Join us for the inaugural release of Sun Survey Book 01: Summer, the first in a limited-edition series by Detroit artists Martyna Alexander and Daniel Ribar, exploring the changing seasons of Northern Michigan through photography, painting, and design.

Created in collaboration with Otis Harbor Springs, this place-based project captures the landscape, light, and spirit of the region through an immersive artistic lens.

Celebrate with an all-day experience from 12:00–8:00 PM, featuring the book launch, artwork on display, seasonal food and beverages, a 5:00 PM artist presentation, and a meet-and-mingle with the artists from 5:30–8:00 PM.

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A place-based project as a result of the collaborative art practices of Daniel Ribar and Martyna Alexander with the support of Otis Harbor Springs. Examining the changing light of the northern Michigan seasons, their experiences are compiled into the physical form of a series of limited edition art books. The first 4 books, launched throughout the year, are focused on encapsulating the unique experience of each season in northern Michigan. Book 01, Summer, is the inaugural launch of this series of books and the long-form project of making in relationship to place. As Ribar captures the subtle and visceral materiality of each season through the lens, Alexander responds to the experience through in-the-moment sketches and paintings back in the studio, and lastly in the layout and narration in the design of each book-object.


About the Artists:

Martyna Alexander is a Detroit-based artist interested in how sustainable constructs of routine and lifestyle can create an art practice that might push back against institutional and cultural structures that oppose self-nurturing methodologies.

Originally a designer working in corporate settings for over 10 years, she began using her art to explore the space between rational knowing and subconscious understanding. Using that realm to examine our identities and their ethereal existence formed by our genetics and biological pasts.  

Alexander was born and raised in Ann Arbor, MI to a Polish immigrant with Korean ancestry and a Michigan local with Irish/British ancestry. She studied at Parsons New School for Design before finishing her BFA at the University of Michigan’s Stamps School of Art & Design. She’s worked as a designer in-house and as a consultant for companies like Shinola, Floyd, Whirlpool, Google, and Apple, before dedicating herself to painting full-time in 2020. Alexander’s work has been shown internationally, including exhibitions in Tokyo, New York, Detroit, Madrid, and Milwaukee. She also co-runs the collective studio space, Dive Studios, in Detroit, MI.

Daniel Ribar is a multidisciplinary artist based in Detroit, Michigan.

Ribar’s work questions how we see and interact with the world around us, drawn to utilitarian objects and everyday environments—particularly those shaped by his Midwestern upbringing. He looks beyond assumed functions to reveal what might otherwise remain invisible, collapsing the distance between life and the studio. The work often sits somewhere between abstraction and documentation of lived experience, ultimately his visual description of it, approached with a clinical investigation into form, material, and context.

Through collecting, indexing, and re-creating objects across photography, sculpture, and painting, Ribar explores questions of authorship, ownership, and value, blurring the line between made and found. His work leaves viewers questioning where the artist’s hand begins, ends, or is even recognizable.

Ribar holds a BFA from the College for Creative Studies and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.

He has served as a returning guest lecturer at institutions such as the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the College for Creative Studies, Cranbrook Academy of Art, and Wayne State University.

His work is included in the permanent collection of the Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills, MI, and has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Bloomberg Business, i-D, C41 Magazine, IGNANT, Fisheye Paris, and more.

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