Shepard Fairey and the Art of “The Belt”: 22 New Works

The great city of Detroit, Michigan is currently ground-zero where visionary street art is concerned. Find Library Street Collective in the eye of the storm. First they brought us “The Z Lot”, at Broadway & Gratiot, revolutionary in both concept and execution. Their follow-ups: 1) co-commissioning the brand spanking new, 185-foot tall Shepard Fairey mural that is now visible throughout much of downtown and also from miles away, 2) hosting a spectacular, three-month Shepard Fairey gallery show, and 3) the ever-expanding, envelope-pushing art of “The Belt”, projects that all successfully compound Library Street’s currently sterling reputation.

Fairey’s as of yet untitled mural stands 185 feet tall and approximately 60 feet wide on the back side of the Compuware World Headquarters Building on the north side of Campus Martius, and can be seen from a great distance when travelling southwest into downtown via Gratiot Avenue. We’re told it’s the largest mural Fairey’s ever created. Back on May 22nd Library Street Collective held their opening reception for Fairey’s ‘Printed Matters: Creation & Destruction’, and let us tell you, dear readers, it’s a precious few Detroit galleries that enjoy the kind of overwhelming opening night attendance we witnessed firsthand. The skillfully produced event also featured a lively performance by the Detroit Party Marching Band (see our video below) performing a handful of tunes right smack dab in the middle of the local street art sensation dubbed “The Belt”: a single block alley running southeast to northwest from Gratiot to Grand River, between Broadway and Library Streets in the heart of downtown. Over the last two years or so, the industrious staff at Library Street Collective have been diligently filling it with a host of permanent works by artists of national and international renown, augmented by a quintet of panels intended for the temporary six-month display of rotating works by painters and sculptors of varying origin. Currently, five compelling pieces by Fairey himself (all pictured below) inhabit said panels, installed in concert with the gallery show and thematically congruent in subject matter. Find Fairey’s second, far less publicized and slightly less epic Detroit mural, ‘Enjoy Power While It Lasts’, in the immediate environs of “The Belt”, upon the billboard atop the Detroit PuppetART Theater building, on the northwest corner of East Grand River and Farmer Street. Walk just a bit north of Grand River on Farmer and then turn around to see the 21st entry on our list, ‘One Man Army’, by world-class outdoor muralist, ARYZ. Walk two blocks northwest of Grand River on Broadway to see the mammoth, untitled mural by HENSE aka Alex Brewer that is also featured in our list’s 22nd entry. ~I♥DM

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1. Shepard Fairey’s Detroit Mural – As far as our research informs us, no title has been given to Fairey’s colossal mural on the backside of Compuware’s world headquarters on Campus Martius.