Music / Visual art
Niagara
born 1955 · singer, painter
Detroit-born singer of the art-punk band Destroy All Monsters and a painter of pop-noir women whose shows made her the “Queen of Detroit” of lowbrow art.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Birth name
- Lynn Rovner
- Also known as
- The Queen of Detroit
- Detroit years
- 1955–present
- Field
- Music, Visual art
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Born Lynn Rovner in Detroit, Niagara met Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw and filmmaker Cary Loren as an art student at the University of Michigan, and in 1973–74 they formed Destroy All Monsters, a noise-and-performance group that played Ann Arbor parties and comic conventions. When the Stooges' Ron Asheton and the MC5's Michael Davis joined in the late 1970s, she became the deadpan front woman of a harder rock band that headlined Bookie's Club 870, Detroit's first punk club. In 1984 she co-founded Dark Carnival, a rotating Detroit supergroup with Ron and Scott Asheton. Her flyers and album art grew into a painting career in the early 1990s: her glamorous, dangerous women were shown first in Detroit-area cafes and then at the ©POP Gallery in Royal Oak and Detroit, before exhibitions in Los Angeles, Sydney, Paris and Tokyo.
Highlights
- Co-founder and singer of Destroy All Monsters (1973–1985)
- Co-founded the Detroit supergroup Dark Carnival (1984) with Ron and Scott Asheton
- Juxtapoz magazine dubbed her the “Queen of Detroit”
- Solo shows at ©POP Gallery (1996–2005) and galleries from Los Angeles to Tokyo
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 3
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Performed here · 1978–early 1980s
Bookie's Club 870
Demolished · 1978–1982
Detroit's first punk club, opened on March 17, 1978, in a former supper club near Woodward; Destroy All Monsters headlined many weekends. The building burned in 1988 and was torn down.
Studied here · early 1970s
University of Michigan
She met her Destroy All Monsters bandmates here as an art student.
Related place · 1996–2005
©POP Gallery
Status being checked
Royal Oak art space, later on Woodward in Midtown Detroit, that gave her a string of solo shows from 1996.