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by K. L. Dunn (Editor), Caroline Maun (Editor)
An illustrated retrospective on the life and work of the colorful Detroit artist.
Barbara Greene Mann was a force--gritty, loud, messy, and unapologetic. Her life was a maelstrom of creation, destruction, survival, and reinvention. She was witness to and an architect of Detroit's Cass Corridor art scene during the '70s and '80s, and her work captured the chaos and vibrancy of the city through a multitude of hand-colored prints, watercolor paintings, and lithographs. Barbara didn't just exist in the scene; she was the scene.
With a personality as unfettered as her art, Barbara was described as an "outrageous pixie"--electric and always up to something. Whether sketching in the dark at a jazz show or battling for an elephant named Lucy, Barbara threw herself into everything she did, using her art as a weapon to fight for the underdog. This collection of her art along with essays by those who knew her offers a way into her complicated legacy. Barbara's work became a promise--one where, even in the bleakest moments, creativity can change the story.
Author Biography
Barbara Greene Mann (1948-2018) earned her MFA at Wayne State University, majoring in printmaking. Her vivid, colorful work was exhibited in the US and Canada in numerous shows. The last years of Barbara's "mad artist" life were marked by her engagement with the disability art communities in Toronto. Caroline Maun is associate professor of English at Wayne State University. She is the editor of The Collected Poems of Evelyn Scott and author of Mosaic ofFire: The Work of Lola Ridge, Evelyn Scott, Charlotte Wilder, and Kay Boyle. Her poetry publications include the volumes The Sleeping and What Remains and three chapbooks. K. L. Dunn is an associate professor of graduate communication design at Pratt Institute, where she shepherds students through the evolving terrain of cultural storytelling. She is co-director of the documentary The Elephant (in my room) and editor of Sher Doruff's trilogy Betty and Bob: An Actual Occasion. She co-founded No Kill Magazine and No Kill Project Planet, an ecological fashion publication. A former opera librettist and early practitioner of networked media performance, she continues to favor mess over polish and meaning over metrics.
