Creative workers from all over the world are finding visual stimuli in a multitude of Detroit locations, says the New York Times, which points out the opportunities artists are seeking and finding in our vast post-industrial cityscape, where the crumbling Packard Plant can be juxtaposed with pristine Mies van der Rohe apartment towers, and "young artists are turning crumbling homes into art centers, converting factories into studio and exhibition spaces, and planting community gardens as artworks."
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The impresario of such guerrilla art in Detroit is Tyree Guyton, who started painting polka dots and mystical circles on the vacant houses in the McDougall-Hunt area 25 years ago. He also filled the empty lots between the houses with stuffed animals, salvaged furniture and upright car hoods bearing the imprint of primitive masks. A trained artist with a metaphysical bent, the 54-year-old Guyton says he put "the face of God in the 'hood." Now an unofficial landmark maintained by his nonprofit Heidelberg Project, the original site draws 275,000 visitors a year. Next he plans to suspend vintage cars from the facade of Brewster-Douglas Projects, the abandoned housing complex where Diana Ross grew up.
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