We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anthony Marcellini. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anthony below.

Hi Anthony, thanks for joining us today. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

In the late summer of 2020, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, I pitched, what later became known as, the Progressive Art Studio Collective (PASC) program to Services to Enhance Potential (STEP), a non-profit offering services and supports disabled adults in Detroit and across Wayne county. The pitch was to establish a studio and an exhibitions program with the goal of advancing adults with disabilities into contemporary art careers, with a peer staff of practicing contemporary artists. The model for this program was based on experience-driven independent learning principles, such as those of Maria Montessori, John Dewey, Ivan Illich and others, which puts trust and control in the hands of the participants to drive their own artistic education. I had run a similar program for about three years called the Friendship Circle Soul Studio in West Bloomfield, MI, which was extremely successful at spotlighting disabled artists and advancing their careers. And through that work I had become connected to an informal network of 30+ similar programs and initiatives across the United States, many of whom have artists who have achieved success and are now part of major collections and art museums. And who were able to provide further guidance and resources. Moreover, I was aware that many of these disability art studios had been established in other cities 20 years to as long as 50 years ago.

Yet, despite the fact that Detroit has a very high per capita concentration of disabled adults, there had never been a program like this in Detroit. Thus there was a large population not being provided an outlet for creative expression, income generation, and artistic representation. Detroit has a long and invested art history, so I was also convinced there was an untapped talent of disabled adults who had been making art at home, or during downtime in service programs, who were simply not given the proper exposure, high quality art materials, and support from other artists. STEP was 100% behind this program, so after some months of preparation the PASC program officially launched January 2021.

We are currently running three studios in Detroit, Westland and Southgate. And supporting around 150 disabled artists across three studios. We have one public gallery in Southgate with a second Detroit gallery on the way this summer. We have staged and participated in 13 exhibitions, sold almost $30,000 worth of artwork and we employ 6 practicing artists from the Detroit area and 3 other staff to work directly with our artists.

I knew the project would be successful because there was a need and clearly a desire in the disabled population. And I know it would and will continue to be successful because at its core it is dealing with a population who, like it or not, are largely ignored and often denied a life of dignity. And through art, through challenging our artists, providing our artists the independence and freedom to do their own thing, we are making disabled people’s lives better. And when disabled people’s lives are better everyone’s life gets better.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I have dyslexia, a learning disability, so growing up I did quite poorly in school. Only late in my high school years did I start to catch up. But one of the few things I excelled at, and was given praise for, was art. So I pursued art as a career in college, focusing initially on painting, later sculpture and curating. Upon graduating I launched an art collective called It Can Change, which I ran for about four years with another artists named John Hoppin. Our project was focused on staging free art exhibits in public space that encouraged participation from the audience. We were irreverent, a bit punk, and somewhat antiestablishment, yet also fairly successful, and we exhibited our projects nationally and internationally. It Can Change was not a money maker, so to earn an income I worked for galleries, museums and art handling companies learning how to set up and hang exhibitions, and pack and ship art.

Eventually It Can Change broke up, so I moved to New York City and began working for a non-profit gallery called Art in General. I was hired as the curatorial assistant to the chief curator and programs manager Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy. Sofia was, and still is, a mentor to me, she taught me about curatorial practice, working with artists and encouraged my writing. I worked mainly on Art in General’s visiting artist program supporting artists from eastern Europe, South America, and Asia on research, projects and exhibitions. I also curated several exhibitions and authored a couple of published essays. After three eventful years I left Art in General to return to school, graduating with a Masters of Fine Art degree from California College of the Arts in San Francisco with a concentration in social practice.

From 2009-2013 I moved to Sweden with my partner Laura Mott who is a museum curator. In Sweden I taught in the Bachelors and Masters program at Gothenburg University’s art school Valand. During my four years there I exhibited widely across Europe, participating in several exhibitions, public talks and performances, as well as contributed to several publications in Europe and the United States.

In the Fall of 2013 we moved to Detroit, for Laura to take a job as a curator at the Cranbrook Art Museum. I found work as an adjunct professor teaching art and design history and theory, and art practice, in just about every university art program within the Detroit Area, and I even Bowling Green University in Ohio. In addition to teaching I continued to exhibit throughout the US and write for several art publications.

Around 2018 I was still adjunct teaching, in addition to taking on several carpentry jobs to make ends meet. I was pretty burnt out working many jobs, and becoming largely disillusioned with art education and definitely adjunct teaching. Art schools had started to feel strangely conservative, hierarchical, conflicted, and even hostile to art and creativity. As teachers it seemed we guided students more to follow the rules of the university system then to encourage imagination, risk and experimentation. I was seeking more stable jobs, interviewing for tenure track positions in university art departments. But I also interviewed for a position outside academia, to manage the Friendship Circle Soul Studio, a progressive art studio for developmentally disabled artists. This began a major shift in my career.

I remember during the first interview when walking into Soul Studio I felt an immediate contrast with academia. The studio was loud, communal, boisterous and a materially driven space, where the artists worked excitedly, every surface of the studio seemed filled with creativity. The studio was exploding with energy, it was vibrant, textural and emotional, and the artwork far surpassed most of what I’d seen in art schools. Nothing seemed restrained, it felt like a space boiling with imagination and intensity.

Due to my own experience with disabilities, as well as growing up with a mother who was physically disabled, caused by contracting polio at a young age, I felt an imediate kinship with the artists in the studio. I was conscious of how society shuns those who act, learn or look different from the norm, and because of this limits them from engaging in creatively fulfilling activities, or providing them the same opportunities for professionalization, exposure and celebration as the neurotypical population. Working for Soul Studio was a perfect way to bring my professional experience in art, curating and education to serve a marginalized population who could clearly benefit from it. At Soul Studio I brought the program more in alignment with the structure of a progressive art studio–a pedagogical model that aims to give the participants total control to make artwork in any way they want–and was successful at connecting the Soul Studio artists to the Detroit and international art world.

When COVID hit in March of 2020, it was a very difficult time for Soul Studio. We had to shift everything to virtual, some artists dropped out, and everyone from the founders, to the staff, to the studio artists were stressed out and scared. By the early summer it had become difficult to continue working for Friendship circle. So after three years of working for Soul Studio and the community of artists there I left.

Although this initially seemed like a professional setback, I used this time to focus on establishing a new program in Detroit. I developed a pitch deck for a studio and exhibitions program for adults with disabilities, laying out the structure and goals of the program to advance contemporary art careers for disabled adults, and a philosophy to create a nonhierarchical program, where the disabled artists were not only independent but equally responsible for leading the direction of the program. I sought the advice of many in the disability world, and reached out to may disability service programs in the Detroit Area. Eventually I reached out to Services to Enhance Potential and presented them the pitch. They were very interested but it took a couple of months for them to make a decision. Finally in the early fall of 2020 the CEO, Brent Mikulski excitedly agreed to work with me to launch the program.

Launching the PASC program is one of the things I am most proud of in my career. STEP has been an enthusiastic backer of this project, and has said yes to almost every plan I’ve had to develop this program. Working with the disabled population has given me an opportunity to channel a vast set of experiences and knowledge to a population that is not usually granted access to this expertise. Someone with my level of experience in education, curating, teaching, exhibition, performance etc…is not normally interfacing with people with disabilities in a disability services program. But I do it because I love the artwork, I love the people, and they deserve care, attention and recognition for their talent.

This program is only two years old and already the impact is huge. People are hearing about our program all over Detroit, and we are increasingly being approached by new organizations who want to collaborate. People want to engage with us because the artwork the PASC artists are making is incredible, and we are disability forward, improving the lives of all who engage with us.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The hardest professional period of time for me was about four or five years after moving to Detroit. As I mentioned before, I had really hit a professional crisis. In many ways up to this point I was very successful, I had collected considerable work and art experience, I worked in the non-profit gallery and museum world, taught for nine years in well regarded art schools, and had shaped a decent art career. I was well positioned for a tenure track job. Yet I was not doing well in interviews, because my heart was not in it. I did not believe in many of the University art programs I was applying to teach at. So I began to look towards other careers. I liked working with older adults so I began researching graduate programs in gerontology, but wasn’t convinced this was the right thing to do. And I liked to cook, so I even considered opening a Pizza restaurant in Detroit. I had a backer, was lining up restaurant partners and everything, until at some point I realized this was a horrible idea, I really did not want to manage a restaurant.

When I discovered the position to be the manager of the Friendship Circle Soul Studio I was uncertain if I should apply. Was this a total change in career for me. Was I simply going to drop my academic career, built from nine years of teaching, to work in disability services, an area that far less people were concerned with and one that simply did not carry the same degree of professional academic authority. I decided to give it a shot but continued to interview for tenure track positions as well. I was asked to interview for Soul Studio and simultaneously for a position to run a brand new sculpture program at a university near Chicago. Eventually I got to the final round of both interviews, and was torn as to which direction to go. Both opportunities were interesting because it seemed I could transform them both from the inside. One was continuing on my academic trajectory and the other was a total left turn. What eventually convinced me to take the position as the studio and gallery manager at Soul Studio was the fact that it simply felt more free and more impactful. There was more potential to develop the program at Soul Studio into something meaningful for the participants and the art audience in Detroit. Soul Studio was a space of such rare positive affirmation that engendered independence and self-actualization from its participants, which filtered into the staff and volunteers, so different from my recent art school experiences. And I realized this studio space was simply more progressive, than any art school I had experienced. I am very proud of the work I did to transform Soul Studio into a more independent studio and the opportunities I provided for the artists I worked with. I learned how to run a progressive art studio, manage staff, grow a program and learn about the broader world of disability services in Greater Detroit. And all this eventually led to me launching the Progressive Art Studio Collective.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

One: The Man Who Closed the Asylums: Franco Basaglia and the Revolution in Mental Health Care by John Foot. I recently discovered this book through a recommendation from an art educator friend Vivian Sky Rehberg working in Europe. This is a book that may be somewhat specific to my area of focus, as it details the inhuman conditions of psychiatric institutions in Italy in the 60s and 70s. But why this book is really inspiring is it describes how through a commitment to treating all people, despite their disabilities, with dignity, and by making simple changes in an institution, several forward thinking people reduced hierarchies and transformed an institution. Some examples are, banning lab coats or scrubs so there would be no visual hierarchy between doctors, nurses and patients; establishing group meetings with all patients and staff to talk collectively about the institution, and sharing in the responsibility for its transformation; and even opening a bar in the asylum, run by patients and frequented by both patients, staff and the general public. It is a great book for learning how to change about how to dismantle systems of subjugation through small changes that put power into the hands of the seemingly powerless and dependent.

Two: Daring to Lead by Brenee Brown.
Although initially I was wary of self-help books, this book was extremely helpful to me a couple of years ago when I was having some trouble managing staff and my own unconscious negative impulses and biases. It is a very popular book by a very popular writer and researcher, so most people have either heard of it or already read it. But it offered a lot of insight and encouraged introspection and self-reflection. In a way, it was a comfort, as if Brenee Brown was telling me ‘you will make mistakes, but you can fix them and be better if you want to put in the effort’. It helped me deal with a lot of things I was not aware I was doing, helped me be a much better manager, and actually partner, and I return to it every couple of months for reminders and support.

Three: The books of Kate DiCamillo.
Kate DiCamillo is an author of children’s fiction, known for The Tale of Despereaux, The Magician’s Elephant, Because of Winn-Dixie and The One and Only Ivan. I have an 11 year old daughter who I still read books to at night, which in itself is an incredible gift she has given me, a moment of connection and group reflection, which I get at no other time in my life. DiCamillo is one of my daughter’s favorite authors, because her books are difficult, and they deal with difficult subjects. I put her here because DiCamillo does not try to paint a perfect world for children or even a good/bad world of heroes and villains. And because these books often depict adult and child relationships, but adults that are fallible and often broken people, even though they may be the people who the books main characters, most often children, have no choice but to depend on. DiCamillo has said, and I am paraphrasing here, that her job as a children’s author is not to sugarcoat the world, but to tell the truth about the world and make that truth bearable. And this desire to tell the truth comes from an intense love for the world, “its sorrow, its heartbreak, its devastating beauty.” And through that love comes a connection to others and an understanding that we are not alone.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.progressiveartstudiocollective.org
• Instagram: @progressiveartstudiocollective
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-marcellini/

Image Credits
1. Sherri Bryant working in the PASC Detroit Studio 2. Alsendo Owens talking about his work to audiences during the opening of Liberty Realm at the PASC Detroit Pop Up Gallery 3. DeRon Hudson, Hannah Lilly and Stanley Brown in the Southgate studio 4. Installation view of Setting the table at the PASC Detroit Pop Up Gallery