Rustwire photo essay hits the streets to find beauty beyond the blight

Rustwire.net’s Richey Piiparinen was in town for last week’s Rust Belt to Artist Belt conference, but he admits his attention was waning. So he snuck out for a photo adventure — to find the art in our city. It was easier than he imagined. A perfectly placed Church’s Chicken, a Communist-eque building facade, Tyree Guyton’s new exhibit, fake flowers in The Whitney gardens. Sometimes it’s worth seeing your everyday surroundings through the lens of an outsider.

Excerpt:

And while the goal of my journey was to find the art of Detroit as
opposed to hear how art’s going to “remake it” what I found was a city
percolating with life just fine: with people, and buses, and stretches
of vacant-less blocks. And yes, I found signs of a death. But in this
death I found something else. Something that a one-time giant has that
current day giants are incapable of having given the fact these latter
giants haven’t yet needed to be reborn.

View the photos here.