The Carr Center and the Detroit Artist Market Champion the Cause of Detroit Artists
Who Ever Designed the Charming Space of Gallerie Camille, La Feria and Vino Cato?
Saturday, January 21st, 2023 at 11:11 AM
Yorkshire Woods
Detroit, Michigan
I made the rounds of the art openings last night, thankfully at galleries nearby the Detroit Institute of Arts. The Detroit Institute of Arts makes a great place to kick off the night, even though the Kresge Courtyard reached capacity. The last weekend of the Van Gogh exhibition had brought many new visitors to the institute. Hopefully, the organizers will think of way to extend the exhibit a month, but not more.
I made a short walk to the Carr Center Galleries, located adjacent to the splendid lobby of the Park Shelton Building. The center had granted Austen Brantley a prestigious one person show. His community showed up for a soiree, dressed for a night on the town. Many of the sculptures celebrating the beauty of African women already had collectors, symbolized by the red dots on the title cards. A serious collector of sculpture had the artist in deep conversation when I made my tour around his midcareer exhibition.
The Carr Center is a rebranding of an old friend on the Detroit art scene, the Arts League of Michigan. I remember when the league forged a partnership with the Historic Scarab Club of Detroit. The league has thirty years of service on the books, a fact that the Carr Center celebrates. At first, I found the galleries in the Park Shelton to be rather snug and cozy for such a prestigious organization. However, looking at the record, it’s impressive how agile the center has become. For example, the Carr Center leverages classroom and performance space at the Detroit School of Arts.
Looking at the 990 PF, the Carr Center shows great discipline with the funding raised by its lean organization. Leveraging a budget just under 700 K a year, the Carr Center organizes the artistic leaders of Detroit to help raise a new generation of artists. I’m glad to know more about this team, who had a circle of painters demonstrating on the street at this year’s Dally in the Alley.
I probably could have walked the half mile to the Detroit Artist Market, celebrating the first opening night of a two location show. The artist market opened during the Great Depression to give Detroit artists an effective place to sell art work. The DAM also functions as an agent to sell art work to the corporate world for member artists.
The Concerning Landscape show reveals the market at its best. Thanks to Megan Winkel, the show will open at the Brigette Harris Cancer Pavilion at the Henry Ford Hospital on Friday, January 27. Waiving my HIPAA rights, I will admit that I’m currently under the care of a medical team at the pavilion. I walked the second floor, where the DAM show is destined to open. Although my treatment that day had to be described as minor, I explored the art collection, finding solace.
The pavilion, which has just been open two years, worked with the DIA to present well-interpreted reproductions of works of art from the art institute’s collection. I’m hoping that the show from DAM gives those items a rest. I’ve seen the DIA reproductions at the Saint Regis Hotel and around town in Grand Haven. It’s time for the new. Winkel has an employment relationship with the Henry, and I hope the DAM will be a pipeline into the Henry Ford Health System art collection.
Last night, I had a chance to talk with one of the artist juried for the show at the pavilion. Donald Cronkhite paints cloudscapes that appear to my eye to represent accurately the sky in all of its moods. A true entrepreneur offering graphic arts and exhibition services, Cronkhite counts on DAM for a portion of his income.
Cronkhite in person appears wonderfully self-confident almost to the point of being arrogant. Yet, he has the skills to prove his boasts. And that’s how I like my artists, fully empowered. Artist members like Cronkhite can publish their art on the market’s online database. Over forty pages of Detroit painters show up in a query for painters, ten painters to a page.
I walked the Cass Corridor four tenths of a mile to catch the show at Gallerie Camille, a small gallery tucked in behind La Feria, a tapas bar, and Cata Vino, a wine bar. In the main gallery, we found a daring, challenging show, the first by photographer and image maker Darryl DeAngelo Terrell, curated by Dalia Reyes. Terrell celebrates the beauty of the African body, unbound by the strictures of gender. Darryl Terrell was declared a Kresge Art Fellow in 2019.
In an adjacent room, we found an art library with over one thousand volumes, displayed as carefully as paintings on the wall. In this room began an exhibition for Ryan Standfest entitled When Day is Done. According to his artists biography, Standfest’s work has been driven by a preoccupation with optimism and its aftermath. This statement has helped me understand his juxtaposition of old-fashioned post cards of Detroit factories from the halcyon days of the forties and his representations of men ready to be assembled according to instructions.
After walking my twelve thousandth step for the day, I called an Uber and made my way home.