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Arts & Entertainment

Butcher's Daughter Spurs Discussion, Hope and Helps Build Community

Monica Bowman, an actual butcher's daughter, curates "The Quiet Life" with taxidermy artist David R. Harper.

Monica Bowman runs an art gallery, and she wants you to participate.

The director of the Butcher’s Daughter Contemporary Art Gallery wants to provide a space in which you can begin the discussion: What is art? What emotion does this stir in you? Who are these artists who make the pieces on the walls, how are they like you, and how do they do what they do?

“I really desired a sense of community,” said Bowman, who recently curated Live From Detroit, a group show that took place this spring in New York and featured a dozen Metro Detroit-based artists.

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After studying at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, she returned to her home state of Michigan (having grown up in Holly) and found that Ferndale suited her aspirations for galvanizing and utilizing an art community.

Bowman came to her space, a suite in the second-floor loft on the corner of Woodward Avenue and Troy, specifically looking to enter the orbits of other galleries — namely, the Lemberg Gallery and Susanne Hillberry Gallery — believing that “community” is the probable answer to her main objective: “How to develop context for artists” as well as for audiences, she said.

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“I think it’s important not just to put a product out there and simply say, 'It’s for sale,' but to get involved in the artists’ lives," Bowman said. "How do they relate to their work, where do they get their material, what are their connections to the city?

"But, early on, I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself into just showing Detroit artists. I thought it was important to start that synergy, map D.C. artists to Detroit artists to New York artists," she said. "So, contextualizing the work and creating a network to support that — that’s what I’m interested in, that’s the way forward, I think, for me.”

Bowman returned to the Detroit area after completing her specialization in contemporary arts at Sotheby’s Institute in 2008. The next year, the Butcher’s Daughter was born.

Last week, Chicago-based artist David R. Harper opened his current show, The Quiet Life, a pet project of the Butcher’s Daughter as Bowman collaborated with the artist (who specializes in embroidery and “art taxidermy”) to tailor a show to her space’s nuanced layout.

One reason for their meticulous fitting of aesthetic was that some of Harper’s rather elaborate or heftier pieces — such as the life-size horse featured in Last to Win — wouldn’t fit. But again, the pieces chosen, including a haunting-yet-dazzling spread of decaled mink skulls and a splayed cloth bobcat, were chosen to attain “context.”

Bowman is the daughter, granddaughter and sister of butchers, hence the gallery’s name. But, she admits with a shrug and a chuckle, The Quiet Life is her first show involving animals.

Growing up in rural Holly, there was “no influence of art in my young adult life,” she said. One of her first jobs, though, taught her a lot about being a director, working as an account manager in automotive logistics, learning about the flow of goods through trade, exports and import duties and tariffs. It just wound up that the “goods” she in which she would specialize are works of art.

How does one solve the juxtaposition of art and commerce?

“Community is the answer, and I think the next question is: sustainability," Bowman said. "It’s part of my job to provide this space that’s welcoming, with art that should definitely motivate the conversations.

"It’s definitely about the context. I wouldn’t want to close down, because I don’t want to live in a town that has only x amounts of art galleries or even x amount of choices. I’m trying to create a resource that I need in a place where I live. It’s more than work. It’s relationships with people that care about art.”

Bowman recently completed her first semester teaching business practices at the Center for Creative Studies. She said she's returning to CCS in the autumn to help in creating the artists of tomorrow, to fit them to the standards of entering a gallery or to just finding solutions and other outlets for their art.

Moving forward, Bowman will continue her commitment to contextualizing art and improving the artist community.

“I’m so proud to live in Ferndale," she said. "It’s an enchanting place; you can have an elegant time, or you can just have a coney dog; fine art to friendship bracelets.

"I think there’s room for everyone and in such a concentrated area – that’s hopeful for me, living here and hopeful for people who visit.”

Harper’s “The Quiet Life” runs through June 25, after which the Butcher’s Daughter will likely close for the summer, so make sure to stop by soon.

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