“A Bit of This, A Bit of That”
Spot Lite Detroit (2905 Beaufait)
Feb. 6, 2026
In the winter, business slows down for Detroit sign painter Kelly Golden.
While that’s a loss for the canvas of the city, it’s a gain for art patrons like us. With this solo exhibition at Spot Lite, we get to see Golden flaunt a more creative side of her practice. She’s finally got time to dive in and bring them to life before spring comes to Detroit and her main hustle of painting signs for others takes back over.
“A Bit of This, A Bit of That” is right there in the title. It’s the oddities, the loose ends, the bizarre concepts that Golden has collected in her head over the years. Sure, they're still anchored in a functional reality. That’s likely why nearly every piece sold.
Mirrors read “open till late”; they would tie together any dive bar. We’re also beginning to see Golden’s neon work in the world, an expansion of her creative palette that she started working on a few years ago. A neon rose somehow is romantic and dramatic and yet somehow really quite simple, too.
That might be a good way to sum up a lot of Golden’s work in this show and around the city.
The more surreal signage in “A Bit of This” shows off Golden’s sense of humor when she’s not just a hired gun bringing somebody else’s dream sign to life.
How about a bloated, floating Garfield reminding you to “transcend limitation?” Or Garfield on a surf board with a nod to the lyrics from Enya’s anthem “Orinoco Flow” framing it? How about an old office door with “Multiverse HQ / everything all the time” painted on it? My favorite is a dive bar beer mirror with “infinite tenderness” lovingly scrawled across it.
Golden is a master at taking familiar objects and twisting them a bit to bring out a laugh or a sense of surrealism. It’s inherently anti-marketing, asking “What if that bar mirror was reminding me to be kind instead of drinking another beer?”
As one of the acclaimed sign painters working in Detroit today, we’re lucky to see Golden’s work woven into the fabric of the city every day.
It’s a special treat to see her dedicate a body of work to a solo exhibition like this. I’m not the only one who would love to see this become a yearly tradition in Golden’s portfolio.
