Time: Creative Solutions for a Depressed Economy

The Heidelberg Project
Detroit, MI 2012

Every few years news anchors, fanatics and twenty-somethings find a reason to fear and celebrate TIME or rather the ending of it. With the winding down of the Mayan Calendar and impending apocalypse everyone has been counting down the end of days. Time is a fickle dimension.  As human beings we always want more even though we know it is limited. We wish our jobs, families and other responsibilities would give us a moment to  just be. Many artists choose not to have families in order to preserve their time. Others choose to live a more spartan lifestyle in order to work part-time or freelance.The spike in unemployment over the past few years has afforded the U.S. one thing, time. 

Lee Plaza Hotel Room
Detroit, MI

For decades Detroit has been drowning in time. With high unemployment rates and urban flight buildings were left unoccupied and now stand like giant guardians over the city. In 1986 Tyree Guyton, a Detroit resident, returned from his service in the army to find the empty houses, empty streets and an empty economy. Guyton began to use his time to start The Heidelberg Project. The project began as polka-dots painted on abandoned houses and over 25 years has grown to take over streets and blocks of an area that looked "bombed out" upon Guyton's return. His efforts created an amazing public art installation and helped cement a community.

The Heidelberg Project
Detroit, MI

Guyton's effort have spawned other initiatives to take over dangerous areas and create something that supports it's neighbors. Urban gardening is one such endeavor that has exploded in the city. The Ferguson Academy for Young Women is Detroit was the subject of the 2009 documentary, "Grown in Detroit". The film introduces us to an alternative High School for pregnant teenagers. Part of their curriculum is learning agricultural skills not only to help support themselves but to take some of the financial burden off their families. Working on an urban farm is obviously not a monetarily supported job. Rather you reap what you sow. 

The economic landscape of Detroit is beginning to shift. Young creative types recognize that Detroit offers one luxury, time. For artists and entrepreneurs who want creative space it is a solution to the mounting cost of rental prices. For the larger community, Detroit's growing creative initiative could be a model for small, industrial cities affected by the recession that has left millions of Americans with something they always wanted more of. 

Welcome to the Office: Things Could Be Worse

Sometimes realizations can be completely banal and familiar. Like a line you remember reading in every birthday card you have ever received. Sitting in my windowless office in front of my computer screen I had the pedestrian realization that yes, "things could be worse". I had never considered an office job. The thought of roasting under fluorescent lights, answering emails, seemed like a waste of time, talent and life. I swore I would become a crazed coke fein or heroine addict before I would submit to being a desk jockey but at the age of 27 something happened. The recession. 

The recession affected each generation in a particular way. For myself and my contemporaries that meant the undertow was in full swing when we took the plunge out of  grad school, clutching our MFAs which were a less than desirable life raft. I was facing student loans, a tenuous bank account and the black abyss of job opportunities.  Coffee shops didn't even want to hire me. Upon my move to New York I applied to be a cigar girl, wall painter, personal caretaker, art teacher for toddlers and finally, an artist assistant. Luckily my prior experience was applicable for one of these jobs and I began working in various artist's studios. Each week I would show up in old jeans and a tank top to a work space most familiar to me. As I stretched canvases, cleaned brushes and resized jpgs we would chat about life, art, and being a creative individual.  

I loved hearing stories of the art world in the 70s. The struggle, the hunger, the parties, the ideas. In many way it sounded exactly like what I was going through except for one fact, the space available to artists had been turned upside down. Artists need two types of space: work space and exhibition space. During the 70s there were limited galleries and plentiful work space. Today there are a record number of galleries and work space is limited to those that can afford it. Long gone is the Tribeca filled with artists living in reclaimed spaces. SOHO is now a place you go to buy $1000 dollar sneakers rather than being an undesirable industrial area ripe for artist studios. My generation was told to look to Brooklyn. In the two years I was there the area outside of my loft replaced it's burned out cars for plans to build a mall. Yet again artist work areas were traded for galleries and the economically established.

This leaves artists with few options. One, keep being pushed out into the burroughs and constantly relocate your studio. Two, seek out like-mided, poor, contemporaries and live together in a live/work space. Three, leave New York for cheaper living space but give up the creative jobs that are available there. I chose option three.

A year and three months later, things could be worse.