Our next guide was Liz Isakson herself, who recently did a public art project in Scripps park, which is near her home neighborhood in Detroit. She took us to Dabl’s African Beads, which besides housing a wonderful collection of jewelry and other beads, has an outdoor art park. One of the employees there, Curtis Bundles, showed us around and talked about the store and the park to us. The outside of the building is covered with donated mirrors, while the sidewalk sports different styles of African alphabets (of which there are dozens!). There’s even an outdoor public art installation area crafted over rocks, iron, mirrors, and wood that added to the glamour of the place. He told us that they built a stage to also hold weekly reggae dance nights there — another example of how art stages a place to bring community together.
Liz then took us to Theatre Bizarre, another project that attempts to reclaim some of the abandoned buildings in Detroit, but with a twist: these folks made their block into a twisted carnival. The haunted carnival is the artistic vision of one man, but dozens of people work on creating this place throughout the year. One participant showed us around the site itself (I didn’t catch your name, but thank you so much!) and explained how things had been added and changed over the years. Even though Theatre Bizarre only held parties once a year for Halloween (currently on hold as the wrangle out details with the city of Detroit), the group formed by working on this project was really fascinating to hear about. Then Liz introduced us to Stacey Dumas, who lives on site of the theatre. We had a delightful time talking to her about the project and its incarnations while sitting on her balcony overlooking the scene.
We’ll definitely be back again!
& believe or not, I still have one more post to go about Detroit. Y’all have really showed us an incredible, incredible time.
