The first time I experienced Kyler Wilkins’ music I was mystified. I had to move toward the front of the audience to witness close-up all of the intricate and elegant sounds being amplified from a simple set up on stage. He was playing the Ann Arbor’s SummerFest side stage in June 2022.
Posts tagged #Kindred Conversations
Kindred Conversations with Hilary Nichols: Filmmaker Christina Morales Hemenway
Courageous, kind, and creative in equal measure, Christina Morales Hemenway may be the most prolific feature filmmaker in Ann Arbor. She has five finished feature films and two more film projects currently in the works—and this is just one of her ongoing careers.
Kindred Conversations with Hilary Nichols and Curtis Wallace
Curtis Wallace introduced his Be Creative Studio LLC in Ypsilanti, Michigan in 2019 after a lifetime of sharing his art professionally and prolifically. Be Creative Studios honors the honeybee and hexagons in their logo.
Kindred Conversations: Susan McLeary and Kelly Campbell
It was a passion flower that first stopped Susan McLeary in her tracks. The exotic flower ignited her passion and initiated her purpose toward becoming a florist, a designer, an artist, and an author. Yet, educator is the title Susan McLeary identifies with most these days.
Kindred Conversations: Jasmine Hampton, Olympic Hopeful and Local Boxing Champion
“That’s life,” Jasmine Hampton reports cheerfully from training camp. If she is anything, she is a good sport. Hampton is a two-time Junior Olympics champion boxer and 11x national champion with a record of 106-17 or so. She was enrolled in the Olympic Training camp with US Boxing in Colorado Springs as an alternate, even though she won her weight class. The selection process can seem arbitrary, but she is happy to train in any case. Born and raised in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, I met Hampton as the cool high school kid who lived down the street. I got to know her as she became a champion basketball player and track star first. It has been a treat to witness her devotion to the task every step of the way.
Kindred Conversation: Joy Dettling, Life and Health Coach
Tears run down my cheeks. My right hand, resting on a hand cradle contraption, buzzes lightly. Life and health coach Joy Dettling asks me to continue speaking about my central concerns, as she monitors the correlating reactions on her laptop. “What’s bothering you?” she asked. “What are the blocks between you and your betterment?” With one deep aha moment after the next, I am surprised to be finding the words to express some of my most long-held emotional blocks and self-doubts. As I speak, the ZYTO EVOX hand cradle measures my reactions through the pulses in my fingertips and reports the levels on her screen. With a thumbs-up, Dettling assures me that, “We are on the right track.”
Kindred Conversations: Ebony Evans and Chris Huang
It is said that we all have a book in us. As an avid reader, book reviewer, and book club leader, Ebony Evans has actively encouraged a lot of those books into being. Her book club, EyeCU Reading and Chatting Club, has over 2000 members online with impressive outreach and impact in the literary sphere. Evans discovered in previous book clubs that the participants weren’t really there to read, they were catty and talked about each other. It became clear that she was looking for something distinct. So, she created it herself.
Kindred Conversations: Maurice Archer and Anne Erlewine
The center of Maurice Archer’s big vision starts with dance. He’s known around town as the premier break dance performer, teacher, producer, and owner of A2 Breakdance. He has been bringing his unstoppable energy and expertise to classrooms, after school programs, rec and ed offerings, private parties, intensives, local festivals, and street fairs for years. If you’ve seen the linoleum unroll and a simple boom-box set up for a crew of kid and adult dancers to step in for six step, windmill, kick-up, flare, or a bunch of impressive acrobatic dance moves, then you have seen an A2 Breakdancers’ cipher. A cipher is a circle of dancers, jumping in to share a small mobile dance floor with their handstands, back spins, and fancy footwork before the next dancer tags in.
Kindred Conversations: with Hilary Nichols
Where does music begin? When you’re a musician, the search is inward. David Magumba realized that, “Beyond inspiration, you do the work. You make it happen. As a songwriter, that is the effort I am making right now.”
