PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Mary Rigg Neighborhood Center serves approximately 250 people a day in inner-city southwest Indianapolis. The Center commits to help, serve, and connect neighbors to additional resources. The Center supports learning, work, and community opportunities to help those who want to improve their situation today and take steps toward a better tomorrow.

This design, in the shape of a life-size question mark, becomes a mascot to the idea that knowledge is available at our fingertips as we ask the questions and look for the answers. The answer is in the question. It has a strong conceptual relationship to the type of work that is accomplished daily by the Mary Rigg Center. The question mark as a book share station also comments on a topic of social significance, with the idea of libraries as symbols of social justice.

“Social justice includes ‘support for human rights, and a fair allocation of community resources.’ There are numerous ways in which libraries support human rights, beginning with the human right to access information. Libraries are also a community resource, an intellectual infrastructure that is made available to all members of the community.”

Phil O’Malley, a professional studio artist and designer in Indianapolis, IN, lived his first decade about forty miles west of Cape Cod, followed with the past four decades painting in the Midwest. Phil has created two and three dimensional works in fine art, culinary art, interior design, architectural design, graphic design, and event design. All these endeavors have symbiotically fed his art to maturity. He studied Interior Design in the Purdue School of Engineering and earned a BFA from the Herron School of Art and Design.