“Remember to serve your own loas.” That’s the advice given to a couple of the central characters in Ishmael Reed’s intensely discursive work of literary collage, “Mumbo Jumbo.” Not incidentally, “Mumbo Jumbo” is also the title of the most recent show at Public Pool in Hamtramck, Mich., a collectively-run gallery […]
Mark Stryker does some follow-up on The White House, highlighting the disappointing but completely unsurprising outcome of this project for actual Detroiters. Read more here… For critics of Mendoza, the plight of the neighbors who have become innocent victims proves the point that artists have no right to come to Detroit […]
DETROIT — Perhaps I should preface my discussion of Homage: Regular Folk with a brief declaration of my own sentiments regarding the energetic qualities of inanimate objects. This perspective is not so much in alignment with object-oriented ontology, which suggests that objects have existences and uses beyond their relationships to humans, but […]
Detroit’s literary scene is booming. Last week, two local authors held book launches for work that touches deeply on some of the most difficult and most real parts of being human, being black and being female: Desiree Cooper debuted a collection of flash fiction, “Know the Mother,” while Casey Rocheteau–the […]
There are funny shapes and objects all over Clay Odyssey: A Retrospective, a survey of work at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center by ceramicist Marie Woo, spanning a 60-year career that has always aspired to push ceramics past function and into experimental realms. There is not a symmetrical form among […]
HAMTRAMCK Mich. — Many women will happily tell you — if only you looked them in the eye instead of the chest — there is something deeply alienating about being reduced to one’s body parts. It’s an experience that is becoming increasingly relatable across gender lines; as women and gay men […]
Artist: Robert Mirek Location: His studio Breakfast: RM – Coffee (black? pretty sure) SRS – Coffee (black) Walking into Robert Mirek’s studio space on 9 mile, where he has been working for 15 years, is like walking into the offices of the anthropologist of a forgotten world. Atlantis, maybe — […]
DETROIT — Painter and art instructor Bob Ross, host of the legendary public access show The Joy of Painting, was known to say, “There is no such thing as a mistake, only happy accidents.” Proponents of synchronicity and/or fatalism would say there is no such thing as coincidence, only signs […]
2013 Detroit Knight Arts Challenge winner Hatch is a collective in Hamtramck, Mich. that brings together the work of many artists, each with different perspectives and approaches. The latest is the work of Kasper Ray O’Brien, whose solo installation, “Show Me Love,” might be termed a “body of work” in […]