Rochester, New York-based arts nonprofit Free Art Collective is on a mission to make Global Day of Art a worldwide holiday, with hopes for Detroit to be a big piece of the puzzle.
“If someone can make up ‘National Donut Day,’ we can invent a holiday too!,” reads an Instagram post from Free Art Collective. “Every May 1 we will be inviting the world to make art, buy art, and plan creative pop-up events in their city! Help us bring Global Day of Art to your city!”
The grassroots organization with the mission to “make art accessible for all” and “use art to feed, house, and water everybody” distributes free art prints and art supplies, plus hosts therapy events, music shows, craft fairs, gallery exhibits, and fundraisers.
Through the Free Art Collective’s Free Print Program, Peck connects with artists all over the world who allow her to print their art and give it away to people for free with their information on the back, giving artists recognition while upping public art access.
Since launching in 2020, the Free Art Collective has connected with over 300 artists, many of whom are from Detroit, which is only a six-hour drive from Rochester, New York.
The two cities are more similar than some may realize, which has led the group’s founder Gabrielle Peck to want to start a Free Art Collective branch in Detroit.
“I fucking love Detroit, I’ve been twice and I’m obsessed. I started doing outreach in Detroit a couple of years ago and we’ve been building our branch there slowly by just meeting more artists,” Peck says. “[Rochester] has incredible artists, it’s very tight-knit, with an amazing activist mutual aid scene. It’s pretty bad, but it also is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been and has some of the most real motherfuckers and I think that’s why I’m so drawn to Detroit… Detroit and Rochester are like cults… People in Rochester are rabid about supporting it the same way people in Detroit are.”
On one of two visits to Detroit so far, she did a pop-up outside of Mom’s Spaghetti in hopes of giving out Detroit art to tourists. Simultaneously, she realized that Eminem’s “restaurant” is a joke, and now has a dream to open a competing soup kitchen across the street called Dad’s Macaroni that gives away pasta for free, funded by the Free Art Collective.
Another of the organization’s long-term goals for Detroit is to open a community center with a gallery so artists can sell their work. Although they currently give away art for free, “the long con is to get all of our artists paid so they can quit their day job,” Peck says.
“Detroit has one of the most thriving, tight-knit underground scenes of any city in the country that I’ve done work in over the past decade, so I’ve wanted to get involved in Detroit ever since I started doing community art stuff right out of college about a decade ago,” she adds. “The more I got involved with Detroit, the more I realized how incredible the thriving art scene is.”
Peck first got connected with Detroit artists by posting about the collective’s print program in Detroit Facebook groups. Almost immediately, she connected with Julie Sailus, who owns Disco Walls in Hamtramck and curates many spaces in and around Detroit.
“She’s helped me to do a couple of Free Art Collective events there,” Peck says. “She’s been helping me build the team, build the artists, and she's super passionate about helping artists and connecting people.”
For Global Day of Art, Detroit artists or organizations can host any type of art event they want, and Sailus can help people who need a space to host one. While all events for the holiday will be completely self-run, the Free Art Collective will help promote and market them on social media.
Some events being planned so far include a zine-making workshop, open mic nights, and artist talks. In Detroit, local artist Trae Isaac will be doing chalk art in honor of the new holiday, and local organizations will be hosting art supply drives and other art events that are still in the works.
Peck hopes to get a lot more people involved, not just in Detroit, but across the globe.
“The mission is just to get people in the world making art, buying art, enjoying art, and getting into the community and planning art,” Peck says. “One of my main goals is to take the cool punk rock underground shit and make it mainstream so we can make the art accessible for the normies… What we want to do is help bring everyone together to make it easier for everybody involved so that everyone can be a part of art.”
Detroit artists and art enthusiasts who want to host a Global Day of Art event on May 1 or who are interested in helping with other Free Art Collective programming in the city can email [email protected] and follow @freeart.collective on Instagram for more information.
