Sculptor and painter Bob Sestok and playwright and puppeteer Dr. Shaun S. Nethercott discuss their respective projects "Cass Corridor & Beyond" and "Neighborhood on the Edge," and the role of photography in preserving history and bearing witness to moments of movements and neighborhoods. The Living X podcast is hosted by Ryan Myers-Johnson, executive director of Sidewalk Detroit, and edited/mixed by Wayne Ramocan of Red Carpet Lounge. This episode features music by Pamela Wise. The Living X podcast is a product of rootoftwo and made possible with support from The Kresge Foundation.
This episode was recorded remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
About "Cass Corridor Art & Beyond"
Cass Corridor Art & Beyond tells the stories of a half-century of Cass Corridor artists, their importance, and the nuances and intricacies of their artmaking. Narrated by Bob Sestok, this live storytelling event uses photos, slides, and videos taken by Cass Corridor artists, providing an intimate portrait of this artistic community and their collaborative exchanges.
About Bob Sestok
Robert Sestok is a sculptor, painter and printmaker who has worked in Detroit’s Cass Corridor since 1967. Together with other Cass Corridor artists, Sestok sought new forms and methods of artistic expression, using non-standard materials in response to civil rights struggles, the anti-war movement, and the pervasiveness of the automotive industry in Detroit. In 2015, he opened City Sculpture, a permanent public art space in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood that exhibits three decades of sculptural work.
Sestok’s work is in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Cranbrook Museum of Art, and Wayne State University, among others. He has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Cranbrook Museum of Art, College for Creative Studies, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and Marianne Boesky Gallery. He is the recipient of grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
About "Neighborhood on the Edge"
Neighborhood on the Edge is a sound and image installation featuring the voices and images of 10 Hubbard Richard residents reflecting a range of ethnicities, ages, and durations lived in the community. The installation involves 4x8’ portraits and other large-scale neighborhood landscapes by photographer Romain Blanquart, and a sound score edited from nearly 10 hours of residents’ testimonies installed at the Mexicantown Latino Cultural Center in the Hubbard Richard neighborhood.
About Dr. Shaun S. Nethercott
Dr. Shaun S. Nethercott uses immersive or mobile staging, audience engagement, and polyphonic voices to explore feminist, environmental, and other social justice themes. She has dedicated her life to creating plays that give voice to the unheard through structures that transmit their own meaning, and which engage audiences in personal, interactive, and place-based ways. Over her 30-year career as an artist, arts administrator, and activist, she developed and produced 32 new plays, including mobile works Fear and Faith, Raven’s Seed, and Ghost Waters; site-specific works Once Was Paradise and Boomtown 1925; and immersive pieces ’37-’87, Trial, and Mother Tongue. Most of her performances have integrated wide-scale community engagement activities developed in partnership with non-arts community organizations. As the founder of Matrix Theatre Company in Detroit, she has received numerous awards and commendations, including the Governor’s Art Award, Mattin Arts Award for work with at-risk youth, and the Theresa Maxis Award for Social Justice.
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INTRO (00:04):
In this episode, Bearing Witness Ryan discusses with sculptor and painter, Bob Sestok and theater maker, an artist Dr. Shaun Nethercott, the important role of photography and storytelling to the preservation of people in place. Each shares perspectives of their participation and witnessing of major social movements and transformations in the city and its neighborhoods. This episode was recorded remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (00:37):
Hi everyone. My name is Ryan Myers Johnson, and I am so excited to be joined today by Shaun Nethercott award winning playwright, author, and puppeteer, as well as Bob Sestok, renowned scupltor there, painter and printmaker, who was working with Detroit's famous Cass Corridor since 1967. Welcome Shaun and Bob. Hi. Hi.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (01:09):
I really am just humbled to be able to have a conversation with such amazing artists as yourselves, the impact that you've made on Detroit and Detroit neighborhoods and the work that you continue to do in capturing the stories of the places where you live and work just, you know, it was astounding. So I just really would love to start with asking you, Shaun, to tell us about the work that you did for Art X Detroit.
Shaun Nethercott (01:37):
Well, the name of the project was called neighborhood on the edge. It is about the Hubbard Richard community, which is a community I know very, very well it's where my theater was situated for more than 25 years. And the thing that really struck me, why it was an important piece to do at this point is this is a neighborhood that is we've pretty much overlooked for many, many years, but now as the center of development focus and you've got the Ford motor company moving in, you've got the ambassador bridge you've, you've got, you know, the international crossing to Canada and all of a sudden there's all this development pressure. So the question is, is what does the community have control of what happens to it? And so I wanted to kind of capture what people were thinking about in the, in the face of the fact that their community is got major players choosing what happens to them and the community may not have any voice or choice in what happens to them.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (02:38):
We're facing so much of that in Detroit, all over the city. And Bob, your work is also really capturing so much history in the midst of so much change. Would you mind telling us a little bit about your AXD project?
Bob Sestok (02:56):
I titled the project Cass corridor, art and beyond, and it was a kind of a chronological slide presentation of my photo history here in the Cass corridor, or which has now Midtown Detroit. And it started around 1967 and the artists that came together all had studios on Cass Avenue and in the neighborhood of surrounding area. And we started the Willis gallery, which is now the Avalon bakery and the gallery ran for about 10 years on with the original members. And then it turned into a cooperative with opening it up to the general public
Ryan Myers-Johnson (04:00):
Amazing. So there is just a vast history of art making and creativity and social change within Cass corridor. So for those of us or listeners who don't know about the Cass corridor or art movement, what is it?
Bob Sestok (04:15):
Well, the Cass corridor art movement largely dealt with deconstructive issues in making art. And there wasn't a lot of you know, people didn't have a lot of access to art, regular art materials. So we used whatever we could find to make art with it, wasn't the case for everybody, but the attitude about, you know, making something and then painting over it or destroying it and, and putting it back together again was largely the basis for the movement,
Ryan Myers-Johnson (05:03):
The work of your peers and community. It seems it really it really impacts, you know, the type of work that we're doing. So Shaun, you've been deeply rooted in your community for a long time as well. Can you give us a little bit of background on your creative practice and the type of mediums that you work in?
Shaun Nethercott (05:26):
Well, I really began being focused on kind of community based we're way back in the eighties. And there was a movement at that time called the Alliance for cultural democracy, so that when I moved to Detroit in the early, in the late eighties and was founding the theater in the early nineties, it was much of what Bob was talking about. The city was highly neglected it to say it nicely. And, and and there was this real need for people to start to have an opportunity to talk about who they were and what they wanted and what was happening. And so we began really gathering oral history and creating, using those to create plays. And over the course of the 30 years that I was working in Detroit, you know, have created, you know, me personally more than 30 different plays, but with my company more than 130 oral history based plays about what was happening in our communities.
Shaun Nethercott (06:25):
And so almost all of these were really rooted in Southwest Detroit, which is a pretty interesting neck of the woods because of its cultural diversity, because of the way that things really changed here quite rapidly. And and because of the fact that it's a community of enormous social capital. And so people really have deep longterm relationships and that allows you to really work in community and really, really powerful ways. And so so I've just really made the effort through all of these years to, to be the facilitator of community voice. And that's at the core of my work.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (07:02):
Wow. Yeah. How critical is it right now is we see so much economic development and change to capture the oral histories and the visual histories and the stories of these places because they, they literally are being built over in so many ways. And so Shaun, you mentioned neglect, you know, that the city was neglected to say it nicely. I'm curious about what your, what both of your thoughts are in regards to the relationship between the sort of neglect of the past. And what we see now as development is where's the middle ground there, you know, there are certain services or things that people need. Do you have any thoughts on that
Shaun Nethercott (07:50):
Tie this to Hubbard Richard, which is a pretty interesting little Island in the middle of the city. And just to tell people where it is, you know, at the foot of Hubbard Richard is the ambassador bridge and two on the North end of it is [inaudible]. And to the to the East end event is the railroad tracks and to the, to the Western women is [inaudible]. So it operates as a cultural Island and really from the period up until 2000 it had been very small community and full of emptiness and openness, and pretty much completely neglected. Now there'd always been families there. And I was able to gather, you know, people's histories from whose families have been there multiple generations. So there's a kind of depth of knowledge that is really amazing. But about 2000, the Bagley housing started building new houses in that community.
Shaun Nethercott (08:46):
And those were the first new houses built in the city of Detroit since 1950. Now you gotta think about 50 years, not a new built in this city. That's an astonishing thing. So now the community has really grown and it's got nice housing, you know, kind of culturally and historically appropriate housing. And there's been a lot of efforts to build a cohesive sense of identity rooted in the actual identity of the community, but the people who come in like, you know, for who's trying to be a good neighbor and the ambassador bridge who was far from a good neighbor, they don't really care about the history or the culture of the people. They just want to use that space for their own private enterprise. And and very often they come in like a colonial force. And, and so, and that's the way that's the history of Detroit Detroit exists as a colony very much. And so how do, how do we gain control over our own, not only our own environment, but our own history and our own stories. And when I think about the Cass corridor, how it became Midtown and was quit being cast quarters, it is a perfect example of how we lose our own stories when somebody else makes starts making decisions on who and what we are.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (10:07):
Do you have some thoughts you'd like to add to that you've seen so much being in the cast corridor?
Bob Sestok (10:13):
Yeah, the, I was renovating a factory in Highland park and I'm the owner of the property wanted to make me a partner and I declined to be in partnership. And I had received my payment for doing the work, which allowed me to buy the property in Midtown, behind my house and studio. It's on located on Alexandra and in the lodge freeway. So I proceeded to build out the property. I've been cutting the grass. Since my neighbor passed away, he used to be the caretaker of the property. And I took over the job and I said, I should have this for my sculptures. You know, so I, I proceeded to buy it from the city of Detroit and it was an another ordeal to convince the city council, the art would be a good thing to put on the property, you know, so that, that's pretty much how it came about.
Shaun Nethercott (11:28):
Well, you know as Bob was telling the story, I was remembering actually, when we finally got our, our space on Bagley and this had been an abandoned building. And when we moved in, it had no heat, no light, no power, no water, Hey, what a great, So no doors or no windows.
Shaun Nethercott (11:53):
Right. And so, you know, everything had to be done inch by inch, inch by inch by inch. So we moved into the big open space and turned that into kind of a performance space where we would do actually some of the first things he did was like concerts with Harold McKinney. You know, if you remember that great guy and and then inch by inch, we would, you know, we restored a room and that would be where an office was. And then it took us nearly, I don't know, maybe we never finished really it's it's 15 years. And we did all, you know, two floors of the basement and in partnership with our landlord who was a tremendous help and supporter, and took that building from a kind of a state of derelict into a hub community hub, but all the way, doing all that, doing that, you know, you know, it's not for the faint of heart, starting these things from scratch in a city where there isn't a lot of resource or a lot of support, but there's always a lot of social capital in the early days, how we really started was I used to call it, you know, we did it the stone soup way.
Shaun Nethercott (12:56):
So we would like, okay, we've got an idea and you've got a place and they've got some kids, somebody else has got some transportation, then we'll go out altogether and we'll be able to create a project, but there always was tons of social capital. And there was always people who wanted to think and talk about being what it was to live in this time. And, and and I remember, of course the Willis gallery, and actually I wanted to tell a story, a make Bob laughed is that is that we had gone to the Willis gallery to go see Mick brannich, who was a poet at that point in front of me,
Bob Sestok (13:27):
I knew Mitch was my friend. Yeah.
Shaun Nethercott (13:30):
Right, right. And he had been doing kind of performance poetry and with a kind of a Blues based band. And he was, we went into the Willis gallery and there they were, there was, everybody was kind of hanging around on all this, you know, odds and ends of furniture. And the, we opened the door and there was Mitch and he was going live. So that was, that was the, that was the pole it went on.
Bob Sestok (13:54):
You know, Shaun, my friend Gordon Newton just passed away. He lived on Hubbard. You know, he wasn't too far from the Duffy company down on Jefferson. And we all had our artwork in there. Jim Duffy was a great supporter of local artists. And he ran the the, the Edward W. Duffy company across from Revere copper and brass on Jefferson there, right around Fort Wayne. And today it's been torn down for the bridge that's coming in. But my artwork stayed on the outside of the building for all these years, you know? So it was sad to see that change, you know, like so many of the murals I've painted have been destroyed because I painted on buildings, you know? So
Shaun Nethercott (15:03):
This is one of the funny things about Detroit things refuse to stay put. If you think about the environment here. One of the things we used to talk about was Detroit had a case of used-to-be-itis, because if you're with Detroiters you would go someplace and it would be there used to be this, there used to be that there used to be all these different things. And my husband and I, when we first moved here, we couldn't believe it. Cause people would always say, well, that used to be the burner plant. That used to be the whatever. But now that I've lived here, a lot of years, I do that too. That used to be this, that used to be that that used to be the other, because the physical environment refuses to stay foot put in Detroit. It constantly moves around houses, come in houses, go out, huge, big iconic buildings disappear.
Shaun Nethercott (15:54):
And it's partially because that idea, and I think it has everything to do with, we don't believe that our places matter in the same way that other places do. And the stories that are tied to those places, because we don't quite value the people that are in those places. They don't stay put. So you can see 19th, you know, the Revard house, which is a, you know, a story or, or the, the, you know, down, across from the mr. Ski power plant, where those, where your sculptures were, it just gets that stuff just gets taken out because we don't appropriate value our own sense of place. Could you define who you were talking about when you say we, who is that, that we, that doesn't value these places? That's a good question, Ryan, because who is the we, and I think that as a, as a, when I talk about we, in that case, I think I'm thinking about the institutional decision makers of the city.
Shaun Nethercott (16:53):
I think that there's a constant desire to remake remake, redo, re in love the new and without necessarily honoring the old or honoring the past. And part of that is, is, you know, you've talked about Detroit hustles, harder. Part of that is, is we're a, we're a community of makers, you know, as an, a culture of makers, a culture of doers. And so part of that is, is like moving on, moving on, moving on to the next thing, moving on to the next project. And Lord knows I do that all the time. I'm moving on to the next project. But but I think that at a, at a cultural level, the weed doesn't always look backward very well.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (17:38):
What do you foresee for the communities and the neighborhood that, you know, for Cass corridor and for Hubbard Richard what does the future like to you?
Bob Sestok (17:51):
Hmm. I'd like to answer that. I think that, you know, my project was a slide talk that I have given people really responded to what I was presenting. So I had the idea in the back of my head to make it into a movie. And so I'm like I'm taking it to another level, the project, but it's, I'm hoping that, you know, saving some of my history will be beneficial to other people.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (18:31):
Do you foresee that the sort of creative spirit and the creative identity that your self and other, and your colleagues established in the Cass corridor will continue into future generations? Or, or do you think that that's just, it's over it's Midtown now? And,
Bob Sestok (18:49):
You know, I want to relate to something about the, the roaring twenties. People were loving jazz and music, you know, and today we have, you know, all kinds of music that a different genre is that techno, and so I'm, I'm confident that, you know, it's an ongoing process, you know, things change, but people are just repeating history over and over again in a different way. Yeah.
Shaun Nethercott (19:27):
Well, you know, it's interesting that you asked that question because that's was the question motivating the whole piece is what is the future for this community? And one of the things that was pretty interesting is that this community is the organizing. This community is, is formed a new residents council. They are working together. They are, they are actually putting out their own needs. First. I worked with a community in North Corktown and they, they got ahead of the curve. They got to the head of the curve and they said, this is what we want. And you guys have to tell, you have to answer to what we want. And so Hubbard Richard has learned that lesson. And I think that that has been for the community to get ahead. But, you know, I'm like Bob, I'm really, really hopeful about the city, because like I had this team of young and old and, you know, very mixed ethnicities and ages and backgrounds of artists and respondents and people are alive in this city.
Shaun Nethercott (20:22):
You know? And I was working with like one Carlos Dubecky Perez. He was the, he's a young 30 something a photographer. And he did a great job. And we were able to work in different languages. And we were able to work with people. Who've been here multiple generations. There was one woman I interviewed who'd been here since her family had been in the same house since the thirties in Hubbard Richard so the idea that people can come together and have a choice and have a voice, one thing Detroiters do is they do community. They get it. They don't have to be told they should. And there's so many artists, so many young artists who are out there innovating and who are not waiting to be told, they have to how to do it. They're creating spaces and creating opportunities. And this is, this is the strength of the community.
Shaun Nethercott (21:08):
So that what is happening is the community is saying, we want to have our own boys and we're going to start organizing, and we're going to make the institutions pay attention to us. And that's the way it has to be in this city. Because if you wait, you're going to get acted on it. But if you get Oregon, if you organize, if you take, if you take your own voice, then you can have some power. And what I like about the fact is of hover Richard is that, you know, there's this lively little community with, you know, only like 2000 residents they're talking and they're meeting and they're planning and they're organizing and they're telling forward, and they're telling that this is what we want. And to Ford's credit for this listening will be an ambassador bridge ever listen, maybe not, but that's another thing you still have to have. You have to insist on having your voice, otherwise you won't get it.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (21:57):
Wow. It sounds like you guys are really fighting a good fight. And so speaking of fighting Bob mentioned COVID-19, which is of course rampaging through the city of Detroit and in the world right now as artists and creatives have you found that the pandemic has affected your, your creative practice or your outlook on your work?
Bob Sestok (22:24):
Well, I feel that it's a little uncomfortable wearing a mask all the time, you know, other than that I've got a lot of work to do proposals, to ride and grants, to fill out and things, to keep me busy that, you know, I don't have to be exposed to people and my art work, you know, in my studio, I have plenty to do in that regard. So, you know, I'm, I can pretty much be a home body until this thing is over with. Yeah, yeah.
Shaun Nethercott (23:13):
Mine's totally the opposite because minus, minus completely a community based practice then, because I'm, you know, now working as the director for the center for Detroit arts and culture at Mary Grove, it's all community based work and community can get together and community is so how do you keep community going when you can't do the thing that makes you be community, which is at some fundamental level FaceTime and zoom is a poor substitute. I was just telling earlier that one of my dearest friends just recently died of COVID and, and we've been trying to, you know, grieve and do services and have wakes and everything online. And in fact, I just wrote a piece last night about how, you know, you know, grief by distances hardly is barely functional because the point of having services and wakes and everything like that is, is to touch each other is to hold each other up.
Shaun Nethercott (24:11):
And when we can't touch each other, our ability to sustain each other as, as kin, as family, as community is really, really challenged. So for me, how do we, how do we keep these bonds of relationship in place when we can't be in the same place? And it's really, really challenging and it's, and so I've been wanting to actually go out and capture all the oral histories of the folks from the, from the neighborhood on the edge and ask how they're doing now. And Hey, now that I have this cool new recording program, I'm going to, so, so you know, it's, it's the opposite for me. I, I, I, you know, am a puppeteer, so I loved studio time and and the ability to go work at studio, but when you're a community based artist and your, your thing depends on relationship. Relationship is the, one of the things most completely challenged by this by the virus and by the social distancing, we must do to, to maintain, to maintain our safety and the safety of our community.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (25:20):
Yeah, we really looking at a complex situation and artists are dealing with it so many different ways from kind of hunkering down into solitude and work to, you know, that longing, that grief that we're all experiencing in so many ways. And so I wonder one of the questions that comes up for me is what the economic impact of this might be on Detroiters and Detroit artists and how that might affect some of these development projects. You know, Detroit's been in this huge development boom. But as we kind of see or face this sort of uncertain economic future do you have concerns as a creative person for your community, or is this an opportunity to sort of recapture some of the creative freedoms of the past?
Shaun Nethercott (26:15):
I am super, super concerned about this, and I'm hoping that, that from my position at Marygrove, that we are able to create a safe place where artists can come and create. And I actually think that what we need is something like a, you know, a new version of the WPA, a place where artists are basically going to be able to be, have a, some sort of supportive income and studio space to create, because every artist I know who is been out there on the freelance field is in terrible shape is w are really, really, really fragile and really scared. And so I look at the fact that we need to build some supports right away, or we're going to lose a lot of artists who are just not going to be able to survive. And I can think of several artists that I know mostly who are younger and mostly who are in the freelance field, they're in really, really tough shape. And so what do we do as a community? How do we build this new WPA that creates a bridge for people to create work and, and, and have a voice about this important moment going forward? You know, it's real, I'm really anxious. And I really want to figure out how we come together as a community to create these supports.
Bob Sestok (27:35):
I think that street artists seem to overcome the problem of, of getting exposure for their work, because they just put it out and you know, they paint buildings or, or do some crazy installations out in the public sector, you know, that people notice. And it's not like somebody's going to buy the work is the problem. You know, people aren't getting the money for, for their work. They can't musicians can't perform for people. And, you know, the bars and restaurants are closed and galleries are closed and theaters. So it's really difficult to, to kind of figure that out. You know, I think that we're going to have to wait a little bit and see what happens. If things get better, then people can start to come out again. And I'm sure people are looking forward to that.
Shaun Nethercott (28:43):
A lot of people have moved stuff online. And and Oh, and there were at IMD were offering classes, and I know that living arts is offering classes, but, and it's a good stop gap, but again, it doesn't do the thing that art does, art, especially performing art and even visual art is a communal practice. And so it is about the encounter of human human. And so we have to find a way to get past these non, these mediated interchanges in order to really heal. And also in order to, to build longterm sustainability, because even like you think about Bob's sculpture garden, which is you can drive by, but the experience of going in there, and especially in going in there with other people and engaging in the, in the interchange about that, that's what gives that meaning. So it's the social practice we use, which gives all of the art practice. And we have to be very, very, very conscious about building rebuilding the, our social practice in order to heal our communities.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (29:50):
Yeah, yeah. It's a very uncertain time as we kind of think, you know, how we'll do Triton and artists sort of rise out of these ashes, you know, over the years we've all been through so much and, you know, the city of Detroit is kind of risen through so much. So how will artists adapt to these kind of, to this not normal to this new, not normal and you know, what does the future hold for us?
Shaun Nethercott (30:17):
Well I think that the, the, there is no, we're not going back to normal. There is no normal it's gone. We have to invent a new way, and this, this is going to be more sustainable and more helpful and more just, and we that's the task at hand, and there's nothing better than art than trying to figure out how, what are the new paradigms? There's nothing better than art to figure out how we're going to engage in a culture that is going to be sustainable to the earth and sustainable to the people. And this is what I think artists have to do. And this is what, but, but I also know they can't do it for love, right? You have to have some money or, or some other way of some, it doesn't have to be money, but you still have to be able to sustain it. You have to be able to eat. You have to have a roof over your head, you know, and, and we, we can do that. Even if we set up a different kind of, you know economic system in order to do that. And we're good at that in the city. That's one thing about living through the nineties, you figured out how to do stuff with no visible means of support. And you did it by social capital. That's back to what my back to we're back to where we were. If we're back to stone soup, we're going to have to find a way for everybody to bring what they can so that we all can build a little bit of strength together
Ryan Myers-Johnson (31:36):
As an artist and organizer today, I'm taking inspiration from the stories that you shared, that you both shared in the beginning, from Bob, you doing what you had to do in order to eat and Shaun to your looking towards this progressive new future. So thank you so much for sharing these stories of Cass corridor and Hubbard Richard as well as giving us a vision towards the future that we can be looking forward to.
Shaun Nethercott (32:08):
Thank you.
Ryan Myers-Johnson (32:10):
Thank you.
Shaun Nethercott (32:12):
Alright, bye y'all.
OUTRO (32:17):
Thank you for listening. AXD Living X podcast is a production of rootoftwo, and made possible with support from the Kresge foundation mixed and edited by RedCarpetLounge.co Music for the series is by Pamela Wise, to find out more about the projects and artists visit artxdetroit.Com Download the companion Living X catalog Featuring all 22 commissioned AXD works.