Detroit Ho!

One Year Anniversary

2011-05-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

It has been one year since The First Annual Seminole Street Artist's Colony and Exhibition made its way to Motown. Detroit Ho! introduced us to initiative, literary readings and art exhibitions, to generosity, to ourselves, to change, to new and old friends, to home and community gardening, growlers of beer, to the dynamic application of ideas in the realm of landscape architecture, poetry hip hop and art, to the olive guy, to DIA Fridays, Eastern Market Saturdays, Avalon Bakery everydays, the US Social Forum and the Allied Media Conference with its puppetry and dancing, to the most gorgeous gay pride parade of all time, to saying hello to strangers, to the man rollerblading the wrong way down Jefferson Avenue braiding his way like a reckless ballerina gracefully among oncoming cars, to soul food, to big explosive soul love, moments of heartache, to the beauty of dreaming, and to so much more. Who knows what future projects that such a powerful summer will lead to in the future.

While certainty remains of collaborative work in the future, the "First Annual" project has officially closed. If you've found your way to this web address and aren't super familiar with the motor city, I encourage you to look back at our time together, in the hopes that you'll start looking for articles about D-town or even choose to make a trip yourself. Feel free to offer us some feedback, or otherwise keep in touch.

Thank you, Detroit, for an amazing experience! I cannot more highly suggest that EVERYONE click on this last link and let the students at the Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences wish our farewell for us. Please keep your eye and heart out for this incredible land of hope, strength, progress, innovation and renaissance! These kids are trying to raise funds to make another music video in the future, so keep an eye out for ways to help.

Hey Tagger! Your Art Made it To the Big D.

2011-01-11T21:06:00.001-08:00

The Detroit Ho Ho Ho's

2011-01-06T17:23:00.000-08:00

A 'Best Of' list from this holiday season...

Best Place my dad got a leather jacket for $35: Regeneration New and Used Clothes

Best Uhaul Parking Lot in which to read ArtForum magazine in the backseat of a beat-up Nissan with my cousin Travis: 7 mile and Van Dyke.

Best Sunset: Jefferson Avenue, New Year's Eve

Best Inadvertent Sign of Hope for a Colored Girl on a Winter's Day when the Rainbow's Not Enuf:

Best Day to Visit My Maternal Grandmother's House in Order to Collect Seeds from the Trees Uncle Bernie Planted: New Year's Day.

Best New Fashion Trend My Dad is Trying to Spark: Ski Suits when There isn't a Slope in Sight.

Best 40 Ounces of Beer My Great Aunt Cora Chugged: Trader Joe's 2010 Vintage Ale

Best Shot My Mom Took through the Dirty Windshield:

Best Lemon-Lavender Elixer with Brick Oven Baked Veggie Chili and Pear/Gorgonzola Pizza: Motor City Brew Works

Best Place to Buy Small, Home-Brewed Bottles of Perfume Oil Scented to Resemble Designer Brands: The Dollar Store on Mt. Elliot and Jefferson

Best Artichoke Fritters with Potato-Garlic Spread: Pegasus

Best Cappuccino my Dad Has Had Since Paris: Astoria Pastry Shop in Greektown

Best Siracha Chicken Wings to Eat with Some Daily $1 Beer Specials: Cass Cafe

Best Moment of Bonding with My Sister: Fishing the Pork Skin out of the Trash

Best Chicken-Potato Pocket and Artichoke Focaccia with Kombucha on the side: Avalon Bakery

Best Theatre at which to have Black Swan inflicted upon You: The Main Art in Royal Oak

**Thank you to my cousin Suzanne for coming up with the phrase: Detroit ho ho ho...

Winter Daydreaming... on a Monday

2010-12-06T10:43:00.000-08:00

This morning I heard yet another reference to "youth" radio on KCRW, and it gave me some ideas. I was a huge fan of radio in Detroit over the summer (they even play my favorite show of all time, "The Treatment" with Elvis Mitchell on Saturdays!! Who cares if it's at 5am) and it seems that a Detroit-centered program like The Craig Fahle Show could be a good outlet for a project with oh, say, some journalism students at a local community college. I just so happen to have a niece who is studying journalism at a community college in Detroit and according to a text message from her mother this morning, "YES" she would be interested in doing some kind of project this summer. I'll double check with her when I visit Detroit for Christmas.

But why stop with Craig? I have lovely memories of interning at the Leonard Lopate Show at WNYC in New York a million years ago, and shows like RadioLab were making miracles just down the hall. Which is to say, radio is a reasonably accessible medium, right? Does anybody have contacts at This American Life?

A good friend of mine and former NYU teacher, Judith Sloan (no relation) has done some gorgeous radio pieces that come to mind... I am going to start channelling radio waves at yoga class this winter. Unless that's dangerous.

Detroit Ho Wants to Know...

2010-12-04T23:56:00.000-08:00

It's about time to think about summer plans. So, would you-- could you-- come to Detroit? If so, what would you do? Who are you?

Nap Time, and Other Announcements

2010-11-08T15:24:00.000-08:00

Detroit Ho! is currently napping. But check out my friend Valyntina's blog in the meantime... This October, Detroit Ho! curated Back Room Live! Three of the many beautious Cave Canem poets who read this summer at our "Honeymoon in Detroit" reading are featured: Nandi Comer, Aricka Foreman and Tommye Blount.

Bon Appetite a la Detroit

2010-08-25T15:46:00.000-07:00

As I chew on my favorite afternoon snack of all time (garlicky sauteed dandelions with a splash of citrus)...

I am drawn to remember all the wonderful meals we shared in Detroit this summer. I will present, in honor of these delicious occasions, a memorial photo essay. Starting with this oven photograph from a potluck we threw one lovely afternoon...

This cheesy french fry is from a trip to the infamous Coney Island chain, where my parents went on dates as youngins...

Here are some yummy, pastel colored cookies from Mexicantown.

Vegetarian black bean chili on Rosie's balcony... with cornbread and delicious pesto bruschetta and white wine.

And here is some of her famous homemade pie...

A funky concoction of "fried pink tomatoes," and other fun vegetables from Eastern Market.

Pizza at Supino's at Eastern Market...

Fig and prosciutto tapas at Sangrias in Royal Oak...

Flaming Saganaki cheese at the New Parthenon...

Something involving asparagus juxtaposed with a melon in our kitchen...

Crazy delicious tzatziki at Beirut Palace in Royal Oak...

Rodney's ribs...

Racine's side dishes to accompany said ribs...

Olives at Eastern Market...

Lapsang souchong tea (thanks to Rebecca) imported from Seven Cups in Tucson...

Lauren's plum pie a la mode...

An "everyday" type of dinner at Uncle Paul's house...

Cabbage from the community garden...

And last but not least, Aunt Cora May's famous fried chicken... here cooked with Canola oil. But let's not fool ourselves...

...it's always better with lard.

Honeymoon in Detroit: A Literary Reading

2010-07-23T06:48:00.001-07:00

In honor of our visiting friends, Mika and PR, and their recent nuptuals, we decided to title our most recent summer event "Honeymoon in Detroit." I met the happy couple when we were in the MFA program at the University of Arizona together. These last few years they have been refining their skills at being crazy-good at home renovation, and were more than happy to share their gifts with the house.

I wasn't even sure if I had the energy to plan another event, but as I watched my friends sweat, and as we started to have so much fun exploring the city and as the living room and a stairway got coats of some tastefully chosen colors, I got to thinking... what's one last push of creative energy? All it really takes to throw a successful event are talented people and a trip to Trader Joes. What with my photojournalist/blogging dad around, we figured that even if it was just us at the reading, there'd be enough for an entertaining evening.

Before I'd left Tucson, a fellow of the literary foundation Cave Canem gave me the contact info of a bunch of Detroit poets. Because Detroit is such a magical place, and I really mean this, I'd actually met a few of them already out in the small world. By accident. When I shot out emails, everyone, whether we'd bumped into one another or not, was enthusiastic about attending. Some told a friend or two to come, so we had a healthy crowd. Add to that my sister, my journalism majoring neice, my neighbor Rosie, this awesome photographer Stephen, and an MFA friend who just moved to Ann Arbor for law school, and you've got yourself an event.

There is always a moment before one of these shindigs, usually when I'm on my way to buy wine and cheese, when I think "OK hold it together Aisha. You can do a little chit chat for a couple of hours. Just get yourself a cup of wine and you'll survive." But as soon as these friend-strangers started showing up, I got that happy feeling in my stomach. Before I knew it the evening was in competition with some of the best I've had. Nandi was on the couch telling me about a Connecticut artist's residency to model ours after... Blair had these awesome blue shoes... don't get me started on Darryl's pants. I wanted to marry them all.

Then we started reading. The SHEER QUALITY of the work was... sheer. Oh goodness. Cave Canem doesn't let in anything that looks like average, I'll tell you that. And my old grad school friends blew me away anew. It's always refreshing to hear fresh material from people you thought you had pegged-- even if you'd pegged them as brilliant. This may sound like a love fest, but the reading was called Honeymoon, and I am not exaggerating at all. Not this time.

Blair, a fellow with the African diaspora-themed journal Callaloo (which had the Cave Canem folks jealous if you want to know what prestige looks like) read--nay, shouted!-- from his book of poems on Michael Jackson, Moonwalking. He has a slam history, so the room came alive with that satisfying je ne sais quoi that happens when a slammy delivery meets an academic aesthetic. (If you don't know what I mean don't assume I'm casting aspersions at either genre, really... there's just this beautiful balance...) Nandi read a poem about a woman who died in a Detroit fire that had the whole room going "Unh." Josh read what I must ineptly describe as an ode to his mother's immigration from Peru, that practically got a standing ovation. By the time Erika's car got stolen outside (I wish I were joking), we were all old friends.

When it comes to readings, I've become a real fan of strictly enforced time limits, and my sister Lisa decided to take this task on with gusto. For a lot of long, juicy reasons, I haven't spent a lot of time with my sister until the last few years, and it turns out she is... hilarious doesn't do her justice. Sharp doesn't either. She's like Detroit... you have to see for yourself to understand. Her gentle reminders, impromptu Q and A's, and unsolicited but entirely necessary ending remarks yanked our little gathering into order and laughter and style.

The whole car incident left us all feeling a bit smacked around by the rougher edges of a city we love to romanticize. It forced us to reconsider and perhaps take more deeply to heart some of the more hopeful lines read during the course of the evening about the state of affairs in this city, which teaches residents -- new, old and returning-- every day a new lesson about beauty and strength and loss and community. And humor. Oh! And love. Uh oh... cue the photograph of the young black boy wading through the water off Belle Isle in the shadow of a cityscape...

Romancing Detroit: A Courtship Exhibition (part two)

2010-07-23T06:48:00.000-07:00

Our courtship exhibition ended up being a delightful meet-and-greet. Because of the heat, it took place for the most part in the kitchen and on the porch, with courageous dashes up the stairs to check out some gorgeous art.

One room, which we like to call, "the glacier room," contained the work of eight photographers and painters...

The other room, deemed "the woods," contained some handmade "how to" books (which sent my teenaged cousin a-textin and a-blushin... who knew feminism could be so fun!), as well as photographs and an essay about the house where the exhibition was being held (which can be read in an upcoming issue of Michigan Quarterly Review). We also displayed a series of found and re-framed portraits from a Detroit dumpster...

While wandering around in the smothering heat, you could get to know the artists up close and personal. For example, Aisha's cousins! Including Suzanne, whose intricate pencil-drawings and elaborate murals have long decorated the homes of her relatives. Her contribution to the exhibit included a multi-media collaboration with another cousin, Rebecca, who has photographed extensively in Detroit and Italy.

Garrett's photographic documentation of both Detroit and Haiti added to the international breadth of the show. Though not a native Detroiter, he ended up moving to Detroit's Farnsworth Street after living at another artist's residence, the "Million Fishes" collective in San Fransisco.

Also chatting it up in the kitchen was Rachael, en route the Michigan Womyn's Festival. She makes books and other fancy objects out of Austin, in addition to running a design company, Redstart, which provides commercial and residential paint design (and may have inspired our flamboyant painting on the third floor).

If on the sunporch, you might run into the emmy-award winning filmmaker, New York Times freelance photographer and all-around-good guy, Stephen, who is currently working to create a photography institute on Detroit's Riverfront (here he is below, at the site). He was picking the brain of soon-to-be law student Heather, en route to Ann Arbor.

Rosie, a California native and post-card collector, moved to Detroit after taking a photographic road trip through the fifty states. She exhibited a few photographs in addition to the series of post cards she created on her own, fifty in all-- one for each state. She prefers living in Motor City, where "you get the sense that people pay attention," to her former home, New York City, which she describes as "a homing beacon for Type A personalities."

A few people not featured in the exhibit showed up as well. There was Kate, for example, another Farnsworth resident who teaches Detroit kids how to farm. The other Kate in attendance holds a monthly event above a bakery in Mexicantown called "Soup," which is a micro-fundraising initiative. Everybody brings five bucks for soup, and shares an idea they've come up with that relates to the arts. The person with the most popular idea is awarded all of the funds collected that evening.

Jero periodically spends his free time volunteering with a contingent of Detroit DIY/Handmade Detroit ("a loose collective for people who like to make stuff"). After meeting him at the exhibit, we found him at Eastern Market alongside a huge, colorful bus on loan from MIT called the "Fab Lab," which is currently making rounds in Detroit, in the attempt to de-mystify technology. He was helping some kids fiddle with wires that were somehow going to enable a speaker to amplify something (the kids got it much faster than I did).

While the art and learning were educational and all, the evening was most importantly a good time. An old friend made a two-hour treck from her farm to say hello, and three, kindly strangers left with well wishes and requests for more events in the future.

Not to worry!

There will be a literary reading this coming Wednesday... "Honeymoon in Detroit," in honor of our currently visiting friends, who are (to the dismay of all who hear it) ACTually spending their honeymoon in the Motor City. But hey! This place is waaay more romantic than people think.

Romancing Detroit: A Courtship Exhibition (part one)

2010-07-23T05:35:00.000-07:00

Our efforts to prepare for the exhibit on Wednesday started out just fine. We had asked a handful of artists to participate with us in an inaugural show, and we were impressed by their enthusiasm. We sketched out a healthy to do list and got to work.

Logan was painting a local creek onto the wall of the stairway that I was sanding...

Radhika was painting a blue Baudelaire onto the door of a closet...

And we all took about forty trips to the Staples copy center within the course of the day to have our buddy Al print stuff for us...

A photographer from the New York Times even dropped by at the last minute, asking if he could add some stuff to the exhibit. Well alright!

It was hot, sure, but we had borrowed a bunch of fans and the fridge was stocked with sparkling water and white wine. Everything was looking great.

And then the electricity went out.

Since this happens a lot at our house, we figured we'd short circuited something. We started running around for awhile, grabbing our local electrician and, for my dad, one of those masks you wear when you're "at work"...

Every time I opened the refrigerator door to look with panic at the cheese in the slowly-warming fridge, someone told me, "CLOSE IT!" And I obeyed.

But it became clear that there wasn't much we could do to change things. This particular outage was not our fault. It was a city-wide thing.

As we celebrated our faultlessness, it slowly dawned on us that the electricity-free environment had brought an air of calm into the house. This feeling-- something between chaos and zen, is a familiar one in a place like Detroit. After all, this summer has been a festival of rupture and healing-- bike accidents, breakups, cross-country moves and graduations... If this city has anything to teach, it's how to live with lots of hope despite a feeling of uncertainty about the future. So, we stopped running around, and waited for our guests as we were.

Painting Spaces

2010-07-13T08:10:00.000-07:00

We are in the last minute stages of planning our first exhibition of the summer! It will be a small meet-and-greet featuring the art of some new artist friends, family, and ourselves. We are going a little crazy trying to design the heck out of our new space:

Fashion 313

2010-07-08T04:41:00.001-07:00

Extremely Close and Very Uncomfortable

2010-07-08T04:41:00.000-07:00

The Story of Two Ladies Taking Fear to Task

Radhika

When Aisha was selling the idea of "Detroit Ho!" six months ago, she had me at the word Detroit. I had been contemplating my post-collegiate future, and was feeling bleak about joining other graduates heading in a mass exodus to those familiar cultural meccas like New York, Boston, D.C., and any European capital. Detroit Ho! was an opportunity to do something different, to make meeting and greeting a new city my first priority, to work with friends and to develop future artistic collaborations. In the following months, when I began to learn more about Motown, I felt privileged to live in a city that has seen such important civil rights activism around housing, workplace discrimination, and city governance. And, I was energized by current stories of community activism, large-scale art projects, and my fellow Seminole residents.

I couldn't have predicted that I would find something to work on as soon as my first day in Detroit, something totally unexpected involving neither art nor activism: fear.

The ground-work was laid before I got to Detroit. My bubbly enthusiasm about coming to stay here caused concern among family and friends, whose perception of Detroit was shaped by the Cops-esque footage of violence often shown on mainstream news channels. The fact of having grown up in an inner-city neighborhood in Boston, where ambiguous noises at night leave you wondering "gun shot or firework?" did nothing to dispel my dad's fear that somehow, Detroit would be a new level of dangerous. It seems even natives of Detroit feel this way: an elderly woman siting next to me on my flight through Atlanta felt that she had to intervene while I was in the midst of gushing about my summer plans, to ask me where I was from. When I told her she said, "You know Detroit isn't Boston, honey."

So perhaps I was predisposed to be scared because of well-meaning, yet fear-mongering individuals. It also didn't help that I have a prediliction to be excruciatingly cautions around unknown men-folk (always reliably half of any population-- except the one where I spent the last three years of college). During my first week in Detroit, my face was consistently twisted into a pretzel of discomfort when I would sally outside alone.

After a run with Aisha on one of my first days out and about in Detroit, this discomfort, which I had unquestioningly accepted as part of city living, came up. She had witnessed my pathetic attempt to wave hello to a man who had greeted us while we were jogging on Jefferson, and afterward subtly staged a friend-tervention. I was introduced to a new and alien concept: being friendly takes practice. It had always been my intention to get to know people in our community, but I unconsciously only seem to rise to the occasion in 'safe' spaces, such as a community garden, bookstore, outdoor jazz festival (already sounds like a post from Stuff White People Like, right?)

So, armed with this knowledge, and excited to end my perpetual cold feet, I jumped into practicing my hellos. In front of the gas station on Jefferson. At the Post Office. By the broccoli at the Indian Village Market. After an initial "hello" there have been some stellar responses: an invitation to a concert at Cafe con Leche, a cool glass of water with ladies from the Congregational Church in Grosse Pointe, "hey baby," a possible new artist collaborator with her mom, and too many returned "hey-how're-you-doings" to count.

So far I haven't had reason to regret my newfound friendliness, although I'm learning to enjoy that there will always be a wide variety of responses. Like when I said hello to someone on the way to Chene park for a Jazz concert, and he said 'Hey Boo boo do you have a light?' Then I got to say, 'Not Boo boo. Lady.' And he got to say 'Excuse me, young lady do you have a light?' Later that day, a visably intoxicated man intercepted a friend and I, physically blocking us as we tried to pass. This experience wasn't particularly enjoyable, but perhaps the opportunity to maneuver out of it was worth the discomfort. My friend kept her cool while I vigorously side-stepped him, repeating, 'Alright, alright.' Extremely close, yes. But as time goes by, more and more comfortable.

Opening up to the possibility of a good interaction is the thing.

Aisha

Of course some things happen regardless of how we walk down the street. A catalytic converter was cut clean off of one of our vehicles, and the tires were stabbed on the other car, both in broad daylight. This despite the nervous watch our across-the-street neighbor keeps on the street-- he sometimes stands with a beer "watching the cars" as an evening past time. A cop-friend tells us with glee about her daily encounters with bullet wounds, standoffs and shoot outs, in what she brags to be the most violent city in the world. It's not so much there is no reason to fear. It's just that there isn't much point.

I am reminded of one stiflingly hot day when we were stopped at a gas station, and a group of teenaged boys walked languidly across the street, shirtless and strong, constituting what on television would be a scene of virile intimidation. The huge, semi-automatic weapon that one of them swung cagily alongside him was made of blue plastic, and the boys were on their way to fill it with water. The threat of danger that statistically has more reason to threaten these guys seems to slide off of their relaxed shoulders while, in a suburban home protected by seven security systems, the idea of danger just rings and rings-- enlivening benign moment after benign moment with the flavor of imagined violence. To what degree, I wonder, does this expectation of catastrophe make you into a target when you might not otherwise have been?

While crime undoubtedly occurs, the scary/sweet image of these boys is much more indicative of our actual experience of danger in this city. Most people you meet are just trying, like you, to get across the street safe, and to keep cool in the heat. Such people within the city limits are, in our experience, much more likely to extend or return a hello to some random stranger with a smile on he face than a passerby in one of the wealthier suburbs we've visited on occasion. In fact, the most overtly aggressive interactions we've had thus far have taken place at a yoga studio in Grosse Pointe. Which has taken a toll on my savasana.

There are most certainly things a young woman should avoid doing in a new city known for drugs, poverty and crime. But encounteing a whole population with the expectation that they are out to hurt you seems to me, at this point, as inaccurate as it is unwise.

Luck to the Duck Who Swims the Pond and Never Lost a Battle

2010-07-06T06:04:00.000-07:00

During the week of the US Social Forum, the First Annual Seminole Street Artist's Colony hosted a gaggle of friends to our great delight-- many of them Detroiters coming back to the city for the first time in years. The house turned into a Festival of Interesting every breakfast, every morning. There is no joy like seeing your father sip coffee contemplatively while a rapper snacks on eggs beside him, a midwife muses on the beauty of birth, and a woman's studies professor makes a case in favor of the word "queer" while giving a recent Smith graduate a massage. Yes, we had LOTS of fun.

One needed not attend the forum itself to benefit from the buzz that the thousands of attendees brought to town. Without paying a registration fee or entering a conference room, I was able to see folks camp out on Woodward avenue in a tent city, listen to people discuss the pros and cons of conducting a public panel on anti-Zionist movements, watch a bunch of slam poetry at the bar where Houdini died, and find out how an independent bookseller keeps her shelves so dynamic that her authors engage in complex socio-political discussion by merely sitting alongside one another. I also found out the answer to the infamous riddle: How do you cram a city full of queers into one tiny dive bar?... I can't reveal the answer, but it involved dancing in the street.

One fan favorite event that was affiliated with the USSF was the Mexican Revolution exhibition at the Skillman branch of the Detroit Public Library. This traveling exhibition of photographs by Agustin Casasola opened with a show by a very talented group called Son Solidarios, and was followed by a performance by a band that included the former high school art and music teachers of one in our gang.

When we were at home we relished in the pleasures of our collective little hearth during rain storms, tarot card readings, hash brown cookings, pie feasting, sun porch literary discussions, chilaquiles with ingredients from Mexican town and spooky ghost tours of the third floor. The core group of us got so addicted to having lots of folks around that we now describe our present psychological state as "the empty nest syndrome."

A couple of gals biking across the country came by shortly after our forum-folks left. They are working on a local food blog called The Hungry Bicyclists, which paved the way for us to be, somehow, in a permanent state of potluck. When my dad told my grandmother that some guests had baked us cornbread, she asked him how he came to be such a lucky man.

Opening our house has proven to be a remarkable exercise in allowing ourselves to be the recipients of a lot of goodness. Some have scoffed, but I've deemed the period of Detroit's Social Forum "The Era of the Gifts." It may be cheesy but it's true-- and you know what, sometimes I read Oprah magazine in the grocery store. What of it? We are feeling a lot of gratitude around here these days.

I title this blog post with my Aunt Cora May's favorite toast because I can't think of a better wish for the flock of travelers that descended upon us. Come back!

Do you know the Mushroom Man?

2010-06-19T13:47:00.000-07:00

We have welcomed a new member to the First Annual Seminole Street Artist's Colony! We found her at the airport, reading a magazine about politics in French:

Radhika brings know-how about marionettes, translates art captions into Russian, and wants to preserve things once she gets ahold of some jars. She also got us into the habit of biking, jogging and stretching in the mornings. In fact, we are currently taking advantage of the "first week free" policy at the fancy Grosse Pointe yoga studio up Jefferson... somehow I doubt that we will come back for those $17 classes after our week is up, though.

Radhika's arrival marks the end of our back-breaking period of WORK, and the beginning of what for some reason got named the "Era of Engagement," which will include lots of art, good food, cheap wine and soaking in the pleasures of people (lots of friends are arriving for the social forum next week!). Here are some projects we completed while we were doing nothing but sanding, painting and cleaning. (Note the stencils inherited from my housepainter-grandfather). This is in the third floor space that will eventually become "The Colony":

The Era of Engagement has had some awesome moments, including homemade, handpicked-cherry pie with our new neighborfriend, Rosie. But it was clear that this period had officially begun when we went to the Detroit Institute of Art last night, dragging along my cousin Travis for the fun. We thought we were getting off to a late start, but accidentally came on the most happening night of the century. There was modern dance next door to the cafeteria....

...and the first Electronica band of Burkina Faso was performing underneath one of the most breathtaking murals of all time in Rivera court.

Art isn't just limited inside buildings, though. We've been seeing some great murals while driving around. This has got to be my favorite:

This one is just plain endearing:

And this one is our favorite to shout out in passing:

Last but not least in a quick catch-up on the week is our Saturday morning trip to Eastern Market. This too is littered with talented musicians,

and amazing produce.

Today I bought a teeeeeeny bag of Morels from the Mushroom man.

Recipe ideas?

Don't tell them you've never done it until you're done...

2010-06-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

Wow! What a crazy weekend around here. The bathroom got a face lift. 3 days of tiling, scraping and painting. I could set up camp in there! Aisha and I were able to get my bedroom window unstuck from the outside. Air... Speaking of air, it just happens to be heavenly this evening. 69 degrees, clear, wind from the NE, humidity 76%. Our new friends, Keegan and Molly, who live around the corner, gave us some eggplant, zucchini and cucumber plants for our garden. We planted them as well as some basil and the plants donated by Thomas and his family. This morning the bunnies were out of their hole. I thought they might have wandered off but I noticed them behind the ivy after I planted the garden. Oh well.

"I like it when my kombucha mushrooms talk to me..."

2010-06-10T19:13:00.000-07:00

As it turns out, Detroit is living and breathing gardens. There are vegetables everywhere! Around the corner from our house, a man gave us a twenty minute tour of his impeccable backyard farm, bragging about hybrid squash and gourmet carrots in a sassy Caribbean lecture as the evening sun set behind him. On another day, during the Indian Village garden tour, Logan ran into an Up South Foods van selling fresh produce to the neighborhood (music spilling from its windows). Up South is one of many initiatives created to fulfil the needs of this urban "food desert," where grocery stores are sparse enough that the local Walgreens advertises "fresh produce."

So, in a city so eager to support new growth, how do you start a garden? Go to the nearest bakery and order a cup of coffee. That's what we did. At our (of course) favorite morning eatery, Avalon, a beautiful family sat down at the table next to us and started talking about kombucha. Since Logan's ear is always tuned to Kombucha radio, we were soon talking 'shrooms (not psychedelic), and before we knew it, they had invited us over and offered us a bunch of tomato, okra and pepper plants for our garden. One half of this couple, Thomas, is a full time gardener (and daddy to the two adorable, sprout eating babies below), as well as a veteran who hopes to start a gardening organization as a means of recuperation for other vets.

Earlier in the week, Logan had met the folks at the West Village community garden on a bike ride. She was given the job of Neighborhood Compost Person. She subsequently arrived at our yard with a rich batch of black compost from the suburbs.

The dog is, apparently, a fan.

Logan was turning the soil (ooooh the difference from dusty Arizona) in the backyard dog run, mixing the compost in, when WAM! She unearthed a baby bunny nest! (More on that later...)

There is now a nice strip of compost-rich territory, guarded by a rock wall (formerly the porch steps!) just waiting to feed some roots.

We bought a bit of basil from Eastern market today, but should be able to fill a good bit of the garden with plants donated to us by various new friends and community resources. The Retired Horticulturalist of Belle Isle around the corner has offered native ferns for other parts of the yard, and my grandmother's lilies are blooming along the perimeter of the garage. We're off to a good start!

BUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

Will the bunnies grow up over night and eat our Rio Grande tomatoes?

Will Logan's kombucha mushrooms morph into giant lily pads and float away on the river?

Will Chris Farley live in a van down by the river?

Who knows.

This is only the first of many garden episodes, so stay tuned.

Dry Humidity. Logan's journey from Tucson to Detroit as a list.

2010-06-08T08:22:00.000-07:00

arizona. the desert was ocean. el paso. gas station coffee. austin. creek life. queer life. life in a trailer. living on the street. after austin. middle america. toll booth operators. road as a wildlife death trap. walmart parking lots. chitown suburbs. shitty roads. draining lake michigan. d-town. d-boy. 313.

Aisha's Favorite Detroit PrideTattoos (and Earring) at Motor City Pride

2010-06-07T20:52:00.000-07:00

Time Travel Travelogue #1: Aisha's Journey (as List)

2010-06-07T19:24:00.000-07:00

Tucson. Wichita. St. Louis. Detroit

I throw away a full container of lukewarm milk at the gas station just before we get on the 10 to leave Tucson. My dad threatens to fish it back out. This cross-country journey is off to a great start.
A two hour long car jam in Phoenix is spent listening to Outkast sing "Spottieottiedopalicious." I say, "Dad listen to this lyric. Did you hear it? Let's hear it again. I mean, this is brilliant. Don't you think? Did you hear it?"
Hundreds of miles later, dad ejects the Outkast CD from the player while uttering, "Ooooooh kay then." We are floating through the dark down a near-empty highway out of Texas, toward Oklahoma. Headlights appear alone at the top of a hill in the rearview, and the curve of the road is coasting up behind us like we are a dipper in the sky. Dad puts in a CD of his own. Opera plays with windows open while red lights skinny as acupuncture needles flash on and off outside some sort of factory or plant to the left.
Lovely late night poolside walk with the dog around a cheeeeeeeeeeeeap motel with caution tape "decorating" the thin metal posts that are, I think, keeping it standing.
Wichita? We don't talk about that.
My father speaks of meeting and not meeting the photographers he admires near Parisian parks and in Manhattan high rises when the men were at the end of their lives. The topic of our conversations is often mortality.
Late lunch at an outdoor restaurant in St. Louis. As the dog splashes around in the koi pond, we see actual groups of real black people for the first time. The meal is a ridiculous extravagance: blue cheese and steak sandwich for me, a savory crepe and beer for dad. Why? Because of the chemical smell of gas station food we were being poisoned by.
Pushing it, we drive through Chicago after midnight with three hours to go...
In the middle of the night we get to Kalamazoo and are rewarded by the first gas station thus far to sell the New York Times.
The city is quiet. An empty, yellow tunnel turns into Jefferson and we are blocks away from the first house my father bought, where my mother waits.

Six Words

2010-05-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

One way we like to think of Detroit Ho! is as a "resignification" project. Remember all those Henry Louis Gates Jr. articles about the signifyin' monkey from your undergrad thesis research? Don't worry, we won't get into all that theory.

But...

We want to plumb the subconscious minds of everyone we can and take some samples, maybe leave behind some experimental treatments. What are the synapses in your brain that are touching the word "Detroit" connected to? Poverty? Gardens? Peacocks? Greek food? We want to know. We also hope, with every intention of being manipulative, to get down in there and add "photography" and "sculpture" and "literary reading" to the web of associations. The power of impression is strong, and if the whole country-- nay, world!-- started to feel creatively inspired when they thought of Detroit (instead of using it as a punchline for cynical jokes) who knows what kind of innovative energy could waft Detroit-ward?

As a part of our not-so-technical research process, we've found that most of the associations that people currently have with Detroit are pretty apocalyptic. Even if they are beautifully so. For example, at a panel on "Writing Other People's Stories" at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference (AWP) in Denver last month, Jo Ann Beard spoke about the two essays she's written since The Boys of My Youth. One is "Werner" (read it!) and the other "Undertaker Please Drive Slow." Beard said: "Cheri T drove her mother to Detroit to Jack Kevorkian and he euthanized her. This is another kind of mother/daughter story. Take your mother to the arms of death and drive away."

The presence of Detroit in this narrative isn't negligible. It helps create the sense of despair that makes the story so inexcusably painful. It would sound different if Cheri T had driven her mother to Brooklyn or Los Angeles or Tucson to die. Wouldn't it? Detroit has become a kind of metaphor for the shoreline of the river Styx.

At our recent auction, we asked people to write a "six word short story" that takes place Detroit and put it in a jar. This is somewhat inspired by all that NPR reportage on the six word memoir, and by the Ernest Hemingway story: "For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn." And by magnetic poetry and collage and whatever else. Pablo Picasso.

It turns out that people's associations, while the dominant mood of them may be grim, have novels-worth of feeling behind them. For example:

Anguish. Passion. Growing up in mud.
Tiger's game. Parking. Wisest little brother.
Newstory: a missing girl. Dogtown, Quarry.
My mom in dumpsters, retainer found.

Want to add one? Comment to this post! Even if you don't leave your name, please say where you are from. Help us create a map or catalog of associations, to chart the city's resonance in the collective unconsciousness. And perhaps, slowly, resignify.

Detroit Summer Nights Art Auction: The Artists

2010-05-06T10:08:00.001-07:00

Art has been pouring in for this Saturday's art auction! (Scroll down for details). Here are some of the bios of artists who have donated thus far:

Rachelle Diaz: Except for a stint in Florence, Italy, Rachelle has been a Texas resident her entire life, in big cities and bucolic wide-spots-in-the-road alike. She has worked with DiverseArts Culture Works, served as art director for Austin Downtown Arts magazine and The BackWord online magazine, and was a founding member of Pump Project Art Complex. She recently moved from Austin, Texas to Tucson, Arizona where she works from her home studio as a graphic designer and enjoys doing visual art and fashion design in her spare time. Currently, she is producing paintings on vintage fabric and recycled fabrics incorporating embroidery and puff paint. She is also the diva behind Tu Scene, Tucson's premiere art blog.

Lisa Lennon: A commercial photographer and horticulturalist, Lisa currently lives in Tucson via Austin, Texas. She shoots landscapes, architecture and engineering projects.

Emily Yetman: An Arizona metal artist, Emily designs jewelry that enhances "the perfect curves, lyrical forms, and sensual lines that are the human figure." She takes inspiration from the texture of the desert landscape, using "stones and minerals to connect with the body on an emotional level." She is currently earning an MA in Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona.

Carl Hughes is the founder of Hughes Moto Art. According to his website, it was a passion for art and motorcycles that led him to pick up an airbrush in the early 90's. For the next few years his airbrush skills were honed and his knowledge of automotive paints and materials grew. Earning a little extra money and experience custom painting motorcycles while going to school, eventually Carl graduated from the University of Arizona with a BFA. In Phoenix, he had an opportunity to be the art director for one of the nation's largest and most reputable custom paint shops.

Scout Phillips: Self-described cowboi and bike riding ninja, Scout likes to draw and ride unicorns. He currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Ilyea Olsen recently began meditating.

Monica Weinheimer is a painter and an acrobat. She can be seen spinning from pieces of silk hung from the ceiling during performances by the Tucson dance troupe, Zuzi.

Kristin van Fleet worked on organic farms for seventeen years before enrolling in the Landscape Architecture program at the University of Arizona. She plays soccer and is going to France this summer to start up a garden.

Adam Frumhoff is a carpenter, musician, and bike mechanic who is converting an ice cream truck into a house.

TC Tolbert is a genderqueer, feminist poet and teacher committed to social justice. S/he earned his MFA in Poetry from the UA in 2005 and currently teaches Composition at Pima Community College. TC is the Assistant Director of Casa Libre en la Solana and is a member of Movement Salon, a compositional improvisation group in Tucson. S/he is a collective member of Read Between the Bars, a books-to-prisoners program, and s/he spends his summers leading wilderness trips for Outward Bound.

Daisy Pitkin lives in Arizona, grew up on a farm in Ohio, and at fourteen coerced her friends to read "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on a roof. Her job as a union organizer kept her moving around the world, and for ten years she rarely spent more than five days in the same place. For the last several months she has been mastering the mysterious art of photography and photography-related processes. She will be a candidate for an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of Arizona this coming Fall.

Lester Sloan: After teaching himself to develop photographs at the age of nine, Lester became the first African American cameraman at Detroit's CBS TV station. He worked as a staff photographer for Newsweek magazine for over twenty years, covering assignments in the Southwest, Mexico and Central America. He served as a contributing editor at Emerge Magazine and as a contributing essayist at National Public Radio's Weekend Edition; he currently blogs for the Huffington Post. He is also the owner of the house where the First Annual Seminole Street Artist's Colony and Exhibition will take place this summer.

Leila Ruth Sarah Simpson is a 3rd grade GATE student at Lineweaver Elementary School. Her talents include reading, writing, making art, gymnastics and magical thinking. One of Leila's many goals is to open a sanctuary for abused animals with a clothing boutique and a cafe on the premises. Leila has an older brother, Brian, and two pets: Sophie the dog and Hermione the hamster.

Laura Milkins earned an MFA in Visual Art from the University of Arizona, and most recently completed a Fulbright Scholarship by crossing all of Mexico City on foot in the company of strangers and their stories. Since 1993, she has shown her work in Boston, Portland, Maine, Grand Rapids, MI and Tucson. Prior to settling in Arizona, Laura traveled to Europe, Asia and South America, documenting the experience through email with text and drawings. Laura has worked in a variety of media from traditional painting and drawing to mattresses and altered books. Her current work seeks to create community and engagement by involving the viewer in the art making process.

Amanda Sapir defends Gabrielle Giffords from flying bricks by day, is an art therapist by night, and is also, somehow, getting a masters degree in her spare time. She can do a killer (whale) Powerpoint that will make you laugh and cry.

Emily Feingold lives here in Tucson, where she has been blissfully taking refuge from northeastern weather for nearly three years. Leaving her full-time job this year has afforded her time and energy to devote to art, which has taken the form of portraits in pencil and charcoal. Since January, she has drawn around twenty portraits and intends to keep it up.

Logan Byers grew up on an ice boat in a remote location surrounded by water for most of the year. She currently resides in Tucson, where she learned to draw from a desert tortoise named Tank.

Aisha Sloan first learned about photography from her photojournalist father as a teenager, but never got into all that technical stuff so calls herself a "multimedia" artist to explain away all those blurs and scratches. She studied printmaking, video art and New Media at NYU, where she earned an MA in Cultural Studies and Studio Art, and rode in an elevator with Ashley Olsen. She will be in Detroit this summer, interviewing her father on the sun porch over coffee.

Sarah Donnelly's brain is a fish net knit by the nymph Calypso after her infamous affair with Odysseus. The net disappeared from Coast Guard radar once when it was carried to Antarctica by a school of renegade sharks. After a raucous time fishing up sushi for Somali pirates, Sarah's brain now contains infrared maps of an ancient, buried civilization which may or may not be a metaphor for the future of mankind. Spelled backwards and translated into Farsi, her name means the distance between Saturn's cutest moons.

Andy Steinbrink - While the majority of the drawings created by the American Apparel staff are, shall we say, obsessively "anatomical," the print that will be featured this weekend makes a direct critique of the kind of workplace malaise endemic to the modern American workforce.

Patsy Gelb was born in 1987 to a couple of working musicians. Her parents separated and then traveled throughout her childhood, bringing Patsy along for many tours. Left to her own imagination, Patsy spent most of her spare time drawing and looking at bird books. Home base was the hot valley of Tucson, Arizona where Patsy completed grade school. She began studying at the University of Arizona for a few years before migrating north to Portland, Oregon where she now attends the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). It is there that she discovered printmaking, which among other things has become a versatile medium for her work to grow from.

Giddy Up!

2010-04-26T10:12:00.000-07:00

Detroit Ho! is preparing for our May 8th art auction, which will feature fine art, piano jazz by Del y los Pecados de Amor, Memphis Soul by Club de Veste de Jean, a trike raffle and more. We'll be holding the event at the Boxing Gym (click for a map) in Barrio Anita. Tell all your art collector friends! Keep an eye out around town for our poster, and be sure to have loud conversations about how amazing the event will be whenever you're in public. We will be collecting art up until May 4th, so if you'd like to donate, contact us at airtrain@gmail.com. In the meantime, take a look at some of the posters and tee-shirts you'll be able to buy! This new image was created for us by Portland designer Philip Iosca:

Please note: there will be a huge variety of artists donating to this auction, from established photojournalists with matted 8 x 10 work prints (of a young Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Jackson and Elton John) to MFA candidates working on their theses at the University of Arizona. This will be an excellent opportunity to get very high quality art for a low cost. And a good cause!

Hope to see you there...

Colbert Makes the Connection: Arizona/Detroit

2010-04-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

On Friday, Jan Brewer signed a bill into law that allows police to question "suspected illegal immigrants" for their papers, inspiring a great deal of furor among Tucsonans. It is a common first instinct for many of us recently-arrived young folks to say that it's time to leave when such things happen. But after years of thinking that Arizona's red politics (and its SOLE art house theater and its completely illogical tanning salons and its bleached blond sorority sisters and its 3% black population) would eventually prompt me to leave, I am starting to feel more aware of just how many people around here aren't as divorced from reality as our Martian-like politicians.

At the restaurant where I work, for example, my co-workers used their breaks from work to grab (free) "Legalize Arizona" tee shirts across the street at American Apparel, to the delight of our customers. And as I walked the dog yesterday morning, I listened to speeches at Congressman Raul Grijalva's headquarters against the Immigration Enforcement Bill, and felt a buzz in the air. Brewer's naive, bizarre step in the direction of fascism has, like any natural disaster, started to bring folks together:

While it's been my temptation to abandon this town, (and I am going to Detroit for a break soon, obviously) there is something satisfying about sticking around, and helping a new culture-- one that is compassionate, culturally diverse, and artistically dynamic-- manifest itself. I'm starting to consider being the antithesis of bi-coastal. Being bi-Tucson/Detroit-al. Spending time in two places that are becoming America's most unfortunate. I mean, c'mon, what's so great about having low self-esteem in Brooklyn when you can walk around knowing that you have more degrees than Arizona's governor?

That said, I can't blame people for wanting to escape racial profiling, deportation and a general air of harassment. But if everybody leaves, what will be left? Stephen Colbert likened the Arizona of the future to "a very dry Detroit." After all, it only took a couple of crooked politicians to help hurtle Detroit toward it's current state. One possible solution could be to give these tired Arizona politicians a chance to relax in one of the Sonoran desert's many spas while somebody else (as my friend Dallas has suggested, those "crystal-yoga women in Sam Hughes who walk their dogs at 4AM") tries to fix our dismal economic/educational situation. There are PLENTY of folks in Tucson who actually have a college degree, unlike Gov. Brewer.

Saturday Night Movie at Shakespeare and Co.

2010-04-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Detroit Ho! will host Saturday Night Movie at Shakespeare and Co. In addition to showing a documentary, we will be selling used books, handmade Detroit-themed posters, and freshly silk-screened tee-shirts.

Why "at Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore"?

OK. It's actually at Logan's house in Tucson. BUT, we can pretend. In 1919, Sylvia Beach started the Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris, with the help of her girlfriend Adrienne. It became a base for English speaking writers like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Beach is perhaps best known because she took the risk to publish James Joyce's Ulysses, despite the fact that she had little experience as a publisher. Beach's store is a fantastic example of the Do-It-Yourself mentality embraced by Detroit Ho!... and of what our summer is going to look like! A handful of lesbians brainstorming on beg-bug-ridden couches. I am only kidding. There are no bed-bugs in Detroit.

When I was sixteen, my dad and I spent the summer in Paris, and five days out of seven were spent at the Shakespeare bookstore. We sat upstairs listening to Mary Louise tell stories about raising her family in a tent in Italy as she puff-painted portraits of Shakespeare onto black tee-shirts. We ate Chinese food down the street with a group of ex-pats and listened to Finnish poetry. We tried time and time again to get the owner, George (featured topless below), to crack a smile. Artists and writers from all over the world exchanged a few hours at the register for a bed in the apartments above the store. It was one of the first artistic communities I witnessed, and one I'd very much like to emulate in Detroit this summer.

Here are some pictures from that trip (to be superimposed onto the images that come to mind when you think of Detroit):

Tucson Artists!

2010-04-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

On May 8th, Detroit Ho! is hosting an art auction: Detroit Summer Nights. There will be piano jazz, a trike raffle, and much much more. Perhaps you'd like to consider donating a piece of art to our fundraiser! Or you have an artist friend you'd like to tell. If so, contact Logan at airtrain@gmail.com or Aisha at sloanish@gmail.com. The deadline to donate is May 4th.

Interview: Marshall Walker Lee

2010-04-12T00:58:00.000-07:00

At the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Denver this week, I ran into a bunch of former classmates from the University of Arizona MFA program. I spoke with one who heard of my interest in Detroit and referred me to speak with Marshall Walker Lee at the "Poor Claudia" literary journal table in the book fair. Among other things, Marshall grew up in Detroit, studied at the University of Michigan, worked for an arts organization in various rural locales in South Africa, and helped start a well-regarded literary journal in Portland, Oregon. Detroit Ho! recently decided to start interviewing people with expertise on Detroit and/or the process of establishing a creative community, and Marshall is our first "expert" in this series. Oh wait... I can't disregard Spike Lee... Marshall is the second expert. And the second Lee.

Detroit Ho!: What exactly is the arts scene in Detroit right now?

Marshall Walker Lee: One of my best friends in Detroit works for an organization called "Inside/Out," which is something that Detroit Public Schools (DPS) are doing to bring artists and writers into middle and high school classrooms. The literary and art scene has really taken off since the opening of Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), which is in the shadow of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). It's an artist run co-op with concerts and arts programming. When my older sister moved to Detroit after going to the University of Michigan, nobody from her class moved to Detroit. But when I graduated six or seven years later, around fifty people from my class ended up moving there. It is cheap to live there, and abandoned spaces make everything guerilla. There are huge non-profit grants to lure young white artists from the suburbs. Last year, there was a $25,000 grant for photography. This year it's for writing. Everybody is applying for it.

DH: Damn...

MWL: Because it is dirt cheap you can do so much there with practically nothing. You can start a restaurant with a full liquor license for something like $60,000. But there is no infrastructure to maintain it. I love the idea of living there except for the winters. And there is always a necessity to drive. But the city attracts self-motivated artists who don't need to rely on an institution or school system to sustain them. I mean, Wayne State's radio station is shutting down. But twenty-five to thirty-year-olds work easily part time at a job, and part time at a non-profit or library program, with plenty of time to do their art. My friend's dating the co-director of the city's NPR station.

DH: How long has this all been going on?

MWL: I think the city has been building toward a new beginning since the opening of the Renaissance Center in what, 1977? But they've been waiting for the right mayor and legislature to bring this about. It seems like Dave Bing may finally get things done. He is aiming to cut the footprint of the city in half. One of the best proposals being considered now is that they build a green belt around the city, but that probably won't pass. So they are trying to move one neighborhood at a time to the city-- which is what they have to do. And it's now or never. If the auto industry leaves completely, it'll be like Berlin in the 1980's. It will have to start over again.

DH: So what all is going on art-wise, specifically?

MWL: My friends do something called "Theatre Bizarre." A bunch of artists go to the state fairgrounds, which have been abandoned. And for one night they turn on all the rides, and it's like Mardi Gras for one day. It's this burlesque carnival.

DH: What are your thoughts on gentrification as it relates to Detroit? Does it have to have the same effect as has been the case in Brooklyn and Portland?

MWL: It's strange to say this about gentrification, but in Detroit the areas least gentrified are the ones shutting down completely. Because they are 50-70% unoccupied. In east Detroit, 20% of the areas are unoccupied and they've turned into an urban prairie land, which people are romanticizing. But there are wild dogs roaming around. You have to go out with a baseball bat.

DH: Tell me about the work you did in South Africa.

MWL: Well, I'd gotten a grant to go there and write. And eventually I ended up doing work with this bookbinding press about 40 miles outside of Johannesburg. Between Durban and Johannesburg. The CreACTive Center. I worked with a woman named Gabisile Nkosi, who is a pretty famous South African artist who grew up in a township and really made herself. She built her own house and her life from just doing her art. But she was killed by her ex-husband. It was really horrible. She died just after I left.

She helped set up centers around the country in rural bush schools to teach classes to kids and adults in practical crafts. Things like teaching weaving to women, bookbinding for record keeping. It was part of Caversham Press, which was started under apartheid. It was the first printmaking press for both blacks and whites-- "open," they call it. Some major names in the South African art scene came out of there.

DH: What was it like?

MWL: It was a positive experience for me because of who I was with.

DH: What exactly did you end up doing?

MWL: I was able to teach and develop programming. They were a kind of medium for me to understand what was going on culturally. One thing we did was, if we were there for two or three days, we'd ask people to establish a community newspaper. They had to go home, write a story, and illustrate it. One kid went home and asked his grandmother for a story he didn't know. And she told him about the time his grandfather had beaten her so badly he broke her eye socket. When he came back and told us, all the other kids just nodded. I mean, every Saturday you go to funerals. There is something like a 90% AIDS rate in rural east South Africa. Johannesburg is kind of like Detroit in some ways.

DH: What you're saying reminds me of an NPR story I once heard about funerals being a kind of recreational activity in Detroit. That kind of culture of violence. What else do Detroit and Johannesburg have in common?

MWL: They are both sparsely populated. Land laws are such that residences, businesses and factories can all be in the same place. But Johannesburg is also unique. It's the only major city with no body of water. It was built because of the gold deposits, and it has no sense of itself. It's much more violent. It's not really a city. I've heard that in the next 20 years, it will join with Pretoria to make a city of 55 million people.

DH: Where will Detroit be in 20 years?

MWL: It's possible that it is going to die before it gets better. There is just such an endemic lack of government. So much corruption. It may have to fall apart. And perhaps young people might move there and form a resistance. Already, everyone under thirty living in Detroit is really involved in politics. Everyone knows the name of the president of the school board. You have to be involved or you'll feel powerless.

DH: So when did you start "Poor Claudia"?

MWL: It's one year old.

DH: And you are a printmaker?

MWL: No, both Drew (co-founder) and I are just lit nerds. I'm a writer. We just taught ourselves this stuff.

Marshall, Gabisile and the people/organizations he described are an excellent example of what my friend Daisy has deemed "Nouveau DIY:" a new phase in the era of "Do-it-Yourself." With a motivation that goes beyond redoing the living room... Watch out TLC.

For more info on Poor Claudia, check out this article from the Portland Mercury.

Detroit Ho!'s Exclusive Interview with Director Spike Lee

2010-04-03T13:35:00.000-07:00

OK. Maybe this isn't an exclusive interview. Maybe it's the "exchange" that took place between members of Detroit Ho! and Mr. Lee during his recent visit to the University of Arizona's Centennial Hall. But there was still a back and forth... Our dialogue began after a brief discussion of Mr. Lee's history as a film student, getting a student Academy Award at NYU, living without electricity in Fort Greene, failing at his first feature, and finally succeeding with (my personal favorite) "She's Gotta Have It." Here's the transcript:

Spike Lee: There was an audience for that kind of film... it was "She's Gotta Have It" along with "Hollywood Shuffle" by Robert Townsend. You should check it out if you haven't seen it. Those two films brought about the so-called "Black Renaissance" in film.

Detroit Ho [Aisha]: (Laughter...lone laughter).

SL: Why you laughin'? It was a big thing back then.

[time passes]

DH: I know New York is your city. And you've done some work in New Orleans. But, what would you do in Detroit?

SL: Ooooh. You from Motown?

DH: All my family is.

SL: The Motor City? You know, Detroit is really the most depressed city in the United States of America. There's definitely stories there. And uh, it wasn't once like that. We had the car industry there, uh, things went downhill after the riots. Your mayor... Kwame Whassisname?

DH [Miro]: Kilpatrick.

SL: That wasn't a good look. (Laughter). There definitely is... I'll bet you could do a good TV series, like a Detroit version of "The Wire." Also, all those fans of "The Wire," David Simon's next new show is called "Treme" and it's about New Orleans. But definitely, there's a lot of good stories in Detroit.

Thank you Mr. Lee. We look forward to our next interview...

Travels with Pen Reading Sunday

2010-03-22T12:09:00.001-07:00

This summer, a group of artists, designers and writers are heading to Detroit for the First Annual Seminole Street Artist’s Colony and Exhibition. We plan to transform an historic house, with a literary past, into a residence for artists and writers—not unlike Casa Libre. Part of our mission is to disrupt the poor image that Detroit has earned, over time, as the nation’s failure—and in this spirit, our first Tucson event this spring will be an attempt to raise awareness about the ways in which we conceptualize of our environments: “Travels with Pen: Five Minute Sketches on Place.” Please join us! If you’d like to learn more about our endeavor, scroll down! We’ll be hosting various events, and an art auction/fundraiser in the coming months.

Here are some of the bios of writers participating... stay tuned as the list will grow!

Arianne Zwartjes' first book, The Surfacing of Excess, won Eastern Washington University's 2009 Blue Lynx Prize for Poetry and a box of copies just arrived at her house. Her 2008 chapbook of prose poems (Stiched) A Surface Opens: Essays was published by Diagram/New Michigan Press, and her writing has appeared in literary magazines including The Pinch, Cue, Caketrain, Front Porch, Diagram, Blue Fifth Review, and Word for/Word. Zwartjes teaches at the Poetry Center and in the English Department at the University of Arizona; she is also an EMT and wilderness medicine instructor, and has just completed a book-length collection of lyric essays entitled (Detailing Trauma).

Simmons B. Buntin is the founding editor of Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. His first book of poetry, Riverfall, was published in 2005 by Ireland's Salmon Poetry; his next collection, Bloom, is due from Salmon in late 2010. Recent work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Isotope, Orion, Hawk & Handsaw, and Southwestern American Literature. Look for new work in High Desert Journal, ISLE, Freshwater, Spiral Orb, Salamander, and Versal. Catch up with him at www.SimmonsBuntin.com.

Leftrick Herd had to leave Oregon one year after his birth because his parents feared he might be getting "webbed feet" from all the rain. He grew up on an 80-acre ranch in western Colorado where his main sources of transportation were horses and an old Willy's Jeep. Joining the Navy only whetted his appetite for adventure and he has been on some sort of trip ever since.

Ben Quick served as Beverly Rodgers Fellow in creative nonfiction on his way to a master of fine arts degree from the University of Arizona in 2008. He lives with his son in Tucson where he writes and teaches at the U of A. The recipient of a 2010 Pushcart Prize for Nonfiction, his work appears in Orion Magazine, Hotel Amerika, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments and other publications. He smokes. And he likes it. Especially after coffee, sex, food, exercise and any combination thereof. He doesn't like lectures. He will live to be 100.

Beth Alvarado, who has lived in Tucson since 1968, loves the desert and often writes about it. Her stories are collected in Not a Matter of Love (New Rivers Press). Newer work has been published recently in Seattle Review, Ploughshares, Cimarron Review, and Third Coast.

Timoteio Padilla is a universal artist who is not from one particular place. He is of the stars, and the red dirt, and all the elements. He is here and he is there. He was physically conceived in this plane in New Mexico, and was raised in Tucson. He is an artist who utilizes the medium of Hip-Hop, and lives what he speaks.

Lauryn Bianco would live her life to a soundtrack of music from the 70's and 90's if it were possible. This bio, in fact, should be read to the tune of Salt-n-Pepa's "Shoop" or any track recorded by TLC. Lauryn once ran a half marathon while wearing a tiara and hoop earrings. She has since completed a full marathon, and she no doubt will run her next one backwards and in heels. Lauryn is from New York, which you might not notice until she gets angry or drives. Lauryn has a BA in English from SUNY Fredonia, a master's degree in Gender and Women's studies from the U of A, and a black belt in femme fatale from an undisclosed credentialing agency.

TC Tolbert is a genderqueer, feminist poet and teacher committed to social justice. S/he earned his MFA in Poetry from UA in 2005 and currently teaches Composition at Pima Community College. TC is the Assistant Director of Casa Libre en la Solana and is a member of Movement Salon, a compositional improvisation group in Tucson. S/he is a collective member of Read Between the Bars, a books-to-prisoners program, and s/he spends his summers leading wilderness trips for Outward Bound. TC's poems can be found in Volt, The Pinch, Drunken Boat, Shampoo, A Trunk of Delirium, and jubilat.

Daisy Pitkin lives in Arizona, grew up on a farm in Ohio, and at fourteen coerced her friends to read "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest" on a roof. Her job as a union organizer kept her moving around the world, and for ten years she rarely spent more than five days in the same place. Her most recent nonfiction manuscript contemplates themes of memory, maps and family.

Lisa O'Neill is a writer, teacher of writers, and a graduate of the University of Arizona's program in Nonfiction Creative Writing. In addition to teaching students pursuing undergraduate degrees, she co-teaches writing workshops with incarcerated writers in Pima County, Arizona through the program Inside/Out. Although she lives in Tucson, Lisa often centers her writing on the place where she grew up and the geography closest to the heart, Louisiana. She recently completed a nonfiction manuscript, Vessels, which explores the physical, cultural and historical landscapes of her home state as well as her home town, New Orleans. Lisa appreciates people who experiment and play with sound, language, color, texture and light in whatever form this play takes.

Manuel Munoz is the author of the short story collections Zigzagger and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue. He has received numerous honors, including the 2008 Whiting Writer's Award, a 2009 PEN/O. Henry Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. A graduate of Harvard University and Cornell, his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Rush Hour, Swink, Epoch, Glimmer Train and on NPR. He teaches creative writing at the University of Arizona.

Gillian Drummond is a Tucson-based freelance writer. Her articles appear every Sunday in the Arizona Daily Star and on her blog, www.homeisafourletterword.com. Gillian came to Tucson in 1998 from London, where she had spent nine years working on business and consumer magazines, and freelancing for national newspapers. Her credits include The Guardian, The Scotsman, The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times Scotland. She is working on her first novel.

Cesar Diaz lived the fragmented life of a migrant boy: divided. conflicted. uprooted. in-between. in constant argument. unforgiving and in a bind. His work is not a figment of his imagination but a construction of the imagination of a boy (now a man) who uses language, memory, and his own words as a glue to understand the situation he was in. Cesar Diaz is a writer. A journeyman. An essayist with an urge to work with language as a method of searching. He strongly believes in the power that writing has on youth and has worked as a creative writing teacher and mentor for outreach nonprofits such as Badgerdog Literary Publishing, Breakthrough Collaborative, The Austin Academy and The GEARUP project. He is a second-year MFA candidate in nonfiction at the University of Arizona, and hopes that some of his journeys find their way into a literary magazine. In the meantime, he'll settle for introducing undergrads to the power and fecundity found in essays.

Ruth Hillman is a third generation Tucsonan and has been a semi-secret writer and artist since the fourth grade. She has worked to help people most at risk or living with HIV/AIDS for the last eight years and is starting a soon-t0-be famed new business, The Paper Theory.

Lucy Simpson grew up in East Yorkshire and Buckinghamshire, England. Since then she has lived in Paris, Geneva, New York City, Long Island, Dayton, Ohio, Charleston, SC and lately, Tucson, where she intends to stay awhile because moving is hard work and Tucson is nice and warm and slightly weird, which is good. Lucy has a degree in French from the College of Charleston and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Arizona. She is currently working on final revisions of her first novel, and teaching English at Pima Community College. The glamor and mystery just never stop. Lucy lives with two unruly stray children, three beautiful, inspiring, talented dogs, one cute fluffy husband and a wonderful, gruffly sexy, supportive hamster.

Remember! Casa Libre, Sunday March 28th at 4pm.

Travels with Pen: Five Minute Sketches on Place

2010-03-09T08:08:00.000-08:00

In order to start generating awareness about The First Annual Seminole Street Artist's Colony and Exhibition, Detroit Ho! is going to host a few Tucson events this Spring.

The first will be a literary reading at Casa Libre on Sunday, March 28th at 4pm. "Travels with Pen: Five Minute Sketches on Place" will feature a collection of readings that delve into the nuances of the relationships we form with a particular environment. The goal is to spark thought on how we shape and are shaped by the places we inhabit. I'll post a list of readers soon! Stay tuned...

Re: Re: Blues People

2010-02-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

Awhile back, my dad stumbled on what he calls, "Blues in an open field." Vacant land where folks have come together on the east side of Detroit to play and listen to the blues. "At first you wonder, Is this OK?" he said, "but then you realize that there's something sacred about this space. Nobody's going to bother you here."

He called yesterday and asked, "Have you read 'Blues People' by Ralph Ellison?" It is an essay from the collection, Shadow and Act, discussing (then named) Leroi Jones' work of the same name. This was, as my friend Radhika would say, a bit of kismet, as we just finished reading James Baldwin's "The Uses of the Blues" in my composition class a couple of weeks ago. I've since re-read some other responses to blues music, and I am going to let James Agee, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and a student from my class discuss the blues alongside the photos my father took of this summer Blues festival, to lend a bit of historical context.

In preparation for one of the most beautiful books of nonfiction ever written, (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, 1939) James Agee and Walker Evans went to the homes of sharecroppers in the South to see how people lived. At one point, an impromptu serenade is arranged on their behalf. They watch with discomfort as three black men in their twenties are ordered to sing. After the singers finish the first tune, Agee asks them to sing another, and writes, "I had a feeling, through their silence before entering it, that it was their favorite and their particular pride; the tenor lifted out his voice alone in a long, plorative line that hung like fire on heaven, or whistle's echo, sinking, sunken, along descents of a modality I had not heard before, and sank along the arms and breast of the bass as might a body sunken from a cross; and the baritone lifted a long black line of comment; and they ran in a long and slow motion and convolution of rolling as at the bottom of a stormy sea, voice meeting voice as ships in dream, retreated, met once more, much woven, digressions and returns of time, quite tuneless, the bass, over and over, approaching, drooping, the same declivity, the baritone taking over, a sort of metacenter, murmuring along monotones between major and minor, nor in any determinable key, the tenor winding upward like a horn, a wire, the flight of a bird, almost into full declamation, then failing it, silencing; at length enlarging, the others lifting, now, alone, lone, and largely, questioning, alone and not sustained, in the middle of space, stopped; and now resumed, sunken upon the bosom of the bass, the head declined; both muted, droned; the baritone makes his comment, unresolved, that is a question, all on one note: and they are quiet, and do not look at us, nor at anything."

In "Blues People," published in The New York Review in 1964, Ralph Ellison writes, "Bessie Smith might have been a 'blues queen' to the society at large, but within the tighter Negro community where the blues were part of a total way of life, and a major expression of an attitude toward life, she was a priestess, a celebrant who affirmed the values of the group and man's ability to deal with chaos."

In a 1964 issue of Playboy Magazine, James Baldwin wrote, "Gin House Blues is a real gin house. Backwater Flood is a real flood. When Billie says, 'My man don't love me,' she is not making a fantasy of it. This is what happened, this is where it is. This is what it is. Now, I'm trying to suggest that the triumph here-- which is a very un-American triumph-- is that the person to whom these things happened watched with eyes wide open, saw it happen. So that when Billie or Bessie or Leadbelly stood up and sang about it, they were commenting on it, a little bit outside it: they were accepting it. And there's something funny-- there's always something a little funny in all our disasters, if one can face the disaster."

After we read "The Uses of the Blues" out loud, I asked my students to find quotes from Baldwin's text and respond to them. One young man picked out this quote: "People who in some sense know who they are can't change the world always, but they can do something to make it a little more, to make life a little more human." The student responds, "I believe that if everyone does this the world can be a lot more human. But to do that you must have some sense of who you are and I don't think its just me but I sometimes feel as if I don't even know who I am so how can I do my part?"

Detroit Poet Wins an Award!

2010-02-11T23:28:00.000-08:00

Wayne State University professor and poet M.L. Liebler has just been named the recipient of the Barnes and Noble "Writers for Writers" award. He is the author of thirteen books, including the award-winning poetry collection, Wide Awake in Someone Else's Dream, and he has done a great deal to promote a literary life in Detroit. I noticed that a photo of Junot Diaz was linked to the article and this is because Diaz and Maxine Hong Kingston, (two authors I've seen speak in the last three years who are incredibly generous with their time and energy... especially to you, Laura-- remember that?) are also recipients of this 2010 award.

According to the Detroit News, he is a busy man-- always rushing off to Russia to perform or collaborating with the likes of Bob Dylan. But it would be phenomenal to have him do a reading at our exhibition/festival this July. Congratulations!

Brainstorming Idea # 8

2010-02-10T19:11:00.000-08:00

One thing I hope we are able to accomplish this summer is to have some kind of affiliation with "Detroit Summer." The organization is a "multi-racial, inter-generational collective in Detroit," that attempts to transform the Detroit community through "youth-led media arts projects and community-wide potlucks, speak-outs and parties."

One summer, they had a "video intensive" that resulted in a project called "Rising Up From the Ashes: Chronicles of a Dropout Hip Hop Audio Documentary." After conducting research on why students drop out, and more importantly, how they can be encouraged not to, they created a series of videos that focus on three themes: "Cooperative Economics" "Alternatives to Criminalization" and "Respect."

I am told that they also focus on urban gardening and volunteer work...

One of the major interests I've had in the last year or so is to collect all of the education-minded people I know (who are also at their wits end with regard to America's educational system) and put them to work in a dynamic environment with people who want to learn. It would be fun to conduct community and youth-focused workshops on our respective interests, such as bookmaking, printmaking, photography, journalism, bike repair/art (with The Hub of Detroit?), writing, composting, etc.

From the looks of their blog, it seems that most of the young folks affiliated with Detroit Summer probably have more to teach us than us them... but maybe we can team up and do some work together? I don't even know what's possible! But I'd like to find out.

Ice House Detroit

2010-01-31T17:03:00.000-08:00

Lately my dad has been stalking these two dudes who are, in the name of art, freezing a Detroit house. There have been a range of uncomfortably political responses to this venture by "the public" (ie: connoisseurs of Yahoo's news feed, "Buzz"). What follows is an interview with my dad about the Ice House. Or as he calls it, the Ice Castle.

(**For more information about the house, check out their blog.)

Q: Hey Dad, so, where is this house?
A: Well, it's on the East side of Detroit, near Mack. On McClellen, about a block and a half north of Mack. On the east side of the street.

Q: What's the area like?
A: It's like many of the neighborhoods on the east side of Detroit, there are more vacant houses than occupied. I'm told by the artist that it's owned by the state, and we were talking about how it is that some houses are owned by the state and some by the city.

Q: How'd you hear about it?
A: Dell (a friend) met them at a DIA event. They sat next to each other at the event. She told me about it, then a few days ago I saw a story about them icing the house or spraying water on the house.

Q: That sort of answers my next question, which is: How, exactly, are they freezing it?
A: They apparently paid the city for a certain amount of water. I asked them how much but they didn't want to tell. They said it was pretty cheap. I said that in the summer when kids try to get a free shower by opening the hydrants, the community ends up paying for it.

Q: Do these men have accents?
A: The guy I talked to has an accent. They're New Yorkers. The guy who was the architect grew up in Detroit. He owns a house in Hamtramck. I asked "Is he Polish?" And his friend said "I don't know what he is." I don't know if he grew up in the part of Detroit where this is taking place. His grandfather is from the neighborhood where the house is, though. They are aware that a lot of foreigners are moving here. They seem to agree or make the same observation that Detroit is a place where a lot of young people can have a new start. For whatever reason they seem to be able to see down the line, where things are going to get better in the city... for those who get in early and get a place, stake their claim, maybe they can get a new start. Strangely enough some of the people investing in houses are drug dealers. Not for dealing drugs but to get their cronies in there to keep the places from being fire bombed. I'm told that this one guy owns twenty houses, and his main source of income is drugs. They'll use the houses as a source of income. Entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. I was telling some guy about it and he said, "the Kennedy's got started the same way." Joseph Kennedy Sr., Robert, Ted and Bobby's father, was a rum runner, who brought in illegal liqueur from Canada to the US. Later on he got honest, but that's how he made his fortune. It's like the godfather. That story is not just relevant to Italians. A lot of people have done illicit things to get a foothold, and the first thing they want to do is to get legit. Get out of drugs, prostitution and get into legitimate businesses. People who have a truncated memory have a hard time comparing these guys who are dealing crack to Joseph Kennedy, but in a sense they're doing the same thing. Acquiring property in the hopes of one day going legit. And since they can get the property so cheap-- in a city where you can buy a house for a dollar-- the feds can't come by and ask how you got all that money.

Q: What kind of clothing did they wear?
A: They look like anybody else. Detroit's a blue collar town and they look like, if they weren't doing that, they might have been some guys who were laid off at the Chrysler plant or going to Wayne State. They looked to be late twentyish, early thirties. One of them had a Cannon camera. They don't seem to know a lot about the neighborhood, which this one guy seemed a bit ashamed of. I was saying with streets like Goethe, Shilling and Lessing, it must have been a German neighborhood, and this guy said he didn't know. I think he felt a little guilty about not knowing enough about the neighborhood.

Q: What are their stated/implied goals?
A: From what I can see they are going to make this ice castle, and then the photographer is going to photograph it with an 8x10 camera and make blow up prints. Clearly they don't intend to thaw it out and live in it. After they're done with it, it will become a body of work I suppose. One's an architectural photographer, the guy I talked to yesterday-- Gregory. The other is an architect, Matthew.

Q: What did they say to you when they noticed you were taking photographs?
A: He thought I was like anybody else, I wasn't using a professional camera, just a point and shoot. I guess I was elevated one step above everybody who was taking pictures with their cell phones, but when I asked him to stand so I could take a picture of him in front of the house, he was OK with that. When a guy came by with a Detroit jacket on and I ran across the street to get a picture of that, he said, "I want that picture too!"

Q: So when you were standing there, looking at their art, what revelations did you have?
A: One of the things I noticed was, on the front porch is a red door. And I was thinking: how ironic. Fire and ice. The red being fire, the ice being what it is. I could see the value in what they were doing, as making a statement. It's not the same thing as making sand castles because that requires more skill, but what's the guy who slings paint? Jackson Pollack. I can see that as requiring the same kind of... you have no idea what you're going to get. It's all serendipitous. You can't really shape the icicles. The same way Pollack might say, "I need to splash some more over here," I don't see it being any different. Not as colorful, but it's... what you accomplish by going through this process is valid because the person thought about doing it, and then they executed it, and then they're going to make it permanent by photographing it. The house is already on the junk heap so to speak, but it's sort of a clever thing to do. It's not the same thing as buying the house and refurbishing it. But because of the photographs, the house will live on beyond the wrecking ball, which is I'm sure how it's going to meet it's end.

Q: What did they say when you invited them to take part in Detroit Ho's Annual Seminole Street Artist's Colony and Exhibition/Festival?
A: I didn't mention it. I will take a spin by there tomorrow and see if they're there and uh, mention it to them. I didn't want to talk as if I was trying to take over their project or in some way try and compromise what they were doing.

Q: Did it seem, at any point, that the artists were questioning the effectiveness/methodology of their conceptual work?
A: I think, I don't think they had any doubts about what they were doing or how they were going to accomplish it. They felt that they had to justify it to people who were asking them questions. The only thing they were concerned about was doing it before the weather got warmer. They are working the same way a film company would. They got permits, that way you're not harassed by the cops, and the city is glad to see that someone is doing something positive. Now that they've got all this publicity they have to do something with it. Actually I think they're missing an opportunity. The house shouldn't be the goal, the community should be the goal. Everything that people said when they were looking, that should have been recorded. They should have filmed everybody who had come to see it. Call it the Ice House, but let the Ice House be the thing to initiate discussion about the city. You got people's attention, now do something with it. That's your project, that's your story. That would probably tell them more about human nature, art, a lot of things... it's almost as if they're frozen in time more than the house that they've created. They should record the enthusiasm that this house has generated. [The next day he spoke to the artists on this point again, and they mentioned that they were collecting email responses to the project, and working to reach out to the community]. [Click here for footage Lester took at the ice house.]

Q: Did it seem, at any point, that the neighbors of the Ice House were questioning the effectiveness/methodology of the conceptual work?
A: People were generally impressed by what they were doing, and curious about what was going on. Cars were stopping, people were taking pictures with cell phones, getting out and parking to find out what was going on. There was only one guy who was like, "What the hell? What's going on?" And I told him these two guys were making an art project out of the house, and he saw two black guys and assumed I meant them. I said, not those two, this one guy and his partner. And then he got sour. He said "Well why didn't they do it in their own home?" He seemed amused when he thought it was the black guys, and then pissed when he realized they were white. I found it strange that he got so upset about two guys spraying ice on a house when so many houses are gutted and stripped. It doesn't take anything away from the house, it makes for a colorful display for everyone in the neighborhood to share. To me he got pissed off about the wrong thing. But I think a lot of people are pissed off in general, and when they can find something specifically to get pissed off about, they embrace that. A lot of people seem to get angry that whites are moving back to the city. This one guy was complaining once, "They're just moving us out of the city," but when I asked where he lived, he lived in the suburbs, and I said, "It sounds like you left the city." It's the same thing in South Central LA, guys come back and get mad when they see all the signs are in Spanish-- but when I ask them where they live they say "Georgia."

Q: Did you tell Grandma about it? What did she say?
A: I think she saw it on the news. Since I've been here, a week today, they've been on three TV networks.

Q: How about Aunt Cora May-- what did or would she say if she saw?
A: (Laughs) What's her favorite expression? "Lord have mercy." And it's not what she says that would be so profound, but what that means. "What's wrong with these poor people? Why are they out in the cold? Don't they have something better to do?" I think she would just think they were crazy. Aunt Cora May is like every man. Every other person who comes by and says "What the hell is that about?"

Q: What would Grandpa have said?
A: (Long pause) You know, I don't know. I think my father would just laugh. I don't think it would make any sense to him whatsoever. Maybe a waste of time, or, express dismay I guess that somebody could actually get paid for doing something so crazy. Work to my father was about doing something that earned money, and there were certain legitimate jobs. When I told him I wanted to be a photographer, he said "OK OK. That I understand. But what do you want to do for a living?" I thought he was short sighted, but I remember Tom Bradley once said in earshot of anybody who happened to be listening, that photography is not really a job. And uh, it was just something that people did for a hobby. Of no value whatsoever. And I thought less of Tom Bradley, and more of my father when I heard that from him. My father said it because it wasn't something he'd experienced in his life as a means for making a living. But Tom Bradley was supposedly an educated, sophisticated man, and I thought it was interesting that he thought nothing of insulting everyone around him.

Q: Uncle Paul?
A: I would ask Uncle Paul. Uncle Paul would no doubt say something interesting or insightful. What, exactly, I don't know.

Q: Uncle Ted?
A: I think Ted'd just think they're crazy.

Q: Lisa? (my sister)
A: Lisa saw it. I did ask her opinion, she thought it was sort of interesting.

Q: Mom?
A: Ask mom. I sent her a picture and she said she'd received a picture from your cousin when these guys first showed up. I think when I go back around there I'll ask people "What do you see? What does it mean to you? What does it mean about Detroit?"

Q: Picasso?
A: Been there, done that.

Q: One person responded to this project by saying, "I will be happy to donate....as long as he promises to freeze the entire city and all the low lifes in it !! And keep it frozen !! What's the H.S. graduation rate in Detroit.....Last I heard it was around 23%. Freeze these idiots and get them out of our way so we can do something productive!!! (sic)" Another with, "shame on anyone who condones this action, shame on the bank who is allowing this to happen. You can not allow things like this to go on when this was somones HOME, it is like having a clown show up at a funeral. (sic)" Will the public's general disdain for/lack of education about Detroit, compassion and conceptual art get in the way of this project's impact?
A: Well to the person who's saying the stuff about high school graduation rates, they're using this as a springboard to talk about what you'd like to do to all these people who you consider unfit or not useful. He's not really talking about the project, he's talking about how he feels about people who drop out of school. Without understanding why this is occurring. The graduation rate in this city... if you're going to start freezing people in Detroit you'll have to start freezing people in sunny California. The institution has failed the students as much as the students have failed to navigate the institution. It's just another way of saying if you can survive, you deserve it, otherwise you're standing in the way of progress. If all these people disappeared tomorrow would things get any better? I doubt it. As for the other comment, I suppose a person could feel that way about what they're seeing. I think the artists tried to find out about who occupied the house and when and they failed. If he's saying that this person probably lost his house because it was foreclosed, that is sort of sad, but... I don't assume that the guy who made this statement made any effort to find out who lived in the house, or found out about the neighborhood and why it went down. Sure, people can show up and turn a house into an ice castle to say something about Detroit, the house is probably a symbol of the city. Whether or not that's someone laughing at Detroit, I don't think it's that. If they're laughing about Detroit then there's a whole lot of laughing to be done about the rest of the country. Maybe what the guy is really saying is "This is my f**** city." If that's the case, well say it! If you're pissed off about it, say it. Don't hide behind this suggestion that it was somebody else's home... if you feel that it's your city, it's your funeral, say you're pissed off about that.

Q: OK. Thanks Dad.
A: Can I go to bed now?

Brainstorming Idea #7: by Aisha

2010-01-23T14:46:00.000-08:00

Ask my uncle the gourmand if he will teach me how to cook.

Moths and Poems

2010-01-17T08:30:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things of late is "The Moth." Have you heard it? The basic gist is this: people-- most of them ordinary, some of them famous-- go on stage and tell a story about a particular theme. There are slams, where ten or so people compete and can move on to bigger and grander competitions, but more than that, they are a chance to hear some fine storytelling. You may have heard stories from "The Moth" on "This American Life." My friends Brooke and Dan invited us to a Moth Slam in LA around the holidays, and it was about as entertaining as an evening can be. Add a beer and some chicken wings and you're talking about close to heavenly. We also got to judge, and let me tell you, even the lowest scoring stories had something to give.

The concept emerged when a poet by the name of George Dawes Green wished to recreate those "sultry Southern evenings" of storytelling on Wanda's porch back in Georgia. The first show took place in his living room in New York, and now they're all over. We get the podcast and the other night listened to the former editor of Paris Vogue describe her experience with a haunted French apartment. We also listened to a man talk about how he decided not to kill himself. They run the gamut from funny to breathtaking the same way a good essay collection would.

So, when I say they are "all over," I mean, and here's why I'm writing about this here and now: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and... DETROIT! Watch out Detroit... you're gonna get some pretty discerning Moth judges this summer. Check it out.

Since we're sharing Brooke-related issues, I thought I'd also share this photo essay that she drew my attention to. It ends with a quite lovely poem. Perhaps it will get you brainstorming about a project you'd like to do this summer when you join us in Detroit!

Brainstorming Idea #6: by Aisha (Once Upon a Detroit Schoolhouse)

2010-01-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

This morning, I read an article about Detroit Entrepeneurs from the New York Times out loud to my girlfriend and our dog while she and I consumed avocado-thai-coconut smoothies (recommended by my cousin in chef school). I don't know if it was the healing powers of our breakfast or the article, but I felt a huge jolt of adrenaline. Maybe now is the time to think up a crazy business plan and try it while there's still space! I realize that the politics of gentrification are swimming under the surface here, but somehow Detroit feels different from Brooklyn and Echo Park... Isn't something akin to gentrification what Detroit needs right now? Minus the displacement of local populations? Perhaps because locals are starting these businesses it is different. (Any experts who want to explain this for me?)

Anyway, it's hard not to imagine a booming, artful metropolis coming about sooner rather than later. The article focuses on a creperie, a hair salon, a bookstore and an art-house film theater that pretty young folks have started for sums of money that my eyes and brain can actually compute. The movie theater is in an abandoned schoolhouse called Burton. And I wondered... are there any other classrooms available?

One idea I've been thinking of lately is opening up a Detroit based version of the tutoring centers that Dave Eggars started in New York and San Fransisco. Click here to hear Dave Eggars (whether or not you can stand his books) describe his basic blueprint for this process.

Brainstorming Idea #5: by Logan

2010-01-07T07:14:00.000-08:00

I only know Detroit as well as I know the stories on this blog. I hear its run-down, leaky faucets, vacant lots, garbage piles, foreclosures, although I've never been. A light goes on when I think of Detroit. Or maybe it's a new galaxy forming. Whatever it is, I am drawn to this place.

There is a bin in my yard full of food scraps, sticks and dirt. I know the pears and strawberries are in the middle and butternut squash is near the top. During the composting process, fungus, bacteria, insects, heat, microorganisms, and enzymes go to work on the leftovers. They work long hours in a hot, smelly box, for compost, so that our seeds can grow and be nourished within it. What comes out of this pile of waste is the foundation of life. This mixture of kitchen scraps and yard debris will decompose and reformulate into a rich, sweet smelling compost. In that, seeds will grow.

I will advocate for a compost bin anywhere, but since I will be in Detroit this summer, I will help you make one out of things we find. Let's have fun and grow a garden!

Brainstorming Idea #4: by Sarah

2010-01-04T19:41:00.000-08:00

The community desired to create an architectural structure within which only the most useful communication took place. Some may think of the meditation of foreign species, intergalactic messaging, cell phone towers, or whale song. Others may think of a computer lab, or the comfortable sterility of a therapist's sitting room. So, what is the most useful communication?

The building was smooth and constructed of one thousand wooden matchsticks. Imagine pulling a spoon out of thickly whipped icing or the solidified peaks and valleys in meringue. Or a bird's nest twigged under the hollow of a boulder. This is the building. There are no excuses in communication, only happenings - sayings and hearings.

As the world spoke, giant lizards were taking the stars down from the sky like ornament, the moon was lobbed like a softball pitch across the sky; there was a sandstorm that buried the voice thick as a new beach. We dug them out, thickly. We raged. Our claws grew strong out of our eyes and our chests puffed as words enunciated and clung like battle axes to an opponent's fortress.

We step through sopped mud, muddy our pant legs in disgust only to win a battle, blind-sided and bleeding. Yet we are whispers in a theater as the movie plays on, we are on the sidewalk with houses and cars zipping by us, we are treating the moon as a destination rather than what it is - something we can see but never stand on. All the places a human can get to, a human can get to - we wake up edged and cutting or we wake up having left the light on all night. We wake up to see another person sleeping, or we sleep while they wake up.

Wake up Together - In Detroit!

There will be collaboration - there will be sleeping in a pile if sleeping in a pile means solidarity in art. There will be a fortress of unshakable creativity. We will spin our new architecture skyward whether or not the sun persists.

One time, months ago, I left the theater of Where the Wild Things Are. The film evokes grandeur and majesty and unshakable loneliness. It explores the epic feeling of being a monstrous force at the center of the universe. It takes us back to that first moment when we consider, from fort-building to mud fighting, the center needs more than one to hold.

Communicate.

(**Image from Southern Accents magazine's May/June issue, via www.ashley-spencer.com)

Brainstorming Idea #3: by Lester

2009-12-31T21:41:00.000-08:00

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.

Marathon Dancers

2009-12-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-30T15:38:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-30T15:04:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-30T14:51:00.000-08:00

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.

Brainstorming Idea #1: by Miro

2009-12-12T14:14:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-12-06T09:37:00.000-08:00

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

Object Orange

2009-11-14T18:05:00.000-08:00

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.

The Detroit Institute of Arts

2009-11-01T12:29:00.000-08:00

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.

First Annual Seminole Street Artist's Colony and Exhibition

2009-10-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

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.

Why We Migrate

2009-10-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

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.