Cay Bahnmiller, Untitled #15, 1980. Oil on blueprint paper.
April 11, 2020
Cay Bahnmiller, Untitled #15, 1980. Oil on blueprint paper.
Cay Bahnmiller’s legacy is one in which her once bold and eclectic personality carries nearly the same mysticism and weight as her artwork itself. Although Bahnmiller’s work far outlived the Cass Corridor art movement, her later creations maintained the same grit and complexity of the period which she had originally worked so closely within. Her artwork is fraught with emotion and pieces of personal experience and interest. A love of poetry and literature is obvious, with words and phrases scrawled reverently under awnings of thick paint- sometimes her own while often those of authors she held in high esteem. The letters only add further dimension to Bahnmiller’s own visual poetry- often trickling throughout layer upon layer of paint and miscellaneous materials.
Also predominant is Bahnmiller’s appreciation for the city of Detroit, where she would move soon after graduating from the University of Michigan with a BFA in 1976. Within much of her early work resided a fascination with Detroit’s layout: how a map might hold much more significance besides simply a means to a destination. Having frequented the city, Bahnmiller knew that a place was the sum of its people, architecture, and environment, and concerned herself with attempting to capture and relate to a truer Detroit landscape.
Untitled #15 shows one of Bahnmiller’s attempts to “map” the city. Bits of underlying blueprint peek through heaps of cement colored paint, as if to show how Bahnmiller has altered the standard view of the city by means of including her own. Buildings are differentiated slightly, but mostly lost in blurs of brushstrokes portraying what feels like dynamic action towards a new history-for better or worse. Streets are alluded to only with a hot streak of yellow and tiny notes give hints as to where the cityscape is located. It is at once precise, while also careful to record the hazy beauty and potentiality of industrial Detroit which might be lost on those who have not lived so intimately within it.
Written by Samantha Hohmann