barn. Housing generations of cows in the building has created unique structural challenges, and multiple expansions over the years have left behind a choppy, awkward floor plan. One small, oddly positioned space may become a tiny museum dedicated to Indiana’s utopian communities, such as New Harmony.
The heart of Big Tube will be allocated to something near and dear to Marsh.
Back in the day, she was executive director of the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, which occupied a Fountain Square storefront until its dissolution in 2020. Big Tube will house a sort of spiritual successor to the IMOCA, devoting a total of five exhibition areas, one of them a gargantuan 4,200 square feet, to modern art. Interestingly, while works will be commissioned for the space, no attempt will be made to build a permanent collection.
Big Tube will have peckish patrons covered.
Walker considers a great meal to be a work of art. That’s why Big Tube will include a commercial kitchen and restaurant, which will serve visitors, cater private events, and help train a new generation of food service specialists. “I’m looking forward to the first meal that we can all share in the new building,” says Walker. “It’ll be great to have it cooked and served in that space, so the artists and the community members can eat together in the midst of all the art.”
In the meantime, Big Car is a big draw.
The eye-catching grounds are enticing. Tube Factory contains a coffee shop, Normal Coffee—try the croissant toast—and continuously rotating, unconventional art exhibits. Yet the tiny poultry-themed structure known as the Chicken Chapel of Love is a fan favorite. It’s like a Vegas quickie-wedding chapel with barnyard decor. Yes, couples can and do get married amongst fowl.
First Friday is the time to go.
Walker recommends newbies drop by on the first Friday of the month, a tradition that’s been important for Big Car ever since its formative days in Fountain Square. You’ll find a food truck and oftentimes an exhibit opening. Otherwise, the campus is open Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Big Tube is unlikely to be the last addition.
A stretch of rough-looking real estate along Cruft Street could lend itself nicely to additional housing. “We also have our eye on the area’s alleys, having accessory dwellings like carriage houses go in those,” says Walker, who envisions maybe 20 new units. The idea is to create more affordable housing in an area where (surprise, surprise) real estate prices are climbing. This time, Big Car isn’t going anywhere.
