Ellen Phelan

"I started working in the context of early post-Minimalism. At the time there was this scene in Detroit, a rough, gritty Motor City junk aesthetic. It was also quite macho, lots of guys. I took canvas off the stretcher and began treating it as an object—painting both sides, cutting and folding—which had something to do with Robert Morris’s felt pieces. But they were much more feminine, much softer, and had color. In some ways being an artist is a conversation: you’re always commenting on somebody else’s work. I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to say that I was trying to do a feminist version of Minimalism. But I did say to myself things like, Well, I think I could make that one better." --Ellen Phalen, interview Bomb Magazine

Pun Plamondon

Lawrence "Pun" Plamondon is a former activist and co-founder of the White Panther Party. He was the first hippie to be listed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Plamondon's father was half-Odawa and his mother was part-Ojibwe, which he was unaware of early in life. A Traverse City, Michigan couple adopted him and gave him his name, Lawrence Robert Plamondon. Plamondon had a troubled childhood and left home as a teenager.

Ed Sanders on Yeah, Exorcism & Electric Stencil Cutting

Ed Sanders is a poet, activist, publisher, founder of the Youth International Party, founder of the The Fugs, author of The Family (a bestseller on the Manson cult)  producer fugitive pamphlets of poetry and prose beginning in 1962 from his apartment and secret lower East side location, where he opened the notorious Peace Eye bookstore.

The bookstore became a famous hangout, hosting book parties and art happenings.  Sander's describes the bookstore and his early association with Fug-mate Tuli Kupferberg: "I rented a former Kosher meat store on East 10th Street in late-1964, with groovy tile walls and chicken-singeing equipment which I transformed into a vegetarian literary zone called the Peace Eye Bookstore. I left the words "Strictly Kosher" on the front window.

James Semark

James Semark departed this earthly plane sometime during the first week of December, 2010, his death due to a possible heart attack or possible complications from an allergic reaction to antibiotics, something we will never know as an autopsy was never done. The coroner's office explained it as "death by natural causes." He was found alone at home with the front door left unlocked, perhaps to not trouble anyone by having to break it down. His body was discovered by the Ferndale police several days after he died. James Semark was a poet, musician/composer, cosmic communicator, organizer and creative spirit born in Toledo, Ohio who moved to Detroit as a student at Wayne State University in 1959. His interests were diverse; from meditation and macrobiotics to technology, green-economics, jazz, urban renewal and theosophy.

A Statement by Archie Shepp

It is our belief that jazz musical forms must be extended to meet an entirely new set of artistic, social, cultural and economic circumstances. It might seem strange to some to see the word jazz mentioned in context with such cold hard realities as society and economics; yet it is an undeniable fact that the very origins of the music itself and all its subsequent development was rooted in societal forms. The field holler, the spiritual, the blues, each served a definite function and grew out of very real, very painful experiences. We know today that the lyrics of the spiritual sometimes served as an alarm, a call to arms, or an angry cry to be done with suffering and rid of the oppressor. Much of the blues is an extension of this argument.