Amy Fisher Price
1473 Winder
2025 Murals in the Market
Multiple locations in Eastern Market
Detroit
This is part of a Midbrow series highlighting murals that were recently completed as part of the 10th anniversary of Murals in the Market, a mural festival in Detroit’s historic Eastern Market.
When you think of a mural, you don’t think of a massive hanging textile. That’s what makes Amy Fisher Price’s work for the 10th anniversary of Murals in the Market so exciting.
Clocking in at 24” feet by 12” feet, it’s on the larger size of Price’s work and complete with the signature tassels along the bottom. Even the way the wind makes these tassels dance and has the textile gently slapping against the brick building it calls home is an exciting sense of movement for the acclaimed public art festival.
A lot of the works for Murals in the Market celebrate and honor other businesses in the area, which is counted as one of the largest open-air farmer markets (fresh fruits and veggies, hot foods, seasonal delicacies, legacy brick-and-mortar businesses) in the United States.
Price’s work does the same, weaving in references to shops like Discount Candles & Blessings and Busy Bee Hardware. “FOOD 4 THOUGHT” is stitched along the top, a nod to Eastern Market’s legacy of connecting Detroiters to fresh foods direct from farmers in a city that’s often dubbed a grocery store desert.
“Flowers to the People” is sewn in cursive below, honoring the annual flower market that is one of the busiest events the market hosts every year in the spring.
And, for good measure, a quote from “Terminator 2: Judgement Day”: “NO FATE BUT WHAT WE MAKE.”
In Amy Fisher Price’s hands, this is some of the most visually stunning and well-made work in the city’s cultural cache. In this context – completely on street level and available to the viewer to be touched and considered – it’s a treat to be able to get up close to her work and see how detailed and intense the stitching is.
I’ve covered her work for years and been one of the few journalists she’s offered interviews to, preferring to normally let her work speak for itself. Her catalogue often consists of words sewn into flags and hung from derelict homes or recreating fading liquor store signs to be preserved forever. It’s familiar for anyone that has driven around the city, which is covered in hand-painted signs in a bevy of styles. Her work speaks to us in a language we already know well.
A lot of these times, these signs (and small businesses in the area) are fading away or completely disappearing. With this work and others, she’s helping preserve these memories, too.
Her latest for Murals in the Market is one of best in the festival line-up of artists and without a doubt one of the best pieces she’s made in her career.
