For All Tomorrow's Parties

The sculpture that first influenced me to be an Artist.
"The Fist" Sculpture dedicated to Joe Louis, Robert Graham 1986

No, this isn't Nico singing low, with Lou Reed, about the depressed girl in the corner...This is a happy story with a happily-ever-after sort of feeling. It's about a girl, who as a young bride, left her hometown of Detroit for a better life in the tropics. She met her husband, Nicholas in college, and soon-after, the school-sweethearts married and took off for a better life in Miami, Florida. A better life, to them back in 2000 meant opportunities not available in her decomposing home that was "Detroit burning".

Nicholas in our potential foyer,
imagining many guests!

Amongst naysayers, we went back to a sub-zero Michigan winter, hoping to find a good-enough reason to leave behind Miami, our loving family of friends and all that we built here. Instead, we found multiple reasons. Beckoning with promise, we go with a passionate & wild-west-pioneering spirit, and we even have multiple spaces to incubate our ideas and expand continuously for years to come. Trading in our tiny castle on the beach isn't so bad when what we get in return for the money, is a mini mansion, with enough room to invite all of our Miami peeps! We even have enough left over to help out friends and family and start a new business to boot! 

Now, the greener pastures may be Detroit. It is brimming with hope, opportunity, creative ideas, funding for those ideas, togetherness, willingness and cooperation. Sounds about right for me.

Communities are rebuilding from ashes and pulling together and taking back the land from the banks who disposed of it and left it raw with burning embers. Artists are buying up properties cheap and are using them for creative co-ops, museums, urban farming, food co-ops and learning and healing centers. Areas that 15 years ago were scary as shit, once burnt to the ground and filled with crackheads are now growing, creative communities with yoga studios, coffeeshops and galleries. 

Some of it is even gentrified enough for a certain known coffee giant to plant themselves! The renaissance of Detroit is palpable.  Critics, you MUST see it for yourselves!!! Christ! There's even a Whole Foods on Woodward in Midtown!!!! WTF is right!

I was surprised to see many mom & pop places doing well!
(Detroit Shoppe on Woodward)

In Detroit, the Artist as an entrepreneur, calls the shots. Anything is possible and encouraged! Artists keep Detroit alive, not just the people making money off of the Artists.

We came to Miami for it's art scene, only to find the opposite. Strict rules of conduct and every-man-for-themselves attitude make it like New York, and unless you are a child of the scene, a relative, or an Abramović, Banksy, or Fairey, (or in Miami, a Britto, ugh), you are nobody and treated as such. That's not fair. Why submit to that? Knowing that, we just don't fit in here.  

Another reason to be there is the DIA (Detroit Institute of Arts). This great collection itself lends to an importance to preserve what came before us and not honor so much what the future might hold.

Our goals for this year are simple: Plant ourselves in a place in which our love, ideas, energy and brilliant light can shine. We leave a beacon and invite all of our friends and family to partake in that brilliance and see for themselves a real place with real ideas. Real beauty is built from love. For that is Detroit, and that is our art, and that love is what makes us real.