1 Cass Corridor Artists Oral History Project Interviewee: Mary Ann Wilkinson Interviewer: Anke Wolbert Date of Interview: March 24, 2010 Location: Northville, MI Wolbert: This is the interview with Mary Ann Wilkinson taking place at her house in Northville, Michigan, on March 24, 2010. The interviewer is Anke Wolbert. Wolbert: Mary Ann, can you tell me a little bit about where you were born and where you grew up? Wilkinson: I am from Michigan, originally. I have lived in Michigan mostly my whole life. I grew up in a little town called Kingston. That is up in the thumb area of Michigan (uses her right hand to show the placement of town in the thumb area) and that s where I went to high school. I haven t lived there since. I left there to go to college at the University of Michigan and Wolbert: What did your parents do for a living when you were living up there?
2 Wilkinson: My father worked most of the time at Ford Motor Company in Pontiac I mean at General Motors in Pontiac and he was also a part-time farmer, if you will. He raised race horses. He raised the kind of horses they re called standard standard-breds that pull a sulky. Yeah, that was fun! That s what he really wanted to do but he knew there wasn t any money in it. So, he worked in the factory where he was supervision most of the time. My mother never worked. She was a homemaker. Wolbert: Did you have any siblings? Wilkinson: I did. Well, I have two siblings that are still living. I have an older sister and a younger brother. Wolbert: Were your parents or your siblings interested in art? Or how did you come to be interested in art? Wilkinson: Well, I kind of came at it very late in life compared to what people do now. I went to college originally planning to study languages. I love languages! I was primarily a Romance language scholar as my undergraduate career. My undergraduate degree is in French Language and Literature. There was no art or anything like that in my high school. I did music in high school. I was a singer and I played musical instruments, too. But I did a lot of work with languages in high school.
3 I continued that when I went to Michigan, which I went to because it was the biggest place the biggest and the best place that my parents could afford to send me (laughs). Because coming from a really little town like that I was desperate to get out of there. So I went to U of M (University of Michigan) and that was a wonderful experience for me. And like I said, I continued with my language degree. But as part of that I lived in France for a year. I did the Junior Year Abroad program and I lived in the south of France, in Aix-en-Provence. And I took my first art history class there. Before that I had never even been in a museum! Wolbert: Wow. Wilkinson: I took my first art history class while I was living in Aix and realized that it was something I really loved and that I really felt I understood. And knowing that I had very little hope of a career as a translator if I was not a native speaker, I When I came back to Michigan, for my senior year, I took a lot of art history classes and then after I graduated I took some additional art history classes. I essentially had a double major by the time I finished. And then I went to Graduate School after that. Wolbert: How did your parents feel about you going into art? Wilkinson: I think my parents had absolutely no clue of what I was doing with my life and, honestly, I am not sure that my mother even now has any idea what it is that I do.
4 Wolbert: You went from studying French Literature to studying Art History in your Master s degree and at that point did you have any idea what you wanted to do with your Master s in Art History? Wilkinson: Well, I did after my first term of the Master s program. I originally went to Michigan for my Master s degree because I was interested in Renaissance Art and they had a very, very strong program in Renaissance Art in those days. They don t so much now but they did then. And my first term we were obliged to take a methodology course, and as part of the methodology course the professor who ran the class assigned us to work with some of the paintings in the University Of Michigan Museum Of Art. A classmate and I worked on this painting and I ve even forgotten what the assignment was but we realized that it was attributed to someone who clearly could not have been the artist who painted that painting. And so we did the research and took it back to the professor and got the painting reattributed. And it is still such a thrill to me to go into that museum and look at that painting and think Wow, that s there because I did that (laughs)! It was after that experience that I knew I really wanted to work with objects. So, I didn t follow the standard academic track but rather left after my Master s to go into museum work. Wolbert: To become a curator? Wilkinson: Yeah! That s what I really wanted to do after that. I knew I wanted to do research on objects themselves. I didn t want to just work with reproductions which is what a lot of academics still do. And working with actually objects is really exciting for me.
5 Wolbert: What makes it exciting for you? Wilkinson: Because you can feel that the artist is there! You know, it s this I don t know how to describe it exactly, but in a reproduction you don t always get the texture and the right color and what the brush strokes really look like and so you can t really imagine the presence of the artist. But that connection between the person, the mind, and the technical facility, the hands, that turns this object into something that someone else can understand and interpret is what to me makes art so exciting. Wolbert: You had a pretty good idea what you wanted to do while you in your graduate degree? Wilkinson: Yeah. Wolbert: That s good. What did you do when you left college? Like your first job in art as an art historian when you were done Wilkinson: Oh, my first job was at the DIA [The Detroit Institute of Art] (laughs). I finished my Master s in 1981 and the job market was really very bad, like it always is, of course. So one of my professors said you know you really need to break into this field by volunteering. And so you should call up the DIA and see if they d let you come in and volunteer. So I did, and I interviewed with the curator of Modern Art because by that time
6 Oh, I should also say that by that time I had left Renaissance behind. My degree technically is still in Renaissance but I did a lot more work in Modern because I found that connection between artist and art so much more interesting in Modern and there was so much more scholarly work to be done in Modern. It seemed like everything was done already in Renaissance. Modern and Ancient really interested me for that reason. Anyway, I interviewed with the curator of Modern Art who called me back just a couple of days later and said we re looking for someone to help us organize this big exhibition. Are you interested? I said Sure. Wolbert: Who was the curator at that time? Wilkinson: His name was Jay Belloli. Wolbert: What was the exhibition they were working on? Wilkinson: The exhibition was called Design in America the Cranbrook vision and it was a show about the first 25 years of the Cranbrook Educational Community. Wolbert: The Cranbrook, for those who don t know what that is, is an art institute in Detroit? Wilkinson: Well, the Cranbrook Education Community is a combination of an elementary school, a boys high school and girls high school, a graduate art academy, an art museum, and a science museum.
7 Wolbert: That is very encompassing. Wilkinson: Yeah. And it was envisioned by a man named George Booth, who made all of his money from the Booth newspaper chain, that [the Cranbrook Education Community] he really started to pull together in the early 20s. The architecture is based the model of the English boys schools and it is a very beautiful architectural place. And he brought in a number of very fine Scandinavian artists, specifically the Saarinen family. Eliel Saarinen, the architect, designed many of the buildings. Loja Saarinen, his wife, ran the textile department. Their son was Eero Saarinen who became a very famous international architect. That s what this show was all about, the founding of this educational community out in what was essentially farmland in 1925. Wolbert: What did you do for the exhibition? What was your particular job? Wilkinson: I don t remember what my title was. But the exhibition was organized between three institutions: the DIA, Cranbrook and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. And I was the person who basically coordinated anything that needed to be coordinated. There were eight scholars, I think, who worked on the catalog. It was my job to organize meetings for them, do some research for them sometimes. I organized all the meetings for the curators. I worked with the editor of the catalog, pulling all the photos together, doing all that sort of stuff. I was just generally the person, if you needed something, you came to me and I did it.
8 Wolbert: So your first job pretty much taught you all of the background information that you need to work for an installation or at a museum every time an installation is being put up? You pretty much learned everything that had to do with the installation? Wilkinson: My first job taught me a lot about how to do a big exhibition from the research to the preparation of the catalog to working with the installation designer I did a lot of work with the installation designer and the photographer to organizing it for travel and I travelled with the objects when they went to other places. So yeah, it was a really great learning experience. I met a lot of scholars and had lots experience in various kinds of things. That really came in very handy for me later on. Wolbert: It sounds like it was a good way Wilkinson: It was a perfect introduction. Wolbert: So what did do you when you were done with it? How long did it take you? Wilkinson: It took three years. I started in that position in the fall of 81 [1981] and I think the show was over in late 83 or early 84 and then I was hired as a permanent employee at the DIA. Wolbert: Good. Wilkinson: Yeah.
9 Wolbert: So how did you get involved with the Cass Corridor art then? Wilkinson: Well, I was in a department called Modern Art then but it really was from 1900 up to the present, essentially. It had a number of different names over the years, but it was Modern Art in those days. I was always very interested in local artists and I went to lots of galleries and artists studios when I could meet the artists and that sort of thing. I think I really got involved I was trying to remember, it is hard to remember that far back, you know? But I think my first real serious contact with, whatever the Cass Corridor was, was through the gallery owners Joy Emery and Susanne Hillberry. Because they asked me to write a little catalog for them on Gordon Newton and that was in 88, I think, and that came out in 89. So that s when I got know Gordon Newton and then I did a couple more for them. I did a little catalog on Michael Luchs and on Cay Bahnmiller. So those projects meant that I spent a lot of time with each of those three artists and then, of course, there was a lot of work in the DIA collection and it was still close enough to the time of the big exhibition Kick Out the Jams that people were still talking about it. It was much more in the wind then than it was now. Wolbert: What did you hear about Kick Out the Jams? Because it seems like it was this big event when it happened, which I know was in 1980. Wilkinson: 1980, yeah. So it was just before I got there.
10 Well, I think it was the first at least as far as I can remember it was the first show about art of this area that attempted to put it into any type of a context or look at it from an art historical point of view. Prior to that and after that, too, there were yearly exhibitions of Michigan artists where is just sort of a juried show of what were considered the best works of art that came to the curators view that year. But there was no attempt to write about them, to put them in any sort of context, to help people understand what was going on behind those works. It really was a watershed, I think, for art in Detroit. Because of that. Because it was a way to make it coalesce as an art movement more than just a group of artists who knew each other who were sort of working at the same time. Wolbert: So, when you got the DIA there was still very much talk of this. Was there talk about having other shows or other exhibitions on Cass Corridor artists? Wilkinson: It depends on who you mean by talk. I mean, certainly, I think, the artists were very buoyed up by such an exhibition and felt that they were getting recognized by the big institution in town, and that would lead to much more fame and then, potentially, fortune. I think, from the museum s point of view and I don t think I am putting in anybody s mouth to say this it was a show that was done and then they moved on to the next thing. Wolbert: Why do you think that was? Wilkinson: I m sorry?
11 Wolbert: Why do you think that was? Wilkinson: Why? Well, like every other institution, museums have limited resources, both financial and in sense of personnel and there is a lot of ground to cover in a museum. The DIA is an encyclopedic museum. We start from ancient times and go up to contemporary times. You can only do so many shows in the course of a year. And if you start doing a show on Detroit art every other year, it cuts out a lot of the other programming and I think that s what people always forgot, that museum programming is not infinite. You know, you can only do so many things at once. Wolbert: It seems like so many of the Cass Corridor artists always felt like they should have been a little bit better recognized, or more recognized, and perhaps even more commercially successful. Do you think it was part of it that the DIA only had so many resources that they could contribute towards it or do you think there were other factors? Wilkinson: Well, the DIA s priorities were someplace else. A museum is not in the business of making artists famous or getting them recognized, necessarily. I mean that can happen. But museums are more in the business of interpreting art for their visitors and helping people understand different kinds of art. I think, if the city had had a contemporary museum long before, things would have been different. There was a lot of pressure on the DIA to do more for local artists. And the DIA did do many things for local artists. There were a few other shows. There was this yearly series of exhibitions that kept going for a long time. We also had a small series that I ran for a long time that was either solo shows small shows or small group shows.
12 They didn t have catalogs, unfortunately. That s one real problem because there was never any money to do that. But also, I think, the problem is bigger than just the DIA. The DIA is only one component of the art community. Many potential collectors were not buying Cass Corridor work. There were certainly some people that were interested in Cass Corridor work and bought a lot of it and really supported these artists. But after Jackie Feigenson [owner of the Feigenson Gallery in Detroit] died, then I think the gallery commitment to the Cass Corridor artists somewhat diminished. There were still people who showed the Cass Corridor work. But there have never been a lot commercial galleries in Detroit and certainly in the early 80s there were not that many who would take on these people. Wolbert: Do you think that might have had something to do with the grittiness of the art or the toughness of the art? Those were some of the words the art was described as. Wilkinson: Maybe, I don t know if I can answer that question. But I do think it has to do with a certain let s see what s the word I want I am sorry the word is not coming to me. Wolbert: (laughs) Happens to me all the time. Wilkinson: Thank you. Well, you know, it s not the art community in Detroit, like so many aspects of Detroit, doesn t believe in itself and for some people they would only buy Cass Corridor work if it was validated by somebody else. Not by the DIA necessarily, not by local galleries necessarily, but by galleries elsewhere, particularly New York. I remember there was always a lot of grumbling that collectors from Detroit would go to New York and buy Detroit art.
13 Wolbert: Have you heard anything about what the New York art scene might have thought about the Detroit art scene? Were there Wilkinson: I don t think the New York art scene thought anything about the Detroit art scene. You know, there is an art scene in every big city, and in every medium-sized city there are groups of artists who are working. And New York certainly was much more important to the art world than may be it is now. It really was the center of things in a way that it isn t anymore. That s kind of dispersed. But it really was then and if you had to make it New York, if you were going to have considered making it all, it wasn t enough just to make it in Detroit. I don t know how the artists felt about it, but I know that for some collectors that was certainly the case. Wolbert: So there was sort of an external appreciation or external acceptance that wasn t quite given to Detroit art? Wilkinson: I don t think that s exactly what I mean. I think it s kind of the other way around. It s that kind of validation, not an acceptance, but a validation of this work had to be done in New York for it to be important enough for collectors here to buy. Wolbert: I know that you were not yourself an artist and were not in the Cass Corridor during that time, but as an art historian, do you think being in artist in Detroit very much informed the art that was produced by those artists in the Cass Corridor?
14 Wilkinson: Well, I really do believe that not to negate the statement I just made (laugh) about every city having its own. Every city does have its own group of artists who work in their own style. But the Cass Corridor group really did come up with an idiom for art making that was different, that said something about living in Detroit, that said something about their relationship to each other, that didn t happen in Detroit before that and that hasn t really happened much after either. It was a moment where not only visual art but music, and poetry, and literature came together, and really did have a cohesive style. I have forgotten the questions you have asked now, but I guess the answer I yes Wolbert: How Detroit influenced Wilkinson: It really is something that is unique and is a moment that is important to Detroit s cultural history. Wolbert: How do you think that comes through in the visual art, that Detroit influenced the artists? In what elements do you see it? And I realize that each artist has a vastly different style in the Cass Corridor. Wilkinson: The most important artists from the true Cass Corridor moment were working in assemblage. They were taking things they found around them that sort of detritus of industry and putting it together to make something else. You know, to make something that said something else. And that, I think, is one of the most important aspects of it.
15 Wolbert: You said at the DIA you became involved with it when you started writing for a project on Gordon Newton and Michael Luchs afterwards. How was your working relationship with these artists? Wilkinson: (chuckles) I love these artists. I have always really enjoyed knowing artists. Even though they are very difficult personalities sometimes. But they are wonderful, artists are wonderful to know. And it s been a privilege, I think, to know so many great artists that live in this area. It s really been wonderful for me. Well, my working relationship with Gordon, and Michael, and certainly with Cay whom I became quite close friends with was very good. And I think that they were interested in someone who took them seriously and really wanted to know about the work, looking at it as part of a continuum of art history, looking at it from outside of it just being about gritty stuff from the factory, who could understand that they were really looking for something else besides using that kind of material. They were really trying to transcend that material and put something of themselves in it and sometimes some spiritual parts of it, too. It was really wonderful and we always really had a great working relationship. Wolbert: Did they take influence on the art exhibits themselves, in the installation; suggest how the art work is placed on the walls or any of those kinds of things? Wilkinson: You know, I didn t really work with them on installation. When I did these things for Joy and Susanne, I was really just writing the little catalog that went along with it. They did
16 the installations. Artists always like to be involved with the installations but I can t really speak to that. Certainly when I installed the work in the museum, they were rarely involved. Wolbert: You yourself worked on a Cass Corridor art installation for the DIA, I believe, in 2000 or 2001? Wilkinson: 2001. Yes, that was a permanent collection gallery. It was within the context of the Modern and Contemporary Collection. We reinstalled the collection in 2000 and 2001. And in the context of the rest of the collection one of the galleries there was devoted to the Cass Corridor movement. Wolbert: Can you tell us a little bit more about the thought process behind the permanent gallery. I read that there were sound stations Wilkinson: Yeah, it was great (smiles). One of the things that I wanted to do in that gallery was to make it clear to museum visitors that this art movement had happened! Because it was already 20 years by that time and many people didn t know that such a thing even existed. And since the DIA was the only art museum in the area, to me it made sense to do something permanent that was about Detroit within the galleries. So the gallery was simply designed as a space to show a group of works of art. And I started out with what are called the first generation of Cass Corridor works of art. And then I collaborated with someone at the museum who did this thing that we call the sound station where people could sit down and put earphones on and could listen either to music like
17 the MC5 or Mike Kelley s group [Destroy All Monsters] I forgot the name of it that were associated with Cass Corridor or they could listen to poetry. Because there were a number of really wonderful poets that were associated with the Cass Corridor visual artists. That s really important because the poets did have a more national exposure; much more so than the visual artists. They would do poetry readings in New York with some of the major poets in the country and there was a lot of give and take in the poetry circles. I felt it was important to kind of round out this whole idea of the Cass Corridor by helping people understand that is wasn t just about making collages. It was about all these other aspects of art making that came together at once. Wolbert: How were the reactions to that exhibition, or the permanent gallery? Wilkinson: As far as I know people really, really liked it. Wolbert: Did you hear from any of the artists? Wilkinson: The artists liked it, I think. If they didn t like it or they grumbled about it I didn t hear it, let me put it that way (laughs). Wolbert: I guess that s a good thing (laughs). Wilkinson: That s good enough (laughs).
18 Wolbert: So you said that you found it was really important to have a permanent representation of the local art there. Currently, this representation/contextualization of the artists at the DIA is lacking a little bit. I was wondering how you feel about that? Wilkinson: The way that museum galleries are installed now, it s really gone off in a different kind of direction. When I did the reinstallation in 2001 it was a much more straight forward art historical presentation that put things in contexts; in the context of movement and genres and periods. The DIA doesn t want to do that anymore. They want to group things thematically, that don t talk so much about art making as they do about subject. Well, that s not quite true, but almost. What that means is that when they chose themes for gallery spaces as they have now, there are only a certain number of things that will really fit in. On the one hand, it s good because Detroit artists are part of the level playing field of all the artists in the collection so all of the works from the collection are pulled out and put in service of this theme. The bad part about it is that unless you know who these people are, you don t know that they are Detroit artists. So there is no way to have any sense of a shared history and I think I am little sad that this part in lacking. Because the 20 th century in Detroit has been a pretty interesting time visually speaking. But there is no way to know that from the museum installation. But permanent installations, of course, are misnomers. And so, you know, that ll change again too. And who knows what it ll be like the next go around. Wolbert: What do you think is the most important legacy of the Cass Corridor art community?
19 Wilkinson: Well, the most important legacy is the art that was produced. That sense of shared vision, of people trying to make sense of a very difficult urban setting and not trying to change it. There are a lot of artists now who think more about the amelioration of the urban setting but, I think, in the Cass Corridor period it was more of a not really a celebration, but certainly an acceptance and a recognition that this is what life was like. And that was the beginning of exploration, of artistic exploration. And like I said that all the art coalesced at that time or many of them did is their legacy. Wolbert: Do you think that the interest in Cass Corridor art will continue and will pass the test of time? Wilkinson: Those are two different questions, I am think Wolbert: Yes, they are. Wilkinson: Yes. I think that the best Cass Corridor art will certainly pass the test of time. A hundred years from now we will look at some of that work and say that s really incredible, just like we did 30 years ago. But whether it continues is a different question. There are reverberations of it still. Some of the younger people who came up after the very first group, were known as the sort of second generation Cass Corridor people, still worked in this assemblage/collage style. There s still a lot of that that rumbles through Detroit art. That approach to art making is still very important here. And that really is an echo that continues and
20 probably will for a long time. It is a very dynamic way to think about making art. That I think will remain. But the problem, really, with thinking about the Cass Corridor is that it takes over every conversation about Detroit art. And it was really important and those guys doing it are really good artist. Most of them are still alive so they are still making art. They are really good artist! But there are lots of other good artists who were not part of this movement, even working at the same time. The Cass Corridor group were essentially white guys and there were a whole group of African-American artists who were working at the same time, who were not part of this urban exploration thing. They were moving in a different kind of direction. There are not very many women involved who got any recognition for being part of this group. Wolbert: Why do you think that is that many of the acclaimed Cass Corridor artists are white male artists? Wilkinson: That s a very interesting question. I ve always wondered and I don t know this but I ve always wondered if it doesn t have a lot to do with the fact that their very first champion was a curator from New York named Sam Wagstaff. And Sam, of course, was a white male, from a very wealthy family, very well educated, very good looking, very persuasive. And he took an interest in these young artists and really brought their work forward and got people to buy their work. He really was the one who began to make this group come together. Art history is full of movements that are started by white guys, so (laughs), you know, it s not all that surprising.
21 But the women worked in a different way for the most part. They didn t really approach it with the same kind of bravura or performance angle that the men did. The men made these huge works that had gigantic pieces of machinery hanging off of them with all this paint thrown around. And they really were pretty spectacular, gigantic, macho style works and most of the women did not work that way. Stylistically they weren t really a very good fit, even though they did very strong work on their own. But so often the Cass Corridor is defined by a pretty narrow group of artists and objects. That original group well, I shouldn t even say that I guess. I am mostly thinking of Gordon Newton, Michael Luchs and the guys who worked around them. But there was also somebody like John Egner whom they knew from Wayne State University and John didn t work that way. He was a very, very good painter who worked in a sort of classical painting style. But he was always considered part of that group as well. Wolbert: now I lost my train of thought Wilkinson: (laughs) But it s interesting, if I can say just one more thing on that subject. I did an essay for the catalog that Wayne State did when they got the Jim Duffy collection. When we started to work on that show I forget exactly how that works now they brought together a panel of artists who came and talked about their experiences in the Cass corridor, including a couple of the women who were every outspoken about the fact they were never really part of anything, that nobody ever took them seriously, that all attention was paid to the guys. That was an eye-opener for me. I never heard it put quite that way before.
22 Wolbert: They are very outspoken in the Works in Progress: Images from Detroit s Cass Corridor documentary as well Wilkinson: Yes, absolutely. Wolbert: about the way they felt that they were perceived. Wilkinson: Yeah. Wolbert: You said earlier that you sometimes wondered if Sam Wagstaff s influence might have had something to do with the fact that the males were picked up a little more than the women. Do you think that Jim Duffy s influence on the Cass Corridor might have had something to do with it? He did commission large pieces of work and installations in his factory. Wilkinson: Yes, he did. He bought work by women, too. But it is true that primarily he supported the guys. I mean, primarily he supported Gordon. And the things that he bought for the factory were mostly Gordon and Michael and then some younger artists who were really not part of the original Cass Corridor group. And yeah, that might have well been part of it because he bought works from them regularly so that they would have some kind of an income. And that gave them an imprimatur, too, in the way that Sam s interest did.
23 Wolbert: After the galleries sort of closed down and now that Jim Duffy doesn t collect art anymore, do you think there have been any other sustaining events or artists that have carried the Cass Corridor art project or community? Wilkinson: Not really. The Feigenson Gallery continued after Jackie died. A woman named Mary Preston ran it for many years and did good shows. Not always Corridor shows, but good shows. Susanne Hillberry certainly does some. The most sustaining over the years has really been through the offices of Wayne State [University] because they did the show when they first got the gift well, when they got a gift from Jim not at first, but later. And then they did the big catalog which of course if very important. If they are able to continue with this project [the oral history project], that will be a real way to sustain the memory of this movement. Wolbert: What I find very fascinating is that the Cass Corridor art is everywhere on campus. It s in the most random spaces and the most random buildings. From your perspective being the art historian and having worked in museums, how do you think that fits for the Cass Corridor art, to be exposed, say in the Undergraduate Library on Wayne States campus? Wilkinson: I think it is good actually, because (door bell rings) it may help people to remember that the Cass Corridor and Wayne State were very much bound together. The Cass Corridor group came out of hanging around the art department at Wayne State. It s very much part of the university s history and that is an important aspect of things, I think. At least there is some little reverberation in your mind when you see a piece in the Undergraduate Library (laughs).
24 Wolbert: Who is for you the most influential or most important artist from the Cass Corridor project and why? Wilkinson: Well, I would have to say the three artists that I did the most work on, I think, are the most interesting and the most complex. I really think that Gordon Newton is the kind of artist whose work could stand up against work by anybody anywhere. He s really a wonderful artist because he has such a beautiful touch in the way he used those early charcoal pieces of his are so beautiful, very, very sensitive. He is very interested in other periods of art history. He is really interested in 18 th century British landscape painting and uses some of what he learns from looking at that work to inform his own work which looks very different. That intellectualism that he brings to work, that looks raw in many cases, is fascinating. That is just fascinating. Michael Luchs does something similar, although his work to me is much less complicated. He takes a very straight forward idea but transforms it, so that you look at it from an entirely different point of view. And that s a very special thing, I think. And the other is not somebody who was part of the original group but someone who came later; a woman named Cay Bahnmilller who works very much in the Cass Corridor style. She brought also that complexity that Gordon had in his work. But she was very interested in poetry and music and most of her work is very melancholy. She was very interested in Schumann [Robert Schumann] and Emily Dickinson and used the kind of abstraction that you see in that kind of poetry and music; brought that into the visual, as well as making it very, very personal. Her work has more of her in it than I think Gordon s or Michael s does. A lot of her work is autobiographical but relates to other periods in an abstract way where there is this kind of space between words and images.
25 Wolbert: So you would say she has been probably one of the more influential artists coming out of Detroit after the Cass Corridor? Wilkinson: Well, I don t think so. I don t mean to say that she was influential. I don t think she was the least bit influential. And I am not really sure how influential Gordon or Michael are ultimately. Many people have adopted aspects of their style. In that sense they are influential, but I don t really see that beyond that there is much influence and partly I think it is because well, Kay is dead Gordon and Michael both have removed themselves from the community. Michael in the physical way; he doesn t live here anymore. And Gordon has always been very private. He doesn t mix, especially with artists. So, you know it is not like they have a group of followers or students or people who use them as a resource. People take what they can from looking at the work as often as they get to see it, which isn t all that often. Wolbert: Is there anything else you would like that add, that we haven t touch on yet? Wilkinson: I don t think. Wolbert: Okay, then I thank you very much for your time and this lovely interview. Wilkinson: Oh, thank you.