By Anna Skinner
When the City of Fishers put out a request for art proposals to be installed on The Edge building at 116th Street and Lantern Road, Fishers resident Rachel Johnson knew exactly what she would propose.
Her work, “Pursuing Innovation,” was revealed Oct. 27. The six-paneled project represents the city’s vision of being smart, vibrant and entrepreneurial.
Five of the panels consist of abstract silhouettes of the city’s finest entrepreneurs, with the six panel depicting two children playing to represent the future of entrepreneurship.
“I’ve lived in Fishers for four years, and I’ve had the opportunity to meet entrepreneurs in the city, and I have met an amazing diversity of people who have pursued all sorts of different fields and showed me what it means to be an entrepreneur and what an entrepreneur looks like,” Johnson said.
The five figures represent locals David Becker, Lynda Carlino, Kelsey Habig, Cydney Ogan, John Wechsler and Santiago Jaramillo.
“I took individuals in the community who inspired me and created a portrait of them,” Johnson said. “The portraits are very abstract in nature because I want the community at-large to see these and identify with the portraits themselves even though they do represent specific individuals. By abstracting them, I hope to make them accessible to the community. I had one last panel, and I thought about who I should fill that with and decided I really wanted to leave the last panel dedicated to future entrepreneurs. So I created that as a painting of two children to get across the idea of although I selected certain individuals, to me this work is about the idea that any of us can be an entrepreneur.”
