Indianapolis Star:: 'Luckiest Guy In the world': Sculpture of John Mellencamp unveiled at IU Bloomingto n

Indianapolis Star By Holly V. Hays 

Rock star and singer-songwriter John Mellencamp is the latest Hoosier legend to be memorialized in bronze on Indiana University's flagship campus.

Several hundred people gathered outside IU Auditorium Friday afternoon to see the sculpture unveiled. The piece, created by Indianapolis-based artist Michael McAuley, depicts Mellencamp playing his guitar, right arm extended triumphantly in the air. It's McAuley's third sculpture to be featured on the Bloomington campus; he also made the sculpture of composer Hoagy Carmichael that sits outside the Auditorium and the likenessof Nobel Prize-winning social scientist and former professor Elinor Ostrom that sits outside Woodburn Hall.  

The 73-year-old rocker, who lives in Bloomington, has been a force in the genre for decades, with hits like "Hurts So Good," "Pink Houses," "Small Town," "Jack & Diane" and "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A." He's a Grammy winner, a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame and, alongside icons Neil Young and Willie Nelson, one of the founding board members of Farm Aid. Mellencamp is also an accomplished artist whose paintings are the subject of an exhibit currently on display at the university's Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art.