Graem Whyte | POPPS PACKING

The Agent @ Popps Emporium

Opening Reception: July 7, 2018

7-10PM

Popps Packing is excited to present The Agent, a new immersive installation/performance by Jova Lynne that transforms Popps Emporium into Paradise Travel Company.

The Agent

” The Travel agent is here to help plan your trip to Paradise-a remote location between the Caribbean sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The travel agent is here to assist you in exploring the depths of your imagination–taking you to a place where fantasy becomes reality and colonization becomes conquest.

Come to Paradise Travel Company-the place where everyone wishes they were. “

Jova Lynne is a transdiciplinary artist and curator based out of Detroit, MI. Of Jamaican and Colombian heritage, Jova was born and raised in New York City. Jova graduated from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA in 2010 with a Bachelors of Arts in Video Art and Education. She has worked at the Museum of Moving Image in Queens, NY as well as the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA. Jova is a grantee of the Astraea Foundation’s Global Arts Fund, which has supported her work on media based projects in Kingston, Jamaica and Berlin, Germany in addition to her work in Detroit. Jova moved to Detroit in 2015 to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts in Photography at Cranbrook Academy of Art which she completed in May of 2017. Jova’s work investigates themes around female empowerment and the construction of identity by exploring histories of colonialism and brutalist theories. transdiciplinary practice. Jova is a co-founder of BULK SPACE and Black Artists Meet Up-Detroit and is currently the 2018 -2019 Ford Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art-Detroit.

The Agent

July 7-August 11, 2018

Popps Emporium

2025 Carpenter St. Detroit ( Across the street from Popps Packing)

Gallery Hours Saturday 12-5 and by appointment

Register for Camp Carpenter!

Popps Packing Presents:

CAMP CARPENTER

Two Sessions: July 23 – 27 & August 6-10, 2018

Camp Carpenter is a weeklong outdoor adventure camp for ages 7-16 set in and around Popps Packing’s dynamic buildings, art installations, and green spaces. Campers will work alongside professional artists to design, build and create imaginative worlds of their own making. Youth will learn to use basic hand tools, to take their designs from idea to reality, to collaborate across age groups, to tell imaginative stories through theater games and role playing and more — all while contributing the betterment of the Detroit/Hamtramck community through the construction of a lasting play space for all. Register online here.

All Materials included. Bring a bag lunch, a good attitude and your imagination!!

This year we are offering 2 sessions!!

Dates: July 23-July 27 and August 6-August 10, 2018

(Mon. through Fri.) from 9:30AM-3:00PM

Weekly Rate: Pay what you can, Suggested $200 for non-residents; free for Detroit District 3, Hamtramck, and Highland Park residents

Location: Popps Packing, 2037 Carpenter St., Detroit, MI 48212

Register online here.

To see images form last years amazing camp visit our Facebook page here

Check out the great story by Zak Rosen about our camp on NPR last year here

Considering donating materials and supplies to the Camp!

broken wooden furniture,
wood scraps (no particle board or splintery stuff please,
workbenches,
saw horses,
ladders
large tarps
corrugated plastics and metal
hinges
rope
wood (2”x4”x96” wood, 4’x8’ 1/4” plywood, balsa wood)

Or Donate to support our teaching artists and staff so we can keep the camp free for local youth!

Checks be mailed to: Popps Packing 12138 St. Aubin, Hamtramck MI 48212

We are a 501c3 not -for -Profit organization so your donation is 100% tax deductible!!!

Contact us at poppspacking@gmail.com with any questions

Learn more about Adventure Playgrounds and some of our inspirations for Camp Carpenter:

https://beamcamp.org/projects/

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/08/04/334896321/where-the-wild-things-play

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/

https://popupadventureplaygrounds.wordpress.com/welcome/pop-up-adventure-playgrounds/

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/04/03/395797459/the-value-of-wild-risky-play-fire-mud-hammers-and-nails

This Project is made possible with support from Michigan Council of Arts and Cultural Affairs Mini Grant Program and Culture Source, the Peck Family Foundation and Enterprise Collaborative Action Grant.

Traveling to Turiya: The Future Mapping Project by Ingrid LaFleur

Opening Reception:

Saturday May 5, 2015

6-9PM.

Popps Emporium, 2025 Carpenter, Detroit

Guided Meditations on Sunday May 6, 13 and 20 at 2PM

Traveling to Turiya: The Future Mapping Project outlines how to attain turiya, pure consciousness, in Hindu philosophy and investigates the theory that de-colonial futures can be created only when all trauma is cleansed from the body.

For this installation, Lafluer created a series of sculptures that utilize over twenty varieties of crystals such as pyrite, black tourmaline, amethyst, and bismuth, which she believes can heal traumas and help us transcend into the cosmos. The sculptural installation is accompanied by a sound essay that brings together the wisdom of Audre Lorde, Eartha Kitt, Octavia Butler, Sun Ra, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison.

Transcending the human experience is the only safe place where futures can be imagined freely without limitation. LaFleur believes the map for the future can be found within the transcendent music meditations created by jazz musician and Hindu practitioner, Alice Coltrane. Inspired by the composition Galaxy in Turiya, LaFleur finds a kinship with Detroit born Coltrane and regards her as a Patron Saint of their hometown.

Traveling to Turiya: The Future Mapping Project

May 5- May 26, 2018

Popps Emporium

2025 Carpenter, Detroit

Ingrid LaFleur is a cultural producer, arts advocate, pleasure activist, founder of AFROTOPIA, and former candidate for mayor of Detroit. LaFleur has developed and organized art exhibitions both nationally and internationally with a curatorial focus on
Afrofuturism. In 2013, LaFleur founded AFROTOPIA, an evolving creative research project that investigates the possibilities of using the arts movement Afrofuturism as psychosocial healing.

Within her artistic practice, using sculpture, sound, site-specific installation and performance, LaFleur further unpacks ideas around trauma, which have arisen as a result of audience engagement through AFROTOPIA. She has exhibited in BOOM City Detroit curated by Dashboard Co-op (2015); the Something Else Off Biennial, Cairo, Egypt curated by Simon Njami (2015); Future Africa-Visions in Time at the Iwalewahaus at University of Bayreuth, Germany (2015-ongoing); Traveling to Turiya: The Future Mapping Project at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College; Take Root Among the Stars at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

LaFleur has presented at Centre Pompidou (Paris), Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA),
TEDxBrooklyn, TEDxDetroit, Iwalewahaus at the University of Bayreuth (Bayreuth, Germany), Ideas City, New Museum (New York), AfroTech Conference (Dortmund, Germany), and Black in Design at Harvard University, among others.

LaFleur is based in Detroit, Michigan.

Residency exhibition with Eric Magassa.

ONE NIGHT ONLY EVENT!

Saturday April 21, 2018 7-10PM.

Join us for a special exhibition of works in progress by Artist In Residence , Eric Magassa (Sweden).

Eric Magassa (1972) is a multi-disciplinary artist currently based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Magassa has a rich cultural background and was brought up moving back and forth between Gothenburg and Paris with his Swedish mother and French father from Senegalese and Malian descent. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Magassa studied at Central Saint Martins, London and The Art Students League of New York.

“Eric Magassa’s body of work spans a variety of materials and methods ranging from painting, collage, and print to cinematic sequences and performative camera set-ups. His many years as a DJ built an intimate connection between his image creation and music. A brief glimpse into the Eric Magassa studio reveals inspirational material in the form of ethnographic artifacts, textiles, modernist sculptures, colored pieces of paper, spray paint, color tubes, books, music and snap shots of abstract urban environments reduced to structures, surfaces and compositions. Objects and artifacts that have long lost their meaning are captured and given new contexts. Driven by restlessness, but above all, curiosity, the fragments are used to reinterpret the world. Despite the vast range of sources, an unmistakable aesthetic with visual unity is created.
For Eric Magassa, art is not a representation of an objective view, but a way of understanding and connecting with life. He does this through heightened presence and concentration within a world of perpetual motion. Through the constant flow of images and impressions, his work suggests a holistic worldview, and the possibility of a utopia of diversity, and a world without borders.”
-Translated excerpts from an essay written by Angelica Olsson

This residency is made possible through an ongoing partnership with the Region Västra Götaland, Sweden.

Check out the Facebook event

The Lounge of Saturn- A winter salon exhibition

Opening Reception: Saturday, December 9, 7-10PM

Popps Packing is pleased to present our winter salon show, The Lounge of Saturn. Saturn is known as the mythological god of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation as well as the god of time. During the month of December the Romans celebrated Saturn during the Saturnalia Festival, a time of feasting, role reversals, free speech, gift-giving and revelry. The Lounge of Saturn is our way to pay homage to the season, to the god of renewal, to honor the cycles of life and death and all that lies in between. The Lounge of Saturn will be an actual lounge space that folks can hang out in and relax while also viewing, sitting on and interacting with the art on display. The exhibition will feature both functional works and non functional works, video, installation, fine art, outsider art, printed matter, found objects, ceramics, sculpture and more.

Some of the featured artists include: Jessica Frelinghuysen, Ryan Standfest, Millee Tibbs, Marie Hermann, Scott Hocking, Clint Snider, Chris Schanck, Ryan Haas, James Viste, John Rizzo, James Collins, Peter Dunn, Adrian Hatfield, Anders Ruhwald, Alex Buzzalini, Victoria Shaheen, Teresa Petersen, Virgina Torrence, Henry Crissman, Chris Riddell, Michael McGillis, Noah Mantei, Graem Whyte, Faina Lerman, John Charnota, Alison Wong, Andrea Eckert, Nathan Tonning, Vince Troia, James Collins, Tim Van Laar, Rosie Sharp, Jonathon Rajewski, Kevin McCoy, Andrew Mehall and a few special guest performances.

Residency Open Studio: Patrick Schlotterback and Peter Rand

Join us on Saturday, November 25, from 1-6pm for an Open Studio event with our current Artists in Residence, Patrick Schlottereback and Peter Rand.

Learn more

Saturday, Nov. 25: Closing Receptions for Matthew Hanna and Paolo Marino

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.”

Homespun: New works by Matthew Hanna at Popps Packing

Homespun, New works by Matthew Hanna

October 28 -November 25

Gallery hours: Saturdays 12-5 and by appointment

“Objects are my “words,” the best way I know how to communicate with others about myself, what I understand of the world we share and the things I’ve experienced in my life. This exploration has continued over two decades, learning new methods and techniques, sifting through the detritus, the everyday images and information-saturated world; considering simple, ordinary things that fill everyday life.

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.

NEIGHBORS by Paolo Marino at Popps Emporium

NEIGHBORS, an exhibition of new works by Paolo Marino

October 28- November 25, 2017

Gallery hours: Saturdays 12-5PM and by appointment.

Paolo Marino was born in the city of Rochester, NY, and was raised in one of the surrounding suburbs. He 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. He Graduated with a BA in Studio Art from Nazareth College in Rochester, and an MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook. Most recently, he has shown work at the International Print Center in New York, Big Car Collective in Indianapolis, and curated a show of mainly Detroit based artists for his residency at the Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA.

“I think a lot about fantasy. I used to play a lot of video games, and the older I get, the more I realize that the screen I spent so much time looking through was the most accurate representation we have now of how fantasy exists in reality. It is thin but not see through, and goes on into perceived infinity.

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. I think action movies are modern day history paintings. 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.”

Last chance to see “Wearable Sculptures” by Stargazer

Saturday, September 9, 2017. 12-5PM.

This incredible exhibition of wearable sculptures is coming to end this Saturday. If you have not had a chance to see this special show, now is your chance.