George Tysh

Born 1942, in Passaic, New Jersey, poet George Tysh was educated in Detroit. Tysh’s numerous volumes of poetry, including The Imperfect (2010) and Dream Sites: A Visual Essay (1998), have been praised for combining “rigor, artifice, and intuition,” in the words of Brooklyn Rail reviewer Jeffrey Cyphers Wright. Tysh has also collaborated with the conceptual artists Sarkis and Christian Boltanski. He co-edited the project In Camera with his wife, Chris, and Blue Pig with David Ball, and has served as arts editor for Detroit’s Metro Times newspaper.

Howard Weingarden

Howard Weingarden (1942-2011) was a visionary painter born in Detroit in 1942. He studied one year under Ken Bear in Miami Florida, a year under Don Brackett at Cass Tech in Detroit and won a National drawing award. An honorary scholarship provided him with 4 years of study at the Society for Arts and Crafts (now CCS). His teachers at CCS included Charles Culver and Sarkis Sarkissian. Weingarden had 5 consecutive solo exhibitions from 1965-1970 at the Renee Galleries located 297 East Grand Blvd., in Harmonie Park, Detroit.

Why the casket…? (for John Sinclair) by Ben Schot

Why the casket…? (for John Sinclair) I first met John Sinclair in the summer of 1998. Ronald Cornelissen and I, two artists from Rotterdam, had invited John to a program on the radical subculture and music scene of Detroit in the late 1960s and early 1970s that we were organising in our hometown that summer. […]

Lyman Woodard

"Lyman was born March 3rd, 1942 in Owosso, Michigan and started his formal musical training at age four on the piano. In 1962, he attended the Oscar Peterson School of Contemporary Music in Toronto, Canada. After hearing a performance of the great Jimmy Smith in 1963, he was convinced that this was his future and he made the switch from piano to the Hammond B3 organ. Lyman formed the first Lyman Woodard Trio in 1965 along with fellow musicians Melvin Davis on drums & vocals and Dennis Coffey on guitar.

Jerry Younkins

"Jerry Younkins is a man who doesn't like to live in the past. Although he's done many, many things which I find to be very interesting, I mostly find out about them from outside sources and then have him grudgingly confirm them. He's done so many things of interest that I wouldn't even know where to start. Do I tell you that he used to date Janis Joplin, and that they lived together? Do I tell you that he's done lightshows for everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Alice Cooper? Do I tell you that he's done posters for the likes of The Moody Blues and Jefferson Airplane?