The Crossing Point

Participating artists: Michael Ficara, Manual Bart, Stanley Brown, Sereal Crawford, Dwayne Curry, Mandy Demorest, Santina Dionisi, Zainab ElHasan, Derek Ellis, David Harris, Ryan McDonagh, John Peterson, Justin Pollard, and Tessann Rondeau 

Exhibition Dates: October 17, 2024 - January 3, 2025

Location: PASC Southgate Gallery
13721 Eureka Road, Southgate, MI 48195
Ph: 734-250-8695

Gallery Hours: Friday, 10 am – 3 pm and by appointment

Curated by Benjamin Haddix and Kristi Ternes

How can it be that we are both gravity and levity? […] I am both. Don’t tell me
I have to choose. I don’t have to choose. I am both and I live in the crossing point. 

– M.C. Richards  

The Crossing Point is an exhibition featuring artists from all three PASC studios whose artworks represent an acute sense of structure and materiality. Spanning from two-dimensional artwork to sculpture, the artists in this show demonstrate a willingness to experiment beyond mediums, allowing their interests and intuition to guide crossings from paper to clay, from ink to thread and from paint to glue. This show represents a lived world of architecture, toys, props and play. It is flat, soft, drawn, and sewn, and it spans the junction between the manifestation of an idea and the materialization of what spatial form it takes.  

As an example of this theme, consider the following PASC artist's practice. Santina Dionisi, writes colorful and richly imagined musicals which carry into her art practice. Her storyboards become comics, playbills become paintings, and characters become sculptural stage props. Derek Ellis chooses architectural monuments and their unique geometries as the starting place for his two-dimensional artworks, which get to the cellular fabric of our built world. Justin Pollard brings his precision and exacting attention to follow his expansive imagination, realizing known television characters into new imagined forms.  

The title, The Crossing Point, is derived from a popular workshop by M.C. Richards, a ceramicist and educator who spent the later years of her life living and working with adults with disabilities. She urges the creative spirit to follow the non-linear growth of our vision, rather than set a definition of what kind of artist we should be. In The Crossing Point, we hope to represent artists in the process of following their vision and imagination across a diversity of styles and expressions.  

Ben Haddix is a graduate of the Evergreen State College in Washington where he studied art and education. Since working in a library for 10+ years, Ben has maintained a commitment to accessible and inclusive spaces that hold potential for communally generated structures for learning and sharing. This is a commitment that is reflected also in his art practice – short plays and video works that value participation, amateurism, and the process of learning. He lives in Hamtramck with his two cats, Pia and Temple, and many musical instruments. Ben has been an art advisor at PASC since early 2024. 

Kristi Ternes is a graduate of both the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and "YouTube University", which have launched her into 20+ years of teaching puppet and mask-making, costume and set design, fine arts classes to elders, and co-directing collaborative community outdoor puppet pageants. Her artistic highlights include showing her films at the Walker Art Museum, as a part of Women in the Director’s Chair; participating in the Independent Studio Program at Parsons New School for Design; being a videographer of, and traveling with, the French punk band Dure Mere throughout Europe, and having her 20 person collaboratively created theater show Iron Mermaiden highlighted in an article in American Theatre Magazine, noted as “a fever dream worth experiencing.” Kristi has been an art advisor at PASC since 2023. 

Launched in 2021, PASC is the first progressive art and design studio and exhibition program in Detroit and Wayne County dedicated to supporting artists with developmental disabilities and mental health differences to advance artistic practices and build individual careers in the art and design fields. PASC is a program of Services to Enhance Potential (STEP), a non-profit service organization founded in 1972 that provides services and support for more than 1,400 individuals with disabilities and mental health differences across Southeastern Michigan.