Randiah Camille Green
Nicole Macdonald (center right) at the celebration of her new mural, the 200th installation in Detroit’s City Walls program. Activist Wayne Curtis (far right) is depicted in the mural.
With all the drama unfolding in Detroit around equity in mural painting, who should get to paint the city, and at what price, we’re taking this time to appreciate a piece that Detroiters can actually be proud of.
Earlier this week Mayor Mike Duggan, city officials, and community members gathered at a press conference to celebrate the 200th mural in Detroit’s City Walls program painted by lifelong Detroiter Nicole Macdonald.
While some of the work produced by the program is seemingly random (many are small-scale and painted on abandoned buildings in an effort to transform “blight to beauty”), Macdonald’s piece prominently features Detroiters tending the soil in Jefferson Chalmers.
Farmer and activist Wayne Curtis and his grandson Travis are pictured taking a break from gardening in the piece at 14229 Jefferson Avenue. Curtis and his partner “Mama” Myrtle Thompson Curtis founded Feedom Freedom Growers, an urban farm and community resource hub on Manistique Street. In the center is Terry Black who helps give Detroiters access to solar panels through the Community Treehouse Center. She is working on the Eastlawn Solar Training House, which will provide solar installation training to Detroiters. Nancy Weigandt and Tom Milano of Detroit Abloom — also down the street from the mural on Manistique — are harvesting the native fruit paw paw and cultivating flowers on the other end of the mural. Kayakers traverse the Eastside Detroit canals in the background.
“The Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood is a unique spot in the city, located on the river with canals and urban gardens,” Macdonald said in a statement. “I tried to capture some of this uniqueness while highlighting particular residents who are working hard to restore and reimagine this corner of the city. These individuals, as well as others in the neighborhood, have spent long hours working the soil and trying to better their community.”
As a lifelong Detroiter, Macdonald says her goal with mural painting is to “go beyond the typical capitalist auto industry narrative and raise people’s awareness of [the city’s] lesser-known history and accomplishments.”
“For example, in my ongoing Detroit Portrait Series project, I have painted sung and unsung Detroiters — including poets, publishers, Black Bottom leaders, organizers, and musicians,” she said. “In my recent work on neighborhood garage doors around the city, I painted local pollinators and species important to our health and environment. It is in this spirit I made the Jefferson-Chamlers mural — to highlight those who are sacrificing to make our environment better.”
Earlier this week, Metro Times reported on a group of murals installed downtown dubbed “Detroit Be the Change” that drew criticism from local artists, including prominent muralist Sydney G. James. The murals were painted by international artists, mostly from Europe, via New York-based non-profit Street Art for Mankind.
The non-profit approached the City of Detroit’s Office of Arts, Culture and Entrepreneurship and the Downtown Detroit Partnership about installing the murals, which are painted on walls between 6,000-8,000 square feet tall. Local artists felt these painters were severely underpaid for their work and blasted the city for not including Detroit artists in the project, though Detroiters are expected to participate in the second phase of the activation. The project also came as a surprise to local artists who had no idea about it.
The Detroit Be the Change murals were not part of the City Walls program.
“I agree with the other artists in terms of wanting more transparency as to who is painting these murals, how decisions are made, which surfaces we are painting, where tax dollars are going, and equitable pay for artists,” Macdonald tells Metro Times.
Macdonald also says sometimes painting murals in Detroit means navigating jobs that may not align with your ethics while trying to make a living.
“I see myself as a progressive person, committed to activist and historical art, yet I am also a working artist, one who depends on jobs for survival,” she says. “I am committed to telling stories of local people who have contributed to the betterment of society, I have done this with the Detroit Portrait Series, Tribute to Paradise Valley, and my documentary film work. But financially I find it difficult because I have had to turn down some of the more lucrative corporate-sponsored jobs, because I didn’t agree with their business ethics.”
Detroit was ranked fifth in USA Today’s list of top 10 cities to see incredible street art for 2023. At the press conference for Macdonald’s mural, City Walls project manager Bethany Howard told Metro Times the goal is to keep going until Detroit beats Philadelphia, which claimed the top spot.
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