a laboratory for artists
Popps Packing is available for rentals this holiday season and beyond. We can host intimate groups of 30-75 for corporate, private and community events. Popps Packing gallery and studios available for larger groups (up to 75ppl) and Popps Emporium first floor is available for more intimate gatherings.
If interested please fill out our inquiry form here so we can learn more about the event you are planning.
Closing Reception December 4, 2022 12-4PM
Gallery Hours: Wednesdays 11-4PM or by appointment
Contact: Poppspacking@gmail.com, 248-568-9167
Popps is excited to present our first exhibition in 3 years, A snake in the grass, featuring the paintings of Julia Callis and the pottery and sculptures of Virginia Torrence . Callis and Torrence have been quiet forces in the Detroit art community for years and their poetic and distinct individual practices are often un-seen, like a snake in the grass.
Please joins us on Saturday, October 29th 6PM-9PM at Popps Emporium to celebrate these two artists.
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Seen or unseen
A snake
lay bare, the boneless body
to tie knot
in the rope, shed off with
The skin, an image
Can both stand alone or
in conversation with others.
Disperate figures
on pot or panel, A dance
between friends with Discrete,
individually separate and distinct, image
Snake, or snake-less
“The Grass divides as with a Comb-”
and image becomes another, anew
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Julia Callis (b. Detroit, MI) received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan and studied serigraphy in Florence, Italy. She currently works at Wasserman Projects as the gallery Assistant and makes work out of Klinger Studios in Hamtramck, Michigan.
Virginia Rose Torrence (b. 1991, Midland, Michigan) received her BFA in Craft/Ceramics from the College for Creative Studies in 2013 and her MFA in Ceramics from Alfred University in 2016. She is the co-founder of Ceramics School a community art school and residency. She lives and makes art in Hamtramck, MI.
Popps’ fall residents, Taylor Simone and Aino Aksenja invite you to see their works in progress on Saturday October 29th, 6-8pm at Popps Packing!
Aino Aksenja is an artist who looks for escape routes and tries to grow roots. Life and art intertwine in works that are site-specific installations, made-up rituals and stories. Aksenja often works with a camera. She studied photography in Sweden, Germany and Finland and fine art in Helsinki, Finland, completing her MFA in 2017. In 2021 she started studying landscape architecture, with the aim to connect art, landscape and architecture in her practise. Aksenja is based in Helsinki, and her works have been shown in Finland, Sweden, Russia, Germany, Portugal, USA and South Korea.
During her residency, Aino’s been working on a new video piece called Stranger. Through placing herself into it, the city slowly starts turning into a playground, St. Aubin Street into a stage. Dreams blend with reality in both this work and the embroidery piece she has begun in residence, Dream city.
Taylor Simone is an artist, organizer, and educator from Metro Detroit, currently living and working in Toledo, Ohio. She received her MFA in Visual Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2019 and currently works as an International Network Coordinator for the Design Justice Network. Simone is also the director/organizer of Exodus: School of Expression, an alternative space for BIPOC educators and artists to deepen their practice. Simone has exhibited Internationally in South Korea, Berlin and Italy.
Taylor will be showing the progress of her publication, Seeded in Flesh. This space and time have been one of world-building for Simone. Sitting with old and new symbolism that developed throughout their practice, they explore systems of selfhood and portraiture.
Our annual collaborative outdoor soundscape installation, Soundhenge is back! Please join us for this amazing sonic experience in the wooded lots across the street from Popps Packing this Saturday, September 24th from 4pm- dusk.
“DEMONS” is a collection of demons rendered by Sadie Nielson, our September/October artist in residence. Over the course of Sadie’s first month at Popps, Sadie made a series of small paintings, and hanging fabric sculptures inspired at least in part by her recent increased awareness of the destructive nature of human activity on the earth as well as the existential threat it poses to itself.
Popps Packing is excited to present, Floral Hygiene by Momm and Popp, Sustainable Arts Foundation Fellow, Regine Rode (DE)!
Rode began working primarily in sculpture and installation while living in LA where she received her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design. Her works aim to disrupt the traditional forms of sculpture by intertwining autonomous elements from her current surroundings. Please join us for her most recent body of work, Floral Hygiene this Thursday from 6-9PM!
Join us this Friday, June 28th from 6-9PM at Popps Packing for open studios and view our June Resident’s works in progress!
Carley Zarzeka (PA) received her MFA in Studio from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her work in progress series “Wear Closed Toed Shoes”, Zarzeka explores how standardization has become essential in the world of product design and their relationship to the domestic space. She does so through a sculptural and installation-based practice collecting common objects to construct a framework of time and place that though aims for individualism, falters due to unconscious, generic consumerism.
Michael Hubbard (TX) born and raised in the Detroit-area, has been creating a multi-panel painting inspired by women of Detroit’s music history. Titled “Rocksteady,” the painting combines images of Aretha Franklin, Mary Wells, and other soul artists, forming a complex portrait of a sound.
Gabrielle Finn Egnater (CA) is in the midst of a series titled, “Mini Monuments” , that questions which objects can “mark importance” and which objects are a “marker of importance”. Egnater’s newest body of work aims to allow the audience to place their own memories and desire on the “marker of importance” by creating “adjustable monuments”.
Popps Packing is excited to be a part of the Together We Sound Festival in hosting a night of Detroit-based music with the Acropolis Reed Quintet, New Music Detroit, and Detroit Bureau of Sound+Kristen Carey & Chris Sies!
Thursday, May 30th from 7 pm – 11 pm @ Popps Packing 12138 St. Aubin St., Hamtramck, MI 48212
$10 door suggested donation (currently no advanced ticketing)
More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/2462225840456837/
Join CultureSource at Popps Emporium for an info session on the 25 grants they offer to the creative arts community!
Many types of arts activities happen in Southeast Michigan regularly, and regardless of scope and scale, they can contribute to the vitality of our communities. Through this program, each year for the next three years, CultureSource will offer 25 $3,000 grants to creators of culture, in collaboration with the Detroit Arts Support program.
Thursday, May 23 from 5:30-7pm @ Popps Emporium, 2025 Carpenter St., Detroit, MI 48212
Sign up on through the facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/427290598036764/?active_tab=about
or learn more here: https://www.culturesource.org/resources/creators-of-culture-grants
