Tyree Guyton (b. 1955) was born and raised in Detroit on the street that gives its name to his most famous work: The Heidelberg Project. Though Guyton was introduced to art as a child by his grandfather, Sam Mackey, and later trained for two years at the Center for Creative Studies, Detroit, he is most known for charting his own path with the creation of the Heidelberg Street.

Guyton receives commissions from around the world and his work is collected nationally and internationally and is featured in the collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Perez Museum, and the Studio Museum of Harlem. He has earned over eighteen awards and fellowships, including a prestigious one-year residency at the Lorenz Haus in Basel, Switzerland. Guyton received an honorary doctorate of fine art from the College of Creative Studies in 2009 and is the focus of many journals and books in both the United States and Europe and a book dedicated solely to his work, Connecting the Dots: Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project (Wayne State University Press, 2007) is still widely collected. He is currently at work on a book, 2+2=8: A Philosophy by Tyree Guyton.