Three members of the Mobile Homestead’s Teen Painting workshop, with hair as bright as canvases.

This past weekend was a whirlwind of activity for MOCAD’s Mobile Homestead, with a 1-2-3 punch of activities to supplement the opening of a new round of exhibits at the museum. Friday, February 6th saw the continuation of the Radical Scavengers: Quilting Bee Project, which will feature events and open working hours from Friday to Sunday through May 24th. Sunday, February 8th was a free Circuit Bending Workshop, wherein facilitator and local noise artist Catherine Engstrom helped visitors to transform low-voltage, battery-powered electronic devices into new custom instruments.

Artist and professor Robert Platt overseeing Saturday’s workshop.

Sandwiched between these two activities, on Saturday, February 7th, a group of young people—some of whom are on the MOCAD’s Teen Council, which is working on a group show in collaboration with grown-up mentor/artists—were hard at work in the Mobile Homestead, creating works of art under the supervision of painter Robert Platt, PhD. Platt is an assistant professor of art and design at University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art & Design, and over the course of the three-hour workshop, he took the teens through a process that involved taking and enlarging pictures of their own irises and projecting them on canvas to form a personal and abstract work of art. This process speaks directly to some of Platt’s large-scale paintings, which layer intense, vibrant colors in and around abstracted images that are only visible at a remove.

‘Stonehead’ by Robert Platt; 84″ x 139″; oil, pigment, enamel on linen; 2013. Photo courtesy of the artist

Some of the teen participants working to trace their own eyes onto canvas.

Platt’s most recent solo show was at The Butcher’s Daughter gallery last summer, prior to its relocation to Harlem. It’s good to see that even as his representation branches out to New York City, Platt is scrupulously bringing up a new crop of artists in his wake.

MOCAD: 4454 Woodward Ave., Detroit; 313-832-6622; www.mocadetroit.org Mobile Homestead Hours: Friday – Sunday, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.; 313-832-4944