From July 2010 to July 2016, Alonso Delarte was Detroit Event Photography Examiner for Examiner.com. This is an archive of the articles he wrote for that website.
Start Gallery was located in the Merchants Building in downtown Detroit. It was founded by Jason Reed in 2011 to give his friends a place to exhibit artwork. Unfortunately, rising rent forced Reed out in 2015.
February 4, 2012 10:00 PM MST
Tead with some of his biggest fans, including Mia Lowe (right). Photo by Alonso del Arte.
"We drove from Indianapolis, we started at 5 a.m.," recalled Pete Brown, an enthusiast of street art and curator of the Midwest Street Art page on Facebook. Brown and his friends came all the way from Indianapolis to view the work of Malt and Tead at the Start Gallery downtown, and to look at some graffiti around town. Brown bought a skateboard by Malt and he is getting some of Detroit's best known street artists to sign it. "I won't be riding it," Brown said, "but if I wanted to, I could put wheels and trucks on it."
Tead had some advice for young street artists: "You just gotta do what you want," he said. Tead's friend from high school, Dustin Purdy, showed up to the exhibit. "He hung out in my basement," recalled Jack Purdy, Dustin's father. "He painted a bookshelf glass door, ... my son still has it, it will be a [museum piece] some day."
Malt's pieces feature an owl with an intense look, while Tead's pieces at the show, each titled Acid City, show graffiti-inspired cityscapes. Mia Lowe bought a print of Acid City 15. "You're my only stalker," Lowe said sweetly to Tead.
Pete Brown with his new skateboard featuring artwork by Malt and the signatures of some of Detroit's most prominent street artists. Photo by Alonso del Arte.
February 24, 2012 11:59 PM MST
Artist Kevin Jarvis shows his business card, which is very similar to one of the pieces he has in the show. Photo by Alonso del Arte.
If there were ever any doubts as to the skills of tattoo artists on flat surfaces, there is an exhibit at a local gallery that will put those doubts to rest for good. Many of the artists exhibiting canvases at the Start Gallery's Beyond the Machine show are also tattoo artists. Kevin Jarvis, for example, has a tattoo on his upper right leg that was done by Davey James, who also has an untitled painting in the show.
And Jarvis himself is also a tattoo artist exhibiting flat work at the Start Gallery: he works at Gypsy Kings Tattoos in Commerce Township with Zach Hewitt, who also has work on display at the gallery. "Zach has amazing detail, I'd love to have one of his pieces," Jarvis said of his colleague. Hewitt expressed admiration for the work of Stephanie Henderson, one of the few artists in the show who does not do tattoos.
Gallery owner Jason Reed made a few dozen special prints reading "Beyond the Machine Detroit 2012" which were given away to gallery patrons for free at the opening reception. The show will be up for only another couple of weeks and some artists are already busy preparing frames and wires for the next show.
Gypsy Kings Tattoos does not yet have their own website but they do have their own Facebook page.
May 5, 2012
Candy Draper with one of her paintings at Start Gallery. Photo by Alonso del Arte.
Now there are more art galleries in downtown Detroit than there are Starbucks. One of those galleries, the Start Gallery on the little stretch of Grand River east of Woodward, is celebrating a one-year anniversary with the colorful paintings of Candy Draper. Inviting Candy Draper for the anniversary show was the idea of gallery owner and curator Jason Reed.
Not only was Draper the first artist to exhibit at the Start Gallery, "she was the catalyst for me to start this gallery," Reed recalled. Reed had long admired the work of Draper, but had wanted to show a lot of it in one place at one time. "Probably three quarters of all my stuff" is at the Start Gallery, Draper estimated.
"Each of the pieces in the show has a song [that inspired] it," Draper said. For example, Draper's best friend, Bridgett Davenport, a Detroit photographer, really likes the song "Stellar" by Incubus. So Draper, while listening to that song, painted Stellar. At the opening last night, Davenport made sure to emphasize that she has already bought Stellar, as a gallery assistant was on the way with a red dot to attach to the tag.
Draper has painted at Davenport's house. "She came over to my house, to see if she would get a different vibe," Davenport explained. Listening to a Nine Inch Nails album, Draper painted using primarily reds and blacks. "We are both Capricorns," Davenport said, pointing a ram in one corner of the painting and a genie in the other. "My kids see birds and animals" in Draper's paintings, Davenport said. Her children have not seen Stellar yet, which is on display at the Start Gallery for one more day.
Indeed the whole show is on display just one more day, today, May 5, until 6 p.m. and then from 8 p.m. until midnight. Free art will be given away to everyone in attendance, according to the gallery's Facebook page.
July 29, 2012
Timothy Orikri with his painting Detroit On My Mind at Start Gallery. Photo by Alonso del Arte.
He's got Detroit on his mind, and Detroiters have him on their minds. The work of Timothy Orikri is now showing at three different places in Detroit: at the Detroit Public Library's Main Branch, at the Carr Center, and, starting last night, at the Start Gallery. The reaction to his work has been almost completely positive.
Betty Morrison, a Detroit entrepreneur, is one of Orikri's biggest fans, having seen his work at various locations throughout America. "I love his use of color, his textures, his versatility," Morrison said at the Start Gallery last night. She was with Orikri at the Carr Center a block away when he put his work there. If she could commission a work of his, "it would be three panels of trees and sky," Morrison speculated.
The biggest painting at the Start Gallery's exhibit right now is the 3-panel Detroit On My Mind, and Orikri has no qualms about mentioning that the painting includes Kwame Kilpatrick's initials. When he was mayor, Kilpatrick consulted with Orikri about the arts in Detroit. "That was before his legal troubles began," Orikri said, putting it delicately.
There are a few other paintings in the current show featuring Detroit landmarks. But as Orikri is a very prolific painter, even a solo show is but the tip of the iceberg. Leon White, an electrician who lives in Detroit, was very impressed by Orikri's paintings of women playing musical instruments. "She's the temptress and she's Mother Earth," White said, first pointing to a painting of a woman with a bass and then to a painting of a woman with a saxophone.
The gallery's Facebook page does not yet have a closing date for the Orikri exhibit, but presumably it will be before the opening for the encore presentation of the Rob Adams exhibit.
COMMENTARY. Now I can't remember what I meant by "encore presentation of the Rob Adams exhibit." I now think it was a misunderstanding of the information available to me at the time.
COMMENTARY. If I recall correctly, this is the headline that was so terrible that my Editor couldn't hold back anymore.
August 19, 2012
Artist Rob Adams with the portrait he painted of Jessica Alba for his friend Nathan Taib. Photo by Alonso del Arte.
He's baaack. After taking a break from the art gallery circuit, Rob Adams is making a triumphant return, starting at the Start Gallery with the Back By Popular Demand solo exhibit. "I had so much going on," Adams recalled. He still maintains a busy schedule, but chooses his commitments more carefully. When he could no longer ignore the requests for a new exhibit, it was time to select a gallery. Several galleries were considered, with 323 East, the Grosse Pointe Arts Center and Start Gallery neighbor Long-Sharp Curis being leading contenders.
Jason Reed, owner of the Start Gallery, gets many requests from artists of varying quality, but he was very impressed by the work of Adams and agreed to host the exhibit. Seymor, an artist and Reed's right-hand man, was also very impressed with Adams. "All his different strengths really show" in It's All In Your Head, an acrylic spray paint that shows an old man with his brain exposed. "It's really fresh," Seymor added of his favorite Adams painting so far.
A triptych tackles modern ideas about love and romance in three striking scenes of a couple having sex with the woman pointing a gun at the man or at herself. This is of course no reflection on the artist's relationship with his girlfriend Kristen Whiteside, a nursing student from Sterling Heights with whom their 2-year relationship has already outlasted those of some celebrity couples, with the artist's relatives predicting that Whiteside will eventually be part of the Adams family.
Some of the paintings are overtly political. There is an admiring portrait of John F. Kennedy near the entrance of the gallery; "JFK was one of our last great presidents," Adams declared. Closer to the gift shop hangs the 4-panel piece The 3 Faces of Evil, which portrays George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld with a text that reads in part "I charge you with genocide, the corruption of our government, ... you put our Soldiers in danger ... you are the terrorists!"
There was a healthy mix of old and new Rob Adams fans at the opening reception last night. In the latter category is entrepreneur Marcelus Brice, who runs the Mark England Collection, and saw paintings by Adams for the first time last night. "This [expletive] is hot!" Brice said repeatedly, and is now in talks with Adams to commission a number of paintings from him. Brice's friend Joy Lewis especially liked the portrait of Martin Luther King. Adams has yet to do oil on canvas, preferring acrylic and spray paint, but is planning to tackle oil after the current show.
Adams is no stranger to requests and commissions. His friend Nathan Taib, Jessica Alba's biggest fan in Michigan, had long wanted a portrait of the Sin City and Fantastic Four star. "I was asking him [Adams] forever. He showed up with it [the portait] one day," Taib reminisced. "He almost cried" when he saw the painting, Adams recalled. The Alba portrait is not for sale, and Adams believes it will be the first piece to come down when the show ends, going directly back to Taib's house. The exhibit runs until August 25, according to the gallery's Facebook page.
November 11, 2012 9:13 PM MST
Auston Purdy next to his piece Eye Candy at Start Gallery. Photo by Alonso del Arte.
The eyes have it at Start Gallery. Last Tuesday, Michigan voters rejected six state ballot proposals, but last night every piece at Start Gallery had the vote of art lovers who attended the opening reception. The show, titled Vessels, features the work of five artists who are all close friends and call themselves the "2435 Tribe." One of them, Seymor, gallery owner Jason Reed's right-hand man, who curated the show, is an artist who is due for some honors.
"This is a show we've been planning since May," recalled Brian Gagnon, one of the artists. "Seymor's been here all week" installing artwork, Stephen Kruse explained, so "he went home to shower and sleep" before coming back to the gallery for the opening reception. Despite the variety of artists and styles in the show, Seymor achieved cohesiveness not just through the judicious placement of the artwork, but in one case painting a wall to create a kind of group of shadows for the pieces on that wall.
That kind of 'background' art is almost certain to go unappreciated and without comment. But Seymor's 'foreground' art was very well appreciated. Well of Urd, for example, a painting that shows the Norse equivalent of the Fates from Greek mythology, was well-received even by those unaware of mythological inspiration.
"Most of the work here I have difficulty relating to," said Del Sandburg, a retired software analyst, and Seymor's father, at the opening reception. He was proud of his son, though he admitted he didn't really understand Well of Urd until his son explained the mythological angle. Other artists in the show include Allison Gardner, Zach Hewitt, Auston Purdy and Ryan Wheeler. The show will be up almost until Thanksgiving, according to the gallery's Facebook page.
In Norse mythology, the Well of Urd is located under one of the roots of Yggdrasil, and guarded by the three Norns, Urd, Verdandi and Skuld, who pronounce the fate of newborns, according to Nordic Runes: Understanding, Casting, and Interpreting the Ancient Viking Oracle by Paul Rhys Mountfort.
The Bingo character recurs in many of Brian Gangnon's paintings, like the ones at Start Gallery. Photo by Alonso del Arte.
COMMENTARY. In hindsight, my headlines for articles back then tended to be terrible.