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Herron Team Gives Fieldhouse Flavor of Hoosier Hysteria Nov. 10, 1999 INDIANAPOLIS - Images of Indiana's storied basketball past blend with Hoosier Hysteria's future in the new Conseco Fieldhouse, thanks to a collaboration between the Herron School of Art at IUPUI and the Indiana Pacers. More than 300 unique images, created by a 10-member team of students and faculty artists from Herron, have produced a pictorial history of Indiana basketball, to be publicly unveiled Nov. 6 when the Pacers play their first NBA game at Conseco Fieldhouse. The images were created in Herron's state-of-the-art computer design center, the Image Resource Integrated Station (IRIS) Centre for Digital Arts. "The memorabilia displays, historical information, and other visual creations complement the 'retro' theme of the classic fieldhouse structure, and serve as reinforcements of the fieldhouse's historical identity as the epicenter of the state's great basketball tradition," said Steve Mannheimer, project coordinator and an associate professor at Herron, which is based at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Conseco's retro design also is evident in the 10 custom-crafted 8-foot-by-6-foot display cases designed at Herron to house the memorabilia collected and installed by the IUPUI team, which included Phil Tennant, professor of woodworking design. Memorabilia displays in two 40-foot-long cases at Conseco Fieldhouse's main entrance also represent the team's work. Herron was awarded a $227,000 contract - the largest ever for the IUPUI school - to fund the project, which began in May. The Herron team featured Mannheimer, Tennant, technology director Scott Sutherland and seven students. They sorted stacks of basketball memorabilia from private collections, the Pacers and the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. Selected items were scanned into a large-format computer at the IRIS Centre, then manipulated and placed into the appropriate design setting. Team members put an estimated 7,000-plus hours into the work. "Working on the fieldhouse project has been a great opportunity to sharpen my design skills and given me a much greater appreciation of Indiana's contributions to basketball," said team member Sean Jessup, a junior IUPUI visual communication student. "It's very rewarding to interact with such a high-profile organization such as the Pacers." The Herron School of Art, currently located off-campus, is in the midst of a multimillion dollar campaign to move to an on-campus site by the year 2003. The renowned art school employs nationally recognized faculty to educate students committed to careers in the visual arts. Degree programs include ceramics, sculpture, woodworking design, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, visual communication, art education and art history. Herron also offers courses to provide visual literacy and an understanding of the visual arts for students who are not majoring in art and for other interested members of the community. (Diane Brown, 317-274-7711, habrown@iupui.edu) --or--JULIE SCHAEFER, HERRON SCHOOL OF ART, (317) 920-2413 |