The Hub

Detroit is crawling with terrific media. In just these past few months stories from, of course, the venerable Detroit Free Press, Detroit News and best of all, the online news blogs and radio including The Detroit Hub, Model D and WEDT (101.9fm), an active NPR station out of Wayne State University. From a variety of perspectives, catching up with the real news has so changed the view of this city from the caricature depicted outside to that of a vibrant city filled with character, will and strength within.

From just this morning rummaging around The Urban News Hub, both present and past:

25 June 2010 YOU CAN GET FUNDED IN METRO DETROIT: LIVIO RADIO
25 July 2010 WHAT TO GIVE DETROIT FOR ITS 309th BIRTHDAY
and best of all, today
17 June 2011 DEAR WORLD: SMART KIDS LIVE IN DETROIT .... JUST SO YOU KNOW reporting on the number of terrific, "smart" college-going kids who just are graduating from the Detroit Public Schools.

Kunsthalle Detroit

With a strong background in contemporary art, I absolutely applaud yet another terrific sign of Detroit's ascension again: the opening of the Kunsthalle Detroit http://www.kunsthalle-detroit.org/#!

In a neighborhood west of Wayne State, Kunsthalle Detroit is starting off with a spectacular exhibition of some of the more prominent video artists. Not all from Detroit yet the show is making a statement for this city where so many artists are flocking, listening no doubt to Patti Smith (see Times blog below), as well as their own always avant-garde instincts. Detroit's combination of an easier cost of living for always financially-strapped artists while being a place where the history, amazing and tough, combined with aestheitc perception and expression provides a symbiotic fertile ground for innovation and growth.

In her Times blog, "Go to Detroit, Young People," Detroit writer Karen Dybis quotes David Byrne: "The skies here are bigger than in New York."

I love periodically returning to the city at this time and historically, wasn't this a similar experience in those early days of Ford and others that too provided a growth moment - a long moment - for this city? It's happening again.

Check out the Kunsthalle's FB page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kunsthalle-Detroit/108340745867164

And the video of the opening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em3iCTBnol4

some other press on the Kunsthalle:
New museum, Kunsthalle Detroit, to open exhibition space
Video art museum takes shine to Detroit's gritty charm
Art museum to open in rough section of Detroit
A New Cultural Light in Detroit

Reclaiming the industrial waterfront

The riverview in Detroit is incredibly beautiful with the flowing Detroit River, a bridge to Belle Isle, and the across river view of Windsor, Canada, the only point in the United States where Canada is south. The riverfront was formerly filled with industrial buildings but now a public walkway is developed and even during my rainy Spring visit, while at the Hoedown in Hart Plaza, I looked down on so many on promenade.



So I love this news from the Architect's Newspaper blog:
Now Docking: Detroit's evolving waterfront gets new terminal building.



Detroit is filled with significant architecture and it looks like this little building will add to the mix.

An organization worth checking out, one bringing Detroiters already and hopefully a burgeoning tourism to Detroit: The Detroit RiverFront Conservancy, responsible already for the three-mile walkway. http://www.detroitriverfront.org/ and the Dequindre Cut Greenway, an urban recreational path.

American Pie

A friend passed along this video made in Grand Rapids in response to those who also call it a "dying city."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPjjZCO67WI&feature=share



My entry into "career" life started with Don McLean's "American Pie," released by United Artists just days after I started work there. It's theme, even after 40 years, is again significant in the narrative of our lives for just back from my second visit to Detroit, I can see the same spirit and joy in this great midwestern city.


From Detroit's Annual Downtown Hoedown 2011, Saturday 14 May 2011.

Magazine Up

The first issue of DETROIT: DEFINITION, A WORK IN PROGRESS is published and available at the POD site, Magcloud. www.sarajaneboyers.magcloud.com

This is the first in a series of seasonal "reports" about my photographic exploration of Detroit, the city of my birth. I will return each season over the next year and one-half.

I've just returned from the second visit, "Spring," and am sorting through pics, thoughts and experience. Cannot wait for summer!

Back in Detroit

In Detroit already for 4 1/2 days. So busy I haven't yet posted.

On the first afternoon, last Thursday 12 May after a very early morning flight into unseasonably hot and muggy Detroit, a visit to Belle Isle at dusk seemed the thing to do. I was far from alone in that thought.


On the drive toward the western point: scenes seemingly sprung from Seurat's Grande Jatte. Electric green lawn descending down past the ducks and geese to the river. As the sun lowers, the dual points of Detroit downtown and Windsor, Canada narrow the straight in a lovely gray silhouette.

I drive the Island twice at least, stopping to watch the families headed over the bridge to picnic at the end of the day, then on a known section of the circular drive where are parked rows of cars with trunks open and groups of teens lounging in/leaning against each, their gaze more inward to the other cars than perhaps to the view, reminiscent of my youth cruising Hollywood Boulevard (never telling my parents) with girlfriends in the yellow convertible GTO.




The weather has now turned what I thought was unseaonably cold and rainy and yet all of this is Detroit in May. Notwithstanding, the streets now busier, tulips even in front of the more sketchier home, and on the weekend both at the Eastern Market with its annual flower day/weekend and at the confluence of the annual Hoedown, the largest free country music festival in the nation, and the Tigers at home, a diverse and fun crowd on the streets. More to come...

Just discovered, from last September's Detroit Free Press, a magical series on Belle Isle, its beauty and its concerns and those who are fighting against invasive species while inviting even greater exploration of the wonders of this park, larger than NYC's Central Park:
http://www.freep.com/article/20100905/SPECIAL05/110120001

Mother in Detroit

My friend and fellow photographer, Aline Smithson, asked us to send in a photograph of our mothers to celebrate today, Mother's Day 2011, on her terrific LENSCRATCH blog.

Immersed in my magazine creation, I could only think of this photograph of my mother. I am guessing is from December 1944, only a couple of months after her marriage to my father and her move to Detroit to be with him. The notation looks like it is 1944/45 but I am assuming it was '44 since she looks quite thin and if it were December of '45, I would almost be born and she would be looking very pregnant.

She is wearing my favorite pin, a '40s Alfred Philippe Trifari Jelly Belly Frog, that she gave me decades ago and that I wear to this day.

The window from which she is looking out is not the Pinehurst home. Possibly the address at 3444 Second Avenue? She looks delighted to be in Detroit.

When it comes down to it, Mother's Day reminds us that we are full of hope and thoughts about the future and how we accomplish that to which we aspire. For what is the birth of a child, if not a moment of dreams? The concept of "rebirth" speaks to renewal and a fresh new life. Detroit is in this stage.

I am looking forward to returning there at the end of this coming week.