THE REGULARS
Cyrah Addae
Andrea Bonaventura
Steven Cherry
Ali Clegg
Bryan Corley
Mary Cotter
Jeff Fournier
Mira Hughes
Timmy Lampinen
Noah Morrison
Chris Riddell
Lisa Vel
Jonathan Weier
Linda Stachowicz Wolyniec
Emily Wood
PUBLIC POOL
January 20 - February 24, 2018
KA Letts
March 6, 2018
Response > Hamtramck, Michigan
Like a raisin in a bagel, Detroit’s Hamtramck neighborhood is surrounded by the city, but retains its own distinctive taste and consistency. From Polish and Ukrainian blue-collar factory workers in the city’s manufacturing heyday to more recent arrivals--Yemenis, Bangladeshis, Catholic Albanians, Serbians and Macedonians--immigrants have left their mark.
Hamtramck’s low rents have attracted (and still attract) a substantial population of young artists looking to live and make art at the margins. With the artists have come the galleries, a mongrel collection of mostly artist-run spaces that include Hatch Hamtramck, 9338 Campau, Popp’s Packing and Public Pool. For this art scene, barriers to entry are low. Creative cross-pollination is facilitated by urban density and a lively dive bar scene, where (apparently) this youthful population is imbibing some creative ideas along with its beers.
Public Pool shows a wide variety of sophisticated work within its small storefront on Hamtramck’s Caniff Avenue. The space also hosts the monthly Good Tyme Writer’s Buffet, a potluck event where budding and established writers read their latest, with snacks and a DJ included. And occasionally, the gallery opens its doors to especially community-based artists like the ones in The Regulars.
Installation view, The Regulars, Image courtesy Public Pool
Sixteen of Hamtramck’s makers have put together an exhibit that not only looks like the neighborhood, but feels like it. The work in The Regulars is not outsider art (which I see as the work of socially isolated individuals expressing their private obsessions). Nor is it what I would call “community center” art, with routine still life, landscapes and figures that don’t ruffle the viewer in the least. Instead, this is a collection of images and objects by makers comfortable with art school-approved forms and methods, and are using them with considerable skill to describe their immediate environment.
Acupuncturist and masseuse Lisa Vel’s grid of animal portraiture features intimate images of nature close to her eye and hand, while Emily Wood’s technically-skilled and darkly moody urban landscapes on reclaimed plywood seem almost to be found objects. Chris Riddell combines a found photograph, entitled I think it’s Wayne State, with a hockey puck-shaped chunk of head cheese (I kid you not) worshipfully placed before it on a pile of rock salt. Musician, composer, and bartender Jonathan Weir sees the universal in the particular with his small, matter-of-fact photographs of Hamtramck’s people and places. Linda Stachowicz Wolyniec, the only lifelong neighborhood resident in the exhibit, takes the long view, combining fabrics from all of the varied ethnicities of Hamtramck into her textile piece Sewn Together.
The work in The Regulars is, above all, intensely personal and local. As Public Pool founder Steve Hughes says of these artists, “They’re the outside of the inside. They’re going at it because they love it, and maybe they don’t have a choice. What they all have in common is that in some regard they are all building a body of work that’s representative of who they are, and consequently who we all are too.”
Installation view, The Regulars, Image courtesy Public Pool
K.A. Letts is a working artist and art blogger. A graduate of Barnard College (BA History) and Yale Drama School (MFA Set and Costume Design), Letts has shown her work regionally and nationally and in 2015 won the Toledo Federation of Art Societies Purchase Award while participating in the TAAE95 Exhibit at the Toledo Museum of Art.
Public Pool is an art cooperative formed in 2010 that was designed to create and support a wide range of contemporary art experiences. Founding members include writer Steve Hughes and his wife, artist Anne Harrington-Hughes, author and Team Detroit creative director Toby Barlow, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) board member Jessie Doan, advertising-industry creatives Mary Trybus and Jim Boyle, who is also a former Detroit Institute of Arts executive, artist/curator Tim Hailey, who’s also the former co-director of New York City non-profit gallery HEREart, writer and musician Walter Wasacz, and artist/musician Jennifer Paull.
apublicpool.com
3309 Caniff Aveniue, Hamtramck, Michigan
313.587.9572
Hours: Saturdays 1-6pm
RESPONSE
A feature of project reviews experienced in person. Response will provide artists with much needed critical response to their work. Response is opinion-based but is not an op-ed.