Michelle Hinojosa's "Logcabins" quilted columns at Stamps Gallery honor her family's history of migration

VISUAL ART REVIEW

Michelle Hinojosa standing next to one of her "Logcabins"

Photo courtesy of Michelle Hinojosa.

In April 2023, Michelle Hinojosa presented her thesis exhibition at the University of Michigan's Stamps Gallery. The exhibition, Lime Green Is the Taco Stand, was inaugurated with a poetry event, "Poetry by the Light of the Quilts," where Hinojosa read a series of poems on immigration and the collective feeling of loss that comes with this experience.

Hinojosa returns to Stamps a year later with a new creation, Logcabins. This time, we encounter her work outside the gallery as her log cabin quilts wrap the two columns of the gallery building.

The two colorful quilted columns help the gallery signal its existence amidst the dreary concrete landscape. Hinojosa’s striking quilts use color combinations that play with shades of yellow, green, pink, blue, and orange to create patterns of tesselations. Developed around the unit of a pink square, the blues and yellows of the respective quilts can be seen as stepped borders surrounding the squares to make a larger square motif. However, on closer inspection, a corner of the motif breaks away from this neat enclosure to connect it to the other blocks on the quilt, forming a sense of continuity unique to tessellated patterns.

Tactile Sensations: Ericka Lopez's "touch" exhibit at U-M's Institute for the Humanities Gallery encourages visitors to feel her art

VISUAL ART INTERVIEW

Ericka Lopez at work in her studio. Photo courtesy of Tierra del Sol.

Ericka Lopez working in her studio. Photo courtesy of Tierra del Sol.

Amanda Krugliak remembers the first time she saw the work of artist Ericka Lopez.

“I was walking a gallery in Chinatown, in L.A., and I saw this work. It just had something undeniable about it,” said Krugliak, curator for the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities Gallery, which is hosting Lopez's touch exhibit. “There’s something incredibly powerful immediately about it. It felt like the kind of work that doesn’t have a motive. There’s no other reason for the work, but the immediate human connection, or something material we respond to. There are a lot of contemporary artists who try to achieve this, and here was this artist that just felt so natural.”

Lopez's tactile textiles and colorful ceramics bristle with textures. She also happens to be blind. After finding out about Lopez’s story, Krugliak made inquiries about bringing the show to Ann Arbor.

Cards for Humanity: Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.'s "Random Thoughts on Poster Cards" Exhibit at EMU

VISUAL ART INTERVIEW

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. stands with Danny Baskin and three students at EMU's University Gallery.

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., center, and Danny Baskin, right, with EMU students at Random Thoughts on Poster Cards. The exhibit is located in EMU's University Gallery on the second floor of the Student Center and runs through December 14. Photo by Lori Stratton.

An empowering quote from Bell Hooks is printed in a black serif typeface on a brown handbill-size poster card.

The statement from the late author reads, “If we give our children sound self-love, they will be able to deal with whatever life puts before them.”

That motivational proclamation is one of numerous type-driven messages hand-printed on 3,000 vibrant 8-inch-by-6-inch poster cards by Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.

The Detroit printmaker’s renowned letterpress work is featured as part of Random Thoughts on Poster Cards, an exhibit running at Eastern Michigan University through December 14.

“People give me quotes, I read things, and then I just compile a list. And depending on the mood I’m in, I print what I want to,” said Kennedy alongside fellow letterpress printer Gerald Schulze during the exhibit’s November 7 opening reception at EMU’s University Gallery.

“It’s just a matter of someone telling me something, and I’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, that would make a good poster,’ or I’ll read something and think, ‘That would make a good card,’ and then I just print them.”

For the Culture: "Silver Linings: Celebrating the Spelman Art Collection" at UMMA

VISUAL ART REVIEW INTERVIEW

Fun #2, Benny Andrews (American, 1930 – 2006), 2002, From the collection of: Spelman College Museum of Fine Art,

Benny Andrews, Fun #2, 2002. From the collection of Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.

Silver Linings: Celebrating the  Spelman Art Collection at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) is an eclectic collection of 40 works of sculptures, lithographs, photographs, paintings, and a gelatin silver print. The media includes acrylic, ink, pastels, graphite, crayon, oils, metals, wood, glass, and even 24-carat gold. 

 

Styles and subjects vary, too. 

 

What unifies this exhibition is that all of the work represents Black artists and expresses feelings or thoughts about Black culture or life. 

 

“The exhibition came to be through decades and decades and decades of Spelman College’s commitment to collecting art by Black artists,” says Liz Andrews, Ph.D., director of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art.  Andrews says the immediate reasons for putting together a touring exhibit, the museum’s first, are less significant than Spelman’s groundbreaking efforts over the years in prioritizing art by and about women of the African diaspora. 

Illustrating Freedom of Speech: "An Ungentle Art: Pat Oliphant and the American Tradition of Political Satire"

VISUAL ART REVIEW INTERVIEW

Richard Nixon by Pat Oliphant. Image from the Clement Rare Manuscript Library..

Pat Oliphant, Richard Nixon, charcoal sketch, 2008. Courtesy of the Wallace House Center for Journalists.

Journalists are the white blood cells of democracy, and their ability to report news and share opinions without repercussions is one of the best measures of a free society's hardiness.

 

The right to employ comedy and satire freely is another solid assessment of a democracy's health, and the Clements Library's online and in-person exhibition An Ungentle Art: Pat Oliphant and the American Tradition of Political Satire is a compelling reminder of illustrative journalists using humor to make a point.

 

The University of Michigan exhibition—produced with the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum and loaned original art from the Wallace House Center for Journalists—ties into a multi-event program this semester on how the arts interact with presidential politics during this election year.

 

“I think using Clements Library materials to help people think about the democratic processes in the country, and how we have historically talked about elections is important,” says Paul Erickson, the director at Clements. 

Personal, Politics: Pete Souza's "Obama: An Intimate Portrait" at Ann Arbor Art Center

VISUAL ART REVIEW INTERVIEW

President Obama holding a child wearing an elephant costume. Photo by Pete Souza.

President Obama holding Ella, the daughter of his deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes. Photo by Pete Souza.

If there is a timeliness prize for art gallery exhibitions, the latest offering from the Ann Arbor Arts Center (A2AC) is a shoo-in for a podium finish.

 

Weeks before the 2024 presidential election, A2AC's Obama: An Intimate Portrait displays some of the best photographs by Pete Souza, a veteran photographer who reached the pinnacle of his career by serving as President Barack Obama’s photographer.

 

After Obama left the White House, Souza sorted through approximately 1.9 million photos to select 300 from his eight-year tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a 2017 book called Obama: An Intimate Portrait. He then selected 50 for a traveling show, which started making the rounds in 2019 thanks to Souza’s exhibition coordinator Hava Gurevich, an Ann Arbor artist.

 

Living History: Craig Walsh's "Monuments" Video Installation Spotlights Local Community Heroes and Their Contributions to Public Spaces

VISUAL ART PREVIEW INTERVIEW

Video portraits of Joyce Hunter (African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County) and Bonnie Billups Jr. (Peace Neighborhood Center) projected onto the trees in Wheeler Park as part of Craig Walsh's Monuments installation. Photo by Rich Retyi.

Video portraits of Joyce Hunter (African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County) and Bonnie Billups Jr. (Peace Neighborhood Center) projected onto the trees in Wheeler Park as part of Craig Walsh's Monuments installation. Photo by Rich Retyi.

Craig Walsh spotlights everyday people and their impactful contributions to society in Monuments, a large-scale, nighttime video installation. The Australian visual artist projects people’s portraits onto trees in public spaces to honor community heroes and create welcoming spaces.

“When I made this work the art—the trees—are looking at the audience, so there’s this reversal of the role of art,” said Walsh, who’s from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

“That work does take on different meanings to different people and quite often in different cultures and different places. That’s the beauty of touring this work—it’s always different in every location.”

Walsh is bringing his Monuments video installation to Ann Arbor’s Wheeler Park September 4-8 in partnership with Ann Arbor Summer Festival and the Ann Arbor District Library.

It's also receiving support from the University of Michigan Arts Initiative, Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library, and the Ladies Library Association

Monuments arrives during the city’s bicentennial year and celebrates the living history of four individuals who have served the community:

Building the Blocks: Artist Melissa Dehner interpreted seven local landmarks for Ann Arbor 200

VISUAL ART INTERVIEW

Blocks at Traverwood

Building blocks at the Traverwood location of the Ann Arbor District Library. Photo by Shoshana Hurand.

Sometimes it takes something small to make you notice something big.

On the first night of the Ann Arbor Art Fair, I was in the outdoor seating area of The Ravens Club on Main Street, with my back to vendors who lined the road. I leaned back in my chair, looked to my right, and scanned the restaurant and bar's red-brick building, admiring the two levels of black metal balconies unique to its facade. 

My eyes then drifted left to the adjacent building, composed of large gray-white bricks and featuring a tall tower on the corner of Main and Washington. The words First National Building appear above the tall arch of the tower entrance, with decorative cornices above the text. As my eyes glided up, I noticed the two first two levels of windows were arched, but the next four floors were rectangular. The arches return for two of the final three rows of windows, and four carved lions’ heads jut out at the top of the building between the three window rows.

All of this looked familiar. But it’s not because I’ve walked by the First National Building hundreds of times, or because I’ve sat at this approximate spot at The Ravens Club dozens of times.

The familiarity came from my having just seen Melissa Dehner’s drawings for the Bicentennial Blocks that the Ann Arbor District Library commissioned.

Fundamental Defiance: Clements Library's “The Art of Resistance in Early America” exhibit

VISUAL ART REVIEW

Lewis W. Eaton, stencils, [mid-nineteenth century] Auburn, New York: Lewis W. Eaton Collection.

Lewis W. Eaton, stencils, mid-19th century, Auburn, New York: Lewis W. Eaton Collection.

The concept of resistance to power has always been part of the American story, and an online exhibit at the University of Michigan Clements Library demonstrates some of the many ways that truth has played out.

The Art of Resistance in Early America effectively illustrates the many ways that early Americans used creativity to resist things like British colonial rule, slavery, and efforts to silence their voices.

The exhibit grew out of the fall 2023 Arts and Resistance-themed semester at U-M’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and it highlights priceless works from the nation’s past that helped forge its future. (An in-person version of the exhibit has closed.)

Susan Goethel Campbell’s “Garden Repairs” traverses the intersection of natural and man-made worlds

VISUAL ART REVIEW

Garden Repair No. 2, 2024 Stains from black walnut, iron oxide and dye on Japanese paper with hand embroidery 55” x 88”

Susan Goethel Campbell, Garden Repair No. 2, 2024. Stains from black walnut, iron oxide and dye on Japanese paper with hand-embroidery. 55” x 88”. Photo by Tim Thayer.

Not long before visiting Ferndale-based artist Susan Goethel Campbell’s Garden Repairs installation at the U-M’s Institute of the Humanities, I’d shared a photograph on social media of a cluster of snow-dusted daffodils in my backyard, shriveled and hunched over. I’d been struck by how often nature mirrors human gesture; how these flowers visibly conveyed what many of us were feeling that morning, as we pulled winter coats and gloves back out of our closets, just days after walking around in shorts. I’d wondered if the natural world shaped the way our physical bodies communicate emotion, or if this is all, in fact, subtle, visible evidence of our inter-relationship with each other.

As it happens, this train of thought was a perfect foundation for experiencing Campbell’s work, which marries the natural and man-made worlds in surprising ways.