In the heart of the Garfield Park area, let your creative mind wander as you explore Tube Factory art spaces.
Tube Factory is one of the very few of its kind. Big Car Collaborative is a nonprofit art and design organization that uses tools of culture and creativity to foster community and social cohesion. Tube Factory, within Big Car Collaborative projects, is a free, artist-run contemporary art museum and community center featuring a public space for guests to experience culture, community and creativity.
Complete with rotating exhibits, outdoor gathering space, reference library, and art pieces with visual and audio aspects. Themes of the museum include mythology, memory, community and place. The various pieces of art and space are meant to transform communities and inspire creation.
The space at Tube Factory used to be a dairy bottle plant, house an armory, sheet metal pattern works, peanut roaster, manufacturing building, and is now a thoughtfully renovated space for the community to explore, design and enjoy.
In the main building located at 1125 Cruft St., Indianapolis, IN 46203 there is a coffee shop, Normal Coffee, which also has fancy toast with honey made from the Indianapolis Bee Sanctuary located right outside the building.
The bigger space has many tall tables for guests to use to work near windows looking out into the neighborhood, a reference library, and books for teenagers and people to take home. Around the corner, Tube Factory art space has a room with the Guichelaar Gallery and Listen Hear exhibits. The inside is very modern and stark, simple yet artistic. Right outside, guests can sit at various tables or play ping pong, chess, Jenga or foosball and sip coffee with the chickens! You can look out at either the residential area or tall trees that line Bean Creek.
Inside of the main building there is also an art gallery with art history on each piece listed in multiple languages in addition to audio recordings so that guests can experience sound as art.
There are many other spaces for various artists to use to be creative and work on their various pieces. Tube Factory even owns 10 houses so that people can rent a home for a few months while they create art in the spaces.
Visitors and residents alike are encouraged to come work and explore in this unique space while enjoying coffee from Normal Coffee. Visit their website for more information about Tube Factory and all of their projects and events.