DETROIT – URBAN ART

July, August, September 2018

Detroit has earned its bad reputation.  The city’s financial resources are stretched thin, there’s a high incidence of drug use, violence, teen pregnancy and school drop-outs; the number of citizens living below the poverty line and without adequate healthcare let alone city resources like police and fire protection is astounding; homes once in stable blue-collar neighborhoods are in foreclosure, in ill-repair or abandoned; far too many empty lots with no city plan for the future exist, and the isolation of the disenfranchised from downtown renovations, the gentrification of Greektown and the Lakeshore add to this being a tough place to live.

But take a closer look around, and see the wonderment of the people of Detroit taking pride in their community; see the wonderment of a creative process that is thriving.  No that’s incorrect – it should read pride in their neighborhoods, because all around town there’s an amazing amount of outdoor urban art.  And – oh yeah, you have to at least stop and contemplate all of the music produced at Hitsville USA at the corner of Berry Gordy and West Grand Boulevards.

The Heidelberg Project is an outdoor art project on Detroit’s east side, just north of the city’s historically African-American Black Bottom area.  It was created in 1986 by the artist Tyree Guyton, who was assisted by his wife, Karen, and grandfather, Sam Mackey (“Grandpa Sam”).  The Heidelberg Project is in part a political protest, as Tyree Guyton’s childhood neighborhood began to deteriorate after the 1967 riots.  Guyton described coming back to Heidelberg Street after serving in the Army; he was astonished to see that the surrounding neighborhood looked as if “a bomb went off”.

At first, the project consisted of his painting a series of houses on Detroit’s Heidelberg Street with bright dots of many colors and attaching salvaged items to the houses.  It was a constantly evolving work that transformed a hard-core inner city neighborhood where people were afraid to walk, even in the daytime, into one in which neighbors took pride and where visitors were many and welcomed.  Despite the area being characterized by high levels of blight and poverty, the evolving art work grew.  Tyree Guyton worked on the Heidelberg Project daily with the children on the block.  The Heidelberg Project’s mission was to improve the lives of people and neighborhoods through art.

The Detroit Industrial Galley is a home copyrighted as a work of art, an adjacent outdoor sculpture garden, created by Detroit’s Premier outside artist Tim Burke.  The outdoor sculpture garden is made from a collection of building pieces scavenged from demolished historical buildings that were once iconic landmarks of the city.  The iconic buildings incorporated into the sculpture garden include the Detroit College of Law, the J.L Hudson’s Department Store, the Packard Motor Car Company, and the Studebaker Car Company.

The Z Lot is an indoor parking structure across from the public library in downtown Detroit; adjacent to the structure is Belt Alley.  Every floor of the Z Lot is filled with an array of murals by artists from around the world.  You don’t have to park here to see the art; simply park on the street, take the elevator to any floor and look around.  We suggest however going to the roof and walking down floor by floor.  It’s really, really cool.

The Belt, an alley that runs alongside the Z Lot, is filled with art from one end to the other, some of which changes on a regular basis.

 

The Grand River Creative Corridor is an artist-driven revitalization project started in mid-2012 along Grand River Avenue (imagine that).  There are oodles and oodles of murals that have been painted on buildings, free standing boards in corner parks and on storefronts to identify businesses in this deserted section of the city.  The murals have been painted by artists not just from Detroit but other cities from around the world. There are paintings on buildings. There are paintings on free standing boards on a corner park.

The Lincoln Street Art Park is an evolving community collaboration between local artists, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, the Detroit Recreation department, and the adjacent recycling center.

At the corner of West Grand and Berry Gordy Boulevards is Hitsville USA, somewhat better known as the home of Motown.  It was here that Motown’s artists recorded their hits.  The studios and administrative offices were converted into a museum in 1985.

We were intrigued to see Eight Mile Wall during our tour of Detroit.  The wall is a 1 foot (0.30 m) thick, 6 feet (1.8 m) high structure that stretches about 0.5 miles (0.80 km) in length.  It is hidden between houses, covered by weeds and ivy, and cuts through a public park in Detroit’s Wyoming neighborhood.  The Eight Mile Wall has been referred to by locals as Detroit’s Berlin Wall, although unlike its German counterpart, this divider still stands today.  The wall was built in 1934 and was meant to physically, legally and symbolically segregate a black community from an adjacent white development.  How sad that it was built in the first place?

Great day looking around a city we never thought about as anything but a place to travel through.

So it check out, but look beyond Trip Advisor or any of the other mainstream advice sites that direct you to stuff to do wherever you are.  The top things to do in City “X” don’t tell the whole story.  Check out Atlas Obscura.  Check out what the locals say are the most interesting things to do in their city.  Find local publications that will help plan your day.  You just never know what you’ll find.

Barbara and Brian