Art Intensive

June 11, 2026

Ford Design, Color + Material Team

Itinerary

1:15 pm Meet at I.M. Weiss Gallery, 1501 Parkview St. to carpool to studios (street parking on Parkview and St. Paul)

1:30 pm All Arrive at Jack Craig Studio, 2915 Mt Elliott st. (street parking on Mt. Elliot and Arndt)

2:10 pm All Depart

2:15 pm Group 1 Arrive at Mary-Ann Monforton Studio, 1086 Bellevue St. (street parking on Bellevue)

2:15 pm Group 2 Arrive at James Benjamin Franklin Studio, 1111 Bellevue St. (across the street)

3:00 pm Group 1 & 2 swap

3:30 pm All Depart to I.M. Weiss Gallery, 1501 Parkview St.

3:45 pm Light refreshments + private exhibition tour

STUDIO VISITS

  • Jack Craig currently resides and works in Detroit. He was first trained as an engineer and worked on stealth technology for the U.S. Navy before pursuing degrees in design. He holds a BFA from the University of Illinois and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI. His work, spanning the categories of furniture, sculpture, and installation, source material and inspiration from industrial processes scaled down and reexamined through hand manipulation and fantasy.

  • Mary-Ann Monforton was born in Windsor Ont. Canada and raised in Detroit. She is known for her involvement with the NY downtown art scene and her work at BOMB Magazine, establishing the Bomb Art Program, which placed work in Museums and Institutions as well as organized their annual Gala and Silent Auctions.

    In 2013, Monforton returned to her own studio practice. A conceptual artist at heart, she picked up her practice right where she had left off in the early ’70s: experimenting with tentative lines and nonsolid shapes, making works that were uneven, unstable, off-kilter and insecure, all human characteristics. Humor and pathos remain a cornerstone of her practice. In 2021, Monforton moved to Detroit, her hometown, to pursue a full-time art studio practice. Mary-Ann Monforton is represented by High Noon Gallery in New York, NY.

  • James Benjamin Franklin’s practice operates at the intersection of painting and sculpture, driven by a deep engagement with material memory and transformation. He constructs his own supports using repurposed textiles—discarded towels, upholstery, carpet—imbued with personal and anonymous histories. These substrates serve as vessels for layered compositions built from paint, sand, metallic pigments, and compound mediums that shift between gesture and form. Franklin’s process is intentionally unpredictable: an intuitive response to how materials resist or absorb, sag or solidify, revealing the tensions between control and surrender, surface and structure. Franklin received his BFA from the Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA) and his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI).

    Born in Tacoma, Washington (1972)
    Lives and works in Detroit, Michigan.

SURFACE AS STUDY @ I.M. Weiss Gallery, 1501 Parkview St.

A collection of objects from Detroit-based artists and designers exploring color and materiality through distinct modes of making. Curated exclusively for Ford Design, Color and Material Team.

Featured artists include: Addie Langford, Kim Harty, Paula Schubatis, Lauren Kalman, Eleanor Anderson.