Intersections Dialogue

Work : Detroit 
presents
INTERSECTIONS
An ongoing series of dialogues among makers of creative work


Join us Wednesday, October 17, 2007 from 6:30 pm to 8 pm for a conversation with the participants in the current exhibition “Intersection” featuring:
Jim Cogswell, Jack Johnson, Stephanie Rowden, Stephen Schudlich, Gary Schwartz, Nick Tobier

The series “Intersections” brings together makers of creative works from Detroit, Ann Arbor, and beyond in a dialogue with each other and the audience about their process, practice, and purpose. On this fertile crossroads between regions and disciplines, multiple viewpoints converge, ideas collide, and new perspectives bloom.

This evening’s Intersection event includes those artists whose work directly addresses the intersection of Mack/Martin Luther King and Woodward -- Work : Detroit’s location. Jim Cogswell’s work turns the windows of the building into a colorful mural, while Gary Schwartz presents the animated adventures of Judge Woodward, the architect behind Detroit’s street plan. Jack Johnson and Stephen Schudlich both worked with trash collected found on the scene, with the former turning it into a three-dimensional composition and the latter into a systematic color chart for the urban environment. Sound artist Stephanie Rowden documents oral histories of the neighborhood and Nick Tobier engaged Detroiters waiting for the bus.

Join us at Work @ Detroit for this unique opportunity to participate in a dialogue with makers of creative work and contribute to the new discoveries that emerge along the way.

Intersection runs 22 September – 2 November 2007
Hours Tuesday – Friday 10am to 5pm
Work : Detroit Gallery, 3663 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48201
Reception Desk: 313 593-0527
http://www.art-design.umich.edu/workdetroit/
Exhibition and artist information: http://intersectionumdetroit.blogspot.com/

Opening Night Photos

Project contractor Eric Benfield and wife Lisa

Installation Views

Intersection Press

A list of media coverage for the exhibition.

UM internal Vodcast/UM News Service:
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6042

Metro Times preview:
http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=11815

Real Detroit (blurb):
http://www.realdetroitweekly.com/article_3244.shtml

Model D - Detroit:
http://www.modeldmedia.com/developmentnews/intersection11107.aspx

The Detroit News:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070922/ENT01/709220349/1032/ENT

WDET (live) Radio (we’re at about the 45 minute mark):
http://www.wdetfm.org/audio/detroittoday/196/921final.mp3

thedetroiter.com:
http://thedetroiter.com/b2evoArt/blogs/index.php?blog=2&title=intersection&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Metro Times event coverage:
http://metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=11846

Real Detroit blurb: http://www.realdetroitweekly.com/article_3313.shtml

Marilyn Zimmerwoman and Bob Sickles

Intersection
giclee print
2007




Marilyn Zimmerman is a photography/installation/performance artist and curator and an associate professor of the Department of Art and Art History, Wayne State University, Detroit. She is also a post-modern post hippie anticensorship feminist working in collaborative communitarian projects envisioning an urban utopia Her interrelated and often collaborative social documentary projects involve re-envisioning and transforming societal patterns inclusive of race/class/gender, the urban past, the (post) nuclear family and the representation of aging and women. Her work in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The ABN-AMRO Bank of Amsterdam, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England.

Bob Sickles is invested in both traditional and digital photo practices and specializes in the mapping of 3 Dimensional spaces both real and imagined into 2 Dimensional visualizations. He is an alumni of Wayne State University's Department of Art and Art History, a WSU Master of Library and Information Science Candidate and currently teaching at WSU.

Vito Jesus Valdez

Memorial to Native Peoples/Border Baroque
2007
(Memorial located west of this intersection in Wick Park between Martin Luther King Blvd and Davenport)

Border Baroque #1 is part of a series of multi-layered works that look at immigration and US borders – those crossing over as well as those living here. Who came first? Who is the immigrant? From the earliest settlement at the river came our first footpath and trail into a road – one later called Woodward.

With a history of people arriving here from all over the globe, Detroit is a great intersection for many cultures. Crossing rivers, oceans, bridges and borders they came to find work and we took them in. They arrived at Michigan Central and took cable cars into the city where Woodward was a central artery separating east from west. This artery continues to reflect the migration and ensuing cultural diversity of our city.






Vito Jesus Valdez, second generation Mexican-American was born in Wyandotte, MI, and has been an artist and educator for more than two decades. While serving in the U.S. Army as a surgical tech, he re-discovered his love of art and enrolled at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit upon his discharge.

Valdez left the U.S. in 1988 to work as an independent artist in Montreal, Canada and later received an artist-in residence award from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. He subsequently received invitations to exhibit in Havanna, Cuba; Zacatecas, Mexico; Germany, and Paris, France.

Since his return to the States in 1992 his concentration has been on community art projects on the U.S./Canadian border in Detroit, and has received numerous grants and public art commissions. His most recent mural was for the Detroit Public Library Campbell Branch. Valdez also works in the education department at the Detroit Institute of Arts and continues to exhibit his work in Canada and the U.S.

Nick Tobier and Rachel Timlin

Detroit Service Collaborative
2007

We've waited for a bus in the rain. In the snow. In the sun. So have other people.

Around this city, as others, there are a variety of options from a steel post marking the stop to a 19th century-esque pavilion.

Since we're all in it together, and since the wait can be a treat rather than a task, we conceived of this roving bench. To offer comfort, shade, music, conversation. A gathering spot for the gatherings that form and then disperse at the bus stop.

While we started here at Woodward and Mack, and got to know the culture of this corner, we see the appearance of our stop as part of a potential for other stops. During the course of this project, we formed the Detroit Service Collaborative, with an eye towards more social/functional work throughout the city.




Growing up in New York City, Nick Tobier is a lifelong participant observer of street life and the social life of public places.

Prior to staging public spectacles, I offered small street side services--a bridge to assist crossing puddles, a woven and upholstered mobile tent that dispensed hot chocolate, and a tricycle driven chandelier that illuminated dark streets. The once utilitarian services have become celebratory events more than strictly functional objects, and I believe strongly that this public celebration is inherently functional. Recent events include an eccentric walking tour of Lower Manhattan, an interactive transit device in a Boston subway station, a tricycle-driven chandelier, and a human fountain for a wading pool in Toronto.

Most often I have described my work as situational. If there's a situation, I'll try and interrupt it with something that is gently out of place--an aberrant gesture, a curious movement, a mis-used object.
I'm keen on how I can use humor as a disarming tactic in real or imagined scenarios that play out in everyday places.

I and hope that my actions as an artist provoke the possibility that everyday places and objects can be rather extra ordinary.

Nick Tobier currently lives in Ann Arbor, where he is Assistant Professor at the School of Art and Design, University of Michigan since 2003. More on Tobier at www.everydayplaces.com.

Rachel Timlin works full time as the Cultural Arts Coordinator for the City of Farmington Hills. In her spare time, she makes neckties and other miscellaneous fashion items for her line The New Generic Brand (www.thenewgenericbrand.com), and works occasionally as a freelance graphic designer and consultant.

Timlin studied at Central Michigan University, The Glasgow School of Art in Scotland, and the University of New Mexico, where she graduated with a degree in Photography and Cultural Studies in 2001. Because she finds it far too tedious, Timlin doesn’t keep detailed records of her past exhibitions or accomplishments – however, she does admit to having one or two good ideas over the years. She currently resides in Hamtramck.