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September 20 - November 8, 2008:
"The Last Days of 1984" Curated by Eric Mesko, and running through November 8.
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This exhibit deals with political, social, and environ- mental issues, and is being closely co-ordinated with the 2008 Presidential Election. Various local and national artists address enormously important topics using a wide range
of media, themes, and styles, with the implications of the elevation of a new president in mind.
The opening night reception on Sept. 20 will feature "Mesko Rants", "Maugre and the Puppets Chants", and a new play from Ron Allen, "Bread and the American Dream", to be performed opening night only, and politically and socially conscious music by Greg Sumner…and more!
Performances begin at 8pm (we'll post the schedule as soon as we've got it set).
In the Bar Gallery "The Hudson's Building Demolition Tenth Anniversary", a photo exhibit featuring various photographers’ takes on Maugrè’s unique series of pictures that adorned the building until the very end.
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Thursday May 8 - June 7, 2008:
"Spontaneous Combustion: Found Art by Joan Painter Jones and M-80".
In the Bar Gallery – “WORK” by John Aretakis (neon sculpture) and Tony Patterson (hand painted digital photography).
As part of the Art Detroit Now project, the Zeitgeist will have Special Gallery Hours for the opening weekend:
Thurs May 8, 12n - 5p
Friday May 9, 12n - 10p
Satur May 10, 12n - 12m,
with the opening reception officially beginning @ 7p.
M80 (whose "Tinker Time" is below, center) 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.
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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").
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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.
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March 29 thru April 26, 2008:
"WIRED: Sculpture and photography by Robert Hansen"
In the Bar Gallery, "New Work: Encaustic, painting, and ceramics by Diana Alva".
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Take a brief video tour of the exhibit here (thank you Gary Freeman)!! (Note: You'll need QuickTime.)
The opening reception was Saturday, March 29 @ 7pm-midnight, and featured performances by Maurice Greenia Jr. & his Mad Puppet Theatre at 9p, followed by The Space Band.
Robert Hansen, a retired millwright, is a self taught artist, and has been making metal sculptures for over 20 years in the Detroit area. He built a blacksmithing shop in his garage on the East side of Detroit
and started by making utilitarian objects such as fireplace pokers and such and gradually began making fine abstract sculptures out of iron, steel, and stainless steel. One of his early influences was the sculptor David Smith. When I
visited his studio in the late 1980’s, it was like walking into a blacksmith shop 200 years ago. There were multitudes of tools hanging from the ceiling, walls and stacked against the walls and in piles, anvils and hammers of all types.
His work is very contemporary and often humorous. Bob has recently moved to Chesterfield Township and doesn’t have his blacksmith shop anymore, but he now works with copper plates and wire, that he picks up in scrap yards, because it is
soft and doesn’t need to be heated extensively. What is striking about the new work is the humor. He is creating head sculptures and spectacles of twisted copper wire painted black. These strange head pieces could have been prototype models
for the Road Warrior movies. This is some of the most creative work Robert Hansen has done in his career. These are displayed on mannequin heads in the gallery. Bob also has been photographing objects on an old homemade lightbox he picked
up at a flea market. He uses a 35mm SLR with black and white film. He sometimes inks the box and draws into the ink and shoots, or he arranges old tools on top and shoots them or different configurations of sand and such, Very interesting.
See this exhibit for its inventiveness.
Diana Alva: “Labels seem to be confining, but necessary, I guess. That’s what they tell me. As one making this journey, the urban journey, in this age, means to continue to create on a daily basis. I choose my color palette,
and then explore the subconscious and the blank canvas. What brings it all together, for me, is my desire to create. The viewer has the freedom to orchestrate his or her own events or stories. Lifelike calligraphy suggests structure or expressive
movement. Concave, convex, round, square, sharp and smooth, these are the elements in each piece. They are stories of warriors in rivalry and in love, modern womanhood in a daily opera mixed with the past and present of self. They are primitive
and modern, structural and in repose. The forms are given life by the relationship to one another. I choose to explore their journey by creating an abstract structural thicket which becomes a linear myth, objective curiosity in visual form.
Painting and pottery is limitless with life’s expressive experiences. Pottery is forms basic understanding, both inner and outer, and line is the action it takes. The studio is my world, my factory and my cave. My gender and race is the heart and
soul of my art. It’s the pure act of creating something from nothing. Curious emotion mixed with colors, lines and form.”
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February 16 thru March 15, 2008:
"3 THE HARD WAY"
Featuring work by Tom Carey (whose piece "Robot" is to the left), Topher Crowder, and Dennis Michael Jones.
The Bar Gallery will feature new work from Bryant Tillman.
Wonderful words on the show at thedetroiter.com .
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Music around 9pm (Feb 16) from Monster Island and UVU.
Tom Carey is a painter and printmaker who creates absurd imagery in an expressionist vocabulary. He was born and raised in Detroit, MI. Tom showed an early interest in drawing, especially monsters and robots, although his mother
preferred that he focused on portraits of the Christ and Roman Catholic saints. Despite this difference in aesthetic opinion, Tom's family encouraged his artistic endeavors. Tom attended Wayne State University, where he received his BFA in 1996. After
tiring of the Cass Corridor Artist lifestyle, Tom moved to Philadelphia in 1998. While living in Philadelphia, he completed an MFA at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art, showed his work at Spector and other local galleries, and had one of his hand-made
books purchased by the Print Collection of the New York Public Library. Although he had contemplated the idea of becoming an academic painter in the Wyeths/Brandywine Valley School mold, Tom returned to his childhood love of drawing monsters and robots,
focusing increasingly on relief prints. Back in Michigan since 2003, Tom continues to produce paintings, prints, and drawings of the creatures residing in the squishy fields of his sub-conscious.
ChrisTopher Crowder puts it this way: “I have always loved the concept of storytelling through images and have found inspiration in the animated Saturday morning cartoons from my childhood, vintage postcards, comic books of the 1960s and
1970s, and roadside billboards. I have chosen to capturing a collection of daily emotions and cryptic memories from my childhood, around the early 1970s, of giant illuminated beer-bottle billboards served up electric brews, smelling the pungent odor of grease
paint and alcohol while being entertained by clowns in the front row at a Shriner’s Circus, Saturday mornings spent with H.R. Pufnstuf, and the televised pictures of the Vietnam War. My method, inspired by a Saturday-morning cartoon edited for commercials, a
postcard received from a foreign location, a comic book with more than a few pages torn out, or a partial, high-speed glimpse at a roadside billboard, reveals my childhood memories and everyday emotions.
Dennis Michael Jones' "...work expresses a sense of play, wonder, delight and discovery. These thoughts and emotions are directly expressed with the varied presence of a child-like everyman. The figures suggest an innocence and hopefulness of
childhood—they are my progeny—a metaphor for the creation and realization of ideas—and avatar for the artist as a perpetual child. I think of this body of work as a kind of memorial to these sentiments. With the realization the figures are also toys to be
manipulated, or puppets to be controlled, an undercurrent of irony surfaces as the installation comments on the formation of identity and a creative process that has become corrupted, where innocence and naiveté are doubtful possibilities.
Bryant Tillman is a Detroit artist, born and raised. He has exhibited work since the late 1980’s. His style has changed over the years from impressionism to abstract expressionism. His current works are explosions of color and moment and imagination on rectangular canvass. Bryant’s previous show in 2002 at the Zeitgeist was inspired by the music of John Coltrane. Bryant has a newsletter he sends out monthly entitle “Thoughts From The Secret Hideout”. Bryant’s current work will be exhibited in the new Bar Gallery.
This show runs through March 15, 2008.
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