CCS Center Galleries
Through April 28

In staging this retrospective exhibition of Ann Mikolowski, CCS Center Galleries pays loving tribute to a significant member of the Detroit art community sadly no longer with us, and brings her work to those who haven’t been around scene so long, and so have only heard at most but whispers of her work (this writer included.) On view are her two distinct bodies of work, landscapes, large and wide – of water, land, and sky, and a multitude of tiny portraits, all of friends – fellow prominent members of Detroit’s cultural community and beyond.

The larger works fill their canvases, seeming to stretch beyond them. Frameless, for the most part, these capture the openness of the scenes she depicts – the horizon on a Great Lake, a sunset. All her works arise from snapshots, a fact which is more evident in the composition of the portraiture, and while these are an achievement of accurate depiction as befitting a photo, they simultaneously evoke recognition of a different sort. These are not only moments that we’ve all seen and cherish, they are moments that we’ve felt and been moved by.

As the landscapes touch us on a grand scale, the portraits do on the intimate. This scale invites us to get right up close to them, to peer into them as if we could see within the composition even beyond the solid window-like frames that enclose each one. They are small, but they are full, a richness of detail achieved at times with only a single hair or two for a brush. Scale affects the kind of marks one can make, as does subject, and her figures are achieved with great detail, nuance, and texture. She’s interested in the intricacies of a person’s life, which can’t be rendered in broad strokes, but with such specific attention to detail. On the other hand, landscapes manifest feeling through form – the way the horizon line divides sea and sky resonates in our hearts or sunlight kissing the clouds with pink lipstick makes us smile.

Despite their source material from flattened photos, the portraits, as well as the landscapes, are lively and animated, displaying the skill and vitality of the painter. These catch a moment, a truth about her subjects, even in a fictionalized image. Mikolowski captures likeness quite accurately, but more so their individual characters through her choice of settings, pose, composition, and props, all which speak volumes about the person. To take but a single example, (and a person I recognize) Sherry Hendrick is seen looking away from the viewer, framed between two of her own abstract black on white portraits. She’s dressed in black, head to toe (or so we’d imagine, we can only see the upper half of her body.) Despite the image of an outsider that these elements project, Mikolowski has depicted Hendrick with a certain inner warmth and good humor, immediately recognizable to those who know the artist and co-founder of Alley Culture. The same could be said for her lakescapes, and the intimate knowledge of those shores that she possessed and poured out onto the canvas.

The strength of these images and the honesty of the portraiture demonstrate the need for this sort of documentation to continue within a community – for someone to bear witness and give voice to people through image.

In his essay accompanying the exhibition, John Yau sheds much light on Mikolowski and rightly points out her lack of overt mannerism in the work. These are quite straightforward and true to her subjects, yet they are all unmistakably hers. Each one is imbued with her personality, her approach to the subject, unassuming as it may be. The common signature between them all is the view through her eyes. We may not know Mikolowski, but in looking at a number of paintings of people and places, these joyful moments she preserved for us, we feel like we do, and are grateful for having come to know her. There is great warmth, delight for life, and an openness that shines through in her attention to detail and her pure observance. That personality so evident in the way she saw through her paintings is confirmed repeatedly in the thoughtful and fitting catalogue which adds to the rich picture of her through the words of those who knew her well.

Mikolowski lives on through these people whom she touched and these moments that she preserved so beautifully. This exhibition is an important service to the community and a loving tribute to one who gave so much to it, a treat to both those who are greeting an old friend and for those discovering this work and this artist for the first time. – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com

Contributor Dolores Slowinski offered this response, which I feel compelled to include: "The gift of Ann's life is that it was never about her; always about whoever she was with or poet or artist that needed attention. "
- thanks, Dolores, N

Accompanying Events:

A lecture by ANDREI CODRESCU
Thursday, March 29 at 7:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public
SEATING IS LIMITED!
Wendell W. Anderson Jr. Auditorium
Walter B. Ford II Building
On the CCS campus (corner of John R. and Frederick Douglass Streets)

ANDREI CODRESCU, the Romanian-born poet and essayist, emigrated to Detroit in 1966, and has since gained a national reputation as a candid and shrewd social and cultural critic. Now a fixture in New Orleans, Codrescu is the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Louisiana State University, is the founder and editor of the literary magazine "Exquisite Corpse," and writes poetry, essays, short stories, novels, screenplays and art criticism. His probing, thought-provoking commentary is a regular feature on NPR's award-winning news magazine "All Things Considered." When Codrescu came to Detroit in 1966, he was immediately immersed in our active cultural scene, befriending the artists, poets and musicians who were creating the avant-garde in Detroit. In conjunction with CCS' Center Galleries exhibition "Ann Mikolowski: Two Ways of Looking in a Mirror," Codrescu will discuss Ann's work, the cultural climate in Detroit during the 1960s, and his relationship to both.

A Poetry Reading in Celebration of the exhibition "Ann Mikolowski: Two Ways of Looking in a Mirror"
Friday, March 30 at 8:00 p.m.
Featuring:
ANDREI CODRESCU
CLAYTON ESHLEMAN
KEN MIKOLOWSKI
CHRIS TYSH
Free and open to the public
Center Galleries
College for Creative Studies
301 Frederick Douglass
On the CCS campus (corner of Frederick Douglass and Brush Streets)

Detroit Industrial Projects
Through April 14.
Installation exhibit by Michelle Barczak, Ed Brown, Chris Erchick, Beili Liu, and Andrew Thompson.

While once might be happenstance, and two coincidence, by the third time, a pattern starts to emerge. Such is the case with Detroit Industrial Projects, which continues in this third offering a solid string of exhibitions blending installation and sculptural elements made from common, non-traditional art making materials.

Andrew Thompson knit “hot water cozies” out of plastic grocery and retail bags for the water pipes running through the industrial space’s ceiling. Obsessive work to say the least, and we might wonder where was he when we needed help making our high school floats? With this covering, Thompson transforms the hard and functional to something soft, perhaps even somewhat cozy, through the use of the formerly functional. The plastic bags are a comment on consumerism, these single use, made to be thrown away items, now live on and become part of something to be looked at and valued, not to mention surprisingly attractive with color reminiscent of spumoni ice cream.

The cozies resonate curiously with Beili Liu’s independently conceived project, making use of large black plastic trash bags for her sprawling installation. By cutting countless purposeful slits in the bags she is able to stretch them out accordion-like to make long flowing limbs or perhaps tentacles, reaching into the space from the exterior windows like some giant octopus searching for sailors on a ship. At the ends of each of these appendages, she’s inserted a separate bag filled with air, giving the endings a bulbous form and the entire tube able to keep its volume. The stalks flow and are weightless like an evening gown, in fact, Liu’s left some stalks outside the windows to dance in the breeze. With such a common and simple material, Liu has created something of significant, almost living, presence.

Chris Erchick’s sculpture, “Kid Icarus and the Cure for Cancer” is at once janky and sophisticated. He meticulously constructs in miniature a wooden observation tower and an abstraction of what he considers a car, complete with gold bling off its front end. The “car” pivots freely on a stand, floating like a land speeder from Star Wars and features a small light illuminating the ground below it. The tower terminates in a flattened sun-like mass of cut pink foam, lit by a swing arm lamp, all attached to the equally janky four-legged construction serving as a pedestal. The elements all work together, making sense intuitively. It’s almost poetic if meaning remains indiscernible. These are wonderfully built things, and Erchick’s construction skills seem to match his imagination.

Ed Brown offers up a bike made stationary, and replaced the back tire with magnets. When spun by pedal power, they whip past a makeshift speaker generating sounds correlating to the r.p.m.s at which it’s all spun. It’s pretty clever and a lot of fun to play with, though the bike’s own noise-making ability after the pedaling is done tends to drown out the desired tune. Rounding the show out are bright orange zip-tie stars by Michelle Barczak, which definitely fit in with the show, but lack some of the resolve of the rest. Perhaps about 10,000 of these things, to accompany the obsessiveness of Thompson would increase their presence.

DIP again offers up another strong installation exhibit, and an exciting addition of the types of works that can be seen in Detroit. We hope they’re here to stay and look forward to what comes next. – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com

(with Select Artifacts) art by Carlos Bruton, Maurice Greenia jr., Gwen Joy, Karl Schneider Curated by Maurice Greenia jr.
Zeitgeist Gallery
Through April 21, 2007

In his curatorial statement, Maurice Greenia Jr. points to surrealist Andre Breton’s idea of paintings as windows into other worlds – it’s quite appropriate here. Art entails conveying experience, and this exhibition offers a deep glimpse into the minds and imaginations of Greenia and the other three artists he assembled.

As is often the case, these four all fit the bill of outsiders, working raw, unpolished – using whatever materials, surfaces that are on hand, and exhibiting naïve and childlike expressiveness. Listening to Greenia describe a work of his own, he has this refreshingly honest and unadulterated enthusiasm for a shape, the figure, and even the place he made the drawing. Each artist complements the others nicely, and they are all given a significant stretch of wall space all their own, allowing viewers to get a comprehensive understanding of the artist’s work, while also making linkages to the others.

Looking at Greenia first, he creates surreal figures, critters, delightfully disturbed denizens only a dweller of decaying deindustrialized Detroit might dream up. He’s often playfully experimental, in one instance, drawing with two pens in one hand at once. Too be clear, this is not a gimmick or a pretense at sophisticated technique, but just a fun thought: when happening to have two pens at the same time, why the hell not? Many of these were drawn in part on the bus, and it shows in their jumpy line quality – all of which fits into the vision he puts forth. Greenia has hordes of drawings and paintings on display, all very recent, mostly from the last two months or so – there’s little hesitation between a thought and putting it down on paper. The energy that generates such volume is on display in each one – the creatures are animated, humorous, they seem to talk with one another, and if one knows about Greenia’s penchant for puppeteering, you can’t help but picture these characters all speaking in their own distinct voices (supplied by him) and carrying on a surreal, but insightful conversation.

Karl Schneider’s works offer a bit of visual overlap with Greenia’s, but these come across as more planned, more designed. His are also surreal figures, but they’re not as light, and they tend to dissolve and merge into one another and into the ground of pattern and form. We can see in them hints of tribal markings, tattoos, and perhaps the patterns one might make while doodling, taking on the complexity of figuration. They read at times as tilings hinting at his sculptural works, all tiled not-so-rigidly ala Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. At times it seems the forms generate the figures, in the same way we find faces in clouds, we can imagine Schneider drawing away, and then happening upon the inkling of a face and working to flesh that out.

Relative newcomer to the scene, Carlos Bruton’s work is the most illustrative of the bunch. If Greenia’s misfits are whimsical, these are rather scary. Rendered with fine, detailed lines, his figures are abominations – part men, part machine, sometimes part animal – these are Frankenstein’s monsters. They bear the influence of characters in graffiti art, and Bruton also brings a little more pop sensibility to Zeitgeist, all the while emanating from the same sort of compulsive and unfiltered expressiveness as those around him.

And then there’s Gwen Joy. Her work could be described as coming from who we’d be if we got older but never had to grow up – Peter Pan-like, or rather Wendy. Her figures are kitschy cute, portrayed painterly as if Cezanne had a hand in choosing the palette. Lush greens, oranges, make for delicious coloration. They show the understanding of an adult, yet rendered with all the carefreeness of a child. Like her counterparts in the show, her figures are surreal, people with dog heads, dogs with people heads, little mermaids – often these feel like fictionalized, two-dimensional alter egos of the painter herself. There’s definitely the sense that these are all denizens of the same world, a Disney-inspired dream gone Detroit, and a Gwen Joy is unmistakably a Gwen Joy.

Additionally, Greenia includes a wall of sculptural objects from the artists, he describes these “artifacts” as if, “someone ‘went into’ one of the art works, retrieved some objects and brought them back to this reality.” It’s a nice touch, and expands on the theme of the window as being almost literal. Especially of note is Greenia’s own pieces, wireframe figures somewhat Calder-like mirroring the figures in his paintings.

We may all speak common tongues and have similar experiences, but as this exhibition displays to great effect, internally, different process, different thoughts are unfolding. In them we see the unbridled joy of making and the compulsive need for expression, all a reminder to find a window to look into ourselves, and see what might be ready to come pouring out. – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com

EYEBEAM
540 W. 21st Street, (between 10th and 11th Avenues)
New York City

With art making stretching outside the gallery walls and no longer strictly objects, the idea of what a gallery space can be is transforming all the time to accommodate the expanding possibilities. New York City’s EYEBEAM is just such a place for showcasing experimental works, with an interior able to be greatly reconfigured along with the increased role of video documentation. Their current exhibition, “Open City” showcases groups and individuals from around the country and overseas, all working in the realm of public arts, but in the non-commissioned, non-permissive sort of way. This includes, among others, Detroit’s own “Object Orange” collective. (Written about by us here, among other places.) Besides the interest in seeing Detroiters in the big city, there are plenty of ideas on display here that are well suited to think about in the context of our own urban environment.

While each of the projects on display deal with public action, their approaches and methodologies are wonderfully diverse ranging from performance-based to those making more lasting marks on the public space. As a result, this makes for a learning experience for the visitors and the exhibiting artists as well. There’s a sense that this is a truly open exchange of ideas, a place to talk shop, and that these ideas are to be shared, passed on, and put to use in new ways and new places.

The Improv Everywhere troupe out of New York City is a performance project that might be described as a cross between “Fight Club” and Candid Camera. Their works turn human volunteers into art implements, recruiting them as “agents”, volunteers to take on specific missions. Some projects include, “Slo-Mo Depot” in which all the participants moved at slow motion in a Home Depot for 5 minutes (a sped up video of this, with regular shoppers whizzing around and the Slo-Mo folks appearing to move at normal speed, is a riot!) For another mission, they all dressed in the same color scheme and style as Best Buy employees and then entered the store en masse, browsing, helping out customers who assumed that they worked there, all before being asked to leave by a very concerned management. Projects like these, and No Pants Day (no explanation needed), certainly bring a bit of levity to the participants and onlookers, but they also provide a moment to pause and reflect on things we take for granted, and begin to stir up a few questions in people’s minds.

Leon Reid picks up this theme by altering public architecture slightly, as with two sign posts wrapped around one another in a “kiss.” When noticed, it’s a moment of surprise and a start to looking at one’s landscape with slightly more open eyes. Aram Bartholl’s project linked the virtual landscape of google maps to the real world, by placing a giant mapping icon in its real world location. It’s surreal, clever, funny, and again, something to give us pause. One project by German artist, Matthias Wermke, (and it should be noted that these artists’ works take on numerous different forms) involved him setting up a swing on very public and quite unlikely places – like a suspension bridge in a city, and swinging over the roadway. It’s really wonderful in a Peter Pan sort of way – to fly while all the adults are scurrying about below.

Some projects are decidedly more hi-tech. The Institute for Applied Autonomy has created remote control vehicles equipped with spray canisters programmed to create graffiti as they roll along. These expand the reach of graffiti in much the same way military robots can go where people can not tread. The Graffiti Research Lab (GRL) states their mission as being, “dedicated to outfitting graffiti artists with open source technologies for urban communication.” This statement really hits at the heart of the show – these are projects for the public – that is, not just to look at, but to truly make their own. One GRL project is a sophisticated portable setup that they carry on a bicycle, with which they project onto a building, and can virtually “tag” it in real time using a laser pointer system. “Writing” large scale with buildings as canvas is very cool and extremely innovative, and it’s not hard to imagine such a thing being done on, say, the Michigan Central Station, eh?

In addition to the conceptual realm, some of these projects pay strong attention to the visual aesthetic side of things. KR is a New York graffiti artist, and creator of KRINK – “unfadeable silver ink”, which is on display here, as is his handiwork with it on a mailbox. KR’s work definitely opens up the discussion of the distinction between what constitutes public art and what is simply vandalism. There’s not a simple answer, and it’s certainly a matter of perspective. The defaced mailbox comes across as a bit disturbing, while there’s no denying the wall of the gallery KR painted is an engaging non-objective abstract work.

With that, we come finally to our own Object Orange outfit. They certainly are on the most socially active end of the spectrum – doing what they do in hopes of bringing attention to abandonment and fight apathy for blight. Often, there’s so much talk of the social and legal issue, it’s forgotten that these are definitely artistic statements – it’s not random that the houses are painted bright orange – and as such reanimate the landscape. Object Orange shipped an entire wall a house that they painted and was torn down in Detroit, along with photos of some of their other houses. EYEBEAM made a great choice in installing this wall in their glassed in area – it’s highly visible from the street.

All in all, EYEBEAM did a tremendous job in bringing together the different art projects, and then laying out the installation so as to facilitate dialogue between all the works. If you’re going to New York City soon, definitely make time to check this out. (If you’re not, check out the EYEBEAM website for links to the all the individual projects’ websites.) Detroiters will feel very much at home in this converted warehouse, and will no doubt imagine possibilities for such a place, and this sort of work, right here in our own backyard. There’s an important dialogue to be had about how to take action in urban spaces, and much that can be learned and made use of from those involved here. – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com

Community Arts @ Paramount Gallery
Through March 24, 2007

Paramount Gallery offers up an inspired pairing with the sculptural animations of Ryan Buyssens and Molly Reilly’s compositions of snapshot photographs. As the sub-title suggests, both deal with moments of time in different but complementary ways.

Buyssens’ works are a new twist on the oldest form of animation, the Zoetrope. Such devices create the illusion of motion through a series of static sequential images arranged on a rotating wheel, viewed through a slit or by way of a strobing device. It’s fascinating how this simplest of animation technique, which forms of which have been around perhaps nearly 2000 years, still fill us with wonder and are still being innovated upon. And innovate Buyssens has. He’s patented his own system that removes the need for a strobe or any special viewing device, allowing these to be viewed anyone from any angle. As they spin, they “jitter”, that is stop and start, performing a similar trick on the eye as the strobe. It’s pretty high-tech for something seemingly so low tech, and I recommend checking out his website to read more about how they work. Engineering issues aside, they do what they set out to do – they can be viewed with the unaided eye. (Ok, I had a little trouble at first, but I’m chalking it up as a badge of honor for exceptional peripheral vision!)

In addition to being a novel approach, without the constraints of typical zoetrope-oscopy, Buyssens’ has made these into engaging as sculptural objects as well, independent of the animations upon them. And these animations are elegant as well, showing the rotation of gears and birds in flight. He also has three-dimensional variants using this technology, which like their 2-D cousins, appear to move or morph in time. We see a butterfly flying, origami opening, and a matchstick man marching. This last one demonstrates the lasting appeal of animation; in that using the simplest of forms, the artist can dream into being something quite out of this world. These are quite a delightful achievement of animation, sculpture, technology, and invention. Anticipate seeing more such things from Buyssens, not to mention others following suit with this breakthrough that he’s made.

If Buyssens’ are all about motion, Reilly’s really capture stillness. These are a series of snapshots, juxtaposed within single horizontal rectangular compositions. They might best be thought of as visual poems, offering the feeling of the moment, but not the narration of one. Even descriptions of them in words can’t help but lean toward the poetic. We see: a purse; a woman in a car – seatbelt on; a man drinking an orange soda while driving; a view through a cracked windshield at the open road. In another: a bird in flight; an egg hard boiled in an egg cup; a blue egg cracked open on a plate; an opened newspaper; cracks and wear on a cement surface; wires stretching from a pole in a backyard, birds perched upon them, sky resonating with the adjacent image of cracks in cement. The enigmatic nature of her imagery frees the viewer to construct our own stories and place meaning upon them. As our brains connect the separate stills of an animation into a fluid sequence, we can’t help but try to find patterns in these separate images, whether or not one is intended. And thus the images, which were Reilly’s (and no doubt she has her own meaning behind them), can truly belong in a way to the individual viewer – we each interpret from our own perspective. Again, this is akin to poetry, for in much the same way a poem holds new meanings each time we revisit it, we can return to these images and continue to find new possibilities within them.

The Paramount Gallery is doing a great service to artists, gallery goers, and its customers alike, by putting on exhibitions. Stop in and check out this moment of delight and brief stoppage of time that Buyssens and Reilly provide. – Nick Sousanis
ws@thedetroiter.com

During National Transportation Week

For fifty years, Detroit has had no rapid transit. In addition to holding back our region's growth and development, this also means that the public has little understanding of what transit would look like here, how it would work, and how it could encourage redevelopment and revitalization. Knowing the value of effective visuals in building public perception and sparking public imagination and excitement, Transportation Riders United is holding a design contest: Detroit in Transit.

We will hold a design contest, inviting student and professional artists, designers, urban planners and architects to submit designs of what Detroit’s transit and transit-oriented neighborhoods could look like in 2025. There will be three parts to the contest:
- Designs of transit vehicles on a streetscape
- Architectural designs of transit stations in a streetscape
- Urban planning designs of vibrant neighborhoods or intersections around transit stations or stops
The parameters of the contest will be broad – any design incorporating transit on a real street or in a real neighborhood in Detroit or its inner suburbs will be considered. The design should be something that could realistically be built in the next twenty years (assuming with sufficient investment and support).

We will provide a map of where transit is likely to be developed, including both regional commuter rail and modern streetcar / light rail. We will also provide some specific suggested locations, with current maps, images, and other relevant data.

Contest criteria and details will be sent out to area schools, various web forums, etc in early March. We will work with teachers and professors from area schools to encourage entries. Submissions will be due on April 30.
Designs will be judged both on their visual appeal and design merit by both professionals (in art and urban design) and local residents. Five finalists from each category will be selected. These fifteen designs will be displayed at a fundraising event for Transportation Riders United on Friday, May 18. Finalists will each be given two complementary tickets. At the event, the runner up and the winner in each category will be announced. (If possible, we will get an art supply store to donate gift certificates for each winner as a sponsor of the event, but this has not been confirmed.)

In addition to displaying the finalists and announcing the winners, the event will also include a brief presentation of TRU’s transit vision and what we are doing to make these transit visions become reality.

Transportation Riders United (TRU) is a local non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and improving public transit in greater Detroit, including improving the existing bus service and bringing quality rapid transit to the region, just like every other major city.

It's time for the second annual breast cancer benefit at the Belmont. In addition to bringing back last year's successful night of music, we are adding an art exhibition to the festivities.

The premise is simple: we're looking for Metro Detroit artists (and musicians who want to create some art) to donate for the cause. We're not looking for a big time committment or a big piece; the piece will be on a 4"x5" canvas board. We hope to assemble a large collection of these little canvases from a wide variety of artists to sell for a donation to a great cause!

There will be an exhibition opening on May 30 at the Belmont, when the pieces will first be available for sale. They will hang throughout June, and the benefit show will be on June 9.

ALL proceeds will be going to the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation.

If you're interested in taking part, please send an email to
rockforthecure@gmail.com. Explain who you are, describe your style and if possible, your ideas for the piece. If you have samples of your work, email a picture or a link. If you don't have samples or know what you want to do, that's OK too! Just tell us who you are and that you want to take part.

The deadline for entry is April 15, but we're expecting a huge
response, so the quicker you reply, the better your chances for taking part in this great opportunity for a great cause!

Please feel free to repost this, email it it to your friends, blog
about it, and do whatever you can to get the word out.

--
Ryan Cooper
About Punk Music
http://punkmusic.about.com

Detroit Artists Market
Through April 7, 2006

Gary Eleinko, a Detroit artist who has been involved with the local art community for many years, has once again put his signature on an event at the Detroit Artists Market. By curating this exhibition, he reminds us that the DAM was originally established to show the work of young, up-and-coming artists of Detroit.

With a sensitive and wise curatorial eye, Eleinko chose to select work by nine artists to compose a small group show allowing each artist to present several pieces of work rather than a survey show of many artists represented by only one work. This gave each artist a substantial presence in the gallery and made for a cohesive installation.

Taurus Burns work is the first to greet you as you enter the gallery from the parking lot. A large crowd of anonymous figures seems to have gathered below an abstract, floating, yellow jellyfish in The Mitote. The title immediately calls to mind cell division as the aquatic form does seem to be dividing just as the crowd below is divided into brightly colored figures on the right and dark, shadowy figures on the left. The same archetypal form of head and shoulders, abstract yet easily identifiable as human, appears in other paintings.

In Back Fire and Come Sway with Me, Burns gives his silhouettes more details: arms, legs, facial expressions. The figures are active people, gesturing, running, shouting rather than passive automatons

Burns’ paintings stimulate thoughts of identity and anonymity, isolation and communication, conflict and personal responsibility that we encounter as humans on a daily basis.

Ian Swanson hails the incoming visitor with his macabre, plaster-gauze wrapped forms. Pavlov, a grotesque, mixture of organic and mechanical looking parts resembling a decapitated canine wearing an Elizabethan collar, generates a feeling of curiosity and repulsion as you spy the pomegranate seeds so cleverly placed within its maw. Just who IS the dog here?

It is no accident that Apoptosis, his series of small resin panels, resemble biological slides mounted in frames since the title refers to the death of cells that occurs in the normal life cycle of an organism.

Swanson’s installation, Cleaning House, with its allusion to science and technology is reminiscent of the work of former Detroit artist Ron Leax. Whereas Leax incorporated living plants, organic materials and laboratory apparatus to imply learning as a biological process; Swanson prefers to make science and technology the scapegoats for vanity and greed.

His paintings are unsettling and a bit more gruesome in the blood and gristle hues of pink, red, and ligamentous white sporting ovoid shapes that look like modernist band-aids; spewing pills from clenched fists; or pointing Ponce de Leon in a new direction: biological exploration.

Stephen William Schudlich's work, immediately adjacent to Swanson’s, is elegant, pristine, and statistically analytical in its presentation of sociological facts documenting the urban landscape in Detroit. Whereas Swanson's work accosts they eye; Schudlich's stuns the soul.

In Urban Educational Outdoor Play Space Inventory he documents the detritus, from pop cans to drug paraphernalia; from snack wrappers to weapons and more, to be found on children’s playgrounds around the city

In The Charity of Spiritual and Secular data on Mack Ave. every edifice, storefront, empty lot, and park is accounted for and marked like a grave in a cemetery map with facts that would make a genealogist weep.

Narine Kchikian moves from the clinical to the sensual with her mixed media drawings utilizing colored pencil, ink, paint, marker on vellum to draw figures, architectural details, buildings, patterns that combine in a surreal manner with pattern and decoration overtones.

Common Sense seems to play with the idea of our senses by providing visual puzzles, allusions to scents with floral shapes, textures created by patterns, and colors like sherbet we can almost taste.

Radical Equilibrium achieves just that careful balance in composition through the use of figures, arches, architecture, and decorative elements some right side up, others upside down.

Mira Burack plays with photographed images to further stimulate our sensual interests. Using photographs of hoja plants' leaves and vine as linear elements, she creates the outlines of a feminine torso, Hoja Queen, and male torso, Hoja King, that define form like elaborate tattoos or details of beautiful embroidery.

Cutting up photographs of black, white, blue, and blue-green afghans, blankets and bed linens, Burack created a life-size collage titled Sleeping Position “Spoon.” The elements are repeated and “spooned” or fanned to create a form raised just above the floor level, which beg
the viewer to find the body or bodies beneath or snuggled within the folds while drawing us into her dream.

Kathy Leisen uses watercolors and collaged elements to illustrate her dreamy landscapes that have the sensibility of the work of Henry Darger or William Wegman. Like Darger she creates her own world, whether at the beach in Beach Pandemonium or in Seabiscuit Rides into Hades or standing in line to get on a train in Tickets. Some figures are mere outlines, others are fully rendered, and still others appear monumental in scale within pictures collaged onto the surface, reminiscent of Wegman’s postcard paintings. Whereas in the distance one expects figures to appear smaller, Leisen's are larger disrupting our sense of scale and proportion. Her colors are thin and light or lush and vibrant; overall the effect is delightful.

Laith Karmo humorously combines wood and clay. The wood can be a crudely cut, assembled and painted to support an iridescently glazed, shiny ceramic hose as in Hose Reel; or it can support ceramic grass whirled around the underside of a crudely assembled power mower in Lawn Mower.

Karmo also builds elaborate bases out of particle board that support less refined geometric shapes in outline form. Nothing is really what it appears to be. Yet we recognize it and smile.

Gregory Tom also works magic with clay. He perforates round, voluptuous forms that defy slumping during firing as in Vessel (05). Tom also has drawings in the show. This is a rare opportunity to see the drawings of a clay artist for which Eleinko should be complimented for including. Whereas the vessels are three dimensional, the drawings are flat concentric circles repeated in clusters to overlap and intensify the density of the shapes that seem to vibrate with energy. Tom removes clay to make it look lighter; he adds ink and pencil in repeated patterns to make his drawings look denser.

Brian Pitman works metal into organic forms that seem to have a biological existence beyond our understanding. Some look like stubby millipedes, Los Tres Amigos 1, 2, & 3, scurrying up a wall.

One untitled sculpture resembles an underwater creature removed from the sea with stringy legs reaching down to the floor.

Another piece, Burn Orifice, made of laminated wood, hollow, stained white and scorched is like a geode whose contents are invisible. Should the DAM experience an inundation, Pitman's creatures look like they would simply swim away.

The pleasure in viewing this show comes both from the strength of the individual artists' work as well as from the cohesive installation. Moving from one artists work to another, a thought process and approach to materials and environment emerges: the impersonal becomes personal; the inanimate, animate; and the delicate more powerful. This bodes well for the neXt 75 years of art in Detroit.

Dolores S. Slowinski is an artist and erstwhile art reviewer. Her visual work has recently appeared in Dispatch Detroit, Vol. 8. Her writing has been published in American Ceramics, Art in America, Ceramics Monthly, Dialogue: An Art Journal, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The New Art Examiner, and numerous catalogues. One of her recent works for thedetroiter.com concerned the graphic novel, "Pride of Baghdad,” which can be found in our lit section here.