The first Remnants exhibit was staged on October 17, 2023, at Marjorie Mae Del-Radio's Ypsilanti house. The woman affectionately known as "Big Marjorie" was not physically present in her longtime home at 824 Jefferson Street, but her spirit filled the abode—once covered in family photographs, now mostly empty.

Del-Radio died April 12, 2023, at age 90, and her house was cleared out for its sale.

Takeisha Jefferson and Tywree Bailey, both Ypsi-born artists, wanted to honor their grandma and the house that was a family hub, so they did the one-day Remnants exhibit as a creative memorial for friends and family.

"So many family members spoke of how grandma’s house looked like a gallery because of all the photographs she displayed of family members," Jefferson wrote in a Facebook message. "Well, tomorrow it will be a gallery."

Jefferson and Bailey decorated the home with their own photographs and paintings, and also filled a room with Grandma Del-Radio's colorful muumuus, which floated in the space like joyful ghosts.

Even though Remnants was an impromptu event, first cousins Jefferson and Bailey knew they wanted to have a second edition of the exhibit in a traditional gallery.

Remnants II, which runs through September 26 at Ypsilanti's 22 North, doesn't feature any muumuus. But it is brimming with love and pride for their family's history, which stretches deep into Ypsilanti's past. There are photos of and correspondence from Del-Radio's grandfather, William Campbell, who worked as a janitor and porter for Ypsi's Freighthouse, from 1927 to 1936, as well as other images of other family members.

The core of the show belongs to Jefferson and Bailey's artwork, sometimes with assistance from other family members, such as Takeisha's daughter, Tylear Jefferson, also a visual artist.

A roundup of recent Washtenaw County arts and culture stories from local media outlets Life in Michigan, WEMU, Concentrate, Current, Ann Arbor Observer, WCBN, The Sun New Times, The Saline Post, and Ann Arbor City Lifestyle. 

The in-person Disability Pride art exhibition at Disability Network Washtenaw Monroe Livingston (DNWML) has its roots in the virtual world of 2020.

"I had recently become our arts manager," said Claire Moore, "and we were looking for ways to expand creative opportunities for our blossoming arts program. What began as a virtual art class in March 2020 has become a robust arts program with visual, performance, dance, and writing arts, as well as teaching opportunities for disabled artists. ... As our reputation for centering the arts has grown, so has our reach for the Disability Pride art exhibition."

The Disability Network is "run by people with disabilities for people with disabilities," as stated on its website, offering peer support, training, advocacy, and much more, but it's also become a creative hub, with the Disability Pride exhibit as a centerpiece.

"I truly believe offering a consistent, no-cost art exhibition for disabled artists, during Disability Pride month, is something so necessary—and completely aligns with our mission as an organization," Moore said.

The third edition of the Disability Pride exhibition, in DNWML's Gallery Be, is titled In This Together: Joy & Interdependence in Disability Culture. Moore put out a call for works by asking "artists to emphasize the jubilance and support they experience as members of the disability community."

Kyle Hunt's new exhibition is about looking inward to see what comes out.

"The past decade has been a period in which the inner work I need to do has become more apparent and imperative," Hunt said. "It’s difficult work to dig through one’s past and start fixing what got knocked over, broken, displaced, disfigured, etc."

The Ann Arbor artist's What What Happened Led To exhibit at Ypsi's 22 North gallery features abstract explorations and offbeat figurative works from the past four years, "mostly oil and acrylic paintings on canvas, as well as some gouache, acrylic, and ink paintings on paper," he said.

The exhibition runs from June 27 to July 25, with an opening reception on opening night, where Hunt will display another talent: poetry.

"The poems and the visual art all represent what it’s like for me to start rebuilding after a storm has blown through," Hunt said. "The journey of doing that difficult but necessary work."

But if poetry isn't your thing, don't fret.

"It will truly be a short reading. While I have written some poems since grad school, most of my time has been spent making paintings and drawings, so that’s the focus of the show," Hunt said. "I don’t want anyone tired from a long poetry reading, left with little energy for art on the walls."

The dynamic work in What What Happened Led To is infused with energy, but not directly or aggressively. The images can come across like scary dreams, but they are painted in pastel-oriented colors, giving the works a strange blend of subtle fear but no loathing. It's more like lucid dreaming, where you take charge of your sleeptime imagination and ride out the sensation—even if it's a nightmare—as if you're an omniscient narrator. 

I asked Hunt a few questions to understand his work, where the "bad dream has infiltrated a good dream."

Jeff Dunn didn't mean to become a go-to photographer for the Southeast Michigan jazz scene. He was just a guy who started taking his camera to jam sessions around 2014 after being a fan of the "sound of surprise" since the early 1970s.

"The first time I went to [Detroit's] Baker's Keyboard Lounge in 1973, I was hooked," Dunn told Pulp in a 2018 interview. "I've been addicted to live jazz performances ever since."

Now he's the house photographer for the Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation, a regular presence at concerts from the Motor City to Tree Town, and the focus of a new exhibit at Argus Museum in Ann Arbor.

Jeff Dunn - Jazz Photography runs June 2-27, offering 38 shots by the St. Clair Shores resident and retired Wayne State computer programmer/web developer.

The exhibit is tucked into a narrow hallway with a slight zig-zag, but there's enough room to step back from each photo and imagine the 71-year-old Dunn's placement for each shot. The description plates for each image feature enthusiastic prose from the photographer about his subjects, revealing Dunn's fan-first appreciation of jazz.

Best friends don't always have exactly the same interests, but it can be especially fun when what excites one pal complements the thing the other enjoys most.

For Batcat and Al the Ghost, one literally feeds the other: Al loves to cook and Batcat loves to eat. What happens, though, when their favorite hobbies take on a competitive edge?

Batcat: Cooking Contest!, the third volume of Meggie Ramm's early middle-grade graphic novel series, finds the colorful residents of Spooky Island testing their respective skills as part of a local festival.

The book is fun and cute, and it explores Big Emotions.

Ramm will launch Batcat: Cooking Contest! with a signing session at Vault of Midnight in Ann Arbor on Saturday, April 26, 4-6 pm. (They will also be at Sidetrack Books in Royal Oak on April 19 and at Constellation Cat Cafe in Lansing on May 2.)

I spoke with Ramm about the latest book, the origins of Batcat, and what they hope kids and parents will take away from volume three.

The Guild of Artists & Artisans' Gutman Gallery is a fashion-forward exhibition space—at least from April 4 to May 17 when the glam squad comes to town.

The Ann Arbor gallery is hosting In Style: Fashion + Wearables, which features 26 designers and artists working in a variety of media. These dedicated followers of fashion were selected by guest juror Cheryl Zemke, proprietor of the Wyandotte boutique that bears her name.

There's an opening reception at Gutman Gallery on Friday, April 4 from 6-8 pm, with The Guild of Artists & Artisans inviting you to this free event with a simple request: "dress to impress." (In my case, that means my finest sweatpants.) DJ Batz will spin jams, the South African winemaker Babylonstoren will pour the vino, and Sweet Heather Anne cakes and TeaHaus will provide some nosh and drinkables. (There's also a "live mannequin fashion show," which sounds like nightmare material—but if things get hairy, I'll be wearing my sweatpants and can dash away tout suite because I love depeche mode.)

Some of the works in In Style: Fashion + Wearables include: 

Sasha Gusikhin founded NeuroArts Productions in response to a tragedy.

Luke Balstad was Gusikhin’s best friend, and a straight-A student at Harvard, but he also knew that he needed mental help assistance. Balstad was in therapy, was honest and open about his bipolar condition, and was attended to by a supportive network—but it still ended with him dying by suicide in 2022.

Balstad was being treated with medications—he tried at least 10—and therapy in the standardized modern way, but Gusikhin believes that let her friend slip through the cracks.

“No amount of checking in on Luke would have been able to save him," says Gusikhin, a University of Michigan senior double majoring in biopsychology, cognition, and neuroscience along with voice performance. "He had all of this care and yet there was all this impression with this one size fits all, this ‘let’s try this, and that, and that.' When we do that we are never attuned to: ‘What if this medication [causes a] toxic reaction to that person’s brain chemistry?’ It’s very dangerous, and it can cause very dangerous situations and even loss of life in this case.”

Gusikhin's NeuroArts Productions organizes multidisciplinary arts events to promote mental health education and reform.

Even as I accepted the assignment to attend and write about asses.masses—a daylong collaborative video game art installation brought to Ann Arbor on February 15-16 by UMS—I wondered why I’d made this choice.

It would take me away from my family for nearly an entire Saturday (the program ran from 1-9:30 pm); I’d have to drive from Farmington to Stamps Auditorium on a snowy, freezing February day, all too aware that I’d also be hosting guests in my home the next morning; I had no idea what kind of food would be provided at the event; and while I’m an absolute puzzle fiend, I’m decidedly not a gamer. (The whole idea of Twitch, where viewers can watch others play video games, is something I still struggle to wrap my head around.)

If I’ve learned anything in recent years, though, it’s that I should always follow my curiosity, and I’d repeatedly wondered what this collective all-day video game experience would look and feel like.

My short answer, after attending asses.masses? Community-building. But let’s start with the basics.

Created by Canadian duo Patrick Blendarn and Milton Lim, the game’s narrative involves a herd of donkeys who have been replaced, as workers, by machines, so many of them decide to confront their human overlords and push back against their (existential) obsolescence.

La Raza Art and Media Collective, 1975 to Today, a new exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), highlights creative Latinx students and faculty who have influenced the campus for decades but whose presence is too often overlooked.

The La Raza Art and Media Collective (RAMC) was a student group from 1975 to 1977, formed by Ana Cardona, Michael J. Garcia, Jesse Gonzales, Julio Perazza, George Vargas, S. Zaneta Kosiba Vargas, and Zaragosa Vargas. RAMC organized cultural gatherings and art exhibits, and between 1976-1977, the group also produced a journal of Latinx essays, poetry, and art.

RAMC grew out of the late '60s Latinx political movement. Allied with other student groups, RAMC advocated for Latinx and Chicanx students, combating discrimination and stereotypes while building community. But as La Raza members started to move on from college, the group disbanded and became memory-holed to a certain degree even as other Latinx groups emerged.