Thursday, December 31, 2009

Brainstorming Idea #3: by Lester

Tyree Guyton has seen Detroit mayors come and go: Coleman Young, Dennis Archer, Kwame Kilpatrick and now, Dave Bing. All have attempted to put their mark on the city, none has succeeded to the extent that this Detroit-born artist has. All have tried or is trying to make the city over into the symbol of the striving metropolis it once was, none has succeeded, and one has actually contributed to making it a symbol of malfeasance and disgrace.

Guyton has taken the abandoned houses and the refuge of a consuming society, which have come to symbolize the city's demise, and turned it into artistic installations that speak to Detroit's spirit. The Heidelberg Project, as it's called, attracts tourists from around the globe. Guyton is an ambassador of sort, but more than that, he's a griot.


My project with Tyree will be to tell the story of his community through his art. Like Simon Rodia, creator of the Watts Towers, he speaks to those of us beyond the borders of his city.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Marathon Dancers

I'm told by my friend Logan that Detroit is the location of the first "Marathon Dance." Apparently people in the 1920's and 1930's would get together and dance until they, literally, dropped. This reminds me immediately of the Yaqui Deer Dancers on Easter and Jim Harrison's gorgeous description of them in my favorite book, Dalva.


Brainstorming Idea #2: by Aisha

I was looking through one of those "Such and such a place in pictures" books and decided that one thing I might do this summer is to recreate photographs like these found photos from Hamtramck:





















...using friends. I'm especially interested in the images of men in big-time auto meetings. Age, race and gender would likely conflict with the originals. The photos would be from moments throughout Detroit history, and brief captions would provide a timeline for the city.

Everybody Loves Detroit

It seems to me that everybody has a little place in their heart dedicated to Detroit. Even if they don't know it yet. Recently, I found out that a long-lost friend is doing her architecture thesis about Detroit in grad school (HARVARD?! Go Erin...), and I found a pricey, fashionish art mag at the magazine stall out in front of Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard (we're in LA for the holidays) dedicated entirely to the city. Then there's this video (thanks to Miro): Renaissance State of Mind.

Where To Stay? The Winder Inn

I know not everyone who'd like to visit Detroit this summer likes sleeping in a backyard yurt or on a mattress on the floor of a sun porch with five other twenty-somethings.

Maybe you want your parents to come but what options do they have? Only big chain hotels where they'll be lost among big-time conference goers? Only places near the airport, far from the action? Far from the chicken lemon soup in Greektown? If you or your parent fits this description AND have a few pennies to spend, you or they are in luck.

During the First Official Detroit Planning Meeting (FODPM) this afternoon, over pasteries from the Swiss bakery on Santa Monica Blvd. (where I just bumped into an elementary school teacher I haven't seen in sixteen years! Hey Miss Jeannette...) my father mentioned the Winder Inn. It's a Victorian Mansion. Check it out.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Brainstorming Idea #1: by Miro

I've been collecting "dark room" items for years now. I'm trying to get my friend to sell me her old enlarger... so far I have multiple trays, film paper, tongs, beakers, lighting equipment etc.

I've had this dream to convert old (vintage) nonfunctional cameras into "Pin Holes".... HOW- you ask? well... I don't really know yet, I've collected about twenty cameras and I figured it'd be easy because they're already "light tight".... and the other technical part is... once it's a pinhole camera, I have a black camera bag to load a small piece of film paper into the camera that will work as a negative... you take a photograph- SAVE the "negative" in a dark room- you place liquid emulsion on the negative and transfer it on to a cut piece of Plexiglas, like a tray... then you simply load on to the enlarger and transfer it on to film paper... and VOILA! I would like to simplify this dream... any Ideas?

I would like to see photographs done by a group of people and have an art show--- imagine the texture of the photograph itself?

I imagined a team of two or more people photographing together. The idea was to document a story one wants to tell by photographing and recording a soundtrack for the image or series. For instance, you and a friend want to share something important with us... while one photographs an image the other person records the sounds that occupy the space... you can use a tape recorder. THEN, loop the sound either by playing it and record sounds behind it.... or use a computer. This song will accompany the piece while it's displayed on the wall... it sounds hard, huh... that's why I think a team would work better...

Sunday, December 6, 2009










Detroit Ho! is a for-friends blog that revolves around Detriot and its relationship to the arts. For awhile now friends have been sending great articles, websites and art-related ideas about the motor city. The editors now think that it would be wonderful to see more voices participate. Here are two ways how you can join the conversation:

1) Write a short (500-800 words) essay about Detroit-- about the arts in Detroit, or about something dynamic or bizarre related to its geography or anthropology, or a book review on a book about the city, or, ooh-- even, a fancy analysis of the film "8 Mile," etc. Send it in the body of an email to sloanish@gmail.com, with Detroit Blog in the subject heading. Try to consider keeping the language article-esque, with a clear subject in mind. More creative interpretations of this prompt will be considered as well, so long as they make sense.

OR...

2) Thinking about joining us for the First Annual Seminole Street Artists Colony and Exhibition this summer? Write an even shorter (150-200 words) proposal for an art project you can do, would do in an ideal world, or might do if you end up visiting your aunt in a nearby state and can drop by. The project should involve the concept of Detroit in some way, shape or form. We're looking to have an exhibition/festival so any ideas you have for music, video, documentary, photography, murals, marionettes, etc would help our collective brainstorming about what this exhibition could look like. YOU DON'T HAVE TO ACTUALLY DO IT! Brainstorming is half the fun. Photos are welcome.

Thanks!

-The Editors

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Object Orange

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell claims that the crime rate in New York City actually fell from it’s terrifying heights in the 1990’s because of a few very small but persistent efforts. One of these was based on the Broken Windows theory. The basic premise of the theory is this: when a neighborhood is fraught with broken windows— when a potential crime-doer is stepping over broken glass as they contemplate their next move— the overpowering atmosphere of chaos and despair acts as a kind of green light for wrongdoing.

However, when you make sure to repair windows as soon as they are broken (and Gladwell loops graffiti into this as well) you tamp down on the pervasive assumption that crime and chaos is OK. People are, somehow, less driven to act on the impulse to wreck havoc when things look neat. Some criminologists say that this is total lunacy. But as a person who cannot get any writing done without sweeping, doing the dishes and maybe even a quick mop, I have to say it makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t necessarily mean the end to unemployment or better infrastructure and it would, indubitably require funding, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.

Some aspect of this theory must have been at play when a group of Detroit artists got together to form Object Orange. The members of Object Orange paint abandoned, falling-down, decrepit houses BRIGHT ORANGE. These are houses that are potential safe havens for drug deals and prostitution. These are the houses that you don’t want to see in your grandmother’s neighborhood because every day, perfectly able-bodied, able-minded individuals walk out of them like zombies in a bad Spike-Lee-does-Sci-fi film. While the members of Object Orange don’t go so far as to clean up messes as the Broken Glass theory recommends, they attempt to draw attention to the messes that people in power have done their darndest to ignore.

This project kept reminding me of something… and today I remembered what it was. Once upon a time when I lived in Brooklyn, I got up early one morning and rode the metro to Central Park to see volunteers release pieces of orange fabric from a series of strategically placed poles so that Christo’s bright orange “Gates” could flap in the winter wind. Christo’s fabric must have been a very similar shade to DC1C-70-4, or “Tiggerific,” the Behr brand paint in the “Disney” line of colors that Object Orange uses to paint their abandoned homes.


Throughout his career, Christo has done what Object Orange looks to do: drawn attention to architectural objects that people have perhaps
grown so accustomed to that they stop seeing them. Christo and his wife and partner Jeanne-Claude surrounded Pont Neuf, the Riechstag, a museum in Chicago, an island, and a coast, among other things, in fabric and something that looked, in one case, like pink plastic. It’s kind of like Philippe Petit reminding everyone that the World Trade Centers were the tallest skyscrapers in the world by tightrope walking between them.

New York, I remember, was abuzz with irritation after the Gates were unleashed. And as far as the Tiggerific houses are concerned—there is, if you look at the project without a lot of patience, something almost haughty about using conceptual art to make a social statement. Frank Gehry has tried to communicate social critique through his Los Angeles architecture for decades but this approach leaves far too much to the imagination. However, Object Orange’s technique is not merely decorative or particularly high concept: four of the eleven houses that Object Orange initially painted have been torn down. Even though one city official says this is a coincidence, it’s nice to think that this art has had direct impact on urban renewal.

Object Orange is initiating a process as simple as Sunday chores. Sweeping up is what Malcolm Gladwell has said may have brought New York City back to life. Gladwell, one of the smartest guys ever (he has some of the best hair ever too), and Object Orange (even if they’re just a bunch of art school punks) seem to be suggesting an age old bit of wisdom: slow and steady wins the race. I think that there are probably some other bits of age-old wisdom that could apply here as well, but my point is... if the city’s politicians stopped procrastinating what they must view as their most menial chore, they’d see that this chore in particular is not so menial after all.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

The Detroit Institute of Arts

This morning I watched Frida, a film about the life of Frida Kahlo, hoping to see scenes of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera painting a mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). There were none, but I got a nice jolt of renewed appreciation for Kahlo’s paintings.

Defeated by my first attempt to start researching the museum, I got on the Internet and read some articles about Detroit. As I did this, the voice of Brazilian Caetano Veloso sang “Burn it Blue” in my head. This song played at the end of Frida and Caetano's voice… it sticks with you. It’s the same one that made the lady bullfighter cry in the film Talk to Her. Because of this melancholy soundtrack, a series of images flashed through my mind as I read about Detroit’s internationally renowned museum: Frida Kahlo losing her leg. Frida Kahlo’s sister shooting morphine into her arm. Frida Kahlo kissing her husband Diego one last time and bursting into funereal flames.

It doesn’t seem, however, that it’s just me projecting a series of depressing scenes onto Detroit. In all the articles, each of the writers uses an almost obligatorily blue palette when describing the city. According to Holland Cotter at the New York Times, Detroit is “spirited but depressed,” one of “our ailing cities,” known for “dust and vacancy,” with “little commercial energy.” In a place like this, Cotter notes, art is a “glittering bauble” (I had to look that up: a bauble is a showy and useless thing). For Ellen McCarthy of the Washington Post, the city holds beauty, but she calls it “gritty and romantic,” “idle and empty,” and in some places sad enough to prompt her friend to note “It looks like a nuclear bomb went off.”

It is perhaps no wonder that when I surf through them, all of the paintings in the online catalogue for the museum seem to echo misery: “Still Life with Fallen Candles,” “Shadow Country,” “Melancholy Woman,” “Donkey.”

Luckily, I have other resources for learning about this place. My father, who is visiting family in Detroit right now, calls to report on his renewed adoration for the city almost every day.

Last week when the phone rang, my dad’s voice didn’t even wait for a hello. It said: “I. Just. Had. The. Greatest. Day.”

The story went like this: my father has always been a fan of my great aunt Betty. She is not his aunt, but his aunt-in-law: 94 and sharp as a knife. They are a funny pair. Even though she is from an immigrant Italian family and he a working class black one, they grew up within blocks of each other. She grew up on Seneca, and my father spends his time on Seminole: both streets are in a historical neighborhood named in honor of Native American tribes. She lives in a wealthy suburb now, but it’s a ten-minute car ride from Indian Village. He will bike or drive over when the mood hits, just to say hello.

On the “greatest day,” the two of them took a field trip together to the Detroit Institute of Arts to see the Richard Avedon exhibition. At the show, the walls are lined with images of thin, beautiful women wearing bizarre uniforms dreamed up by the fashion world’s creative geniuses. Richard Avedon has been celebrated for incorporating models of various ethnic backgrounds into the world of high fashion. Because my father is a photographer and my mother is a pattern maker, there is something especially touching about this outing: a middle aged black artist is taking his wife’s elderly white aunt on a tour of the cosmopolitan world they left Detroit in order to explore.

One model in particular, named Donyale Luna, was born in Detroit. In a stark, black and white photo, she stands with sandal straps criss-crossing up her dark legs like ribbon; metallic rectangles shimmy and shimmer on her torso, reflecting neat little flashes of light and shadow; one elbow points at the ceiling, while her face lifts up and to the side, her cheek lit like a waning crescent moon. She is a skyscraper—a gesture of modernity. Though she left it for New York and Europe, her roots are in the city outside the museum; the one that, in its heyday, served as the very definition for the word modernity.

After seeing the show, my dad and great aunt realize that it’s late. They are hungry. So they go to the museum restaurant for a light dinner, in the same cafeteria where my young, dating parents used to go for tea when they worked at the library across the street.

The Detroit Museum of Art is majestic, and the silhouettes of my father and great aunt eating must have been minuscule in comparison to the building that surrounded them. The DIA was designed by Paul Cret, an architect who brought a Beaux-Arts, Italian Renaissance style to federal buildings in many American cities. The walls of the interior courtyard boast frescoes painted by Diego Rivera. Multi-colored hands in various stages of clutching and opening are raised like a bouquet toward the ceiling in a manner reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling. The slithering, silver pipes and wheels of factory equipment twist and wind around the bodies of working men, as though they are toiling inside the viscera of a steel giant. In a short video shot while he painted the mural, Rivera stands calmly— switching among his seven brushes, working slowly to add shadow to the fingernails of a massive hand, which is larger than Rivera's sizable belly.

In order to do research for this mural, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo spent hours observing and photographing the employees at automobile factories. In the mural, juxtaposed with images of industry are the large, round, nude bodies of women and men; the oval of an unborn baby hovers over the west wall. In the film Frida, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, both crippled, hobble to the top of a Mayan ruin. When he asks how she came to have a limp, she does not say: the pole from a bus entered my body at my pelvis and came out my vagina. She says, “at the end of the day we can endure much more than we think we can." I wonder what she, Trotsky and Rivera would say about the fact that Detroit, potent enough at one time to inspire such a grandiose fresco, has become the city of which America is most ashamed.

Aware of Detroit's ethnic demographics, the museum has moved the collections of African and African American art, thanks to a 158 million dollar renovation, to more prominent positions. Curators have shifted the tone of captions and informative plaques to meet the needs of an audience that hasn’t gotten a Ph.D. in art history. Galleries are organized by theme, not chronology, to better cater to the way young minds work.

Newspaper critics roll their eyes in fear that these gestures will “dumb down” the complicated rhetoric of great art. But Frida and Diego worked their whole lives in the name not of the elite, but of the people. Fancy theoretical blah blah is not, after all, the same thing as intelligence.

As they leave the museum, my father and great aunt pass an auditorium teeming with mostly African American children. “What is going on?” my father asks. "We're hosting a chess tournament," a museum employee answers. When my father was young, his teachers told him to stop trying in school and accept his fate as a plumber. It’s hard for him to fall victim to the tone that the national media uses to describe the city of his birth when he is confronted by scenes like this: a room full of black boys and girls, studying a checkered board, contemplating what move they will make next.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

First Annual Seminole Street Artist's Colony and Exhibition










So, at yoga class this morning, I had an idea.

This summer it'd be cool to see the Seminole house brimming with creativity. Friends who'd like to join can help fulfill my father's dream of offering the house up as an artist's residence.

The thing about the house is, it can cast a kind of narcotic spell on the creatively inclined. Some rooms are polished and furnished and ready for movie watching and brunch. Others are missing chunks of themselves, with puffy pink stuff coming out of places, tiles in need of white gunk, patios in need of a French floral paint job-- and the third floor could use, in one place in particular, a floor. The master bedroom, the place where we could hold an exhibition-- what my dad has always referred to as 'the gallery'-- needs a good sweep and sanding but already has track lighting installed. It would be cool to tile one wall like it was the Paris Metro, I think.

What it also is, is a symbol: a microcosm of the city itself.

The house gives me the same feeling that industrial areas do, that unfinished air of potential that makes you hungry to create. You know that feeling? There's just this buzz in the air that makes you want to get out your camera or pencil or start a dark room and lose yourself for days.

So, I was thinking, if a friend or friend of a friend wants to come but isn't sure what that would look like, they can picture this: a stately old house that's like living inside a grandiose but half-realized idea; jazz, blues, Patti Smith, Anita Baker-- some kind of good music playing all the time; planting a garden with tomatoes and basil; periodic trips to Eastern market; family style dinners; yoga; painting parties; waking up early to have green tea and sit by yourself looking out the window; entire days spent writing a short story or taking pictures; filming interviews or leaves or feet. Trips to Canada and Belle Isle. And, you fill in the blank...

Then, maybe meet up with artists in the area, filmmakers, whatever, and plan a big creative party/ exhibit/ gallery opening and put our art on the walls.

**

What I'm thinking, too, is this: our house is only so big. Even a party could only hold so many people. If I don't know you but you are interested in this idea, maybe try to put something together with your community as well... if you aren't in Detroit, have an arty event in honor of Detroit-- put up pictures of Detroit on your living room wall, have books about the city on your coffee table, and play some Motown. If you are in Detroit, maybe we could all try to do something around the same time: have art exhibitions in our houses and document them through blogs. We could even try to have them around the same time, as a series of festivals, of first Friday art happenings to go along with all the other summer events that Detroit hosts. It'll be like the thousand concerts that take place on Summer Solstice in Paris. We can electrify the city with summertime music, art and creativity and take pictures. A way to show Detroit differently, one event at a time.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Why We Migrate

My parents met in the Detroit Public Library. It was a rich era. Their co-workers were all on fire with creative potential. Mary had wisdom and tampons at the ready if any woman was in need, and made fried chicken that could cause you to eat your fingers by accident. Garth was preparing to take his stylish demeanor off to Rochester to start an internationally renowned dance troupe. My uncle was on roller skates in the basement, finding titles, as diligent then as he would be as a doctor of psychology years later. The sky was the limit. Love was in the air.

Years have passed. My parents left to pursue careers in fashion and photojournalism, and raised me in California. The city has changed for the worse. Lately, the draw of family and memory has trumped the South of France or Tuscany in their minds when they think of where they'll retire. They're hoping, now, to return.

While the world has looked on Detroit as the nation's badge of failure, I've been taught to regard it with nostalgia and romance. There are murals, veggie-laden farmers and kosher butchers at Eastern Market, where my grandfather used to go to warm his hands over coffee after carrying ton after ton of steel. Richard Avedon photographs are now on view at the Detroit Institute of Art. The folks at the Chaldean store will, after a few months, begin to look you in the eye and help you navigate tubs of olives, honey-toned flaky baked goods, imported fava beans and bulk spices. The Avalon bakery will sell you coffee with pizza for breakfast. Art students roam the alleys with cameras and sticks of charcoal. The owner of Cyprus Taverna in Greektown once dreampt of singing opera. My father's best friend Rodney will tell you a joke... especially if a six pack of his favorite cheap brew is involved.

Sure, the houses are falling down. In fact, our house in Indian Village has seen better days. But guess whose parents' lived there before he grew up and became a famous author? Hint: He wrote Middlesex. If it's haunted, this house's ghosts are happy omens; beacons of good faith for the people who enter into its raccoon-infested walls. (Half-kidding).

Few places on earth have made me feel so artistically energized. And for the record, the grocery stores are not, as the media would have you believe, on lockdown. Try biking from the center of town to a new Trader Joes to buy some pita chips and a five-dollar Reisling if you think I'm kidding. There is poverty, yes. Crime, absolutely. But the city is much more full of color, culture and spirit than most people have been led to realize. Which is why I'd like to invite you to come see for yourself!

This is my idea: think of an art project. Save up a bit of cash. Come to the motor city for a while and be creative. We'd like to host an exhibition or festival at our house some time this summer to celebrate the city. This blog is an invitation.

I'd like to spend the next few months writing about what Detroit has to offer, to help encourage and inspire people about its richness. My father will provide (some of) the photographs. If not this summer, at some point, take a moment to check this city out. It could use the positive attention.