Street Folk

Art X Detroit, a week-long series of events involving Kresge Artist Fellowship recipients, occurred last week at several venues throughout Midtown. One of the artists involved was Tyree Guyton, founder of the Heidelberg Project (which completely transcends the term "installation art"). For Art X Detroit, Guyton unveiled a new environmental installation called "Street Folks," which consists of thousands of shoes scattered over one block of Edmund Pl. between Woodward and John R. On a fence on the north side of the street, he has attached photocopies of letters from some of the people who donated to the project, telling personal stories about their pair of shoes. It will be displayed until April 24.

The installation specifically confronts homelessness and the idea of "the streets," which are at the same time a dangerous, welcoming, and ubiquitous presence in all of our lives. Guyton writes:

"The street has no respect of person so there are no guarantees. You may not be on the street today, but you might be tomorrow . . . The shoes are a reflection of people, all going in different directions and yet they are all in the streets. The streets have no closing hours they are open 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, all year long. You have night people living in the streets and you have day people living in the streets but we’re all living in the streets chasing whatever your life calls for. In some cases you don’t know what you’re your life is calling for. In the end, we are all Street Folk."

I found it pretty powerful to walk among this overwhelming field of shoes and think about all the lives that had been lived in them, feeling some sort of vague connection to every anonymous person. Many of the letters posted on the fence contained very personal stories about the shoes' former owners.

However, this was probably my favorite note:





(Photos by Margaret O'Leary)