If you haven't visited the Brown County art exhibit at the Broad Ripple Flanner & Buchanan yet, you have until September 12, 2006, to get there. Then it moves on to Washington Park on East Washington Street. The exhibit will also be featured at the Indiana State Museum next year. The art has been in Broad Ripple all summer and I highly recommend it.

Judge Paul Buchanan Jr. is the man behind the exhibit. The art is from the Flanner & Buchanan collection that Judge Buchanan collected since the 1940's. These pieces had been placed in Flanner & Buchanan mortuaries and cemeteries throughout the area. He brought them together for this travelling exhibit.

I asked Judge Buchanan about the theme of the exhibit: "[The artist colony] called Brown County the peaceful valley. It isn't as peaceful as it was back then, but these pieces captured the peaceful valley."

Judge Buchanan showed me his copy of the book The Artists of Brown County by Lyn Letsinger-Miller. "This is the real book on Brown County art," said Judge Buchanan. "I wish I owned this [Adolph Shultz] on the cover. That [painting] is so typical of the peaceful valley."

The art on display includes works of Gustave Baumann, T.C. Steele, L.O. Griffith, and others. The Broad Ripple High School art classes will visit when school starts later this month. I hope you will too! The Gazette thanks Flanner & Buchanan for this chance to view these wonderful pieces, right in our neighborhood.