While sifting through items at an archive in Philadelphia a few years ago, I came across a letter from Marcel Duchamp addressed to Walter Arensberg where Duchamp described how he was constantly trying to preserve the present and show to the public that his art (through his readymades) was, as a normal object, just as beautiful as anything else in a gallery or museum space and that, in a sense, he was attempting to take the forgotten and present it back as something to be preserved. And today in Detroit, in this case and at this space - the two-story blue house on Moran St. - Monica Canilao is doing this to the nth degree.
From taking and acquiring objects that were once rotting in abandoned spaces and places to repurposing them completely, absorbing them into her art and creating something that was once forgotten into something memorable for the future to see for free- Canilao is restructuring the neighborhood with fragments from the surrounding areas and presenting them back to the city in ways as intricate and ornate as the objects she collects.
Strangers and neighbors walking by comment almost always on the house; some asking whether it is becoming a haunted house for the coming holiday, many curious as to "what is going on in there?" or "what are they building in there?"
The answer is simple and will be followed by an inordinate amount of descriptive exposition: she is creating an entire world within this house- the second floor housing the majority of the bounty: objects intricate, ornate and of different sizes / shapes- from glass bulbs, bottles and vases to the spaces of porcelain items, stray scraps of wood, rusting fragments of metal, door handles, and the drapery of a previous home- all of these things which shall eventually merge together into the formation of a chandelier a few feet smaller than the entire diameter of a room on the second floor. Downstairs, housed in organized sections, are piles of larger pieces of wood, which shall make up the formations of another installation and the structure of a sculpture.
Outside, in ways only Canilao can organize- the cluttered madness of a wall covered in objects large and small with rays of different and inordinate color painted evenly in a geometric pattern creating a vibrating effect / affect on the eye as one drives by, along with a two pillar frontispiece comprising of several smaller sections of dark and warm wood cut and fitted together in overlapping design, making the mosaic of an undecipherable figure.
Canilao's work here spreads itself out evenly into the veins of the found objects, her paintings, sculpture, as well as the deconstructing and repurposing of the actual building into her art. From carving sections of the front façade into a disparate shape, painting over the front, forming several triangular sections of color which bookend and line the lanes of the veranda- there is a never-ending sense of her own person throughout the work as well fragments of the people that surround, help and assist her- whether these people and persons be friends, neighbors, lovers or others- everyone here is working constantly / consistently in order to better the project, her vision, theirs and the neighborhood.
Photographs by Tod Seelie Words by Jason Jaworski 
From the speakers of a second hand stereo bought a few blocks down the street, a random radio station blares out snippets of song while in light halogen and incandescent, RETNA and Richard Colman paint the interior of an abandoned house in Detroit.
Working in their own version of gray scale, Colman and RETNA have taken over the numerous and many rooms which make up the house; their styles mixing and merging with each other whilst simultaneously complementing the other in their own intricacy- RETNA's own brand of calligraphy representing the abstract movements of a brush and Colman's refined geometry making up the majority of spaces in the main room- circles, triangles and other rhombi / prisms forming the basis for powerful forms bordered by the work and writing of RETNA's own hand.
Having recently met at a dinner at Jeffery Deitch's house a few months ago, the two have grown close together, both in art and friendship.
Speaking with RETNA on a recent drive through Detroit looking for artifacts and supplies to work with, he spoke of how their rapport has grown gradually with each meeting, culminating in this- their first collaboration.
"I was familiar with his work and I liked it, we had some similar friends that I found out later, but he's one of those guys who, when you meet him, you feel like you've known forever. We just clown around, cracking each other up while we paint."
The two plan to collaborate fully on the interior and exterior of the house, eventually covering both completely in their art, or, in RETNA's words, "we're gonna take over the spot real quick, in and out."
Text / Images by Jason Jaworski 
The sense of freedom within the spaces of a city like Detroit is immeasurable. From carving quadrants of an abandoned space and home, walking the streets or going through the city via van- buildings running by the glass of a window and bridges traversing through the inner sections of downtown while fall falls outside- there is a never-ending sense of freedom and a blank state to the surface of things here, as if every moment were malleable and able to be formed with whatever ideas or art you have to work with. There is no hidden song or cypher lingering long or around- things here are taken much as they're presented: completely whole and of / from the surface.
The houses on Moran Street where Swoon, Ben Wolf, Monica Canilao, RETNA, Richard Colman and Saelee Oh are working form a sort of square formation if seen from an aerial view. Across the street, neighbors of every order move through the veins of Moran, Klinger, Connant and Lawley Street.
If driving down Moran Street, one can see segments and fractions of the house that Monica Canilao is working on from afar- large sculptures of found objects culled together from all the abandoned spaces and places taken from either the late hours of the day or those early embers of a Detroit morning with sections of the front façade carved out in proportions resembling a plume of smoke or the body of a snake which makes up the majority of the second floor amongst the planned placement of clutter from ornate wooden table legs to fragments of glass and mirror organized in coruscant shapes.
Next to Canilao is the house that Richard Colman and RETNA are working on together- a once abandoned, ailing site: white paint crumbling in lattice-like patterns and sections. The house now sits blinding in its grayscale contortion, with an outside wall written obsessively and elegantly in RETNA's familiar calligraphy. Inside the home, a labyrinth of rooms with sections of RETNA's written words and painted prayers and Colman's familiar and brilliant geometric patterns.
Across the street, a figure attached via wheatpaste from Swoon: a woman's face in angelic proportion with a small city making up the majority of her person- thighs, calves and torso emerging from the shapes of houses, homes and apartment buildings with small figures and strangers walking throughout the image. Inside the house, a section of the floor cut out in a prism. Encased beneath in the basement: numerous and many more pieces from Swoon as if the house were a geode- a rough, broken-down exterior with an inner sanctum/interior of jewels and remnants in the form of Swoon's pieces which line the walls and floor in intricately cut portions of paper pasted together along with images of children in profile or dead center- eyes staring agape with hunger while light from the glass nearby comes in through the small slits which make up the basement windows.
In back of the house, numerous dormers and sections of homes / houses sawed off forming the beginning sections of several sculptures by Ben Wolf. Wheatpasted around the house are fragments of bed sheets and a pattern of colors and shapes spray-painted at the base resembling those natural formations of a feather.
Next to the Ben Wolf / Swoon house, a home with a façade of blue water painted over at the base. Up the stairs and into the home: numerous installations from previous artists interacting, merging and moving to the spaces and sculpture of artist Saelee Oh; her ideas filling up the space completely, engulfing the insides of the home as if a flood came through. Notes written on sections of loose scrap paper adorn the floors and walls while the sculpture of a miniature house and one even smaller sit in pastel color with roofs made up of books found at random sections of street surrounding the city on a night run. Further into the house a previous installation and stair structure re-purposed into the spaces of a forest, with fallen limbs from nearby trees spreading out, upward and toward the ceiling.
All of these houses and artists coming together in a community which is already coming together more and moving away from the previous blight and abandonment which had hindered these spaces previously. With the ways that things are progressing, it wont be long before the majority of the spaces here are occupied to admire the art at first and then the burgeoning revival that lingers on the lips of everyone's mind.
Text / Images by Jason Jaworski 
Saelee Oh sawing sections of wood to hold up the miniature house she's building within an abandoned Detroit home.
A roof made of books found in the street and other spaces in and around Detroit.
Sawing and sanding sections of the front entrance to house she's building.
Text / Images by Jason Jaworski 
Inside the interior of a home in Detroit with RETNA and Richard Colman where the two plan to collaborate on several pieces throughout the house and its exterior as well.
Text / Images by Jason Jaworski Find out more at: DigitalRetna.com / Juxtapoz.com / PowerHouseProject.com Photos: thedirtiestlittlerainbow.blogspot.com 
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