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VOL. 9, NO. 1 
SPRING 2020 

 

 SPECIAL ISSUE: DETROIT  

BOOK REVIEW 

Canvas Detroit 
By Julie Pincus and Nichole Christian 

Jonathan Kuuskoski  
University of Michigan 

[Art] wasn’t about establishing a career. It was about making art as life 
support. And no matter who they were or what they did or where in the city 
they lived, or even if they were there for a single project, they all had the same 
subject: Detroit. —Linda Yablonsky (p. 51) 
 
My art is medicine for the community. You can’t heal the land until you heal 
the minds of the people. —Tyree Guyton (p. 159) 

The title Canvas Detroit fulfills a promise long understood in the Southeastern Michigan 
community: the Motor City, despite its rough and tumble journey into the 21st century, is home 
to a vibrant and flourishing arts scene. Though far from a standard coffee table book, this rich—
yet surprisingly accessible—volume functions as a visual ethnography of the artists who define 
that scene. Hundreds of beautiful images complement dozens of profiles of natives, adopted 
locals, and famous visitors, who collectively shape Detroit’s culture while representing the 
resilience of a population indelibly linked to the city’s Rust Belt origins.  

Rather than leveraging topical or theme-based chapters, co-authors Julie Pincus and 
Nichole Christian have chosen to explore Detroit through fifty vignette-like profiles, each 
dedicated to an artist or arts collective. Every profile opens with a brief summary of the given 
subject, and, in the case of non-natives, their journey to the city. These entries are essentially 



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built around interviews, framing each subject’s 
philosophical goals to reveal the intent behind a 
myriad of artistic styles. Such influences span 
everything from deconstructivism (p. 249), to 
political visioning (p. 209), and art as a catalyst for 
urban transformation (p. 61). The stories are 
interwoven with descriptions of a particular 
project, or set of projects, which exemplify the 
subject’s artistic voice. Each entry concludes with 
a statement of potential—calls-to-action that 
draw the reader’s attention to the struggles of 
everyday artists, and the optimism that drives 
their practice regardless of circumstance. 

The book itself is captivatingly designed, 
thanks to Pincus and Christian’s shared visual 
sensibilities. Blending their individual acumen as 
a graphic designer and writer, respectively, the 

writing is curatorial and collaborative. Much like an effective museum experience, every 
paragraph of text invites readers of all experience levels to look more closely at the quality of 
artmaking and variety of aesthetics on display. Seasoned connoisseurs will gain insights on 
lesser known aspects of the practices strewn about by locals and visitors. Who knew Detroit was 
home to not one, but potentially five, Banksy murals? Novices can revel in the visual walking 
tour that gradually reveals obvious themes of resilience and reclamation. The short-form 
vignette format favors the casual reader, though subtext is relatively easy to unpack based on a 
sampling of stories. To that end, the reviewer appreciated the efficient framing essays by John 
Gallagher, Michael H. Hodges, Marion Jackson, and Linda Yablonsky. Jackson’s introduction 
(p. 1), in particular, articulates how artmaking in the Motor City reflects much more than 
individual expression. For many artists, sustaining their peers seems to be a collective, 
existential priority. It is clear to those who have chosen to make Detroit their canvas that the 
city deserves better. More respect for what it has; greater opportunity to rebuild its vibrancy. As 
Wayne State University-trained street artist Eno Laget puts it (p. 203), “If there’s gonna be life 
here [in Detroit], it has everything to do with, as clichéd as it sounds, building sustainable 
communities. We have a chance to be about more than making a buck.” 

One of the best examples of this philosophy in action can be found in the profile of Marc 
Schwartz’s DLECTRICITY (p. 113), a nighttime “exhibition” that blends technology and 
architecture to create a celebration of outdoor space. Festivals have generally proven to be 
effective amplifiers of a scene’s brand, yet they often export much of the value created, imparting 
only transient interest and short-term impact to the local economy. DLECTRICITY is driven 
by a different agenda; it aims to build a year-round community that is energized by 
“concentrated areas” of activity throughout the city. The festival has grown since its launch in 



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2012, with follow ups in 2014, 2017, and Summer 2020. Pincus and Christian can boast that this 
book chronicles the beginnings of a potentially significant and pioneering example of a density-
driven, urban-revival festival concept, but it also exemplifies the potency of Canvas Detroit’s 
own design. The imagery here is equally, if not more, essential to the prose in capturing the 
potential for aesthetic practice to activate communities and physical spaces towards a brighter 
future.  

It is hard to overstate how aggregating resources and individuals is key to achieving 
sustainability in Detroit’s modern arts economy. Many of the entrepreneurial arts organizations 
that have risen in the past decade are central to the work of defining what such an infrastructure 
might look like. 555 Gallery (p. 19), for example, pops up in numerous artist profiles as a guiding 
force that either brought them to the city, or, through incubation, provided the platform that 
nurtured their vision and kept their work local. The self-organized collective known as the Five 
Fellows (p. 147), “dispatched” from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor on research 
fellowships, transformed a decrepit house, a visual epitome of the city’s decline, into an 
architectural playground as a “means to finding opportunity rather than solving problems—a 
technique that resonates with the contemporary conditions of a city like Detroit.” Unpacking 
these connections are left in large part to the reader, though the framing essays provide thematic 
entry points that, when cross-referenced with the table of contents, make the search for 
individual stories accessible for all. 

More than a snapshot of Detroit’s cultural renaissance, the stories captured in this book 
showcase art as a way of life for local artisans, much in the way industrial labor dominated the 
cityscape through much of the past century. One comes away from the book with a sense that 
art is alive in the city, bound by a common understanding that individual works have larger 
implications when coordinated around social action. The obvious takeaway here is that art is 
responding to the urban infrastructure of the city, blemishes and all. The more subtle message 
is how the collective practice of public artmaking has created a living tapestry of Detroit’s rich 
history, present struggles, and aspirational potential. By cataloguing the highs, lows, and social 
ramifications of a transformative arts revival, Canvas Detroit makes a compelling case for the 
power of visual artists to engage in placemaking everywhere.





 


