Renowned artists like Hubert Massey and the Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club call Marygrove home

Amid all the shifts the Marygrove campus has gone through over the years, it has remained a hub for the arts. It is a place where artists of all ages create, gather, and build. Several artist studios are housed on the campus, and a weekly meetup brings together artists from as young as six to seniors.

One of the country’s only African American fresco painters works out of the Marygrove campus. A sketch in progress, mapping out a future mural, covers an entire wall in Hubert Massey’s dimly lit studio tucked behind the Madame Cadillac Building. Colorful tiles and stacks of sketches crowd the tables.

Fresco is a mural-painting style developed in Italy in the thirteenth century, where water-based pigments are painted onto wet plaster. The technique is most commonly seen in Renaissance paintings and, as Massey highlights, is how Michelangelo painted the ceilings of Rome’s Sistine Chapel. It’s also how Diego Rivera painted the Detroit Industry Murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Massey’s fresco paintings can be found around Detroit, including Huntington Place (formerly Cobo Hall), the Detroit Athletic Club, and Huntington Tower.

While the frescoes are Massey’s favorite medium, he also works in mosaic tile and acrylic murals, oil paintings, sculptures, sign painting, and terrazzo, where chips of granite, quartz, marble, or other materials are set in an epoxy or cement base. He used this method to design Charles H. Wright’s monumental 72-foot floorpiece, “The Ring of Genealogy,” in 1997.

Marygrove has been Massey’s home base since around 2020, shortly after Marygrove College shuttered. After the college closed, the Marygrove Conservancy began transitioning the campus into the “Marygrove Learning Community,” with an education model that offers prenatal, pre-kindergarten, K-12, and post-secondary education opportunities.

At the time, he was working on a tile mural at Ella Fitzgerald Park with local children and community members, and needed a place to fire the tiles. An unused space on campus, formerly used for a ceramics class, was available, and the Conservancy offered it to Massey to complete the mural. Shortly after, he began renting it as his personal studio.

Massey often engages the youth in his work. Besides Ella Fitzgerald Park, Massey has recently worked with students at Marygrove to create a tile piece that will live on campus.

“I want the kids to see the possibilities,” he says. “I had parents that supported the arts. My mom always said, maybe this’ll feed you one day, and that gave me freedom. Gave me wings. … You try to free people. You don’t try to constrain them.”

He also knows the importance of engaging communities where his art lives. His 2010 tile mural on the Bagley Pedestrian Bridge in Southwest Detroit represents the neighborhood’s culture and history. After talking with residents, Massey used the mural to honor their stories about immigration and deportation. He also included the three sisters in the mural—beans, corn, and squash in Native American communities—after a conversation with a resident.

“I listen to people,” he says. “We do community forums and get people involved.”

A Diverse Community of Artists

Massey is one of several artists whose studios are housed on the Marygrove campus. Painter and muralist Richard Wilson, photographer Naomi Tajo, multimedia artist Sarah Nesbitt, and mixed media painter Kaee Johnson also call Marygrove home.

Every Monday evening, the Madame Cadillac building brims with excitement as established and emerging artists gather for the Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club. Artists walk in carrying canvases and wearing smiles as they greet old friends. It feels like a family reunion.

Here, artists get to auction off their work and enter weekly raffles for art supplies. They also get two minutes to stand before the room of up to 100 people and practice introducing themselves and their work. Artists aren’t the only ones who gather here — collectors, gallerists, and arts educators also come to support Detroit’s flourishing arts scene.

“It’s kind of like church,” says Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club co-founder Harold Braggs. “The most important part is the fellowship, the camaraderie, because everybody knows everybody. But in addition to showing their art and networking, we help prepare them for getting their work out there, getting into exhibitions, doing a CV for their work, and getting comfortable talking about their work in front of people.”

Art veterans Henry Harper and Braggs started The Breakfast Club in 2009. At first, it was just the two of them meeting up to talk about art over breakfast. Over time, it expanded to include more artists and collectors who gathered for weekly meetups at 1917 American Bistro and later Noni’s Sherwood Grille. After outgrowing the restaurant, pausing during the pandemic, and halting due to funding issues, the Breakfast Club eventually found a permanent home at the Marygrove Conservancy with the support of The Kresge Foundation.

You won’t find any breakfast at the evening gatherings, but you will find community, laughter, hugs, and art — lots of it. Participating artists have sold over $3 million worth of art since the group’s founding.

Mixed media artist Carla Harden drives 45 minutes from Grand Blanc every Monday for the Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club. She has been coming for the past two years, including when the group was meeting at Noni’s.

“My first time talking about my art for two minutes was nerve-wracking. So anyone who is nervous about coming here, just know we’ve been right there with you,” she says. “It is rare to see different genres, skill levels, mediums, all coming together in one room. You start to see their personalities. You start to think about the artists themselves, and no longer just the technical skill in their work. You appreciate them more because you’ve seen them grow.”

In July, the Breakfast Club hosted a major auction at the Motown Mansion (the former home of Berry Gordon) where over 70 pieces of art were sold. Harden sold two pieces of art there — one for $300 and another for $700. Sixteen-year-old self-taught artist Amir Russell also sold a piece at the auction for $800. Mixed media collage artist and longtime Breakfast Club member Judy Bowman was one of the auction’s top sellers, with one of her works earning a bid of $10,000.

Art dealer and co-owner of Paramour Fine Arts Gallery, Ed Ogul, has been coming to the meetups for about eight years and says it’s his favorite part of the week. He rarely misses a meeting and has purchased well over 100 pieces over the years.

“It’s given me a different outlook on art and what artists go through to become successful, because I never saw that up close in my business,” he says. “Now I see it. For me, it’s gratifying because my business has always been basically dealing in art by dead [artists], and it’s nice to support living artists. When I write a check to them, they get the money, whereas when I sell a work by Picasso, Picasso doesn’t get any of the money.”

Marsha Philpot, also known as Marsha Music, has been involved with the Breakfast Club since 2016. She feels like the cool auntie, greeting nearly every young artist who enters the room like family. She remembers them all and is happy to see them.

“We love the role that art plays in the community and are hopeful that more and more artists find out about the Breakfast Club because they come here and are encouraged, particularly those who don’t come out of academia,” she says. “They are welcome here. They get up and show their work, sometimes for the very first time in their lives, and we give a lot of high fives and applause, and it’s a wonderful atmosphere.”

Parents also bring their young children, and artists as young as six years old have even sold their art.

The gift that Marygrove offers

Detroit has historically been a hub for the arts. Groups like the Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club and artists like Massey, who call the Marygrove Conservancy home, continue to add to the city’s artistic legacy.

“Art is embedded in the DNA of this city,” Philpot says. “To encourage that in this community is so important because it allows a person to be part of the design culture in this city. Sometimes artists come from neighborhoods that are struggling. They [may] have difficult situations in front of them. They can come here and, for a few hours, just revel in their gift. It’s wonderful.”

Randiah Camille Green is a Detroit-based freelance writer who covers arts, culture, history and community through deeply reported, engaging storytelling.