34 February 21 • 2019
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TOP: This is Sew Abstract! by Aislinn Wendrow

ANTHONY LANZILOTE CONTRIBUTING WRITER/PHOTOGRAPHER

‘Mirror, Mirror’

Soul Studio show at CCS’
 Center Galleries 
gives artists a professional boost.
A

lyssa Gold has been blind since 
infancy, but that hasn’
t stopped 
her from becoming a prolific 
visual artist. She creates long strings of 
beads she nets into large webs, creating 
works of art that are both spontaneous 
and ordered. 
Her work, along with work from 12 
other artists from the Friendship Circle 
Soul Studio, will be on display in “Mirror, 
Mirror” at Center Galleries at the College 
for Creative Studies in Detroit through 
March.
Founded in 2016, Soul Studio in West 
Bloomfield is an art program for neurodi-
vergent adults that works to develop each 
student’
s artistic practice and create works 
for display and for sale. 
Bassie Shemtov, the program’
s founder 
and co-founder of Friendship Circle, says 

this is not therapeutic art. 
“We don’
t want the word client or par-
ticipants … they are here; they are in the 
studio; they are artists,
” she says. 
Soul Studio’
s facilitating art staff are 
practicing artists who have little to no 
experience working with people with 
special needs. As artists, they focus on 
guiding the program’
s members in 
painting and sculpture, digital media, 
fibers and ceramics.
Gold had beaded before, but it wasn’
t 
until joining Soul Studio that she truly 
became an artist. 
“She started beading in school and 
[Soul Studio] took it to the next level,
” 
says her mother, Andi Gold. Alyssa works 
from a container holding a small share of 
tens of thousands of donated beads; now 
she also makes her own ceramic beads. 
“
Alyssa can thread something that is 

exhibition
arts&life

details
The show is open 
through March 30. 
10 a.m.-5 p.m. 
Tuesday–Saturday, 
301 Frederick Douglass. 
Free parking available in 
the CCS parking struc-
ture located on Brush 
Street between Frederick 
Douglass and Ferry. 
Additional programs:

• “The Scribbling Stage: 
Disability as Ability at 
the Soul Studio,” a talk 
with Anthony Marcellini, 
Soul Studio exhibitions 
and programs manager, 
6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 
28, Wendell W. Anderson 
Jr. Auditorium, Walter B. 
Ford II Building, CCS Ford 
Campus.

• A gallery talk with 
the artists of “Mirror, 
Mirror” at 11:30 a.m. 
Wednesday, March 
27. Center Galleries, 
Manoogian Visual 
Resource Center, College 
for Creative Studies, 
301 Frederick Douglass, 
Detroit.

Anthony Marcellini

Alyssa Gold

Rachel Fallert

Aislinn Wendrow

