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 Sunday, February 13th marks a great opportunity to experience a few different facets of the rock world. Temporary Insanity 3 will serve as a combination art show/rock show, with various artists (including Leni Sinclair, Mark Arminski and Mark Dancey) displaying and selling work while also celebrating the Detroit book release of Art of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion. The free show takes place from Noon to 10 p.m., and includes live performances throughout the day from The Fondas and Carolyn Striho, amongst others. MCR recently had the opportunity to drop a few questions to event co-organizer Gary Grimshaw (who will also be exhibiting work at the show this weekend). ********** MCR: If I must say so myself, this is one hell of a lineup as far as this sort of showcase goes. How did you find yourself involved with the Temporary Insanity gig this time around? GG: My wife Laura and I dreamed up Temporary Insanity in San Francisco, 1995. We had participated in poster shows around the Bay Area with mixed results and thought what a good idea it would be to have an artist-driven event that included both poster and comix artists. We were friends with the owners of Off The Wall Gallery on Haight St. who were thrilled with the idea. The artists loved it because they didn't have to buy table space or handle money, all the sales went through the gallery cash register and everyone was paid off in cash at the end of the day. Frank Kozik was the star of the first event, and Victor Moscoso the second in 1996. Several artists produced posters just for each of the shows. They were successful because they weren't over-produced and happened in the thick of the Haight-Ashbury street action, unlike other more formal shows in "nicer" venues. It was our hope that the participating artists would continue the tradition, the gallery was willing, but we moved across the Bay to Oakland and couldn't handle the organization and promotion work by ourselves as we had done. Laura and I have a knack for getting along with other artists and staging events on a shoestring. I'm mister nice guy and Laura is an event-planning natural with a great attention to detail. Since returning to Detroit last March we did five Wednesdays at Agave's art night series, the Dally in the Alley, and a group show with Mark Arminski and Carl Lundgren, the Detroit Music Poster Show, at CCS in conjuction with the 40th Anniversary Celebrations for the Detroit Artists Workshop which we both worked on all summer. The CCS show is now on the road and will be at the Pleasant Ridge Municipal Gallery in May and the AKA Gallery in Pontiac in June. I will have my first one-man show since the Cass Cafe in 1996 at the River's Edge Gallery in Wyandotte in July. This Temporary Insanity III show seemed like a natural thing to do in the winter, all the pieces fell into place quite naturally. MCR: You actually recently just moved back to Detroit after a spell away. What was your motivation behind the relocation back to the D? GG: A 14 year spell it was. We loved the Bay area and especially Oakland, the Motor City of the West. Oakland looks and feels like Detroit except for the palm trees and no rusty rocker panels. We came back to Detroit often for weeks at a time and never lost touch with our family and friends here. We lived in beautiful places and were making a good living, but something was missing out there. Most of our Bay Area friends were ex-Detroiters or refugees from Chicago, Ohio or New York. We missed that good old fashioned Midwestern friendliness and being a short car ride from our families. Also, we were paying enormous rents, all the while thinking what a palace we could purchase in Detroit for the same money. Detroit seemed to be getting more livable and exciting, and the Bay Area seemed to be getting more conjested and expensive. It just came down to deciding where we wanted to be for the next 20 years, and Detroit was no. 1 on our short list. Once we decided, everything fell into place and the whole move was easier and faster than we thought it would be. And once we got here we found ourselves having more fun than we could have imagined. MCR: Your artwork is fairly distinctive, and is mimicked or used as an indirect reference point for a lot modern rock poster art. Did you ever think that you'd see the point when your pieces would actually become incorporated as images widely relating to various stages of pop culture (i.e., your old MC5 gig posters)? GG: I have no control over what people think of what I do, I work in what Rob Tyner called "The White World" where it's just me and a blank white surface waiting for me to make a mess on it. Of course I'm aware of the larger cultural context in which my work will be viewed and compared to others. That awareness does affect what I do, expecially since I chose to focus on art meant to publicize events, mostly musical performances. I'm trying to understand exactly what your question is. It was always my intent to make images that relate to various stages of pop culture. At first it was my own local pop culture, the bands I knew and venues I frequented, and I slowly saw it seep into the larger national and international pop culture, just as the bands I liked got well-known. None of this particularly surprises or bothers me. I like the attention and don't mind being imitated, up to a point. I just wish I wasn't so pigeonholled as a '60's artist because I've been doing this continuously in every decade since then. And it bugs me when well-meaning folks think they're complimenting me by bad-mouthing fellow artists who I admire and respect by accusing them of ripping off my style. I know many artists who work the way I do and I'm always learning something from them and appreciating their own particular vision. Art is not a competiton, there are no "Arties" statues handed out, thank Jeebus. Let a thousand flowers bloom. MCR: What sort of pieces should visitors expect to see at the Temporary Insanity show (both from yourself, and from others)? GG: The occasion of this event is the recent publication of Art Of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion, so expect to see lots of posters from the last decade by some of the best artists in the book. The authors, Paul Grushkin (who authored The Art Of Rock back in '88) and Dennis King (world-class collector and expert) have written repeatedly that Detroit is a hotbed of rock poster activity right in there with San Francisco and Austin. I won't see the show in its entirety until Sunday just like everyone else, artists will just show up with their stuff. I intend to have everything that was in the CCS show and more, because that show was deliberately restricted to posters for Detroit bands or at Detroit venues, I've got more things like Patti Smith in Santa Cruz and the Raveonettes at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC that didn't fit in the CCS format. Also of note will be the appearance of Dennis Loren, who's work is familiar to everyone who every played in a band in Detroit in the '60's, '70's and '80's, and is himself an encyclopedia of the history of Detroit music. He'll be knocking on my door shortly, road-weary from the 2000 mile drive from Oakland. Then there's the Fondas closing things out around eight or so. It will be fun.  Photo Art courtesy of Gary Grimshaw's
Interview by Gary Blackwell |
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