Currently at the Zeitgeist Gallery

Thursday May 8 - June 7, 2008:
"Spontaneous Combustion: Found Art by Joan Painter Jones and M-80".

This exhibit is part of the Art Detroit Now project.

M80 (whose "Tinker Time" is to the left) and Joan Painter Jones are no strangers to the Zeitgeist. They have been important players in the "Visual Jam Sessions" we've been hosting every summer for 6 years. They've always brought some good junk to play with and share.

M80, who also goes by Michael Dion, has been a junk man and antiques dealer/collector/vendor for 15 years now. He has no formal training, and began creating art around 1993, on a whim. He first started working on old found windows with spray paint and razor blades on the back sides of the window. He would create all types of interesting abstract formations with form and color. Later he began to collect and reassemble found things that he picked up in the trash, chair legs, discarded dolls, boxes, chair seats and the like. Michael has an ever changing yard show of his strange constructions in his backyard at his house in Madison Heights, which is noted in the book "Weird Michigan" by Linda Godfrey (scroll down to "The Doll Garden of Frights").

Joan Painter Jones also uses found objects that may not fit (in the rational sense) to make her constructions. She calls upon her intuition and enjoys the challenge of the materials. She works on many pieces simultaneously and puts together rather haunting spiritual divinations from the castoways and leftovers. Quite sublime. Joan has shown in the Scarab Club, MaryGrove College, Holland Area Art Center, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, Ann Arbor Art Center, Mt. Clemens Art Center, Battle Creek Art Center, Ella Sharp Museum in Jackson as well as in the Zeitgeist Gallery and other Michigan galleries. She has received awards in many of these exhibitions. She is represented by the Cary Gallery in Rochester and the Tamarack Gallery in Omena, both in Michigan. Nationally, she has had work in numerous exhibitions including in the Northern New Jersey Art Center, the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL, Mesa Center for the Arts in AZ, the Stage Gallery in NYC, and in DelMar College in Corpus Christi, TX, where she won a purchase award in 2005.

Please check out The Zeitgeist Gallery: An Historical View