Casey Toomey’s grandma, Carolyn, baked cakes — “beautiful cakes with royal icing flowers” — to celebrate family and friends. She never sold them. It was her gift to those she loved.
“Do well by doing good.” Ben Franklin’s historic quote shapes the Muncie Map Company’s mission, seeking projects and jobs that benefit the Muncie community. Andy Shears, owner of the Muncie Map Company, is a Muncie native and a Ball State alumnus, and always wanted to give back to the community after leaving his former career as a professor.
Dark blue clouds cover the sun as the October wind picks up the coconut logs outside of 713 E. Willard St. The light sprinkle is a relief to the grime and sweat but can be bad news for the hog’s pen in place of a front yard.
Drive on South Hoyt Avenue, and you’ll see businesses decorated with colorful murals, adding a pop of color to the otherwise bare street. Several local businesses, such as Rosebud Coffee House and the Common Market, have set up shops in Muncie's southside to bring the community together.
Amanda Hughes remembers strolling down the streets of downtown Muncie when she was little, peeking through cracked windows, counting boarded-up buildings and watching her hometown wear away.
There he stood, overwhelmed by what he saw. The mile-and-a-half-long property that used to be Muncie’s Slick Track Raceway was now piled with problems.
Founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, Ronnie Abergel created the Human Library to help challenge the stigma of difficult topics by simply creating discussion between people.
Stepping onto the rock-speckled dirt path, the first thing that can be seen from the front lawn of Northern Tropics Greenhouse is the rows of red, orange and gold chrysanthemum stones out on display. Further down the path, the plants from the five greenhouses emerge.
Carlie Boggs, Ball State junior computer information systems major, came across an advertisement on Facebook in January for a new doughnut shop opening in Yorktown, Indiana. When Boggs visited the shop to try its doughnuts, she said she was mesmerized by the food she had just bought.
Dressed in a white-and-black striped long sleeve shirt with a solid yellow patch and black overalls, Kylee Larson sets her iPhone on her tripod and turns on her microphone pack to start filming a video for her kids’ art YouTube channel, Kylee Makes It.
Upon entering Gordy Fine Art and Framing on East Main Street, its character shines through with hundreds of holes on its walls left from years of hanging the artwork of local and regional artists.
Tired of dressing in his regular sweatpants and a T-shirt, Jessie Creselious was searching for a new pair of vintage-style boots when he stumbled upon an ad for an event hosted by Circle City Aerodrome, a nonprofit organization for Indianapolis and Hoosier steampunk enthusiasts to “berth their airships.”
![The work of 38 Black visual artists will flood the walls of the former warehouse of Stutz Business Center in downtown Indianapolis. “We're bringing some new life into the space and transforming a room [by] bringing a lot of creativity to it on the walls, the floors and with the visual art itself,” Mali Simone Jeffers said. Ellen Neiers, Photo Provided](https://snworksceo.imgix.net/bsd/810a038d-ff60-476d-81ed-02bf65659621.sized-1000x1000.png?w=1000&ar=4%3A3&fit=crop&crop=faces&facepad=3&auto=format)
After a racially discriminative job listing for a new creative director for gallery exhibition “DRIP: Indy’s #BlackLivesMatter Street Mural” was posted last February, Mali Simone Jeffers and Alan Bacon decided to pull out of being guest curators for the exhibit.
When Erica Markley’s 9-year-old daughter was born, she knew she didn’t want to expose her child to harmful petroleum byproducts from store-brand soaps that could damage her sensitive skin.
For more than 100 years, Ball canning jars were manufactured in Muncie and plant workers developed many memories working for the Ball Brothers Corporation and cementing Muncie’s history as a manufacturing city. The Minnetrista “Jarring Our Memories” exhibit aims to highlight and share those memories with the local community.
Cindie Hudson, Kokomo, Indiana resident and owner of two therapy dogs — Harlee and Seger — has recently published a book called “Yellow Dog.” “Yellow Dog” is about Hudson’s family trip that she took to Sanibel Island on the southwest coast of Florida.
Justin Shupe, Ball State senior business administration and risk management major, was with two friends when the idea to travel by boat from Indiana to Florida was born.
For Robert La France, director of the David Owsley Museum of Art (DOMA), pop art represents hope during difficult times. The exhibition “POP Power from Warhol to Koons: Masterworks from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation” is a show La France thought could bring some joy to people as they feel safer visiting museums during the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the 2021 school year comes to a close, soon-to-be graduates may feel their time at Ball State is ending too fast.
Sunlight beams through the wide glass windows onto masked customers waiting to have their hair washed and styled at various hair salons in Muncie. Stylists, muffled by masks, talk with clients about families and long days at work while dryers blow and water pours into shampooing basins.
