Once a manufacturing Mecca, the Russell Industrial Center now caters to industrious bodies of a far more creative ilk.
Visible from Interstate 75, the monstrous building known as the Russell Industrial Center takes up 2.2 million square feet of semi-crumbling nether-region on the peripheries of Eastern Market, Hamtramck and New Center. Judging by its looming presence and prime real estate, its rich legacy comes as no surprise.
The structure, designed by Albert Kahn and erected around 1915, originally served as the home of Murray Body Company, where thousands of factory workers built bodies for the Dodge Brothers. It was later used during World War II for war production. It was even owned by Leona Helmsley at one point.
Although there are still traces of its history in the architecture (steel beams, enormous openings for outgoing parts, oversized tracks and doors, loading docks), the assembly lines are long gone. Today, managed by Boydell Development Co. (the Nikki's Pizza folks), the Center attracts a new guard of hard workers, who are contributing to a very different, but just as thriving, industry of modern-day Detroit: the creative arts. Attracted to its sprawling spaces with gigantic, steel-framed windows, artists are taking up residence in the massive outpost, divided into artist studios, ranging from anywhere from 1,000 to 70,000 square feet each.
Albert Young, glass-blower extraordinaire, was one of the pioneers. His idea: get a handful of artists together and move in. “They were cheap, and I couldn’t burn them down,” he says about the studios. He moved out to a studio/gallery in Pontiac temporarily in the mid-'90s but was eventually drawn back to the RIC, citing reasons like the lure of Detroit as inspiration. “My work is about refuge,” he says, which might not seem like much of a compliment to the city. Consider, however, that his graceful sculptures, often industrial-looking with a rusty patina, always capture an ethereal sense of beauty in the glass.
When Young is blowing glass—an art form he’s been honing for more than 25 years—it’s like watching a conductor with his symphony. After gathering molten-orange glass from one of the three furnaces, it’s an act of improvisation: sitting and rolling at the bench, standing and blowing, trapping his breath in the pipe, using jacks, diamond sheers and pinzas for necking, trimming and handling. His movements are as fluid and beautiful as the glass he’s shaping.
Fortunately for anyone interested in seeing a performance, Young, who’s an instructor at CCS, not only offers classes at his studio (six-person courses of students of all stripes, not just artists), he also welcomes visitors to the space. He’ll give a tour, or let you sit in a makeshift audience and watch one of his legendary classes. “I always tell people, it’s like trying to hold a squirrel,” he says. “My best students are the ones who don’t get it right away. The glass teaches you a lot, and the mistakes are all necessary.”
Off to the side of the glass working area, there’s a heaping pile of scrap metal he incorporates into his artwork—chains, drill bits, springs and coils from junkyards. “It’s just waiting to be turned into art,” Young says. He talks about his works as products of a decaying urban landscape. “I consider myself a Detroit artist,” he says. “You’re very close to the wound, but it’s good for the art.”
“I’m the model for a lot of these studios,” says Young, who’s not exactly humble when it comes to his role as trailblazer of the building. “My studios have worked so well that they’ve tried to create other studios based on mine.” How does it work? “We’re like a big family,” Young says.
“There’s definitely a sense of camaraderie,” agrees Mary Anne Grauf, a clay artist within Young’s creative tribe. “We get along really well, but we’re all working in our own spaces.” She leans over her wheel, off to the side of her tightly-packed studio, where fragile porcelain pieces with celadon glazes are spread out on tables amid an empire of bric-a-brac. “I’m a collector of stuff,” she says. But her work, spare and elegant, gives a very different message.
With names like “dusk” and “echoes,” the conceptual shapes she creates—from thimble-sized vases to wobbly yet graceful plates—represent what she thinks sounds would look like. “Some of them don’t make sense, some of them do—and some of them only make sense to me,” she says.
Either way, it’s clear she’s a master of her craft. Grauf has been working with clay for more than 30 years, recently graduated from CCS, after decade-long blocks teaching children, studio pottery and peddling at art fairs. She’s now dedicated to gallery work (Detroit Artist Market and Ann Arbor Art Center, to name just a couple), and the Russell Industrial Center gives her a place to practice her trade.
There are furniture designers amid the group, including Joint Furniture and Alan Kaniarz—another 20-year RIC veteran, who runs a good old-fashioned woodworking shop called A.K. Services. He and a staff of four turn out beautifully traditional, arts and crafts-style custom inset door and drawer cabinetry, doors, bookshelves, furniture, and almost anything else you might want built. It’s the kind of work that deserves to be in the big, old historic homes of Detroit.
Buzzing with the sound of a table saw, his studio is cluttered with the proof of a guy who’s passionate about his trade: tools, antique furniture (which he lovingly restores), old chairs, salvaged doors, fresh-cut wood planks, endless stacks of design books, and extravagant old lighting that he buys and sells.
With almost 100 tenants in the building, there’s no shortage of painters, sculptors, woodworkers, photographers, graphic designers. One of the most well-known artists to call the RIC his studio home is the painter and famed rock concert poster artist
Mark Arminski, who has created posters for bands like Smashing pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails and Iggy Pop.
But the guy who’s been there the longest, why he’s the last tether to the old industry, and ironically, the man with the widest audience of all. “Everyone calls him Mr. Kristoffy,” says the manager of the RIC, Chris Mihailovich. “He’s the only person who still makes parts for Model T’s, and he gets calls from all over the world.”
Photos:Russell Industrial Center signOne of many buildings which make up the Russell ComplexAlbert YoungAlbert Young's shopMark Arminski in his studio
All Photographs Copyright Dave Krieger