All posts by Mariwyn Curtin

139 Dorota and Steve Coy

Artists,

Dorota Coy, Born Lubin, Poland, 1978 / BA University of Vermont / Lives in Detroit

Steve Coy, Born Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1978 / BFA, University of Michigan, MFA University of Hawaii / Lives in Detroit

Like many outside of Detroit, I first encountered the work of Dorota and Steve Coy through the film Detropia in 2012. Looking up at the glowing, gold-gas-masked Executives of the Hygienic Dress League Corporation (HDL) I never imagined that in 2020 I’d be emailing with Dorota to reschedule an interview when the opening of their exhibition The Five Realms at Wasserman Projects  – along with all other social events in the city and across the world – was postponed due to a global pandemic.

As I clear my calendar, I wonder how many respirators are currently among HDL’s holdings, and whether that number affects the corporation’s value. There’s plenty of time for a deep dive on the internet to find out while I’m waiting for public life to resume.

What I discover is that Steve and Dorota Coy are not the Hygienic Dress League.

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133 Armageddon Beachparty

Artists, ,

Elena Smyth, Born Detroit, Michigan, 1990 / BFA, College for Creative Studies / Lives in Detroit

Aubrey Smyth, Born Detroit, Michigan, 1990 / Lives in Detroit

Artists Elena and Aubrey Smyth, working together as Armageddon Beachparty, have created a universe, an epic narrative of deities and powerful beings in vivid images across a wide range of media. A shared, life-long love of comics, street art, and mythology permeates their paintings and sculptures while their canny sense of branding propagates their vision via prints, clothing, watches, and other objects. The artists paint contemporary pop surrealism scenes while surrounded by their considerable output and the energy from a steady stream of admirers and buyers in what Elena calls a “perpetual motion machine” of creativity.

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New writer – Mariwyn Curtin

Writers

Mariwyn Curtin explores cities extensively on bike or on foot and documents the experiences in artists’ books or abstractly as “industrial embroidery” assembled from ephemera found along the way. An author and editor primarily in educational publishing and testing, she is happiest writing about art. She previously interviewed ten award-winning photographers about their craft to write the copy for Hasselblad Masters. Vol. 2 Emotion.