Young Detroit Artists Create Beauty in Unlikely Places

By Edith Assaff

Ben Wright, an 11th-grader at Detroit’s Communications and Media Arts High School, was disappointed that his school no longer had an arts program, but he kept quiet about it.

“I was embarrassed to talk about my interest in art,” Ben says. “I didn’t think there were any other kids who would be interested, and I would stand out.”

Today, Ben’s art definitely stands out. He is one of a dozen or so west side high school students who are creating a huge art mural on a three-story-high exterior wall of the vacant Guardian Building in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood. The 25-foot wide mural depicts fatherhood in the form of a man with his two children walking through a park. “It took three days to put the primer up,” Ben says.

This mural is painted on the Guardian Building at Fenkel and Burt -- in Brightmoor -- which depicts a man with two children making their way through the colorful road of life.

Now Ben is proud to speak of his art. “It’s a joy to see people react to our art,” he says. “No one defaces the murals, and people don’t throw trash in front of art. Our neighborhood really does respect art.”

In addition, Ben has found a community of artists who share his passion for art, all thanks to a new College of Creative Studies (CCS) project funded by the Skillman Foundation. The project, Detroit Neighborhood Arts Corps, provides high-school aged artists with the opportunity to give back to their communities through the creation of public art. Students earn community service hours for high school and college application requirements, while having their art in the public eye.

Ben laid the groundwork for this project in ninth grade, when he became an art intern at the Detroit Public Library Redford Branch, teaching middle school kids about art. The program that provided Ben with his entrée to the world of art was called Detroit Neighborhood Arts Workshop, also offered by the College for Creative Studies through a grant from the Foundation. The program was the second step in a three-part strategy of CCS to engage kids in art from elementary school through high school.

“With so many Detroit schools dropping their arts programs, there is a real need to keep kids close to art through other means,” says Mikel Bresee, director of the Community Arts Partnerships program at CCS. “We have a program focused on introducing art to young children as an in-school and after-school program in the Brightmoor and Osborn neighborhoods. Then in middle school, students are served by our Detroit Neighborhood Arts Workshops at Redford Library and at Matrix Human Services in the Osborn Neighborhood. When they entered high school, we encouraged these students to participate in the most recent of the programs, the new Detroit Neighborhood Arts Corps (DNAC) program, funded by the Foundation and conducted in collaboration with Chazz Miller’s Public Art Workz (PAWZ)/The Artist Village and People Enriching Empowering People Services (P.E.E.P.S.).”

The three components needed for young people to participate fully in art are exposure, education and experience. The DNAC program provides exposure to real working artists and, more importantly, the artistic process they go through to conceptualize and create their art. The program provides education -- teaching students the technical skills needed to compose art. It then offers students experience in creating monumental works of art, working as a team, and giving a thing of permanent beauty to their neighborhoods.

'Don’t let the depression around me define me'

Starting with three students, including Ben Wright, the west-side DNAC has grown to 15 high school students in less than a year. “From 50-70 percent of the kids in the middle school program transition over into the DNAC program,” says Donald Calloway, Jr., a prominent Detroit artist who serves as lead instructor in the east side program. Calloway’s studio in Greektown overflows with his paintings, drawings, sculpture and “assemblages” of found art.

Ben Wright, who has a promising future in the arts, takes a moment to sketch and listen to some tunes.

“Art is a very solitary undertaking,” Calloway says. “Participating in the DNAC program drew me out of the studio and into the community. Artists need that kind of balance.”

The DNAC is finding adult artists in the neighborhoods to lead the instruction, such as Calloway, and Brightmoor lead instructor Chazz Miller. Further support for professional artists and community-based public art is provided through the community + public arts: DETROIT (CPAD) Program, funded through a partnership of the Foundation, Chase and Kresge Foundations. CPAD is housed at CCS.

Calloway’s DNAC students are creating a 100-foot-long mural in Osborn of people “on the move” to be displayed along the exterior of a commercial building near Six Mile (McNichols) Road and Gratiot. Unlike the Brightmoor mural, which is painted on the building, the Osborn mural is painted on wooden panels that will be attached to the building.

Students in both the Brightmoor and Osborn projects participated in the design and layout of the murals, which began this summer. “Our panels were finished in three weeks,” Calloway says. “Students worked 20 to 30 hours a week, and they are still showing up.”

This mural, painted in separate panels, is of a man running with his briefcase and coffee. It is attached to a health clinic at McNichols and Gratiot in the Osborn neighborhood.

The commitment students feel toward the project parallels the confidence they acquire as a result of being involved with the art. “The one-on-one relationship with a caring adult artist and the impact of creating art on a student’s self-esteem is transformative,” says Vera Smith, assistant director of education and outreach for the CCS Community Arts Partnerships program and former art teacher at Cass Technical High School. “What we are seeing is only affirmed by research, which links involvement in arts programs with positive youth development.”

Ben Wright agrees. “When I’m surrounded by ugliness, and I can create beauty, it means that I didn’t let the depression around me define me,” he says.

Art as a viable career choice

A problem artistic young people often face, however, is parental approval. Parents often don’t support their child’s desire to participate seriously in art because they don’t see its potential as a career path. But Bresee provides this riddle for parents:

A Detroit policeman, a Detroit fireman, a Detroit teacher, and a Detroit web-page designer were having breakfast in a popular Detroit restaurant. Which one picked up the check?

The answer is the web designer, since the other three were laid off. And the moral of the story is: parents tend to push their children into the jobs of the past, which were once considered “safe” jobs, while the jobs of the future include many types of design positions for working artists.

“The National Endowment for the Arts just released a report indicating that the field of art and design is one of the fastest-growing careers in the country,” Bresee says. “The number of people who identified their jobs as ‘artist’ doubled in 20 years. That’s quite a growth spurt. And all predictors indicate that it will keep on growing, especially as new forms of technology present new opportunities for computer-aided design, computer graphics and animation, and web design.”

Web design is a career that is especially appealing to young people, because an artist working from home in Detroit can design web pages for companies and individuals all over the world without leaving home. Designers are the largest single group among employed artists, and the highest paid.

The angel in the marble

Though most funding for the arts in America is directed toward large art museums and the preservation of the art of the past, the art of the future requires funding as well, and the Foundation is committed to funding art programs because of the impact on youth development.

“Even past art forms, whether painting, sculpture, music, or playwriting, were funded by patrons, aristocrats, and royalty,” Bresee says. “Artists have always relied on the support of appreciative funders – and thankfully, the Skillman Foundation is a funder that sees the value of art in transforming people and neighborhoods.”

That transformation was best described by Michelangelo when he was asked how he conceptualized his beautiful sculptures of angels from a block of stone. Michelangelo replied, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

Seeing "the angel in the marble" – the potential in a block of stone or in the time-worn surface of an abandoned building – requires a special eye and a passion for infusing beauty in unlikely places. DNAC students have the eye, the passion, the talent, and the commitment to their community that is needed to bring out the beauty in their neighborhoods in a way that frees the spirit.

Pablo Picasso said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” From all indications, it looks as though the Detroit Neighborhood Arts Corps has solved that problem.

“I wouldn’t share my art with other people before,” Ben Wright says. “Now my art is in front of the world and 100 feet tall!”

-- Edith Assaff is a Berkley-based writer who has chronicled the Good Neighborhoods program since its inception.

To read more about this and other art projects in Detroit neighborhoods, click here.