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Shadow Art Fair was a local social, cultural, and interactive art experience that for many years in the ’00s and ’10s marked the peak of summer in July, while providing a warm, community-based, secular gathering each winter as well.

The images and videos on this page illustrate the story of the Shadow Art Fair. Click on the images to view the larger versions. Keep scrolling for videos and images that really take you inside!

More about our speakers

Mark Maynard

Mark Maynard lives with his family and his OCD in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where he has a restaurant called Bellflower, and an incubator space called Landline Creative Labs. He is perhaps best known outside of Ypsilanti for Crimewave USA, the zine he’s published with his partner, Linette Lao, since 1993. He also puts out music one day a year with his band, The Monkey Power Trio, and blogs occasionally about politics, culture, and his life at markmaynard.com. He has a degree in American Studies from the University of Michigan, and probably should have stuck with historic archeology as a career, but he tries not to dwell on it.

 

Jennifer Yates

Jennifer Yates is full of sass and spirit.  A quirky GenXer, she’s done a little bit of everything like driving tractors on a Louisiana rice farm, dropping out of beauty school, managing high-falutin’, corporate, software projects, owning a retail store, and being a VP at a food and beverage investment firm.  Now, she’s a solopreneur in Business Operations, making work and business feel like magic.  She used to play bass and scream in local bands.  She loves traveling, writing, and eating snacks, although her favorite food is gravy.  She lives in Ann Arbor with her husband, Zack, and their two dogs, Chiku Adorable and Belinda Potato.  
 

 

Melissa Dettloff

Melissa Dettloff is a teaching artist based in Detroit, and she has been screen printing for over twenty years. Melissa makes colorful screen prints out of her home studio, which she shares with her greyhound, Bernadette.
 

 

Photograph of Charles Pattison

Early Shadow Art Fair poster

The “monster” discussed in this episode. One example of an interactive art experience, with prizes inside the monster!

Inside the Shadow Art Fair

Click on the images below to see slideshows of posters advertising the shows and crowds enjoying the interactive art experience.

Posters through the years

Crowds enjoying the show

Shadow Art Fair in action

Watch the videos below to get a taste of what it looked and sounded like.

Attendees of the 2009 Shadow Art Fair describe the event using one word. Video courtesy of the Ypsilanti Citizen.

Video documentary of the Shadow Art Fair courtesy of modeldmedia on YouTube.

Read more about the Shadow Art Fair
Explore the Shadow Art Fair in the YDL catalog

Peruse The Local Collection at Michigan Avenue to find Zines from some of the Shadow Art Fair creators!

Maynard, Mark, et al. Hugs & Gumbo. 2008

Dettloff, Melissa. Drawings of Miguel: January – June 2013. 2013