Trans-Europe Express
A new generation of Detroit artists takes Detroit techno back to Belgium and back to basics.
Forbidden fruit
OyamO’s Congolese dance drama explores new theater frontiers….
Decisions, decisions
In a building in Westwood, Mass., sits a room with a computer on which more than 20 million files wait, growing in number and complexity every day, each one starting with a name. They are medical files, and they include information about a person’s penchant for hang gliding or weakness for smoking. They are available…
Phoney business
If you ask Doug Saroki what he considers to be his greatest business accomplishment, he will say designing a pay phone that makes police departments safer. If you ask him what he considers his biggest business folly, he will say introducing the product to the Detroit Police Department. Saroki had been in the pay phone…
Gallery: FunctionArt
Functional objects become art at Gallery: Functionart, which displays beautiful pieces of finely crafted furniture. Artists range from local Center for Creative Studies grads and instructors to nationally recognized craftspeople. A whole section of the gallery is devoted to glass of any size, shape or color one could possibly want.
Gallery XVIII
Gallery XXVIII is a great gallery to visit when looking for the perfect gift. Showing all types of media from primarily Michigan artists such as wire sculpture by Tom Mahard, figurative sculpture by Richard Skelton and jewelry by Diane Benoit.
Creative Arts Center
This non-profit arts organization is a wonderful resource for children as well as adults. Focusing on cultural diversity, they have monthly exhibitions as well as performances and workshops. They feature Michigan artists exclusively in July and August.
Lawrence Street Gallery
This artists co-op along the N. Saginaw strip displays paintings on canvas primarily, but also has some interesting pieces in sculpture and ceramics. Once a year they have a silent auction which benefits Goodwill and occasionally they will have juried shows of printmaking and photography.
Attention Span
SHAKEN AND STIRRED Krups offers drinks for two – 2000, that is. The appliance maker is showing its optimism about the dawn of the new millennium with a champagne flute-shaped motorized cocktail maker designed to make an effervescent splash at Y2K parties. The Midnight Cocktail Maker includes a recipe booklet and a tray that makes…
Food Stuff
EASY BETS When three casinos are in full swing in downtown Detroit, how will you decide where to blow your money? The Motor City Casino, located in the old Wonder Bread building on Grand River, is betting that fine food will tip the scales. To hedge their bets, they’ve hired Chef Michael Russell as their…
Gallery Animato
For the animation enthusiast, there is Gallery Animato. This gallery provides original drawings, limited editions, model sheets and storyboards from Disney, Warner Brothers and Hanna Barbera animated productions. They also bring in voice talents and artists from these cartoon giants. It’s a great joy to celebrate Winnie the Pooh and The Grinch as fine art.
Halsted Gallery
The gallery of choice for photographic works is the Halsted Gallery. Some favorites are Ansel Adams, Michael Kenna and Mark Citret. The Halsted Gallery produces new exhibits every other month featuring local, national and international artists. They also carry antiquarian and out-of print books and do new book signings twice a year.
In one ear
WAY OUT IN TREE TOWN I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: No one conceives of a party like Superbadass Productions. SBA main man Rich Rice, whose visions of celebratory multimedia exceed the tame conjurings of highly paid party promoters far and wide, is throwing another shindig that gathers the best, brightest, wildest…
David Klein Gallery
The David Klein Gallery is like a small modern art museum. Expect to see the modern masters such as Picasso and Matisse, American Modernism from the 1930’s and 1940’s, as well as some contemporary realism thrown in. If you want to look at art on a Monday, this is the place since it is rare…
Yaw Gallery
Fine art to wear is at the Yaw Gallery. Stunning jewelry by national and international Goldsmiths, Silversmiths and metalworkers crafted in, of course, gold and silver as well as the more unique steel, copper, brass and titanium.
Posner Gallery
Among the galleries in Birmingham, the Posner Gallery is a great find. A lot of attention was given to create an environment in which to show art – they didn’t just paint the walls white and call it a day. The space is truly elegant, as an architect was brought in to create an atmosphere…
Pewabic Society, Inc.
Gaze at beautifully glazed ceramic items at Pewabic Pottery. This historical site offers affordable salable items such as tiles and vessels on their upper level gift gallery. They also provide workshops and classes for those who wish to stretch their creative muscles.
Punished for our crimes
"Nate does not appear to have the capacity to conform his behavior to the requirements of the law, and it is questionable whether he has the capacity to form the specific intent to commit the criminal acts of which he has been accused." –Margaret Stack, Ph.D., licensed psychologist, Jan. 29, 1998 "His capacity for organized,…
Elizabeth Stone Gallery
One cannot help but smile when gazing at the walls of the Elizabeth Stone Gallery. This gallery consists of children’s picture book art with some favorites like Jane Dyer and Eric Carle. Travel to a fantastic world of fairy tales, fables and great fun.
splash gallery
Since its opening in November, 1998, the Splash Gallery has been finding its voice in the Pontiac gallery community. Owner Suzanne Rossi promises a gallery open to all possibilities, but mainly aims to promote emerging and established Michigan artists.
Galerie Blu
Reminiscent of any posh New York gallery on W. 57th Street, Gallery Blu features contemporary work of local, regional and international artists. You will find the Museum of Contemporary Art on the premises, which has been doing some interesting conceptual things with the DIA.
Paper recycling
Something’s different, but it takes me a moment to notice what’s changed. It’s kind of like the way the world looks different the morning after you’ve been out partying all night and you haven’t slept yet, and you haven’t quite figured out yet that it looks different because it snowed. "Speak for yourself, Freak Girl,"…
Finery, fate and funding
FACE TIME Egads, now the Metro Times plasters my leering visage alongside this column. (Normally, I only use a photo of myself when I quit or rejoin the paper, a gratuitous and self-indulgent plug of pure ego enhancement.) While this will give me a ready-made press ID card to use on resilient doorman/gatekeeper types, formerly…
News Hits
Dearly departed The Sunday Journal is about to succumb to the inevitable. The weekly newspaper that striking Detroit News and Free Press workers began publishing four years ago will hit the streets for the final time Nov. 21, according to Lou Mleczko, president of the Newspaper Guild of Detroit. The Journal, which is among the…
No private parts
It seems like eons ago. But before Howard Stern launched a successfully syndicated FM radio show in New York, he’d already found his place on television. Although his early-’90s talk show on the E! cable channel is now but a hazy memory of milder, more TV-oriented celebrity interviews and Stern’s former layered, teased ‘80s hair,…
School wars
Two community colleges are locked in a battle for turf that some say could have grave repercussions for other adult educational institutions statewide. Wayne County Community College is suing Henry Ford Community College over HFCC’s plan to build a technical training center at Ford Motor Co.’s Woodhaven Stamping Plant, which is in WCCC’s tax district.…
Progressive Heroes: Ismael Ahmed
Once a year you can find him backstage at Chene Park, managing the "million details flying at once" during Detroit’s premier world music event: culture and language barriers, artist egos, manager demands, roadies with technical problems, politicians and bigwigs who drop by in need of glad-handing. "He’s just very, very even and cool all the…
Progressive Heroes: Mike Banks
The fact that Mike Banks’ Submerge records even exists is reason enough to celebrate. Submerge and Banks’ militant electronic music collective, Underground Resistance (formed with techno luminaries Jeff Mills and Rob Hood), have, in just nine years, become synonymous worldwide with Detroit’s urban-future-funk-techno sound. Just as importantly, Submerge has maintained an equally militant pro-Detroit stance.…
Progressive Heroes: Terry Blackhawk
The fact that Mike Banks’ Submerge records even exists is reason enough to celebrate. Submerge and Banks’ militant electronic music collective, Underground Resistance (formed with techno luminaries Jeff Mills and Rob Hood), have, in just nine years, become synonymous worldwide with Detroit’s urban-future-funk-techno sound. Just as importantly, Submerge has maintained an equally militant pro-Detroit stance.…
Progressive Heroes: Bronson Gentry
Bronson Gentry has made preserving an eastside-Detroit park his lifelong mission. It hasn’t been easy. The battle began 40 years ago when Gentry asked the city to build a recreation facility on a 53-acre grassy field, then called Peter Maheras Park. "I just got tired of the kids having nothing to do, harassed by the…
Progressive Heroes: David Green
These days, when calling yourself a liberal can be an albatross around your neck, most activists working around people-power issues refer to themselves as progressive. That doesn’t work for Dr. David Green. "We don’t mince words. We’re a socialist body," says Green, a Farmington Hills neurologist and chair of the local chapter of Democratic Socialists…
Progressive Heroes: Shea Howell
"Ever since I can remember, I’ve always had a sense of social justice," says Shea Howell. Her inclination to question authority has been there from the start, like the time she fled class as a first-grader refusing attempts to "correct" her left-handed writing. So, to this day, when you call her a committed lefty, you’re…
Progressive Heroes: Maryann Mahaffey
Maryann Mahaffey begins the interview regarding her progressive roots with a challenge: "First, tell me how you define the word progressive." After a moment’s hesitation, I reply: "It means someone who looks out for the interests of working people instead of corporations, someone passionately concerned about society’s underdogs, someone who fights against discrimination and for…
Progressive Heroes: Dan McDougall
"I’m all about communication," says Dan McDougall. "That’s my thing." McDougall’s thing has changed over the years, but he has always helped people find new ways to talk with one another. As director of United Way’s Southeast Michigan Information Center, McDougall helps bring the Web to technology-challenged nonprofit organizations. Back in the ‘80s, McDougall began…
Progressive Heroes: Tom and Sue Ness
In the early days Jam Rag was just another local music magazine. Publishers Tom and Sue Ness had met at Oakland University in 1984 while she was playing classical guitar and he still had "rock star dreams." They married, moved from Clawson to Ferndale and began Jam Rag in 1986 while managing the now defunct…
Progressive Heroes: Detroit Sunday Journal
When the first issue of the Detroit Sunday Journal rolled off the presses Nov. 19, 1995, it wasn’t meant to be a long-term project. A weekly newspaper published by and for the striking workers of the Detroit News and Free Press, the Journal merely hoped to shed light on the Detroit newspaper strike and other…
Progressive Heroes
What is it that makes a hero? For that matter, how do you define a progressive? Those are two questions we had to wrestle with when we decided to honor a select group of people and organizations on these pages. We didn’t find easy answers – which made our job all the more interesting. What…
The meaning of signs
A visitor’s eyes will often see-lect what a native passes over in familiarity and neglect. Such is the case in "Signs of Detroit," Sheila Cohen’s fine show (at the Old Coffee Shoppe) of color photographs of street signs in Detroit and Dearborn. Cohen, originally a London, Englander, takes a mostly minimalist approach to her subjects,…
Not just booty anymore
Neither really "ghetto" nor "tech," this compilation of neo-electro, booty, jungle and instrumental hip hop from a cross section of Detroit’s newer (if lesser known) electronic producers embodies more the spirit than the sound of the city’s ghetto-tech scene. Where ghetto-tech has become synonymous with Detroit’s often raunchy booty (or, more PC, "electro-bass") sound, this…
The Bachelor
As if the institution of marriage hasn’t been beaten up in the movies enough this decade, The Bachelor is here to make the prospect seem absolutely horrifying. Jimmie Shannon (Chris O’Donnell), the single guy on the cusp of his 30th year to whom the title refers, watches bouquet toss after nauseating bouquet toss as all…
Divine Diva
The last golden age of singers, the 1960s, produced an embarrassment of vocal riches, particularly among sopranos. Sutherland, Nilsson, Farrell, Caballe, Freni and Price were at their peaks. So was a young Italian-American woman from Wayne, Pa. named Anna Moffo. So popular was this, her debut album, that it came to be known as "The…
Last Night
There’s something very appealing about an end-of-the-world story in which the coming Armageddon takes a backseat to character development. Sure, exploding buildings and drowning cities can be a lot of fun, harking back to that exhilarating rush when we first discovered rage and knocked over all our Tinker Toys, but special effects yield diminishing returns…
The Insider
An indicting news story – whose issues are imbedded in America’s collective (read: TV) mind – is a surefire starting point for a movie. Its potential drawing power is enhanced by the built-in guarantee to at least hit a nerve already exposed by the media’s probing around the insides of social consciousness. Portraying fact as…
Cookin’ the blues
Detroit mag Big City Blues (which about a year ago expanded the scope of its coverage from a Midwest regional magazine to become a journal of our entire “one nation under the blues”) is keeping the blues flame alive this month by cooking it up on the stove. The Oct.-Nov. ish is dedicated to the…
Y Not 2K?
Quick, you only have a few more weeks to polish your jokes in preparation for impressing babes at your chosen party of the millennium. One way is to drink insanely and fly through the evening on autopilot, hoping you’ll pop out a witticism or two before crashing into the champagne fountain. The other way is…
The Bone Collector
What is it about serial killers that fascinates us? Their craft and intelligence? Their often-benign appearance? Their monstrous gift for deception? They’re the result of Dr. Jekyll’s experiment: pure evil. Tucked away in the farthest corners of our imagination, covered in fears and desires beyond our control, they lie dormant – restless shadows deprived of…
Rainbow coalition
The first two discs of this three-disc, 10-year anniversary set start with a simple nod to what Matador has always epitomized: underground rock ‘n’ roll, aka indie-rock. The breadwinners since day one – Pavement, Jon Spencer, Guided By Voices, Yo La Tengo – are joined by a new set of indie-rock illuminati – Sleater-Kinney, Mogwai,…
Extend the play
In hip-hop social circles, purists and backpackers often talk about the days when the music was fun. They refer to what is commonly known as hip hop’s "Golden Era," the period between 1988 and 1992 when groups such as Eric B. & Rakim, Boogie Down Productions and Chubb Rock pulled our attention toward their songwriting…
Mulletronica
It’s a precarious thing when an electronic musician tries to keep the starball fun going while venturing off the dance floor into the bigger leagues of, in the case of Les Rhythmes Digitales’ Darkdancer, classic synthpop. To its credit, Darkdancer’s acid-washed, ‘80s retro-tinged cuts inject a much-needed personality and humor into electronica’s usual stone-faced, buzz-cut,…
G.R. N’Namdi Gallery
Shelly Moldovan of the N’Namdi Gallery not only knows art, she’s a great conversationalist. Expect to see great things from the N’Namdi Gallery. Specializing in African-American art, they show contemporary abstract works by artists such as Nanette Carter as well as the black masters such as Jacob Lawrence.
Original Brothers and Sisters of Love
From the big lake they call Gitchee Gumee to the college town they call Tree Town, Ann Arbor-via-Brighton-and-New-Zealand sextet, the Original Brothers and Sisters of Love (TOBASOL, for brevity) have managed to hold together a loose northwoods folk implosion thanks to a tight mastery of the three “f”’s “Folk,” “Fitzgerald (as in Edmund)” and “Fun.”…
