A journeyman plumber who logs 60 to 70 hours a week, a GM printmaker laid off from a Detroit EV plant, and a Nashville electrician working on her first novel just spent four weeks doing something none of them normally get to do: making art on someone else's clock. The seven workers are the inaugural class of Union Hall Arts, a residency for union members that wrapped up over Labor Day weekend at Talking Dolls Studio, a former auto garage turned artist space on Detroit's northeast side.
The program, organized by the UNITE HERE Education and Support Fund, gave each artist a $4,000 stipend and four weeks of dedicated studio time, according to The Detroit News. Organizers believe it is the only residency of its kind in the country built specifically for rank-and-file union members. Annemarie Strassel, director of Union Hall Arts and a former national communications director for UNITE HERE, said daily work demands often get in the way of creativity — a tension the residency was designed to relieve. Strassel earned her PhD in American Studies from Yale, according to entity background on the program.
Sammie Sprole, a 39-year-old electrician from Nashville represented by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 429, said she had never before had this much uninterrupted time to work, and she spent it drafting a novel. Dexter Dixon, a 37-year-old journeyman plumber from Detroit represented by UA Local Plumbers 98 who typically works 60 to 70 hours a week, used the residency to build new audio arrangements from sampled music on a Roland SP-404 portable sampler, work he plans to fold into an upcoming live performance.
A Studio Rooted in Detroit's Industrial and Union History
Talking Dolls Studio is co-directed by artists and union members Andrea Cardinal and Wes Taylor. Taylor is also an associate professor at Wayne State University and co-founder of the Detroit artist collective Complex Movements, according to entity background from United States Artists. The studio occupies a 7,500-square-foot former garage on East Davison Street, housing artist studios, a woodshop, a gallery, and one of Michigan's only Black-owned automatic garment screen-printing operations, per MDW. It sits one block from Archer Record Pressing, Detroit's oldest continuously operating vinyl pressing plant, founded in 1965 and a longtime home for Motown and Detroit techno releases, according to The Music Origins Project.
The residency built in visits to sites tied to the legacy of working people and organized labor, including the Motown Museum, a site associated with unionized session musicians, and Ford Motor Co.'s Rouge Complex, a location historically central to battles to unionize auto workers, the Detroit News reports. That kind of grounding echoes deeper into the city's past: Diego Rivera's 27-panel Detroit Industry Murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts, painted between 1932 and 1933 to depict River Rouge factory workers and later designated a National Historic Landmark, remain one of the country's most prominent works of art devoted to industrial labor, according to the National Park Service.
From Assembly Lines and Hotel Rooms to the Studio Floor
Nevena Pilipovic-Wengler, a 36-year-old printmaking artist and GM employee from Detroit represented by UAW Local 22, was among roughly 1,300 workers temporarily laid off from the Detroit-Hamtramck EV plant, also known as Factory ZERO, according to the Detroit News. The layoffs came amid shifting electric vehicle demand, as WardsAuto reported in March. In 2024, Pilipovic-Wengler worked six to seven 12-hour shifts nearly every week; now she is waiting to learn whether she'll return to the Detroit-Hamtramck plant or be reassigned elsewhere in GM. During the residency she worked on a print series tentatively titled Feast or Famine, and said workers simply need more time to pursue their creative ideas and dreams.
Jamie Hearn, a 51-year-old multimedia artist and second-generation GM worker represented by UAW Local 276, has worked at GM's Arlington, Texas plant since 2000 and puts in six days a week on the assembly line. He earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts while still working shifts on the line, the Detroit News notes. Ana Palacios, a 55-year-old hotel housekeeper and painter from Los Angeles represented by UNITE HERE Local 11, spent her residency working on a project called The Wings of an Angel. Murphey Stromberg, a 23-year-old ceramicist from Minneapolis who also holds a part-time event staff job represented by UNITE HERE Local 17, said the residency marked the first time since college graduation that she'd had dedicated space and resources to produce clay pieces.
Closing Out With Detroit's Labor Day March
The residency, which lasted four weeks and organized by the UNITE HERE Education and Support Fund, was co-supported in its Detroit pilot by the UAW Education Department alongside Talking Dolls Studio, according to UAW Local 51. That broader institutional backing places Union Hall Arts within a longer tradition of labor-funded arts programming, including 1199SEIU's Bread and Roses Cultural Project, founded in 1979, which established Gallery 1199 in New York as the nation's first permanent union exhibition space, according to 1199SEIU.
The seven artists took part in Detroit's Labor Day march Monday through Corktown, riding in a truck carrying the artwork they made during the residency. The route runs along Michigan Avenue past Michigan Central Station and ends near the former Tiger Stadium site, according to SAG-AFTRA. Talking Dolls Studio hosted an open house afterward. UNITE HERE represents about 300,000 workers across North America, and the studio itself has become something of a community hub beyond this residency — in July, it hosted the launch of the inaugural Boggs Freedom School, a two-week youth leadership program honoring Detroit civil rights activists James and Grace Lee Boggs, according to the James and Grace Lee Boggs Foundation.
