DIA Millage Mid-Term Scorecard – Executive Summary

Research

This report provides a RYG scorecard for the first ten years of the DIA Millage (2013-2022). It addresses the impact of the millage on the DIA’s Finances (which we rated GREEN), the DIA’s Performance in converting resources into services and programming (which we rated RED/YELLOW), how effectively the Governance process (through the Art Institute Authorities) has operated (which we rated RED), and how effectively the Service Contract(s) have represented the interests of the residents of the Tri-County region (which we rated RED). Based on this analysis we present seven recommendations for the new Service Contract.

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163 Tony Rave

Artists, ,

Born Detroit, MI, 1986/ Lives in Detroit, MI

It starts with a pig. A monolithic, mutilated mural of a pig, its intestines seeping out and wrapping around its neck. Cartoonish innards of the pig’s exposed underbelly appear referential to a confederate flag. A navy X shape with hearts instead of stars lay atop waves of red and white. Its insides are likened to a flaccid flag blowing in the wind. Drops of blood seep from its underbelly. The pig appears to be cut from its neck to the pelvic area of its hind legs.

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162 Cherry Wood

Artists, ,

Born Tegucigalpa, Honduras (date unknown) / B.A. and MFA., Visual Arts, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada / Lives in Beverly Hills, MI

To sit down with Cherry Wood is to notice his poise and calm, traits that serve the observational interdisciplinary artist well.  His voluminous output spans photography, drawing, painting, and performance, and has recently evolved to include time-based media, such as film and experimental music, as well. Through this approach, he explores race, language, geographic borders, sexuality, and identity. The Honduran-born creative is also the founder and publisher of Barbed Magazine, which has spotlighted LGBTQ, Black, Asian, Latinx, and other underrepresented artists in Metro Detroit since 2014.

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161 Mary Andaloro working as Mary Tearz

Artists,

Born Ypsilanti, MI, 1989. / BA, Columbia College Chicago, IL / Lives in Detroit

Multicolored waves of flame, giant eyes crying in the sky, and ominous portals are all common motifs in the artwork of Mary Tearz. Recognizable by its idiosyncratic style and eclectic array of subjects, Tearz’s work encompasses illustration, painting, and animation. Heavily influenced by cartoons, science fiction, and surrealism, her drawings illuminate a bizarre inner world of characters, places, and creatures, unplaceable to a specific space or time, existing in an obscure, far out dimension.

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New Writer – Chelsea A. Flowers

Writers

Chelsea A. Flowers is an artist and educator who holds a Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2017), and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Denison University in Studio Art, with a concentration in Black Studies (2013). She is an alum of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2022). Flowers’ artistic practice and writing interests explore ideas of “otherness” through a social and cultural critique of her environment.

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New Writer – Precious Johnson-Arabitg

Writers

Precious Johnson is an artist, writer, dancer, and collector. Born in the American South, she began her journey into the arts during college where she undertook a two-year ethnography exploring Argentine tango’s history and gender politics. Precious holds a bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree from the University of Illinois-Springfield. A contributing writer and guest editor of Barbed Magazine, her research interests include the construction of self; costuming and textiles in identity formation; and masquerade traditions, both sacred and secular, in ritual dance practices.

New Writer – Marissa Jezak

Writers

Marissa Jezak is an artist/writer based in Detroit. She received a BFA in photography and critical theory from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit in 2014. In her work, she explores themes of healing, desire, and violence. Often using found materials reminiscent of childhood, her art emanates a melancholic nostalgia, alluding to feminine youth. Marissa’s ongoing research focuses on illness, trauma, and gender politics. In addition to many self-published works, her writing has been featured in runner magazine, and she has exhibited artworks internationally—recently at Biquini Wax EPS (CDMX) and Rudimento (Quito).

Metro Detroit Arts and Culture Not-for-profit Sector Financial Overview Part 1 – Funding Streams

Research

This report examines that the total publicly reported, ongoing philanthropic funding support for arts and culture in Metro Detroit based on an analysis of funding streams. It traces where the money comes from and where it goes, and hence establishes a baseline overview of the pipeline of transparent and repeatable year-over-year funding for arts and culture in the region.

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Overview of the Mural Painting Ecosystem

Research

This report describes the ecology and economy of the mural painting ecosystem in Detroit. It includes six case studies of mural painting projects in the city and concludes with a SWOT analysis of the ecosystem. It recognizes, but does not investigate, the economic, social, and ethical issues raised by the relationship between public art and the property market.

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160 Ijania Cortez

Artists, ,

Born Detroit, 1990, Lives in Detroit

In Transcendence: A Portrait of Corey Teamer, a 2018 mural by Ijania Cortez at Brush and Baltimore, the eponymous figure rotates to face the viewer through three successive images. Each image is slightly larger and at a slightly higher elevation, and this, combined with the glowing orange, Rothko-esque background, reinforces the ascendant trajectory implied by the title. 

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159 Juan Martinez

Artists, , , ,

Born Bogota, Colombia, 1976 / Lives in Detroit 

In San Clara Del Cobre, Mexico, where a nineteen-year-old Juan Martinez went to trade school, and where copper working goes back to the pre-Columbian era, they do things the hard way. Standing in a close circle around a hot ingot, typically manufactured from recycled scrap, the copper-workers beat, in turn, to flatten the ingot to the desired thickness before creating the beautiful utilitarian objects for which the city is known. It is punishing labor, but there is a magic in the rhythmic blows, the cascading sparks, and the gradual transformation of the metal. 

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157 Simone Else

Artists, , ,

Born Lapeer, MI, 1985/ Lives in Detroit, MI

Imagine it’s movie night. You’re huddled in front of the TV, feeling its familiar warm static dance across your face. Wedged tightly side by side with friends, you’re so awed by the magnetic power of the main character that you scour the Internet for hours searching for the perfect jacket to match theirs. What we don’t see is the influence that created the influencer, communities outside of the limelight that our favorite muses’ aesthetics have their roots in.  Although it seems like fashion’s cultural influence trickles down from the heights of cinema and haute couture, Simone Else’s wearable art makes it clear that the “it factor” also rises from the underground. 

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156 William Charles Black

Artists, ,

Born Harper Woods, MI, 1995 / BFA, College for Creative Studies; BFA Wayne State University / Lives in Bloomfield Hills, MI

When something living dies, its chemical relationship to this world changes. Scientists use carbon dating, therefore, to assess the age of something that lived long ago, to peer into the distant past. William Charles Black uses carbon to similar ends, exploring its propensity to decay, but also its ability to preserve. This tension between ephemerality and permanence, preservation and destruction, is a thread that weaves through Black’s entire body of work, allowing him to link past to present.

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New writer – Julia Pompilius

Writers

Julia Pompilius is a writer and arts administrator. Born and raised in Ferndale, MI, she has been witness to the flourishing metro-Detroit art scene since infancy. She writes about popular modes of visual communication, from social media to television, and their role in shaping a new media-saturated visual culture. She is interested in fine art—painting, sculpture, photography—that deals with this phenomenon. She recently completed a master’s degree in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where she studied the sociology of art.

155 Diana J. Nucera working as Mother Cyborg

Artists, , ,

Born Chicago, IL, 1981 / BFA, San Francisco Art Institute, CA;  MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL / Lives in Detroit

“WHAT IS AN ALGORITHM?” Ask Mimi Onuoha and Mother Cyborg in their 2018 zine A People’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence. If the question appears startling in its directness, it may be because we have become accustomed to having the spotlight pointed in the opposite direction, to have algorithms direct their gaze on us. Onouha and Cyborg’s zine is a grassroots statement of non-conformity to this power dynamic.

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154 Hiroko Lancour

Artists, , ,

Born Fukuoka, Japan, 1954 / B.A., English, International Christian University, Tokyo; B.A., Computer Science, Wayne State University; MFA Wayne State University / Lives in Royal Oak

Grief is finding yourself in an unfamiliar world suddenly absent a loved companion. But grief can also be the doorway into new ways of life you could never have anticipated. For Hiroko Lancour, this passage led from a career as a systems analyst to a full-time artistic practice.

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153 John K. Bunkley

Artists

Born Detroit, 1964 / BA, Oakland University; MLIS, Wayne State University / Lives in Detroit

“I‘m a Fellini fan,” confides painter, musician, archivist, and all-around cultural polymath John Bunkley. “The question I’m always asking myself is, ‘What would Fellini do if he came to Detroit?'” It is a good question. What would the late Italian director, whose films famously interpret everyday life as a magical synthesis of dream and reality, make of the otherworldly streetscapes and raw humanity of the beautiful city of Detroit?

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