Description

Season One:

ART BEAT #101: JIM PALLAS
AIR DATE: 9-6-03
Did you ever wonder what happened to all those hippies from the Sixties? Some of them overdosed on peace, love and sex. The rest ended up here. I’m talking about the beautiful rolling lawns of Grosse Pointe. Probably the last place on earth one might think to look for one of Detroit’s most enduring reminisce of the Sixties artists subculture, artist Jim Pallas.

ART BEAT #102: TYREE GUYTON
AIR DATE: 9-13-03
The Heidelburg Project began as an outdoor environment in the heart of Detroit. But it has grown into much more than that. A lot of people don’t seem to realize that the Heidelburg Project is even still here. Well, it is and it’s better than ever.

ART BEAT #103: GILDA SNOWDEN
AIR DATE: 10-11-03
They say art imitates life. But there are those of us who believe art is the thing that really teaches us what life is all about. Today’s lesson features Gilda Snowden, a woman who shines a bright light in Detroit’s hard driving art community.

ART BEAT #104: BOB SESTOK
AIR DATE: 10-18-03
Over thirty years ago something truly exciting began to happen in Detroit. A group of young artists, led by an expressionistic painter named Bob Sestok, came together and blew the lid off the art world. Whatever on may think of the work itself, no single force has had a more significant impact or influenced more artists than the Cass Corridor movement.

ART BEAT #105: VITO VALDEZ
AIR DATE: 9-27-03
Vito Valdez knows the transformative power of the arts; he’s lived it. Along with a few other heroes of the art world, he’s on a mission to cover southwest Detroit with art. He encourages conversation about the community, about the environment, about art. Mentor, educator, artist, messenger, Vito Valdez.

ART BEAT #106: JEROME FERRETTI
AIR DATE: 10-4-03
While the arts in Detroit have flourished creatively amid the ruined state of the city, this intense purity has not tended to put money in the pockets of the artists. There are those artists who are committed to the people of Detroit. The people of southeast Michigan. These are our heroes and this is their story. Jerome Ferretti’s background is in hard work and his art about the people who work.

ART BEAT #107: SASHA ECKES
AIR DATE: 10-25-03
There are a lot of myths about Detroit art. Here’s one. Artists have to leave Detroit for greener pastures like New York or L.A. to find their inspiration and their fortunes. In this episode, we will meet Sasha Eckes, an extraordinary woman who lives to disprove such ridiculous notions. She has left San Francisco and made Detroit her home.

ART BEAT #108: LOUIE SANCHEZ
AIR DATE: 11-1-03
Louise Sanchez moved to Detroit from California back in 2000, because he was attracted to the energy of the Motor City. He now collaborates with Furnace Hot Glass, one of Detroit’s hottest glass shops, where he is integrating venetian glass techniques with his own inimitable style. With great inspiration and patience, glass blowing has become Louie’s dharma. His powerful visions have become a reality through glass.

ART BEAT #109: MATTHEW LOFLIN DAVIS
AIR DATE: 11-8-03
This week’s Beat seeks to uncover the mystery of Belle Isle’s stoneman sculptures. Created as if by nature itself, these strange and wondrous rock formations have divided the community – begging the questions: Is it art? Or is it dangerous?

ART BEAT #110: RENATA PALUBINSKAS
AIR DATE: 11-15-03
We visit with one of the crown jewels in Detroit’s creative community. Renata Palubinskas is truly an international artist. Originally from Lithuania, Renata now calls Detroit her home. Her work focuses on the metaphysical but is steeped in classical method and technique.

ART BEAT #111: ANNE FRACASSA & CAROLE KABRIN
AIR DATE: 11-22-03
For Anne Fracassa, Detroit is an endless source of fascinating subject matter. Utility poles and water towers, railroad crossing signals, billboards, bridges and massive old buildings against gray winter skies are powerful abstract shapes that are repeated in endless variations and patterns. Anne sees the beauty in the urban landscape of Detroit.

Emmy award winning artist, Carole Kabrin has found a way to turn her God-given talent to the service of society. As the senior courtroom artist for ABC, Carole has expressed the happenings of some of the most notable and notorious judicial proceedings in recent history.

ART BEAT #112: GAIL MALLEY-MACK & CLAUDIA SHEPARD
AIR DATE: 12-20-03
Gail Malley-Mack’s interest in the images and meanings of ancient symbols, the marks that have become language and the ground that holds them inspires her to dig. But she’s no archaeologist. Gail’s search is for the visual and verbal images that speak to our contemporary culture.

Claudia Shepard paints only herself in her work, exploring relationships both formal and psychological. Her work centers on the most feminine of stories; she paints dresses. Masterful renderings, images absent of the figure, left only with the spirit of memory.

ART BEAT #113: MARK WOLAK
AIR DATE: 12-27-03
Mark Wolak served 11 years in prison for a non-violent drug related conviction throughout the decade of the nineties. In prison he created over 450 abstract paintings filling reams of blank books and canvases with ever more fully resolved images. Now a free man, he remains a veracious artist and his work is sought after not because of his prison story but because of its full resolution and depth.

ART BEAT #114: MARK ARMINSKI
AIR DATE: 1-3-04
Mark Arminski is recognized as one of the foremost rock concert poster artists in American today, and one of a select group that has gained international recognition. Named “Artist of the Year” by Visions magazine, Arminski is not limited to poster art and CD covers; he is a master muralist, fine artist and body painter. The man, the rock legend, the artist, Mark Arminski.

ART BEAT #115: JOCELYN RAINEY
AIR DATE: 1-10-04
Jocelyn Rainey lives by a simple creed: by faith, dreams transform into reality. She has taken her dreams to a level beyond her wildest imaginings. After working as a freeway grasscutter and a near fatal gun shot wound that left her temporarily paralyzed, she had the vision to recognize her life as a series of signs and therefore felt pressured by destiny to create a powerful life. A different life. The life of an artist.

ART BEAT #116: HUBERT MASSEY
AIR DATE: 1-17-04
Hubert Massey is a self-described renaissance man whose art is cast in wet plaster. He dreams large dreams of empty spaces waiting to be filled with colors that will forever mirror the beauty of his painstaking work. Master muralist, Hubert Massey.

ART BEAT #117: CARL LUNDGREN
AIR DATE: 1-24-04
Carl Lundgren was at one time a well-known science fiction and fantasy artist, having created almost 300 book covers, as well as illustrations for magazines and other publications. Then, in the 1980s he quit working for the publishing industry and embarked on a fine art career, writing and publishing a book about his life called “Carl Lundgren, Great Artist.” Tune in to find out how great.

ART BEAT #118: PEWABIC POTTERY
AIR DATE: 1-31-04
Founded in 1903 during the height of the Arts & Crafts movement in America, Pewabic Pottery is today a vibrant non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of the Arts & Crafts ideals while advancing contemporary ceramic arts through its full curriculum of educational programs, its support of individual artists, outreach to various communities and leadership in the exhibition of contemporary and historic collections.