The James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History is pleased to present IN THE AIR: VOICES FROM DETROIT AND BEYOND, September 2020 through April 2021. The series includes works created by local and national artists in response to the global pandemic and racial injustice, featured on a billboard, located at the corner of S. Woodward and E. Canfield, Detroit. A total of eight solo-presentations, each one month in duration, will be on view beginning September 15, 2020.

The paintings by Marcia Freedman and Ani Garabedian in Figuratively Dreamingpresent a current interpretation and exploration of a genre that is versed and familiar but still evolving. Abstract painting rose from a multi-century evolution that moved away from the realistic religion-based storytelling of the Italian Renaissance through the French Impressionists and on to schools of thought like Dada.

The Uptown Triennial 2020 exhibition, the second iteration in the series, presents the work of contemporary artists in dialogue with the Harlem Renaissance, a defining moment in American modernism and African-American cultural history, during its centennial year.

A conversation with artist Ani Garabedian around her current practice and activities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Garabedian will have a two-person exhibition with Marcia Freedman at M Contemporary Art in the Fall of 2020.

Roy Feldman is a Hamtramck photographer with a hefty resume.

Forty Years in the business have certainly taught him a thing or three about his chosen craft.

Last month, his newest exhibit, titled “Truth & Grace,” was on display at the M Contemporayr Art gallery in Ferndale. The exhibit features many Hamtramck residents as subjects.

Vans, El Club team up for custom sneaker during COVID-19 crisis

The sneaker is designed by Freddy Diaz, a Southwest Detroit artist known as SW Freddy, who got the call from El Club last week to put together a design and pulled an all-nighter to get it done on deadline. Diaz is also working on an upcoming gallery show which is set to do a virtual opening on April 17.
"It was literally crunch mode times three," Diaz says.

For his latest solo exhibition, Detroit photographer Kenny Karpov took to the Mediterranean Sea for a closer look at Europe's refugee crisis.

Many of the photos show Black bodies packed onto ship decks, calling to mind a modern-day slave ship. What gets lost in the mainstream media narrative of the refugees, Karpov believes, is that any of the African and Middle Eastern refugees are in fact fleeing the horrors of modern-day slavery, human trafficking, famine, and war.

Looking through his lens, photographer Kenny Karpov tries to capture who people truly are — their expressions, their bodies and the light in their eyes. His emotional portraits, paired with written work, tell their stories.

In Karpov’s latest project, the book “Despite It All We Never Learn,” he tells the stories of refugees, the real people going through travails on a journey toward better and safer lives.

Kenny Karpov will be the featured exhibiting artist at M Contemporary Art Gallery, right across the street from the Ferndale Library, starting November 22 -thru – December 15. This is his first solo exhibition, but Karpov is not an artist. Even if it is an exhibition in a gallery, with 21 works of photography, Karpov is not an artist, just as he’s not your typical photographer. At least he doesn’t talk like one; doesn’t live like one, and doesn’t, frankly, think like one.

A background in storytelling and photography plays a big part in Rashaun Rucker's art, which he uses to direct attention to critical social issues.