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"We are all connected," says Charles McGee, posing with one of his works in June at Library Street Collective.
The New Yorker magazine introduces readers to "one of Detroit’s living cultural institutions," influential artist Charles McGee.
A detailed profile by Morgan Meis, an adjunct instructor at the College for Creative Studies who is a nationally published arts and culture writer, looks at decades-spanning achievements by the 92-year-old painter.
His new "Unity" mural is on a 13-story building on Grand River. (Library Street Collective photos)
McGee was the focus of "Still Searching," a four-week exhibition last month at the Library Street Collective gallery downtown.
It began with the unveiling nearby of his bold, big mural in the Capitol Park area (right). The work, “Unity,” fills the side of a 13-floor building at 28 W. Grand River Ave. It's 118 feet high and 50 feet wide. Meis writes:
The composition is a complicated interweaving of dots and zigzags, lines, blocks of solid black and indeterminate organic shapes.
There are also representational elements, but it takes a couple of minutes of looking to pick them out. A snake slithers down the top-right section of the design. A small bird nestles beneath curly shapes. What had seemed to be a random collection of polka dots turns out, on closer inspection, to be, possibly, the hindquarters of a leopard.
In his 1,200-word tribute, the CCS instructor adds :
Over the years, McGee’s art has worked its way into the contours of the city. Once you have an eye for it, you spot it in art museums, in public parks, at libraries.
There’s a famous work at the Detroit Institute of Arts called “Noah’s Ark,” a painting in which two figures, dressed in what appears to be traditional African garb, traverse a backdrop teeming with shapes, colors, and symbols.
Mostly abstract sculptural pieces sit in public spots all across the city, their jumpy lines coming together and diverging. . . . He has said that his work is about "the power of togetherness. . . . It’s all connected just like we are all connected." . . .
From his perspective, the story of Detroit is but another instance of a cosmic tale in which destruction and rebirth are inextricably intertwined.
"Rhapsody in Black and White," a 2008 work that's nine feet wide and five feet high, was among McGee creations displayed last month at his "Still Searching" exhibition downtown.
