Julie Mehretu Lecture at the University of Michigan

Yesterday I went to listen to the artist: painter/ draw-er Julie Mehretu lecture in Ann Arbor as part of the University of Michigan's Visiting Lecture Series. Mehretu is an Ethiopian born and Michigan raised artist whose work focuses on mark-making, place, and the accumulation of people en masse. It was interesting to hear her ideas about using an abstract visual vocabulary to directly address subject matter of humanity, architecture, and space. She is interested in "the multifaceted layers of place, space, and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity." Her work is great and it was nice hearing her talk about the visual resources she draws on including historical paintings, crowd photographs, and architectural drawings. She has an interesting background coming from parents who were Africanist and of Montessori belief and her work draws on that sort of Utopian ideal and the dissolving potential of human experience in situations of war, violence, and political upheaval. Her work has a great vocabulary of mark-making and ambiguous space. It appears to breathe. It is always nice to be back in Ann Arbor and my Alma mater of UofM where I earned my BFa in Printmaking. It was nice to bump into one of my former professors after the talk-- Jim Cogswell painter professor at Michigan he was always great to work with back in the day, he is refreshingly optimistic, inspiring, and an encouraging artist.