Connecting the dots: Heidelberg creator Tyree Guyton talks, screens doc at Southfield library

Since the late 1980s, the Heidelberg Project has drawn praise from the international art community and provoked wide-ranging discussion in its own backyard.

Artist-activist Tyree Guyton created the project with the idea of visibly altering the environment of his decaying neighborhood by using the materials around him: cast-off toys, discarded car parts and other debris along with his trademark brightly colored polka dots. Guyton eventually transformed several houses and vacant lots on Heidelberg Street into Detroit's most recognizable art environment and one of its leading tourist attractions. Connecting the Dots (Wayne State University Press), the first comprehensive collection of writings on the Heidelberg Project, attempts to get to the heart of Guyton's project by considering it from a number of angles including legal, aesthetic, political and personal.

Guyton and Jenene Whitfield, executive director of the Heidelberg Project, will give a talk this Tuesday at the Southfield Public Library and also screen the award-winning 1999 HBO documentary Come Unto Me: The Faces of Tyree Guyton.

Books will be available from Oak Park's the Book Beat for purchase and signing. The program is in the auditorium at the Southfield Public Library, 26300 Evergreen Road, Southfield. For more information call 248-796-4200.