Detroit’s elected officials haven’t always known quite what to do with the Heidelberg Project, an outdoor art installation decorating some blighted houses in Detroit’s East Side created by artist Tyree Guyton in 1986.
For instance, in 1991, Mayor Coleman Young (D) ordered four of houses demolished. Dennis Archer (D), Young’s successor, was friendlier to the project, but some members of City Council were not.
In the new millennium, Guyton has been in demand as an artist exhibiting in galleries, going as far abroad as Australia. He has also exhibited in North Carolina and in Detroit.
In 2014, after a rash of fires afflicted the Heidelberg Project, Guyton exhibited at Inner State Gallery. I wrote this article for Examiner.com:
The crowd was thick at Inner State Gallery earlier tonight. "It's right up there with Glenn Barr's show," estimated Dan Armand, co-owner with Jesse Cory of Inner State. The people were more or less evenly distributed, until Tyree Guyton showed up, magnetically drawing a lot of people to him, shortly after 8:00 p.m. on October 17, 2014. The anticipation for the Heidelberg Project artist's first solo show in years was tremendous, and several of the pieces on the work list were listed with the word "sold" instead of a price.
"It's so fun and playful," said Jessica Hopkins of Guyton's installation with vacuums. (Hopkins is a curator at the Museum of New Art). With this show, titled Spirit, Guyton demonstrates that he will not be discouraged by the rash of fires that have recently plagued the Heidelberg Project, as he explained in an interview with Lee DeVito from the Metro Times.
Several of the pieces in the show are directly tied to the Heidelberg Project for which Guyton is famous worldwide. For example, a piece titled Eternity consists of "metal and stone recovered from the War Room House arson attack on the Heidelberg Project in 2013," according to the work list. The show also includes new work Guyton created during his residency in Basel, Switzerland in 2012.
Guyton took a moment to remember Prof. Gilda Snowden from the College for Creative Studies (CCS). Her recent, unexpected death "will have a lot more [effect on Detroit's art community] than you can imagine," Guyton said. "A powerful artist, she lived by principle." (CCS awarded Guyton an honorary doctorate in 2009). Guyton also gave advice to young artists: "Follow your dreams," he advised.
The show will be up through November 15, [2014,] according to the gallery's website. It appears quite likely that by then every piece in the show will have a red dot next to it. The gallery is located close to Eastern Market, and approximately one and a half miles away from the Heidelberg Project.
Skip Davis (left) greets Tyree Guyton at Inner State Gallery on October 17, 2014. Davis is one of Guyton's biggest collectors.
Examiner.com shut down some point after July 10, 2016, so this article has been offline for two or three weeks. I will eventually put up all my Examiner.com articles about Inner State Gallery in a public archive on my own website; not all of them are relevant for Daily Kos.
The reason I bring this up today is that Tyree Guyton has another exhibit at Inner State Gallery. The collectors’ preview was earlier tonight, with tickets going for $100 each. The free, public opening reception is tomorrow night. I might write an article about it and I might post it here.
