At Popps Packing:
Homespun, New works by Matthew Hanna
Detroit native Matthew Hanna studied fine art at the College for Creative Studies with a concentration in sculpture. As a curator, he has organized exhibitions for the Willis Gallery, Grey Gallery, Detroit Artists Market and Alley Culture. As a museum professional, he was worked on exhibitions for the Detroit Artists Market, Pewabic Pottery, Center Galleries (CCS), the Ford Gallery at Wayne County Community College District, and currently at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. As an artist, he has exhibited in many Detroit galleries and widely across the United States including Michigan, New York, Florida, New Mexico and Wisconsin.
“Driven by history, faith and fantasy, what engages me is a spiritual devotion to the ritual of art making itself; pounding images into the surface with common tools and vernacular materials.
I pay tribute to folklore demigods, world book heroes and personal histories. By appropriating and adopting elements from the prevalent images of modern culture I am also critiquing and exploring a path of learning about what makes up our culture; the everyday pieces that shape our lives and our thinking. In other words, the small things that defines us.”
At Popps Emporium
NEIGHBORS, an exhibition of new works by Paolo Marino
Paolo Marino ( b. Rochester, NY). Marino holds a BA in Studio Art from Nazareth College in Rochester, and an MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook. Marino has worked as a movie theatre employee and manager, an assistant at a Montessori school, a teacher, a pizzeria janitor, and a drummer in several bands and a bar. His work has been shown at the International Print Center,New York;Big Car Collective, Indianapolis. Marino recently completed an Artist Resinecy at Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA where he curated a an Exhibition featuring Detroit artists.
“I find that in all I do, there is some sort of a threshold between fantasy and reality. I work from observation and from my head. I take experiences that I have had and turn them into vignettes, much the way a film director might – or a fiction writer. All of my work references the ways we ingest fantasy in some way – I make posters, film stills, dolls, models, and videos. And I do so in a way that improvises with my surroundings in order to better reflect them.”