Huck on a river

The movie 8 Mile represents the great divide. As several Motown songs remind us:
It’s so high you can’t get over it,
so low you can’t get under it,
so wide you can’t get around it

We’re not talking distance here; we’re talking different worlds – like the city of Detroit itself, the backdrop for the movie. Eight Mile Road is the city’s dividing line of sorts. It’s the unspeakable gulf, the line of demarcation, the Berlin Wall, the cultural leap, the other side of the tracks.
As a studio employee, artist Keni Davis helped paint the sets for 8 Mile. When the sets were done, he stood back, got another view and began capturing on canvas how the movie wanted us to see the city.
“The drawings were all done on site at each location,” says Keni. “I did them during my lunch or coffee breaks. The watercolor work was done either on site, in my hotel room...