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Although born in Indianapolis, Carol Tharp-Perrin has lived in Chicago; Cape Hatteras, Maine; New Orleans; Muncie and Richmond, Indiana; Mexico and Brazil. As high school valedictorian and a Danforth Award recipient, she studied at Earlham College and was awarded Storer, State Merit and Goddard Scholarships. She majored in art and Spanish, with off-campus studies in
Washington DC, New York and Mexico. She also studied at the Center for
Intercultural Documentation in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in Mexico City and in the Yucatan Peninsula. Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, she has worked in
universities in Brazil and often returns to Mexico, Jamaica, Central and South America as a visiting artist through various programs, including the US Information Service. Tharp-Perrin has returned to Brazil to paint murals in the Museum of Art in Alegrete and for the inauguration of the Presidential Earth Summit Meeting in Canela. She directed collaborative murals for the 1996 and 2000 US Olympic Swim Teams. Tharp-Perrin was responsible for coordinating
the Circle Center Rooftop Mural, while teaching courses on public art at the
Herron School of Art in Indianapolis. She is responsible for designing and coordinating collaborative elements into the International Welcome Walls on
Pennsylvania Avenue as well as the Urban Walls Revival on Delaware Street
outside of the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Through these experiences
Carol has become keenly aware of the importance of public art. As a result, she
has pioneered public, participatory mural and performance programs that integrate and create bonding relationships amongst people of diverse communities.
?The challenge to find an authentic means for creating work that expresses a unified whole amongst the members of these communities led me to work more with musicians and to begin partnering with Larry Gindhart. We have developed an innovative, interactive music, dance and visual arts
performance, as well as a public participatory art form that enhances creative
expression and integrates unique individual contributions into a coherent whole.
These multi-media improvisational arts productions result from a dialogue
created between auditory and visual expressions.
Multi-media performance art: The auditory rhythms of improvised,
percussive music provide the stimulus for painting and dance and for a composition of visual rhythms that are created live, before an audience, into a work of visual art. As the musicians play, I begin to paint what I hear in the music. As I paint, the musicians interpret what I am painting into their music. The interaction of color and form and of tempo and texture becomes a stimulating and inspiring dialogue between each of the performers. This performance arts experience demonstrates how composition takes form. It
illustrates the value of cooperation and collaboration, and it provides an
opportunity for the audience to see an artist-at-work in a public space, rather
than in the seclusion of a private studio.
Multi-media participatory performance art: Taking this art form a step
further into public participation has been an important dynamic of our work.
Professional musicians and dancers improvise, and include participants in
creating percussive rhythms and corresponding movements. The visual artist
invites participants to respond to the sounds which inspire the imagery, forms
and colors of a work in progress. When the collaboration is complete, the process
becomes a finished piece of music and art and the participants have created not
only a work of art, but also a fresh awareness of themselves as individuals in
community. This process facilitates the clarification of community identity and
purpose together while enhancing problem solving as a community. The musical
foundation--from which the visual work is created--creates rhythmic harmony
among participants to such a degree that works painted by twenty, fifty or a
hundred or more individuals appear to have been painted only by one. The
visual foundation--from which rhythmic composition is inspired--establishes a
respect and response dynamic for this creative process. Through this process, the
awareness of community helps to simultaneously celebrate diversity and to melt away the sense of isolation and separation that people sometimes feel today.
With backgrounds in participatory, public art--Tharp-Perrin's in painting and
Gindhart's in percussion--we have developed this innovative, multi-disciplinary
approach.

Painted as an improvised performance with The Rhythms of Life Percussion and Dance Ensemble at the Indianapolis Artsgarden. Signed fine art prints are available for $65 USD (includes US domestic shipping).