Vinyl record artist Lobyn Hamilton taking a spin at Newfields

This image shows “Rock and Roll: I Wonder What Happened to the Girl Who Said I Listened to White Music,” a sculpture made of wood, vinyl records, album covers and a record player by artist Lobyn Hamilton. (Photo provided by Newfields)

Lobyn Hamilton, the Indianapolis artist known for creating portraits and sculptures from fragments of vinyl records, has entered a blockbuster phase of his career.

By physical dimensions, Hamilton’s work is bigger than ever. Using wood, vinyl records, album covers and turntables, he crafts wall hangings that are nearly 16 feet wide and more than 7 feet tall.

The center of each work resembles a U.S. flag, with a turntable serving as the field in the upper left and spines of album covers chopped and aligned to serve as stripes.

Hamilton prepared six different “flag” collages for an upcoming Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields solo exhibition titled “What I Have You Have.”

Expanding his expertise from early-career depictions of musicians Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and Prince, Hamilton said the massive collages represent a visual memoir of his life in Indianapolis.

The show’s pieces pay tribute to different musical styles, including rock, hip-hop, classical and gospel.

“I could do pop culture icons or political icons for the rest of my life if I wanted to,” Hamilton said. “I wanted to see if I had anything else to say on a different level, in a different expression.”

Hamilton started making flags after he displayed a Donald Trump collage that generated a bit of controversy as part of an exhibition at the University of Indianapolis.

Initially, the flags were confined to a turntable and album-cover spines. Three of these works can be seen in a 2022 Architectural Digest online profile of a Boston residence where former Eli Lilly and Co. CFO Derica Rice and his wife, marketing executive Robin Nelson-Rice, now live.

Hamilton eventually surrounded the flag design with center labels, cover art and grooved vinyl—modified into squares and arranged in a 3-D pattern.

It could be said that politics influenced Hamilton’s first supersized flag. All of the center labels represented the same album: 1977’s “Alex Haley Tells the Story of His Search for Roots.” All of the cardboard spines represented a different album: 1974’s autobiographical “Evel Knievel.”

Hamilton titled this work “The Building Blocks of America and the Attempt of Democracy.”

“Building Blocks” made its public debut at the 2021 Butter fine art fair, where cell phones weren’t allowed in a curtained-off space where the collage was displayed.

Hamilton said other artists frequently imitate his work, which factored in the isolated no-phone zone. At the same time, he wants viewers to see the collages free of distractions.

Music won’t be played, for instance, to accompany “What I Have You Have” when the six flags are displayed at the art museum’s third-floor Gerald and Dorit Paul Galleries from Aug. 26 to May 19.

“It’s supposed to be a meditative experience,” Hamilton said. “You’re supposed to be in that space of, ‘What do you see in the work?’ ‘How do you see yourself in the work?’ ‘What memories does it conjure for you?’ It’s not for me to dictate, because I couldn’t possibly know.”

Hamilton, a 2003 graduate of Franklin Central High School, said waves of personal nostalgia accompanied the making of the exhibition’s hip-hop collage.

“It was memory lane,” he said. “I remember buying some of the records after riding my low-rider bike from 38th and College to Rockin’ Billy’s Records [a bygone store on Keystone Avenue]. I didn’t have a car yet.”