- [Narrator] Just ahead on "One Detroit," we check in with a Michigan State University assistant professor about the emotional climate on campus after this week's mass shooting, and learn about ways to cope.

Plus, we'll take you to a weekly Detroit gathering that brings together artists, art collectors, and food.

And if you're looking for something to do in metro Detroit this weekend, Satori Shakoor has plenty of suggestions.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

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Support for this program is provided by: The Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV, The Kresge Foundation.

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We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

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(upbeat theme music) - [Narrator] Just ahead on this week's "One Detroit," a weekly tradition for Detroit artists and art lovers.

We'll take you to a meeting of "The Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club" on the grounds of the Marygrove Conservancy.

And "One Detroit" contributor, Satori Shakoor, steps in with a list of events and activities happening in the Detroit area this weekend and beyond.

But first up, this week's mass shooting in East Lansing, on the campus of Michigan State University, has left students, parents and the entire country shaken.

This latest school shooting has taken the lives of three students and left others' lives changed forever.

"One Detroit" contributor, Steven Henderson, who is a parent of an MSU student, spoke with Dr. Lekie Dwanyen, an assistant professor, in MSU's Department of Human Development & Family Studies, about healing from the tragedy.

(relaxing theme music) - I'm a parent at Michigan State University and I spent, you know, Monday night, doing what every other parent was doing, trying to make sure my kid was was safe.

I just want to have you start by talking about the atmosphere on campus, the things you're hearing from students about what happened and how they're feeling.

The effects of this, I think are immeasurable on the people who are part of the MSU community.

- You're absolutely right, Stephen.

My sense of the emotional energy and climate on campus is that, students, faculty, staff, anybody who is affiliated with MSU, whether we were present there at the time or not, is experiencing a high level of distress.

We are emotionally, you know, experiencing fear, anxiety, worries of, you know, what this means for the families that are directly impacted, how we can support one another as we cope with, you know, high levels of stress from the shooting.

So, the emotional climate is very, very tense, but it also is very supportive.

We have several opportunities that are arising to convene as a community, and really try to form some understanding together, around what happened.

Memorialize the lives that were lost as much as we really can in this moment.

- Yeah, the kind of trauma that people experience when something like this happens is, I think, you know, analogous to other really violent situations that most people don't experience, right?

War and those kind of conflicts, I really wonder how, outside the context of something like that, you deal with this kind of trauma.

How do you treat students, young people, who are experiencing something that most young people still, thank God, would never experience?

- You know, when we experience events like this, even if we're exposed to the event virtually, we can experience a number of traumatic stress reactions, that again, are normal, based on the way that we have to kind of metabolize this information or the experience, right?

So, we might feel more jumpy or startled immediately after events like this, or for a period of time, we might not feel our sleep routine normalized.

We might get less sleep than we're used to.

We might want to, for children for example, we might see our children wanna sleep closer to us or have, you know, a closer proximity.

So, we might also feel symptoms like being unable to eat in the same ways that we normally do.

Our digestive systems are impacted.

And so, we wanna give ourselves and our children a lot of flexibility and a lot of grace in these days following this event.

And for a period of time after, we wanna be checking in with ourselves, asking how we're feeling, trying to verbalize it, and allowing children and students the opportunity to verbalize how they're feeling as well.

And we wanna validate ourselves and validate each other, because however we're feeling right now is normal, to such an abnormal event.

- So, I want to talk a little bit about that word, "normal," in two different ways.

One, one of the things that I detected from my son when this happened, was a sense that "this is just the way the world is now."

And he's never been associated with a shooting like this, but they are happening with more frequency.

And, of course he knows about it.

That bothered me.

It bothered me that he didn't seem more bothered.

And, I wonder what we're to make of that, that we are raising a generation of young people who think of this as more acceptable, or just, they make way for it, in a way that I think should disturb us.

- Yes, and I would agree with you.

When we look at our societal context and we see how common these events are, unfortunately, we can understand how youth and college students are not necessarily surprised by the event.

We saw students at Michigan State with, you know, paraphernalia supporting other schools that had just recently experienced shootings.

There are students here that have experienced school shootings before.

And so, there is an element of this that is more common, but it's not normal.

When I say normal, I'm talking about our individual and our relational reactions to the traumatic event.

In that, whatever we're feeling right now, or however we're coping, or however we feel our routine disrupted, we should normalize that for one another.

You know, if you're having bad dreams, if you're feeling more startled, or if you're feeling more irritable about things that normally didn't irritate you before, those are normal reactions.

And so, we wanna offer ourselves a lot of flexibility in these moments after the shooting.

- And the other way I want to talk about that word, "normal," is how do we get back to normal, the "normal" that we knew before this?

How do you make that pivot away from the trauma of this incident, to a more normal state of interaction and being on campus?

- Yes, that's a great question.

And I think the question of, "what is normal," following this event, has to be decided upon by our community and we will approach normal together, whatever that means.

For this immediate period, it's really important that we allow ourselves the chance to just stabilize and to just sit with however we're feeling and whatever demands are on our plates right now, in terms of taking care of each other, that we honor that.

And then we can, you know, discuss decision making, and moving forward through procedures as a community.

- [Narrator] If you or anyone you know is in need of support in the aftermath of the Michigan State University tragedy, we've compiled a list of resources to help at www.onedetroitpbs.org.

Let's turn now, to a uniquely Detroit tradition, that brings artists and art collectors together each week, on the Marygrove Campus.

"The Detroit Fine Arts Breakfast Club" was created in 2009, by two Detroiters who loved art and love to eat.

Today, it has grown into a huge gathering where artists can showcase, explain, and even sell their works.

"One Detroit" senior producer, Bill Kubota, has the story.

- You had to be there.

- Black expressionism goes all the way back to the founding of the visual arts on the African continent.

It flowed through time into this room.

It passed through many definitions and transitions, until it comes to you.

- [Narrator] The Marygrove Conservancy Detroit, most Monday nights, is "The Breakfast Club."

- Please give him your undivided attention.

Look at that handsome face, look at him smiling.

Okay?

- [Narrator] Artist, art lovers, collectors, looking, talking and buying art.

- I'm happy 'cause it brings artists out of the woodwork.

- My name is Miriam Hull, I'm a acrylic painter.

- I mostly do line work.

Portraiture is what I really dabble in and I'm really inspired by Detroit's underground community.

- I was a technical illustrator for GM for over 40 years, so, that was my profession.

I'm a photorealistic artist.

- And I'm proud to say I am a folk artist.

- Alright, - Alright, now!

- "Breakfast Club" started about 2009.

- [Narrator] Henry Harper, Antiques dealer on Detroit's east side and art aficionado... - Here is Tashif Turner of Detroit.

And actually getting to be a national art rockstar.

- [Narrator] Art, Harper realized, something to look forward to coming home to.

- Art just enhances one's life.

- [Narrator] Artists check in, show their wares, get some advice.

- Yeah so, yeah, the piece is "The Black Narrative."

And it's ironic, you know, prior to me coming here to drop it off, I got pulled over by the police.

So it's just- - You did?

- Yeah, you know- - With this in the car?

- Yeah, this in the car.

- That should've been interesting.

It's something new in this millennia, about the business of art.

Art is now a business beyond what it used to be.

It was reserved for the one percenters.

- [Narrator] Ah, the very rich.

Harper's been a procurer of antiques for some of them.

But this "Breakfast Club," that goes in a different direction - Now, what "Breakfast Club" has done, was to make art absolutely democratic.

- But now, as you go through life and you evolve up the stage of creativity, you're going to have to define who you are and what you are.

Are you a cubist?

Are you an impressionist?

Along the road of life you're going to be experimenting with art, you're going be experimenting with techniques.

You are going to be looking to find yourselves.

Now, once you find yourself, you have to define yourself.

When you make out a resume, you're going to have to tell people what type of artist you are.

I am a black expressionist artist.

- It's not like this elitist, like, the wine and cheese, critiquing our power, Caucasian, walking around.

- I have one work this evening; 30 by 40, I have the up arrow.

- It's very welcoming, it's very home, It's very community.

- It's acrylic, it's called, it has two names: "The Reunion" and it's also called "The Homecoming."

- It's really very therapeutic, because they get to talk about, in front of a crowd on top of that.

And then, there's, like, an African culture.

There's a call and response and African traditions and culture.

- Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Damien Leonte.

(audience applauding) - So you put a call out and get a response back.

That is exactly what happens at "Breakfast Club."

Some artists are showman.

Andy Warhol was a showman.

- Some years back, I did the first one, in 1989.

You had to be there.

(audience laughing) - Picasso was a showman.

- It was in Australia.

You had to be there.

(audience laughing softly) I threw rocks at wild parakeets.

You had to be there.

- The showman, showman, showman.

- And for hours, these parakeets attacked me every time they saw me.

(audience laughing) You had to be there.

- And the showman's rights to the top.

- It's 36 by 48, untitled right now, because it's untitled right now.

- The art is a byproduct of the showmanship.

- On acrylics.

- [Henry] You got to stay with your craft.

Stay what you believe in and really get it out there.

And now, it's easier now.

In the old days, art dealers, it really happened here in Detroit, it was sad, it happened all over the country, nobody wanted black art.

They saw it as "black art," rather than part of the American story.

- I would say I'm an abstract artist.

- However now, brown people, black people, all got an American story to tell.

And the way to tell it is by executing beautiful works of art.

(audience applauding) - So, these two pieces here, first one is, they're both ink.

So, that is ink on paper and that one is ink on wood.

So that style, I feel like I've been developing that for the past 20 years.

'Cause I spent the first 10 years mastering ink, and then I spent the next 10 years mastering wood.

So I wanted to bring 'em together.

- If you look closely you will see that this is a Nigerian woman, and she has a scar on her face.

The scar comes from marauding, people who came to her village, because of her religion.

But her attitude is "I'm still not turning back."

So, that's why I called it "No Turning Back."

And this piece is $250.

(audience applauding) - [Narrator] Some fine eating can be found here, but for newcomers, "The Breakfast Club," that name might be confusing.

- I hear people say, "Well, if you all have dinner in the evening, why do you call it 'The Breakfast Club?'"

So, I have to explain the history to 'em.

- [Narrator] It's when Harold Braggs and Henry Harper started meeting regularly for breakfast.

- And then we start talking and then people would overhear us at that restaurant talking about art and then people would start joining the meeting.

And that first Judy Bowman painting was the real "Breakfast Club."

Mr. Braggs told me a long time ago, he said, "This is gonna be historic."

And I said, "What?

"Two old guys meeting talking about art?

"How could that be a historic?"

- [Narrator] Artists, Art collectors, with coffee, bacon and eggs.

- I started going and meeting with these people, because I didn't know any artists.

I didn't know anything about the Detroit art scene.

I didn't know any of that.

We would bring our work in and talk about it and more and more people started hearing about it and it just started expanding.

And then it exploded.

- [Narrator] They moved meetings to evenings, but kept calling it "The Breakfast Club."

After COVID, they'd grown so big, they moved to the Marygrove Campus Dining Hall.

- With my interest or my background in antiques and art, going to auctions, what do they say at auctions?

"Sold!"

(bell dinging) They don't ring the bell, but they say "sold."

Well, I went and found an antique cowbell and every time you sell something, it just adds to the spontaneity of the evening.

- This one right here is 18 by 24.

That one I actually sold already.

Then- - Wait, did it sell here?

- Yeah, it sold here- - Sold!

(bell dinging) - Artists will never know how to price their work.

And how work is priced is a very difficult, difficult.

Online, they'll tell you per square inch and those kinds of, that doesn't work.

But they tell people that.

- I had no idea that you could sell stuff for $10,000.

I never thought that me, a black man, would be able to do something like, never ever.

- Like, pricing wise, I don't know how that kind of goes, honestly.

So yeah, I'm just starting to figure it out.

But, I feel like if you keep applying pressure to your art, your price should just keep going up.

So yeah, just stay busy with it.

Can just tell they're pretty much my pieces.

- [Narrator] Oshun Williams started as a graphic artist.

He put appliques on clothes he sold.

- The flower patch.

- Those appliques, now part of his painted work, inspired by his daughters.

- I said I haven't seen my kids in a couple of years, so like, that's why I paint, like, little girls, and I paint pictures of them and stuff.

Basically, I'm self-taught, pretty much.

I never went to school for it.

You always gotta be positive.

Yeah, that's about it.

Thank you, bye.

(audience applauding) I never sold my stuff because I didn't know how to price it.

That was like my biggest thing.

I never was really selling art.

I'll probably sell maybe like, two, four pieces a year.

Now, I'm selling a couple pieces a week.

- The title of this piece is "Night School."

I heard a story about Frederick Douglass being taught to read illegally.

For black people, there are anti-literacy laws going around.

- [Narrator] Jonathan Harris, his studios in Corktown.

He became a national sensation a couple years ago with his painting "Critical Race Theory."

- And even when I was in school, like, I studied graphic design and I was just told like, "Oh, if you really want to succeed you have to go to California."

Like, I still had a pamphlet of the different companies in California and Chicago or New York, that the teacher had gave us.

And, now it's like, "Cool, I'm not even in that world "and I'm able to do what I want to do in the city of Detroit; at home."

- I saw how this really was something unique that Detroit has.

I don't know if it's anywhere else in the country.

Hi, My name is Melinda Ruth.

They're bringing emerging artists and it's like a direct connect to the art world.

And I have two pieces.

The smaller one is actually mixed media linocut.

- [Narrator] Melinda Ruth Rushings, from Texas, with a PhD in the health science field, arriving in the midst of COVID.

- And I moved up here for a postdoc fellowship at the University of Michigan.

Block print ink overlaid with India ink.

Before coming here, I was in a show, in a gallery in Chicago and they had mentioned how there's a big art scene in Detroit.

Instead of moving and living in Ann Arbor, I wanted to live in Detroit, because I wanted to pursue this art.

And it was actually like a black and white study that I was working on.

I think artists, but especially for black artists, it's hard getting into this industry and it's hard finding where you kind of fit in.

But this one brings people that are more seasoned, that are vets in the industry.

I'm asking for $400.

But the linocut, it has already been sold, so, thank you.

- Did it sell here?

- Yes.

- Sold!

(bell dinging) (audience applauding) - When I first came to "The Breakfast Club," they asked me, "What kind of artist did I want to be?"

And from the very beginning I said, "I want my work to be in museums.

"I want my children and grandchildren "to come and say 'that's my grandma's work,' "or 'that's my great grandma's work.'"

- [Narrator] Judy Bowman, collage maker, retired educator and original "Breakfast Clubber," says "she got serious about her art seven years ago."

- They start telling me, guiding me towards that venue that I wanted to be in and sure enough, my work is now in museums.

- Detroit artist, Judy Bowman, was in the Armory Show, which was the most important art exhibition in New York City.

And she sold out.

And then, she went to Basel this year and she sold out.

- And so, I guess I came at the right time, because people were really surprised how quickly my career went.

I am!

It's like, "whoa, this is a lot!"

- With me, I kind of just want to compete with the best, 'cause like, that's what I do.

I paint.

So, I just want to like, be around the best, because I want to be the best.

- I think it is the least expensive art school in the world.

- And that's why I always tell artists, you know, "Just show up.

"Even if you don't have nothing, you gonna learn something.

"You gonna see something that's gonna inspire you.

"You know, if you show up with a open mind, "you're definitely gonna leave different."

- I have not heard this kind of vitality is anywhere yet.

People always say, "Why don't we brand it?

"Why don't we do all..." I ain't doing all that.

I don't wanna do all that.

It's just encouraging artists, to do the best and be the best that they can be.

(audience applauding) - [Narrator] And finally, it's time to take a look at some of the events and activities taking place in the Detroit area this weekend and beyond.

Satori Shakoor, host of Detroit Public TV's "Detroit Performs: Live from Marygrove," gives us some ideas on interesting and fun things to do in today's "One Detroit Weekend."

- Hi, I'm Satori Shakoor, with "One Detroit" and "Detroit Performs: Live from Marygrove."

Here are some fun things happening in and around the Detroit area over the weekend and beyond, for you to check out.

On Friday, February 17th, "The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers" is taking over the Southfield Pavilion for Black History Month.

We'll be hearing stories from Reverend Horace Sheffield the 3rd, Yusef Bunchy Shakur, Jill Chenault, and Dr. Mayowa Lisa Reynolds, with a guest appearance by former mayor of Southfield, Brenda Lawrence.

Stories with musical and dance performances start 7:00 PM.

But come early, to mix and mingle during the Pre-Glow Event, where you can shop black-owned retailers, get a drink at the bar, eat good food, and prepare to relax and unwind.

Beginning on the 17th, is "Swan Lake," Ballet Preljocaj, is performing the classic at the Detroit Opera House, through the 19th.

I say classic, but you will be entranced at how the dance company reinvents the piece into a contemporary ecological tragedy.

Also on the 17th, the incomparable Thornetta Davis, Detroit's "Queen of the Blues," will be performing at the Carr Center Gallery at the Park Shelton.

(Thornetta Davis song playing) I love Thornetta's voice, it's so rich and warm and mm!

And on the 18th immerse yourself in the joy of reading at Detroit Book City's seventh annual African-American Family Book Expo.

It's happening from 12:30 to 5:00, at People's Community Church.

Come and find some favorites to read.

And on Sunday the 19th, sit back and bask in the blues at Meadowbrook Theatre.

Enjoy "Blues in the Night," A performance of the Tony nominated musical score, that includes iconic songs from Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, and more.

There's always so much to do in Detroit.

Here are a few more events happening ahead.

Take a look and I hope to see you around D-Town.

Have a great weekend.

(relaxing theme music) - [Narrator] That will do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thanks for watching.

Head to the "One Detroit" website for all the stories we're working on.

Follow us on social media and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

- [Narrator] From Delta Faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco: "Serving Michigan Communities Since 1929."

Support for this program is provided by: The Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV, The Kresge Foundation.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit Public TV.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan focused giving.

We support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Visit www.DTEFoundation.com to learn more.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

(upbeat theme music) (upbeat outro music)