CCS's 101st student exhibition is open through May 29

Every spring the College for Creative Studies turns its campus into a gallery. Illustration, product design, textiles, automotive design, fine arts. The 101st annual Student Exhibition opened this month and is free and open to the public through May 29, according to Hour Detroit and the college's own listing.

The college puts the count at more than 4,000 pieces of artwork on its event page. Hour Detroit reported more than 4,800 pieces and said opening night drew over 3,200 people to campus. Either way, the scale is the point. The work is the other half of it.

The show runs across the College for Creative Studies campus at 201 East Kirby. The college lists hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday through Wednesday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, with the exhibition closed for Memorial Day on Monday, May 25. Proceeds from any sales go directly to the student artists.

Every piece on the floor goes through a faculty jurying process. Don Kilpatrick III, professor and chair of the Illustration Department, told Hour Detroit the selection comes out of the annual critique cycle and is meant to represent the depth and range of each program. Faculty review student work, identify the strongest projects, and put them up.

"The great work always rises to the top," Kilpatrick said. "What you're seeing in the show is the culmination of everything students have been working on throughout the year."

What the exhibition makes visible is more than finished product. Kilpatrick stresses iteration, the test and refine and rebuild loop that gets work to where it needs to be. You can see it in projects that went through a dozen versions before landing.

"We really stress iteration," he said.

Illustration student Reden Lee is one example. She started the year aiming at realistic sports illustration. Her instructors pushed her toward a register of her own rather than the familiar one, and she scrapped roughly 30 thumbnail concepts before the work found its shape.

"I made around 30 thumbnails and none of them felt right," Lee said.

That revision loop is the curriculum, and the juried selection rewards the work that came out the other side of it. CCS has been at this for more than a century. Its automotive and product design programs feed studios across the Detroit area, and its illustration, fashion, textiles, and fine arts students are building careers in the city's creative economy.

One hundred and one years in, the format holds. The campus opens up, the work goes on the walls and tables and in the corridors, and anyone in Detroit can walk in. It is worth a Thursday.