During a Saturday panel discussion at Art X Detroit, cultural critic Vince Carducci, a recipient of a no-strings, $25,000 Kresge fellowship, reminded everyone just how extraordinary the cash and marching orders were that the Troy foundation gave to three dozen local artists: “Here’s a check, go do something cool.”
Mission accomplished.
The results were the core of the inaugural Art X Detroit, the vibrant five-day free festival in Midtown that ended Sunday evening. It included more than 40 events at 21 locations while showcasing the 36 Kresge artist fellows and two $50,000 eminent artists, sculptor Charles McGee and jazz trumpeter Marcus Belgrave.
A sweeping diversity of art, music, poetry, dance, theater and more was on display, produced by some of the region’s most creative personalities, and all of it bred from the soul of Detroit.
Borrowing a term from the world of French wine, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman said Sunday at the Hilberry Theatre that the best art reflects “terroir” — a profound expression of specific soil and tradition. This was the triumph of Art X Detroit: The art was produced by us, for us and about us.
From the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit to Leopold’s Books, audiences poured into Midtown for the festival, and overflow crowds were turned away in some instances.
A few highlights:
• Tyree Guyton’s “Street Folk” — thousands of pairs of colorfully painted shoes strewn about an entire block of Edmund Street — meditated on homelessness. Like much of Guyton’s work, it merged whimsy with sagacity, and singular moments like a toddler’s shoe jolted the emotions. • Bassist and composer Joel Peterson is best known as a free jazz improviser, but he also works in notated idioms. His “String Quartet for a pair of 45s,” which premiered Thursday at MOCAD, blended open, Americana harmony with tricky Eastern European rhythms and affectionate lyricism.
• The young rapper Invincible was on fire Thursday at the Detroit Science Center, crafting messages of social justice in savvy rhyme schemes and musically rewarding settings. Her theme: The people united will never be divided.
• The ongoing group show by the Kresge visual arts fellows at MOCAD offered terrific diversity and superlative works. Two faves: Hartmut Austen’s beguiling abstract paintings displayed within a towering architectural frame, and Sioux Trujillo’s quiet and exquisite installation of milky-colored felt cones spread on the floor like a school of fish, accompanied by elegant webs of colored thread reaching for the heavens.
• Standing atop a chair before an elbow-to-elbow crowd at Midtown shop Leopold’s Books on Saturday night, writer Steve Hughes read scruffy and wryly humorous tales from his new collection, “Stupor: A Treasury of True Stories.”
• R&B/soul dynamo Monica Blaire and a crackerjack backing band had the audience moving, grooving and responding to slinky, upbeat originals and covers like Prince’s “Controversy” and Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” in a Saturday evening showcase at the Magic Stick.
• Belgrave’s “Tribe” reunion soared far beyond jazz fans’ high expectations Sunday evening at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Original members of the ‘70s collective – Belgrave , tenor saxophonist Wendell Harrison and trombonist Phil Ranelin – mixed it up with the trumpeter’s world-class protégées, pianist Geri Allen, bassists Bob Hurst and Ralphe Armstrong and drummer Karriem Riggins. The music ranged from love-and-peace grooves and funk to swinging post-bop, and Belgrave, who rode the aggressively interactive rhythm section to some of his finest solos in recent memory, assumed the role of philosopher-king.
Staff writer Steve Byrne contributed to this report.