Jason Jaworski continues his reporting from Detroit on our 15th Anniversary project with Power House Productions. We just showed you Jason's conversation with Richard Colman, and now we catch a journal entry of some of the action happening in the neighborhood. Read More 
Jason Jaworski spent the last two weeks in Detroit reporting on our post-15th Anniversary project with Power House Productions. He had a chance to speak with painter Richard Colman, one of the six artists in the neighborhood painting and reimagining the homes we bought with Power House. Read More 
In the process of creating an entire world within the space of an abandoned place here in Detroit with RETNA, artist Richard Colman had a brief moment to talk about the intricacies of collaboration and creation as well as give us his thoughts on the PowerHouse Project here in Detroit amongst a myriad of other things. Here's a glimpse into our conversation:
Jason Jaworski: I was curious as to your impressions of Detroit-
I like it, the project's been fun, but I haven't really gone out. It seems cool, but I've just been in here- and in a way, it feels a bit more like art camp with everyone around in the same neighborhood.
How has it been collaborating with RETNA?
Awesome- we met not too long ago, but we have a lot of mutual friends. I think our stuff works off each other really well. When you see my stuff against his, it seems like it can almost change the meaning of what his stuff is although our universe is the same. His work balances against mine, and everything is starting to get this real cool, almost sort of religious feel to it.
Yeah, like the center room here, with all your geometric shapes and his calligraphy-
Yeah, yeah- it's pretty fun, I wouldn't mind doing more stuff like this and sort of exploring that a bit more, you know? I think a lot of it, at least when I was thinking about it- I took in context with what would work well with his sort of aesthetic and with what he does, with his shapes and I think that that, as well as time, affected the color palate we chose to work with. It would be fun to sort of explore different color palates together to sort of see how things change. But as far as working with people goes, he's an easy man.
It seems like you guys just dove into it-
Yeah, we're both workers. And though we'll both be in here joking around, at the same time we're just glad to be together and to be able to get to work, and all the joking around and all that, I think it kind of helps.
Did you guys plan anything out or was the process more loose with just picking the color palate and jumping into the work?
That's pretty much it- there weren't really any solid plans as to what we were going to do. We're both familiar enough with what each other does and it was more, "hey, why don't we keep it simple, and use these colors and we'll just bounce everything off of each other- you take that wall, I'll take this wall, you go up there on that side, I go up there on that side," and it sort of kept this continuous rhythm and in a way, makes the whole house feel like one big painting.
Did you expect this from the project coming here- that the houses were going to be like this?
I didn't really know what to expect. It's funny, I think nobody really knew what to expect.
In what way? Did you think it was going to be all walls or-
Yeah, I thought when it was first proposed that we were going to be painting murals and going around to sort of beautify the neighborhood and as time went on, I got more emails and nothing was really clear on what we were doing, but it was obvious that it was something else. They emailed the supply list at one point and it was all power tools and the Bobcat and it was sort of a - "what the fuck are we doing?" (laughs) But it's nice, 'cause I kind of also didn't want to know what was going on, kind of enjoyed getting here and figuring it out. It kept it spontaneous- are we painting houses, are we painting the outside, the inside or are people going to be moving into these houses? There were a million questions about what it was going to be, but I figured that with all the time constraints and with how busy we were all going to be- I thought it would be better to sort of stop thinking about it too much and just really take it as a project- not to stress on it, just figure it out and have fun.
I remember you saying how in San Francisco, you just wake up, go to the studio and work all day, throughout the day and throughout the night. I was wondering if the atmosphere and the schedule of habit here is similar to that?
It's similar, but it's a little more rigorous because we only have a certain amount of time to work on a whole fucking house. In San Francisco, I'll give myself little breaks- see my girlfriend, see my friends, get something to eat. Here, the deadline is so close and you sort of have to keep working- and I like that. I don't mind the pace, it's a fun sort of way to work with a lot of work and I like to work.
Do you prefer working like this then, with time constraints, or do you prefer a more loose structure?
I don't really prefer it either way- it just is what it is. You figure it out. Different things definitely happen when you have less time- in this case we kept the color palate really minimal, it's three colors max that we're working on. So you don't really have to sit there and go- is that pink right, how's this color merging with that one over here, does this fit- it's more..
Just doing it-
Yeah, exactly- just doing it. Sometimes I like to take a lot of time with things, but I also appreciate what can happen when you're just not allowed that freedom. It just kind of forces your hands a little bit and you make decisions because you have to and they tend to be just as good as something you would spend 6 months on.
How different would you say it is from working on a project such as this versus your current drawings or paintings?
Well, I've been using a similar palate on some of the new paintings I've been doing- it's all silvers and blacks. A few paintings I had just finished the day before coming here, so this style was already on my mind. Also, purposely for my last show, there was stuff that I spent several months on, but for the majority of the body of work, I left myself very little time and limited myself to just a few colors. So the transition from going from that to this is almost completely seamless.
Do you think your work is progressing more into that- a slimmed down color scale with more geometric shapes and compositions?
I don't know- it's just something that I'm doing now and liking, but it's not that I don't like the other stuff as well or wont continue to pursue that- it's just what I'm doing now at this moment. Whether I stay with it or change to something else will just add to the vernacular.
And your studio in San Francisco, is it just you in there or do you share that space with someone else?
I rent the front half of this big warehouse space and it's just me where I work, but somebody lives in the other half. When I get back I'm moving to other studios. The apartment beneath us in our building opened up so I'm gonna move the operation on over to there.
So how different of an environment is it here, with a bunch of artists around you, as opposed to your normal work environment?
Making things for me is normally a solitary operation, I can spend days in the studio without really seeing or talking to anybody and here it's nice to be around other people. I think having that energy is really positive, especially for a project like this. And it's cool too- I know RETNA, I know Saelee, but I don't really know the other artists- I'm kind of familiar with what they do, but it's nice to be around people and be put in this situation with people you normally wouldn't be working alongside.
Do you think that that affects the process with how you create and with what you're working on here at the house?
I think you can't help but become influenced by it. I don't know if it's going to show up in the stuff I do now or later on, but I kind of become a sponge with that shit, so I'm sure it'll turn up somewhere. It's fun to be around Ben [Wolf] and Monica [Canilao], 'cause their practice is so far from mine, and I feel it's good to be around that and to see someone working and creating in a different way.
It feels like their process is much more communal-
Yeah- I know a lot of thought goes into what they do, but they tend to work a lot looser, which for me is good to be around, 'cause I tend to go the opposite way.
Do you think a project like this could be done anywhere else or is it more a part of Detroit?
Well, technically, it could be done somewhere else, but the driving force behind the project is Mitch [Cope], and I don't really know of anyone else like him. He has a real passion for the project, and he's just- he's consistent. He's in it. I mean, in a few days, we'll all be gone and he'll still be here with Gina, the both of them still working. It's a really great and a really rare thing- most people who would be in this situation would be like, "Fuck this- I'm outta here." But he's not like that- he's a rare individual and this is a rare kind of project to be a part of. He's real community minded and he's also a really great artist too, so I don't know if it could be pulled off anywhere else without him. For me, it's just something else to work on. It's a unique thing to do and be a part of. RETNA and I were talking about it and anywhere else, at best, the situation would be somebody with one house where you get a bunch of different artists to work on their own room. But here, we're able to come in and there's fucking four houses across the street from each other, and everybody's just hanging out, chilling on the porches, borrowing tools..
Yeah, RETNA and I were talking about how we should all come back during the summer and have a reunion on all the porches of each house-
It would be nice to have a little more time to sort of experience the city, but at the same time I guess I could do that now, but I don't really work like that. I kind of take on more than I probably should- so you know, if we were here for a year, I still probably wouldn't get out much, although to come back with everyone here in the summer would be real nice.
Is that how it is, sort of in the back of your head- I've got to paint these fucking trees-
Yeah- rarely do I find myself in a situation where I'm not thinking about working or painting.
So in San Francisco, you're just working constantly?
Yeah, pretty much- I mean, why wouldn't you be.
What else are you currently working on at the moment?
There's a show next week at Subliminal that Seonna [Hong] helped curate- it's her, it's me, James Marshall, Souther Salazar and I'll probably do some stuff in Miami for Art Basel and after that it's just a constant stream of things.
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Photographs by Tod Seelie Words by Jason Jaworski 
A soft rain was falling, through slivers of plastic and glass I saw outside the window of the plane a city submerged in clouds and a landscape spreading far and wide in sprawl. Large crops came through the clouds, visible in geometric shapes of circles, rectangles, triangles and other odd obtuse prisms. From the view of the window the plane wing was visible and it started its change, a small sliver of metal protruding and extending itself outward as the plane bended over, slowing and shaking somewhat. A small man next to me looked over and smiled, his hands resembling old magazines weathered and torn in the rain. He had two canes on him, one, he said "for walking," the other "for remembering." It was his wife's and he was coming back home after having buried her in LA where she always wanted to end up. "Think I'm going to stay here though- there's nothing really like home, no place like home like they say- and Detroit always was and is going to stay and remain home to me." The plane moved through the clouds and bended down, wheels retracting and the rubber burning on the tarmac as we landed somewhat abruptly. I took off my headphones and stared further and farther outside- lines of light becoming blurred in the lines of rain running across the surface of the window in a delta which split out into rivulets and smaller veins of bubbles and rainwater. We pulled up slowly, the man next to me constantly content- smiling back and forth, taking out his bag below the seat in front of him and going through it to make sure he still had everything on him. "So where you headed out here? You writing some stuff for a class or something?" I explained the whole PowerHouse Project to him- said he was interested "mighty interested in that. Just watch your back- no telling what's out there now, 'specially with all the fires and abandoned homes and what not. The city's getting better though-" We talked for a little longer, going through the common threads of conversation between strangers on a plane- where we're from, where we grew up and where we're headed. After a long line of waiting, we deplaned and walked out into the hangar of gates, each number suspended by glass marking which way to go. I stopped for a second, moving my typewriter out of my bag and into a smaller more manageable one, watching him walk away slowly, carrying one cane and using another, wading through the crowd of persons and eventually disappearing into it.
I turned on my phone and listened to several messages before calling Gina back and describing what Kevin looked like so that she may be able to pick him up. After a small bit of laughter I walked over to a small booth with packaged foods, magazines and newspapers, buying a bit of gum and walking on, stepping onto the moving platform / sidewalk and taking it all the way down and outside the terminal, standing under shingles of rainfall while waiting to be picked up.
Through a darkened bit of glass I saw Kevin, his smile and mouth agape, hands waving and a woman behind him, Gina, smiling and waving as well. I stepped off the curb and walked over to the car- a silver / gray Volkswagen. I tossed my bags in the back, gave out several hugs and sat in the back of the car, entertaining a 9-month year old baby with toys and a bottle while the rain pushed on in a soft setae, brushing the earth and land surrounding with its liquid. From there, we drove past the planes and onto the highway, eventually reaching a section of Detroit near the neighborhood of Hamtramck.
On the drive over our random conversations collided with one another- we walked back and forth between places and where we're all from, talking of Detroit and what to expect, what we expect, what to see and where we want to go. The streets had an odd air to them- there is so much already said and spoken in the press of bombed out, burned down buildings, abandoned spaces, the climbing unemployment rate and so on and on- but it didn't seem like the Detroit commonly painted in paragraphs- it was a warm place, one with persons on the street and lights buzzing above and a small veneer of rain covering all like a gloss of some magazine cover. We went back and forth between dreams and images of the city for awhile before the car stopped and we got out- the weather near perfect in its brisk ability to attach a cold air to one's face. We walked up the steps of a small house which was to become our home for the remainder of the period while we were to stay here.
Gina explained the house, it belonged to a German curator who was out of town, she showed us our beds and I must have smiled to myself- the first time I was going to sleep on a bed in months. The day pushed on, night arrived, and we sat- staring out at the blank spaces of day on the wall, lines of dirt submerged under the pink, a faint smell of cats and other oddities lining the air of the place. Gina gave us a small tour of the homes in the car on the way over, we talked for awhile about the spaces, the project and what everyone is hoping to accomplish while staying here. She explained that the other artists were probably out, as it was Swoon's last night and she was leaving tomorrow morning. We stopped for a second, unpacking our bags and spreading things out across the shelves of the house before going over to the Yellow House where the other artists were staying. No one was home or answered the door. We left, walking on and spreading out into the curtains and windows of the night, wandering down the empty streets and lanes of Detroit, the two of us having been on opposite coasts of the country just a few hours before.
- Jason Jaworski
Detroit, MI - 10/13/2010
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Photograph by Tod Seelie
Words by Jason Jaworski
You’re lucky we’re telling you about this just as they became available, because they are limited to only 30. We’re talking about Saelee Oh’s new Infinite Path laser cut print. Read More 
In her time here, Saelee Oh has constructed a miniature model of a neighborhood out of wood, found objects and scrapped items. She has painted walls and cut out intricate designs of trees, vines and the veins of a person holding onto them. In her house here, she is taking the installations already present and merging / repurposing them with her own. Recently, I sat down for a moment to chat with her. Here's a glimpse into our conversation:
Jason Jaworski: What are your impressions of Detroit?
I like it.
What's your favorite thing about it?
Well, I really like this project that I'm working on, it's cool to work on something that's a break from just flat paintings or drawings, and I like the challenge of having to take this leap of faith to come here- I didn't really know what was going on, couldn't plan that much because I hadn't seen the spaces yet, so I had to just come here and go with it. Coming to a new space, you don't know what materials you're going to find, you don't know what materials are around, and it's been fun trying to respond to this neighborhood and the house and it's been inspiring to work with other artists that I like, making new friends... it's like summer camp, except way fucking cold. It's just been very inspiring and I hope to be able to share this with the community and it's fun to make something that's kind of permanent or semi-permanent like what we're doing inside these houses.
Nice.
It's been a lot of fun- actually, honestly, I haven't had this much fun making art in a long time. It's been refreshing and I like that there's a new format for my pieces out here. I've been working more sculpturally, collaboratively and 3D as well as using other things that are around me like wheat-paste. Also, I've loosened up a lot.
Loosened up your work or your process?
My work.
Do you think that's from being out here or just in general?
Being out here- I'm working looser, dirtier and I just don't give a fuck. (laughs) Just kidding. It's just a more spontaneous process than how I usually work and it's been a positive thing so far.
Would you say your environment has a lot to do with how you're working then? Like do you think you'd be experimenting with all this found paper or these found objects?
It does have a lot to do with how I'm working. I don't normally work with so many found objects- at home, I don't like to have things around, I really don't like to collect things because I travel so much. I prefer purging more than I do collecting.
The question people seem to be playing with is whether or not they're going to buy the house they're working on out here-
Honestly, I did fantasize about it and I'm still fantasizing about it, but I don't know if I would want the responsibility because I'm always traveling and not in one place. I'm kind of attached to my house and I want to buy this house just so that I can keep working on this project, keep adding to it and just building something continuously. It wouldn't be my living space though. I would be making something that's open to the public and community.
Do you have a studio or a space like this right now where you can do things like this- make art and place it on the walls and so on?
No, no- and it's so cheap out here in Detroit! That's just part of the appeal.
You think you'd like living out here with all the other artists?
I'd like living out here if it was exactly like how it has been this past week, and we were all friends forever. If I could eat at that shawarma place and get a cheap, delicious breakfast everyday. It's been fun being a part of a neighborhood.
How is it working with the other artists?
It's been great, everybody here is a really hard worker, and it's been really fun.
Do you miss that? Having that energy in a studio with a bunch other artists doing a bunch of shit?
Yeah- I've been working solitary for the past two years or so, so being around other artists and watching them work has been a very special treat. Besides the other artists though, in Detroit, people just sort of tend to leave you alone. And actually, I really like it here in that I feel I don't belong here at all- I really like that feeling.
Feeling out of place?
Yeah, I love that feeling.
Is it the same feeling you get while traveling, like when you went to Argentina a few years ago?
Yeah, of course. This neighborhood is pretty crazy- we get to work long hours, many hours into the night, I don't really know of any other neighborhoods where you can do that- unless it's some far removed, lonely, industrial part of town.
You're talking about how Ben's just sawing away at something while we're talking at 3am?
Yeah- we just use power tools at night, oh and I love the trees- it's fall, it's beautiful, I love the black squirrels-
Had you heard anything about Detroit previous to coming out here?
I actually heard pretty negative things.
Like what?
I heard there were a lot of murders out here and I thought that it was going to be pretty depressing with not much to offer, but now I see that there is a lot out here and a lot to offer- you just have to look for it.
Yeah-
There's a lot of opportunity out here and there's a ghost town feeling surrounding the city, and for me that's a positive thing.
Do you prefer to work this loose and in a shorter time-frame like this or do you prefer something more structured and drawn out?
Both- I kind of need a short, concentrated period of time and I'm trying to take this time here that I have without taking it for granted and get everything that I can done. I'm also hoping that all the ambitions and ideas that I have for this house and project - I'm not going to be able to do all of it, so I'm hoping that one day in the future it'll work out to where I can come back and continue creating in this city and in this space.
You're talking about the ideas you were explaining previously? Like having a living garden inside the space?
Yeah, I wanted to make a living garden, which I can't do this time of year because it's not the right season. There's also a lot of stuff I want to have done to the outside of the house and I want to make the house more interactive so it's not just my own art project but something more welcoming for others. I want it to become a more participatory interactive project, with a mail project and other things. And there's just a lot of room in this house; there's a backyard, there's a front yard, a porch, the roof, the attic, the basement- everything has this huge potential of becoming something.
Did you have a concept coming into this thing? I remember you saying you wanted to do something like a flood-
That came after. I think when I first came I wanted to build something and I wanted it to be more functional, like a real house and I was trying to think more practically of a way where the art would not be in the way. I was thinking of designing furniture and things for a living space- but with the way the houses are, I think this works better.
You thought the houses were going to be in better shape than they are?
Yeah, I thought they would be in better shape. Some of these houses need a lot of work put into them- plumbing, lighting and electrical work- it's going to be a long way and a lot more than we can do- but I think that what we're doing - the art - is very beneficial.
Have you had any talks with any of the people in the neighborhood?
Well, I'm kind of shy, so I haven't really been going out and talking with all the neighbors.
Have any people come up and commented about the project or the art you're making?
Yeah, they're curious, and I think it's a positive thing and it's good to see some life going on. I hear more from people like Mitch [Cope] or Harrison who talk to the neighbors.
Do you feel liket his project could be done anywhere else or is it more something that could only be done here in Detroit?
Well, the style of houses is definitely something that we're working with and responding to, and that's very specific to this neighborhood and Detroit, but there's a lot of small cities and spots around where you can get away with something like this. It's interesting- you can feel isolated here, but at the same time you're not too far removed from a normal thing that you would do in a city as opposed to a small place.
What do you think of all the other artists and the houses they're working on?
Honestly, I'm rooting for everybody- I like all their concepts and ideas, the more people that are out here doing their thing, the better.
For more work by Saelee Oh, including details on her new print release, check out her site - here. -
Photographs by Tod Seelie Words by Jason Jaworski 
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