Arts : Buzz

Plenty of worthy individuals, groups and orgs are on this list. Find your favorites and support. Lots of great stuff going on in Detroit right now.

An excerpt:

What we found was a community bursting with creative, innovative and distinctly DETROIT ideas. Many of the ideas came from individuals and small collectives (something we hope you will see reflected in the list of finalists). Several investigated the use of space/place and art. Some looked to marry Detroit’s past and its future. All were thoughtfully reviewed and considered by our panel of local reviewers and Knight staff.

Want more? Here you go: here.

It's called "Two Worlds, One Sound," a followup of sorts to last year's benefit at Model D that also honored our building's rich history as Zoot's, a hotspot for local music in the mid-1990s. 

Here's the lowdown from Detroit Sound Conservancy founder Carleton S. Gholz:

LipCity and BMG never met until the DSC brought them together to organize around Detroit’s rich musical legacy in front of the Blue Bird Inn on Tireman. Both archivists, historians, writers, and sound-organizers, LipCity and BMG were raised in Detroit’s imaginative soundscape, schooled by DJs like Ken Collier and the Electrifying Mojo, and activated to embrace their communities. They will bring their two worlds together under one sound to raise funds for the Detroit Sound Conservancy who are working with the Detroit Public Library Friends Foundation to enhance the stewardship surrounding Detroit’s musical heritage.

Nicely said, but just who are LipCity and BMG? Regular peeps know them by their real names Curtis Lipscomb (yes, executive director of KICK) and Brendan M. Gillan of electro-space disco innovators Ectomorph.

This is quality talent performing for a quality organization. $10 (or more) donation suggested. Magic Stick is at 4140 Woodward Ave. in Midtown. Starts at 9 p.m. tonight, Tuesday June 18, goes til 2 a.m. (editor's note: and the after-party?)

Nearly 40 years after forming in an East Side Detroit neighborhood, the time has come today for a band called Death. 

The group has had its 1970s material released, performed at the first Orion Festival this past weekend and is the subject of a new documentary.

An excerpt from a review in Crave:

Artistic integrity, within the brothers, starts at an early age. Raised in (Detroit), the birth place of Motown, the Hackney brothers were allowed to experience all kinds of music by their loving, open minded parents. In one scene, the surviving brothers reminisce about their father making them watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. As the sixties music scene grew, the Hackney’s became inspired as much by Alice Cooper as Berry Gordy.

"Hell yeah!" to that, we say.

Read a review for the doc here. Buy the download here.

We were saddened to hear of the death of Los Angeles-based Mike Kelley, an artist with Detroit roots. Kelley had been working with the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit on his mobile homestead project for several years prior to his passing.

We've been following the project, still in the works with a launch planned this spring, as has the New York Times.

An excerpt:

The New York The house is a faithful replica of the suburban Detroit childhood home of the artist Mike Kelley, who shepherded the details of its creation up to the final days of his life in January 2012, when he committed suicide at his home in South Pasadena, Calif. Kelley was one of the most influential artists of the last several decades. And though he made his name in the Los Angeles art world, much of the look and feel of his art came from his working-class, Irish Catholic upbringing here, in a city whose affliction he seemed to embody.

Read on here.

Highland Park, once one of Detroit's most prosperous suburbs and home of the world's first assembly line, is the subject of a feature film starring Danny Glover and Parker Posey.

HuffPost Detroit talked to the film's director. An excerpt:

How did you first become interested in the city Highland Park?

The main thing I was looking for … was a prototypical rags-to-riches-to-rags-again community that highlighted the Rust Belt economy. I immediately hit on Highland Park as this ultimate symbol of everything that went right, and then everything that went wrong, at the same time. How a small community went from farmland, to the cradle of the American dream, back to almost farmland or prairie in only 100 years.

Good stuff. More here.

More love, all of it deserved, for Gina Reichert and Mitch Cope's Power House project, which includes a skate park at the corner of Davison and Klinger St. 

Now the world’s most famous skateboarder, Tony Hawk, is supporting this unique Ride It Sculpture Park, a non-profit and community-based skate-boarding project. It is receiving a $30-thousand dollar grant from the Tony Hawk Foundation. Well done.

Pete Whitley is the foundation’s programs director. He says Ride It is unlike any skate park he’s ever seen. Listen up: he tells WDET's Travis Wright how Tony Hawk went from kink flips to philanthropy.

Elysia Borowy-Reeder, 39, is the new executive director of Detroit’s Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, better known as MOCAD. She’ll take over the job, vacant since November 2011 when former director Luis Croquer left to take a job in Seattle, next week.

An excerpt:

Borowy-Reeder, who grew up in metro Detroit and East Lansing, has a bachelor’s degree in visual arts from Antioch College and master’s degrees in art education and art history from Michigan State University.

She recalls how childhood visits to the Detroit Institute of Arts helped inspire her love for her chosen field. “You’d be on the floor of the Diego Rivera mural room drawing. ... That’s what got me hooked on museums,” she says.

Read more here.

The Michigan Film Office says How to Catch a Monster, a feature film that marks actor Ryan Gosling’s writing and directing debut, was awarded an incentive of $1,750,909 on $6,238,922 of projected in-state expenditures. The project is expected to hire 104 Michigan workers with a full time equivalent of 30 jobs.

The film will shoot in Detroit and other metro locations and features Christina Hendricks (Mad Men), Saoirse Ronan (Atonement), Eva Mendes (The Place Beyond the Pines) and Matt Smith (Doctor Who). 

Also approved for a state film encentive is Landlord, which shoots in Hamtramck, and follows the tale of Elvis Martini, a widowed landlord dealing with spiritual conflict and the abduction of his daughter.

Follow news from the Michigan Film Office here.

There's lots going on in the Hamtramck art scene, including a show seeking entries at HatchArt.

We've heard good things about the newish (established in summer 2012) Detroit School of Music from our friends at D:hive and from an appearance on Channel 7's Detroit 20/20. Now a little more love from Detroit Unspun.

An excerpt:

The school is located in what was formerly the Malcolm X Academy, in a building that used to be a part of the public school system. Even though the system has left it, the outside of the School of Music reverberated with the hum of progress and potential that so many buildings in the area give off.

Music is important. I bet you didn’t know that individuals who study music demonstrate higher abilities in nearly all academic areas, a decrease in aggression and violent behavior, lower likelihood of abusing drugs and alcohol, and a lower instance of developing Alzheimer’s or other degenerative mental disorders. In short, music isn’t just about what your ears, but about your mind and soul.

Sounds good, yes? Read on here.

Dig in and stay with this poetic blog entry in HuffPost Detroit by Nancy Kotting.

An excerpt: 

Detroit is not broken. It has simply blown beyond conventional definition. It does not need to be 'fixed' by attempts to make it something it has already been. Detroit does not need to be re-tooled into some economically acceptable form that can continue to contribute to a long dead paradigm. Detroit needs to be recognized for what it is: a place where courageous, creative people can actively participate in the unknown going forward, carving the trail ahead.

Well said, Nancy. Read the rest here.

Here you go, artists and artisans: a message from the Community Arts Moving Projects (aka CAMP) people to let you know they are now accepting proposals for projects to be displayed at this year's Movement Festival, held during Memorial Day weekend.

An excerpt:

We believe that the continued progress of Detroit may be augmented through the exhibition of the region’s exemplary creative talent on the global stage. The CAMP (Community Arts Moving Projects) program aims to facilitate this by giving Detroit artists, makers and thinkers the opportunity to create beautiful and inspired projects that will be displayed at Detroit’s Movement Electronic Music Festival before they are relocated into our neighborhoods.

We are challenging creators to make pieces that will reflect the heart and future of Detroit while taking advantage of the unique resources available to the city.

Read more here.

Many of us knew Ameen Howrani, a pioneering photographer whose studio on E. Grand Blvd. was (and still is) a beacon of creativity. He died in 2010, but his son Ara was there to take over this unique Detroit family business.

An excerpt: 

Ara Howrani had some big shoes to fill. After a stint in Los Angeles, the young photographer and videographer returned home in 2005 to take over Howrani Studios in the North End neighborhood of the city, carrying on the studio's legacy with a style that is truly his own.

Read more here.

Detroit, music city. Yeah man, we're all over that plain but huge matter of fact. This is the original (and only) home of Motown (c'mon L.A., stand down, please); the birthplace of the sickest garage rock (Stooges, MC5, Gories) and electro (Adult., Drexciya, Dopplereffekt) ever made, trailblazing hip hop (foremost Slum Village, James Dewitt Yancey aka J Dilla) and, of course, techno (Cooley High peeps alone -- notably Carl Craig, Mike Huckaby, Anthony "Shake" Shakir -- produced more talent than most Johnny-come-lately "dance music capitals" anywhere in the world, baby).

So, yes, we're well aware of our innovative sound heritage. This short film helps us understand part of what's happening now, in Midtown, Hamtown and other bars, and especially at next gen private house parties.

Check it out here.

Great news from the Museum of Contempory Art Detroit last week about MOCAD's upcoming redesign by Rice+Lipka Architects and urban design/landscape architects James Corner Field Operations.

This excerpt from HuffPost Detroit:

The design won the Architectural Review's 2013 Future Project award in the "Old and New" category.

The judges hailed the MOCAD design as "an inspirational project that combines past and present in a well resolved and convincing manner. It creates new space for new creativity in a post-industrial city."

The two firms will work to make the interior more energy-efficient. They'll also reconfigure exhibit, event and storage area. Exterior changes will also create a brand-new outdoor event space.

Read more here.