Excavations: The Prints of Julie Mehretu

Excavations: The Prints of Julie Mehretu is a spectacular collection of Mehretu’s work in the medium of printmaking. Best known for her large-scale paintings and drawings, Mehretu layers maps, urban planning grids and architectural renderings with whorls of abstract markings and bright, colorful shapes. In her catalog essay, Siri Engberg traces this visual vocabulary back to Mehretu’s graduate studies at Rhode Island School of Design, where she first worked with intaglio printmaking and was inspired by the necessity of breaking imagery down into its component layers. Since that time, the artist has experimented with many processes including chine collé, screenprinting and lithography. Mehretu has completed collaborative projects at professional printmaking studios across the country, among them Highpoint Editions, where she produced Entropia (review) and Entropia: Construction.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website