New Acquisitions

Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs

Nancy Sojka,
Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs

Susan Goethel Campbell, American; Hub, 2000; mixed media on magnetic sheeting, copy six in an edition of six artist's books. Museum Purchase with funds from twenty- eight contributors in memory of Ken Neumann

Artists' books encompass a fascinating range of creativity and imagination. They can be relatively straightforward bound texts with or without pictures or outright sculptural pieces that make a viewer/reader think twice about the definition. Hub falls into this later characterization. Susan Campbell wove together many factual details with loose, but subtle, thoughts associated with growth and decay to make Hub a reflection on time and place. This "book" uses no words to tell the story of a building implosion, only anonymous visual terms. The title is inspired by the axial layout of downtown Detroit and, while the identity of the structure is never revealed, it is Carmel Hall, which was destroyed in 1996. It stood on Woodward Avenue, the city’s main artery, another small fact that adds to the symbolic value of Hub.

The book consists of eleven split, double-page images of a building's demise from the moment the explosives are detonated through its obliteration by a great dust cloud, and to its eventual emergence as a pile of rubble. The images are Campbell's sequential photographs of the event. She attached them to magnetic sheets and enhanced and altered them through a variety of processes with acrylic paint, and finally distressed them. The magnetic quality of the sheets serves as the ingenious "binding" or closing device for the book. The sheets or "pages" click together into a stack that Campbell carved and painted to resemble a brick, an elemental unit of building. These pages can be spread apart in a variety of configurations and combinations to emulate the movement of the dust cloud. They can be seen collectively or separated into individual scenes and even recombined in an "incorrect" order if that is a reader's choice. Because of the amount of handwork involved in sculpting each stack and the alteration of the photographs, each volume of the edition varies slightly.

Campbell thinks of Hub as a remnant that illustrates a story about the evolution and devolution of a structure. However, she was compelled by real facts. The idea for creating the brick shape sprang from witnessing perhaps the most famous implosion in Detroit—the dark red brick Hudson's Department Store—which was the onetime anchor of downtown commerce. Carmel Hall, designed by Paul Kamper in collaboration with his father, Louis Kamper, opened in October 1926 as the Savoy Hotel. It later became the LaSalle Hotel and, finally, a nursing home.

Hub was purchased in memory of Ken Neumann, who served as the president of the DIA's Graphic Arts Council from 1994 to 1995. A founding co-partner of Neumann/Smith Architecture, Neuman possessed a keen intelligence and great wit. He would have appreciated the poignant subject matter and clever construction of Hub. It was learned, after making the acquisition, that his nickname was "the brick."

Contributors to the acquisition: Ansel and Suzanne Aberly, Dr. Irving Burton, Oscar and Dede Feldman, Marilyn Finkel and Stanley Brown, Dr. Kenneth and Roslyne Gitlin, Dr. Sidney and Phebe Goldstein, Norman and Ann Katz, Jim and Valerie Kushman, Bob and Leslie Lazzerin, Richard and Myrle Leland, Corrine Lemberg, Max Lepler and Rex L. Dotson, Dr. Jeffrey and Carol Maisels, Dr. Robert and Janet Miller, Stanley and Doreen Millman, Ruth Rattner, W. C. and Doris Rauhauser, Bill and Marge Sandy, Elliot and Lorraine Schubiner, Alan E. and Marianne Schwartz, Arlene Shaler, Ellen Sharp, Nancy Sojka, Mr. and Mrs. Neil J. Sosin, Henry and Judy Velleman, Norman Wechsler and Carol Coskey Wechsler, Hank and Heidi Wineman, and John and Helga Wise.