Creative visionary Tiff Massey spotlighted her corner of Detroit to show the world with her exciting exhibit, “7 Mile + Livernois.”

Shown at the Detroit Institute of Arts over a 12-month period that drew around a quarter of a million people, the collection was a larger-than-life homage to “adornment.” The 10-exhibit collection included a row of 11 huge steel hair ballies bolted to one wall, a large chain necklace that snaked around the entire room and hoop earrings big enough to walk through.

“This year, essentially, I can’t even put into words,” said the master metal smith. “I grew up in real time, and I’m trying to keep up with myself.”

Massey says it’s only herself that she’s in competition with, and at the moment, it would be tough to find another Detroit artist who is having a moment like her. Massey, the first Black woman to get a Master of Fine Arts in metal smithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art, is also the youngest artist to have a solo exhibit at the DIA. She breaks barriers with a blowtorch in hand, exuding style and authenticity.

A decade ago, Massey was granted a Kresge Artist Fellowship and is a two-time winner of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge. She’s also won the 2021 United States Artist Fellowship and the 2019 Art Jewelry Forum Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant. Her pieces have been highlighted in solo and group shows around the globe.

“I’ve acted like nobody was paying attention this entire time, and I made sure that I was trying to outdo myself, my last accomplishment,” she said. “I am who I’m in competition with.”

Named after her hometown neighborhood, “7 Mile + Livernois” in the DIA’s north wing opened in May 2024 and consumed three rooms. The pieces drew on Massey’s experience as a native Detroiter, and as one who grew up in the 1980s and ’90s, influenced by hip-hop culture, African diaspora and contemporary issues of race, pop culture and their intersection.

Massey, who first picked up a blowtorch at age 16, said her interest in metal smithing was inspired by her curiosity in jewelry and adornment.

“Once I learned how to use a torch and I learned how to solder it was kind of a wrap,” she said. “I was really trying to mimic a lot of the things I saw as a child, these Lucite rings. And then, of course, growing up in the ’80s, all of those things … the scale, the feel of these objects … and then the status of those things intrigued me.”

Katie Pfohl, the DIA’s associate curator of contemporary art, said they hoped inviting Tiff Massey to have a year-long solo exhibit like “7 Mile + Livernois” would resonate with the city and help people feel seen and celebrated at the museum in a new way.

“I think that Tiff is quintessentially Detroit,” Pfohl said. “She combines the city’s unbelievable style, flair, fashion and interest in adornment with this metal smithing that has its roots in the city’s history of industry.”

“There’s something so beautiful about this idea of jewelry that can be worn by everyone, and to create this large-scale jewelry that can exist in public space that makes people feel embraced and really work as a form of connection,” she said.

It wasn’t just the year-long exhibit that drew hundreds of thousands for that type of connection, but the parties that were scheduled alongside the Tiff Massey exhibit at the DIA throughout the year. Last month’s closing event on May 9 drew nearly 4,500 to mix, mingle, sip cocktails and listen to DJs while browsing “7 Mile + Livernois” before it closed on Mother’s Day that Sunday.

“It just felt like home. I’m like, oh my goodness, I’m at a museum and I see a piece of me,” said Detroiter Shelly Ali-Watkins at the closing party. The recent Wayne State University graduate had seen the exhibit earlier in its run, but was moved to return and experience it through the lens of one of the parties.

“It’s a Black experience,” she said. “Other people, other cultures might relate or find some type of common ground within it, but it’s a testament and an ode to the Black culture and just things that we all can find common ground with at home.”

Massey — who is also a musician and performance and video artist — says her plans for the next year include travel and some out-of-state exhibitions and activations on both coasts.

The impact and the reverberation of the year-long “7 Mile + Livernois” exhibit have inspired her to do something more everlasting, too.

“I am working on the logistics of working on a permanent Tiff Massey sculpture park,” she said. “So people can live with these objects for the rest of their lives.”

Tiff Massey

Age: 43

Occupation: Visual artist

Education: Master of Fine Arts in metal smithing, Cranbrook Academy of Art

Why honored: For promoting other young Black artists and blending art and activism. She’s the youngest artist with a solo exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts. “Tiff Massey: 7 Mile + Livernois” is the largest exhibit at the DIA featuring a Detroit artist.