mighty real/queer detroit at the scarab club
The Mighty Real/Queer Detroit project spans seventeen venues in metro Detroit, showcasing 140+ Queer artists with 700+ works of art. The exhibitions present a month-long historical examination of the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community and its longtime allies, featuring established and emerging Detroit artists, as well as artists whose careers were shortened by HIV/AIDS.
As a further exploration, Mighty Real/Queer Detroit at the Scarab Club will address loss and remembrance by including significant, rarely seen and unexhibited art objects. Works by artists who died of AIDS in the 1980s and ’90s will be exhibited for the first time, including never before seen work by artists Brian Buczak, Timothy Gass, Marcus Mannino and Constantino Tsatsanis. A special tribute will be offered to the legendary Detroit artist, LeRoy Foster, and poets Beth Brant and Terri Jewell.
Maureen Petrucci’s blend of pencil and acrylic produces this softly stylized image. The subject’s features are exaggerated blurring gender associations. A clutched head scarf framed with a golden halo harkens to the Madonna who weeps for her son, which can also be interpreted as carrying the burden of a loss from HIV/AIDS or secreting one’s identity for fear of persecution.
Constantino (Gus) Tsatsanis’ drawing, which is delightfully not centered, flows like the text itself. The narrative curls and twists through ordinary experiences punctuated by exceptionally poignant moments, not the least of which is the author’s untimely passing creating this letter priceless to the receiver of these intimately hand-written words and images.
Patrick Webb’s Couples reminds of van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters in its monochromatic treatment of subjects gathered around a single source of eerily mysterious glowing light. The shape of the canvas contributes to the configuration of souls.
My emphatic apologies for this image as it’s displayed under glass and the gallery isn’t in possession of a clean image either. I am posting anyway because its maker, Jack O. Summers, is so dear to the Detroit art community and was recently lost to us, he had to be included not only in this show but in this article. Summers is one of the few collagists whose work never presents as collage until you’re right up on it. His dramatic imagery is reimagined so perfectly it could almost be painted. We miss you, Jack.
Mighty Real/Queer Detroit is a not-for-profit organization that provides a platform for artistic exploration of various queer perspectives crossing generations and disciplines. This month-long exhibition coinciding with Pride Month is a visually beautiful and moving stage to promote positive and meaningful messaging for a community historically suppressed and overlooked by traditional institutional systems.
Works in this show by: Charles Alexander, Brian Buczak, Patrick Bunyan, Jeff Britting, Jan Brown, Patrick Burton, Brian Carpenter, Stephanie Crawford, Julio Dominguez, LeRoy Foster, Timothy Gass, Katy Hait, Erin Brott-Holtzman, Richard Jerzy, Marcus Leatherdale, Marcus Mannino, Ron Madalinski, Annie Meyer, Merel Noorlander, Kasper Ray O’Brien, Henry Petrucci, Maureen Petrucci, Deborah Rockman, Gregory Sobieraj, Joe Sposita, Jack O. Summers, James Stephens, Jarrad Tacon-Heaslip, Constantinos (Gus) Tsatsanis, Patrick Webb, Frederick Weston, S. Kay Young
On view through July 9th at The Scarab Club 217 Farnsworth Detroit
MR/QD participating galleries: Cass Cafe, College for Creative Studies, Detroit Artists Market, Galerie Camille, N'Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, Playground Detroit, Anton Art Center, David Klein Gallery, Affirmations Center, Hatch Art, M Contemporary Art, Norwest Gallery, Oloman Cafe, Public Pool, Collected Detroit, Metropolitan Museum of Design Detroit.
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*images are mine
direct quote from gallery materials
OTHER SHOWS OPEN THIS WEEK
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