Her graduate professors tell her that art doesn’t always have to be about something, but for Maya Freelon ’05, issues fuel her desire to create. Her artwork demonstrates a constant redefinition of herself and her perceptions.
- The McDonogh Report celebrates the contributions of African Americans to the Lafayette community.
Called “Durham’s newest young star,” she exhibited politically charged artwork earlier this year at the Lyda Moore Merrick Gallery, Hayti Heritage Center, Durham, N.C. In-Dependence, a solo exhibition, featured works that express racial equality, identity, and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
She is honing her craft this summer at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, one of the country’s foremost artists’ residency communities.
During her Lafayette career, Freelon wrote extensively on the technique she has coined “Hybrigital,” a combination of painting, drawing, and collage with digital art. She presented this work last year at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research and believes the combination of materials makes it easier to try new things.
She also has experimented with tissue paper, applying it to watercolor paintings as a representation of her reaction to the Katrina tragedy.
Freelon has displayed her work in several exhibitions in the U.S. and in Paris, garnering other invitations to exhibit internationally. She participated in the group show Blurring Racial Barriers at Diggs Gallery, Winston-Salem University, N.C., in January. Her other exhibitions include What is Freedom, Gallery of Social and Political Art, Boston, September 2005; Senior Honors Thesis Exhibition, Lafayette, May 2005; The Body Show, Craven Allen Gallery, Durham, N.C., September 2004; and And Then There Were 3, Combes Gallery, American University of Paris, June 2004.
She is founder of the nonprofit art therapy organization Make Your Mark Art, a member of the Warsat Collection advisory board, and an MFA candidate at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Located in the 1891 St. Joseph AME Church, the Hayti Heritage Center houses African American archives and art galleries. The church itself has been renovated into a performance hall that has hosted many significant speakers, including Booker T. Washington, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, and Martin Luther King, Jr.