Review of Material Spaces: Veneration through the Needle’s Eye

Winter Photo Blog / 2011

It’s time for me to clean out the pictures from my harddrive that I have from shows and studios I visited in the cold dreary months. Listed here are some of my favorite works that didn’t get a mention in the press or on thedetroiter.com, but for me at least epitomize Detroit.
I’m noticing too that [...]

Cynthia Greig: Subverting the (un)Conventional – By Gabrielle Pescador

“Subverting the (un)Conventional”, curated by Dick Goody at Oakland University Art Gallery, is a retrospective exhibit of Michigan artist Cynthia Greig’s photography and video works, in which she explores the notion that the photographic image serves as a surrogate, but never a replacement for the actual person, experience or subject being represented.  The works, though [...]

“Christopher Samuels & Ian Swanson @ PCCA” review by Cedric Tai

Chris Samuels and Ian Swanson are back together again, this time at Paint Creek Center for the Arts. The main gallery has quite a few quirks to its architecture, but these two artists pride themselves on being able to activate challenging spaces, and this show was no exception.  It felt like a church, where most [...]

Andrew Thompson, “From Room to Room” review and interview by Michaela Mosher

In grade-school, the bathroom was a dramatic place. Here you separated men from women and adults from children.  Bathroom stalls are still scrawled with the beginning lawlessness of young minds.  The memories of your grade-school hallways are warped and twisted, visually and mentally.  They seem to close in upon you, the stairways smaller; more dark [...]

Beautiful Creatures: An engaging and playful journey – by Gabrielle Pescador

Beautiful Creatures, curated by Billy Hunter and Jeanne Moore Hunter of Mosaic Productions, features regional artists Sandra Cardew, Mary Fortuna, Gwen Joy, Madeleine Barkey, Glenn Barr, Teresa Petersen and Robert Mirek, showing sculpture in a different vein, portraying the figure and organic form with a playful [...]

Considering the Emerging Artist

Two separate exhibitions over the course of the past week left me with a lot to be desired. At times these shows felt like they were grasping at straws to bring it all together. To be certain there was one artist in each show that stood out as presenting a knock out piece. However, both [...]

Martha Friedman delights at MOCAD

Slices of a pimento (olive) loaf, waffles, eggs, and cow tongue are the ingredients of a promising artist. These items have all fallen on the discerning eye of Brooklyn-based sculptor Martha Friedman. While her work is initially jovial, it has a deeper subtext that challenges and delights the viewer.
Her latest show, Rub, runs through December 30, [...]

Brian Barr’s Intro to Painting Class Moves Confidently

I am very satisfied with the relationship between the Russell Industrial Center and the College for Creative Studies classes that rent out space for a short period of time. It’s the end of the semester and that means the students’ final projects are being activated in satellite spaces from CAVE and other spaces in the [...]

Pop Up Detroit by Gabrielle Pescador and Juan Javier Pescador

Pop Up Detroit combines the talent of established and emerging artists providing a vibrant and fluid perspective on the new landscape of art in Detroit. An eclectic selection of paintings, photography, sculpture and mix media-installations gives life to the walls of a semi-abandoned, yet majestic building with a singular trajectory in the history of Motown.
One [...]