Anyone with decent vision can spot the differences in the two photographs below, but to fully appreciate each incarnation of this house as a work of art, you must first know something about .
The Heidelberg Project was started by Tyree Guyton, with his grandfather, Sam Mackey, in Detroit, Michigan, in 1986. They started The Heidelberg Project in the McDougall-Hunt neighborhood, on the east side of Detroit, on Heidelberg Street. Tyree had come back home from serving in the military, and was shocked and saddened to see that his old neighborhood had begun to deteriorate. Crime rates were high, and community morale was low. Tyree embarked on an optimistic, tenacious, ultimately very successful project to transform his neighborhood to an indoor-and-outdoor art museum, maintained not just by artists but also by the community. He started by painting a series of houses on the street that had fallen into disrepair — with bright dots of color, sometimes attaching salvaged items from within the houses themselves. Soon, The Heidelberg Project began attracting visitors from other neighborhoods, and eventually even tourists from other cities.
In 2013 and 2014, several houses of The Heidelberg Project were destroyed by separate acts of arson. No perpetrator has been caught, and the houses were damaged beyond repair. Rather than despair, however, the folks at THP — led by Tyree — simply turned the burned-out shells into something new and newly lovely. One example of this is below: you can see the “before/after” photos of Soul House. It makes the “after” shot even more amazing to know that THP artists didn’t create that new incarnation themselves; they were helped by Detroit’s Chapter 412 of United Auto Workers. Belief in art by the community, for the community — and its redemptive, unifying power — emanates from these images.
House of Soul and House of Soul Memorial Installation at The Heidelberg Project
Artist: Tyree Guyton / Project Manager: Trista Dymond
