Activist and poet John Sinclair to discuss legacy of the Detroit Artists' Workshop at MSU

Jerry Younkins, who is sometimes considered Detroit’s first hippie, called the Detroit Artists’ Workshop of the mid-1960s the “most fitting and glorious flower to bloom on the dungheap of the arsenal of democracy.”

It was largely the brainchild of students at Monteith College, an experimental liberal arts college within Wayne State University, and young local artists. They hoped the group would put the Detroit avant-garde art scene on the map.

“Detroit, despite all its pretensions, has been artistically ‘dead’ for longer than most people here want to admit,” wrote founding members, John Sinclair and Robin Eichele, in a 1965 article for the journal "New University Thought."

“[O]ur goal was (and is) to pull together the active and potential artists in the Detroit area into a working, cooperative community of human beings that would offer to each individual an open, supportive artistic environment.”

Sinclair, who would go on to become Detroit's most famous hippie, manager for the Detroit rock band MC5, chairman of the White Panther Party, will sit down with artist, writer, and researcher Cary Loren at Michigan State University on Saturday to discuss the history and legacy of the Detroit Artists' Workshop.

When Sinclair co-founded the group along with 15 other artists in October of 1964, he was working as a local jazz critic for "Downbeat" magazine and had recently been arrested for marijuana possession for the first time. He would soon drop out of graduate school at Wayne State to become a full-time beatnik.

Each member chipped in $5 to get things started. They used the mimeograph machine at the Monteith student center until they could afford their own. They found cheap housing in the shadow of what is now the John C. Lodge Freeway near Wayne State’s campus, acquiring several buildings in the area that they rented out to artists.

The Detroit Artists’ Workshop hosted concerts, poetry readings, classes, and exhibitions. The Artists’ Workshop Press published, “thousands of pages of mimeographed materials” Sinclair wrote, including magazines, booklets, flyers, and broadsides. They churned out twenty volumes of original poetry and prose, mostly by Detroit writers, under the titles "Work," "Change" and "Whe’re." They stenciled and stapled everything by hand, usually in batches of 500.

Leni Sinclair, who is perhaps best known for her photographs of the rock 'n' roll scene of the era, honed her skills as a photographer and printer there. She and John Sinclair married in the backyard of the two-story stone building dubbed “The Castle" that served as a communal work and living space for the group, though they've since divorced.

Related

When marijuana was legal in Michigan: 22 days in 1972

At the Broad, the art behind Destroy All Monsters

Trumpet player Charles Moore, a co-founder of the group, went from playing free concerts at the Workshop's weekend events to founding an artist-controlled co-operative record label, Strata, with his fellow Contemporary Jazz Quintet band mates.

Despite the enthusiasm, the group only lasted a few years.

Police came to view the Detroit Artists' Workshop as subversive, so they assigned undercover agents to infiltrate the group and targeted members, John Sinclair in particular, for marijuana use. He was arrested three times for marijuana possession between 1964 and 1967, severely hindering the group’s ability to function.

Also, Sinclair’s tastes as the Workshop Press’ editor and concert organizer chafed some artists who wished to push beyond his devotion to the “new music” (à la John Coltrane) and the sort of modernist poets whose work appeared in "The New American Poetry."

Some members moved away to New York or California.

The Sinclairs and a handful of other members remained in Michigan. John Sinclair went on to become an important music promoter and manager of MC5 from 1967 to 1969. Police surveillance was relentless, and John Sinclair was arrested three times for marijuana crimes, prompting him to co-found the revolutionary White Panther Party, which supported the platform of the Black Panther Party.

The Workshop was revived as a website — www.detroitartistsworkshop.com — in 2004 by poet and founding member, James Semark. He organized an online archive/exhibition of work by Detroit Artists' Workshop members over the years and worked to once again make the group a sustainable and functioning co-operative.

Saturday's event, funded by the MSU Department of History, is being planned in conjunction with the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum’s "Detroit Artists' Workshop" exhibit, which runs until May 13.

It is also a bookend of sorts to the museum’s "Michigan Stories" exhibit, which closed last month and featured art from Jim Shaw and Mike Kelley, who, along with Cary Loren and Niagara Detroit, were founding members of the Destroy All Monsters art collective in the 1970s. The collective drew significant inspiration from the Detroit Artist's Workshop and John Sinclair’s subsequent activities.

The conversation between John Sinclair and Cary Loren will take place at 4:00 pm on Saturday in Erickson Kiva, located inside Erickson Hall at 620 Farm Lane on MSU's campus. The event is free and open to the public. For additional information, go to broadmuseum.msu.edu/sinclairloren.

Ryan A. Huey is a PhD candidate in the Michigan State University Department of History. Contact him at ryanahuey@gmail.com.