Remain Calm: The Art of Graem Whyte

Excerpt from the essay by Dick Goody: The artistic practice of Graem Whyte lies at the intersection of family, community, collaboration, craftsmanship, metaphysics and the imaginative repurposing of materials. The compound where he lives and works, Popps Packing, a former meatpacking business, is a model for the integration of art and life. A home, studio, gallery and de facto community center, it lies at the northern rim of Hamtramck, a multicultural enclave within the massive, shifting metropolis of Detroit. Here, amid an evolutionary transition from urban-industrialism to post-capital cooperativism (and along with it, a return to the land and its values), art and life thrive at the confluence of project-based and production-based artistic practices. Whyte produces work in a variety of scale from small, domestic-sized sculptures to mid sized assemblages to larger collaborative projects