briX Magazine and a Brick of Art

 

A few weeks ago I peddled the old Schwinn over to Joe Cunningham's quilting studio on Market Street in San Francisco to catch up with a fellow Flintoid. He handed over the ultimate Flint artifact, a "brick" of postcards created by Michigan artists for briX magazine. With its lowercase b and uppercase X, it was a publication that was pushing the boundaries of art, ideas and punctuation in eighties Flint. A self-described "collection of art & ideas," it was published thrice yearly by the Art Army Press for project ARTSOURCE/Greater Flint Arts Council.

"In this issue of briX we decided to invoke the adage: 'A picture is worth a thousand words,'" wrote Guest Editor Christopher R. Young. "To do so we changed the magazine format to that of a series of postcards to be packaged as a unit in the form of a brick. This not only provided a workable and convenient format, it also gave us a clever visual pun, a unifying theme to rally our imaginative energies around."

(Does everything, even art, have a tinge of militancy in Flint, where it takes an "art army" to "rally" our imagination?)

Here are a few samples from the collection that definitely capture the mood and feel of Flint in the midst of its free fall.

Thom Bohnert, Flushing, Self Portrait, 1988

Kenneth A. Hannon, Flint, From the series Greetings from Flint, 1988

Madeleine Barkey, Flushing, Untitled, 1988

Kenneth A. Hannon, Flint, From the series Greetings from Flint, 1988

Pat Keating, Grand Blanc, Fish: It's only art, 1988

UPDATE: A photo of the elusive briX Magazine, courtesy of Tim "East Side" Lane.

AutoWorld: It Could Have Been Worse

Let's remember AutoWorld at its best...as an artist's rendition before it actually opened.

Have you ever wondered if AutoWorld might have been something far more sinister than a harebrained redevelopment project?

Here's the Wikipedia description of Flint's biggest boondoggle:

"AutoWorld's first area was located inside a big dome. The insides were designed to look like Flint long ago. The first display that one encountered was a small cabin. Inside was a mannequin. When one pressed a red button on the outside of the cabin it kicked on a film that projected onto the mannequin's face. The mannequin was supposed to be Jacob Smith, founder of Flint. It would welcome the visitor to AutoWorld and talk about the beginning of Flint. In the center of the dome was a Ferris wheel, and nearby was a carousel and other attractions."

And here's Charles Holland, a London Architect, describing another doomed artificial world:

"Westworld is set in a theme park called Delos which is divided into three historical zones: the Wild West, pre-Christian Rome and medieval Europe. Each zone is populated by robots who act as adversaries, sexual partners, drinking buddies or whatever else the human visitors require in order to have a good time. The guests — of whom there seem to be remarkably few — behave according to a crude, secondhand understanding of their chosen period, chasing after comely wenches in Medievalworld or starting barroom brawls in Westworld. Behind the scenes an army of technicians programme, monitor and repair the robots."

Eerily similar, no? Perhaps if AutoWorld had comely wenches and served booze, it would have lasted longer. But anyone who's seen Yul Brynner's performance in the movie Westworld knows that things could have gone much worse at AutoWorld. Maybe we should be thankful that the place closed down before the robots escaped and hit the streets of Flint.

Wish you were here

Two postcards from the 1988 "Greetings from Flint" series by Kenneth A. Hannon, sponsored by the Greater Flint Arts Council.