Holiday Openhouse This Thursday

It's a roof-raising, salvage slaving, kinda holiday party. This time, bring your own tool belt. We are making wreaths (and will continue to on our late night thursdays), putting shingles on the roof of House 365 (http://www.tank425.com/) to raise money for the homeless and shopping for that one certain someone on the list for whom the mall holds no allure Bring your crafty friends or just support one. Royal Oak is promoting late night Thursdays as part of the shop local campaign so don't just stop at the yellow building on the tracks, park it (check out the new lot across main street, close is sweet!) and take a walk downtown. Every retailer is in on it and there's plenty of places to stop and take in a snack or social beverage. Hope to see you at the party!!

Salvage Inspired Wreaths at Inn Season Cafe

Get the magnifying glass out for this one, it's the poster from our wreath show at Inn Season Cafe, our favorite vegitarian restaurant down the street from the shop. We made so many wreaths from all that great detroit salvage we've been collecting, we are happy to have all that bare wall to hang some of them and they are so great together. No two are exactly alike. If you come by the shop, we will soon be sharing all our supplies for you to peruse and choose from should you want to make one yourself. We will be open late night thursdays up to (but not including) Christmas Eve and making wreaths on those nights so bring your crafty self and your crafty friends and family.

December 3rd is our Holiday Openhouse from 5-9pm. We are also hosting Clint Snider's travelling art project house 365 through Tank425 Gallery

On the set

OK can't save the lafayette building or it's beautiful crown of terracotta finials, but hey that telephone pole laying on the side of the road got a new life! Well a girl's gotta eat gang and now that I'm a prop house for movies, when they want weathered telephone poles, I'm gonna find them. Oh I could get all maudlin about the madness of spending gobs of money building temporary artifices to tell stories while the real ones fall apart but hey, this is the most fun I've had in the salvage business and this movie racket might be the salvation for this old city afterall. Today I got to take my 10 year-old Wyatt downtown to to see the big action on the set of "Vanishing on 7th Street" and there on the street scene is the old Heritage Co. Sign they rented, and a neon sign of ours too, sweet. All that equipment, cranes and trucks, fake sidewalks and lights, people running around talking into headsets all in an old Detroit parking lot. We loved it. I dropped my sign off to them yesterday with the help of my painter friend David King. It just so happened they were painting the store fronts just then and gee could they use a muralist. So I dropped off David too and today admired his quick work painting David Bowie and Joey Ramone on the "record store". Now I'm scrambling to get "props" ready for the new film on the scene "Crave". Oh it's fast and furious and these people work around the clock. As I write this, they are filming Vanishing and will be until midnight I guess. You gotta have stamina for that gig. I'm just happy to see all this weird stuff used, by people who think it's cool, pal around with fun creative types and show my 10 year old how vast and clever and cool the real world can be.

Urban sculpture

Call it post halloween fatigue, we were gonna work on our diy wreaths for an upcoming show and just didn't feel like sitting in the studio. So Jon and I did what we would always rather do on a sunny Monday in the city, junk around. We were on the hunt for lumber for Red Dawn (the movie being filmed here) to blow up and other assorted projects and located this oddity. Like the tree growing through the bike found this spring, the barrel of nails rusted into a solid mass is a product of nature and time. In a place like Detroit, things of no consequence are often left behind and in the absence of human activity, mother nature takes over. Rather like an African fetish with heavy biblical overtones, provided by the universe and rescued by the salvge slave.

Reunion Tour

I'll tell you what will turn Detroit's fortunes around...hosting former Detroiters and reintroducing them to what makes this city such a hot bed of creativity that's what. We have squired around two former Detroiters recently who had forgotten just how amazing the architecture and art scene is here. The Lafayette Building is coming down and CCS alum Greg Simons visiting from Portland got the inside tour with me and the wrecking crew as we surveyed what might be salvaged from the remains of this 1920's building. The rooftop terracotta and graffitied windows should not be left to the landfill. We've got a week to find enough interested parties to purchase some or all of it or down it comes and the 150' drop is not gonna be kind. Greg use to work for Richard Gage Design Studio and he flew in to show his sculptural work with reclaimed plywood at the studio's inhouse gallery/practical art school http://www.tank425.com/ Don't let the small venue in the Hazel Park warehouse fool you, he sold very well and was reminded just how loyal and supportive Detroiters are to their artists. Meanwhile, my high school pal Jennifer and her son Jagger flew in for a weekend from Miami to see her old stomping grounds and the fall color. She was ready to buy a house in the Boston-Edison district after I took her to an Estate Sale in one of the still beautiful and intact mansions down there. We stopped for provisions at the Eastern Market htt:://www.detroiteasternmarket.com and yummy Supino's Pizza, took our boys to the Henry Ford Museum http://www.hfmgv.org/ and marvelled at the minds and machines that made the city so great. Last but not least, we had to go to the old neighborhood, drive by the houses where we grew up and have cider and donuts at Yates Cider Mill http://www.yatescidermill.com/. It was the most perfect fall day ever and the grounds have been expanded since we were kids with a path along the river, all well-maintained. I hadn't been out there in years, and of course you never do these things if you don't have guests. So here's my challenge, invite a friend to visit you in Detroit, take them around to your favorite haunts, help them spend their tourist dollars here, say nice things about Detroit.

something's cooking

Sometimes things come easily to you and you might not even notice it. Take last night's impromptu dinner. I cook dinner for the 3 of us most nights, now I had two extra guests, old friends, so it was really no big deal. It gave me a reason to take it up a notch, but I didn't have a lot of time to make anything way out of my repertoire. I picked up a few groceries I needed anyway and then threw it all together with what was in the pantry and what was left growing by the driveway. Et voila, as Julia would say, just enough time to light the candles and set the table. Judging by the comments that were still coming this afternoon, it was more special than I thought. I've had a lot of cooking experience which helps, but my friend Jackie, co-owner Avalon International Breads, says so do a lot of people and it doesn't mean the food is good. Cooking just comes naturally to me, like breathing or talking. I might think it's good, but that's just my opinion. The other thing that comes easily to me is beautiful things. Partly from having done it so long, lots of people know where to find me and partly I know where to find it. The recession has put a serious restraint on my checkbook, but that doesn't keep me from bringing in new treasures for the store. This week my dealer pal Rick http://www.blogger.com/www.architecturalantiquesandgarden.com had a fantastic collection of tiles he'd had in his collection for 15 years, gathering dust in the basement. Rather than put them on ebay, he gave them to me to sell at the store. He had just sold a frame for me at a show and I am only too happy to return the favor. No money changes hands until it sells and we both benefit. Just when I needed it most, and boom, in comes something good that gives me reason to say, come on in and see what's new this week.

Getting by on scraps

Sure was slow in the shop this week. People were out, but they weren't buying. Nothing like a little anxiety disorder to motivate this week's create-new-inventory-out-of-what's-around. The 1930's diner stools have been hanging around the shop looking pretty shabby with the tired yellow vinyl seats. I'd had an epiphany of how to spruce them up with fabric samples I got from my very good friend and designer Charles Dunlap http://www.dunlapdesigngroup.com/. Now I had the time and motivation. Using a heavy duty stapler and 3/8" staples, I simply covered the seats in some gorgeous $125/yard fabric. Our designers often have good size scraps and samples left over from jobs and I have a good selection for a bargain thanks to them. We've stretched some of the more spectacular pieces and created wall art, used smaller pieces to make ugly dolls with kids and covered many a pillow. I've even been repairing my ripped up jeans. Vintage marimekko is my favorite, but this fancy stuff from Charles, now left over from covering the seats, is just right for the jeans I inherited from my sister Lia. She started this pair of jeans in the 1970's and I'm repairing her old repairs while I'm waiting for the tires to be aligned. Reminds me of that children's story Joseph and his Coat. The scraps are my salvation and constant source of inspiration