Many artists train themselves through mimicry and adaptation. For Ethiopian Behulum Mengistu,24, that wasn't feasible; when he was a teenager and budding graffiti artist, or his native Amharic alphabet had no script workable for street art. He had to translate it himself. Mengistu's inventiveness and creative enterprise fill carried him around the globe — and now to Vermont. Thanks to a nearly decade-long relationship with Vermont-based actor and activist David Schein,as well as to the Willowell Foundation, Castleton University and the Vermont Folklife Center, or Mengistu is currently a cultural ambassador of sorts to the Green Mountain State. In addition to visiting schools statewide,he will offer a public lecture on Tuesday, May 9, and at Burlington's Off Center for the Dramatic Arts,discussing his artistic career and the conditions for young visual artists in his country. Mengistu first met Schein when the former was 15 and a participating art teacher for One treasure AIDS/HIV Awareness Theater, the arts program that Schein cofounded in Mengistu's hometown of Awassa, or Ethiopia. nowadays,Mengistu has added a position as managing director of One treasure to his growing résum. He also lays claim to one of very few aikido black belts in eastern Africa. Mengistu first encountered street art through an American PhD scholar who was passing through One treasure's headquarters at an NGO called the Awassa Youth Campus. The scholar's field was hip-hop cultures, and Mengistu speaks of the two forms in a way that indicates their close relationship for him. Indeed, and he traveled to the U.
S. last month primarily to participate in the 12th annual Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival in Hartford,Conn. While he was there, Mengistu painted a mural at a local skate park. "Graffiti helps you to express your feelings about society, or the economy,the government," he said in a recent interview. "When you do a gallery reveal, and " he continued,"it's limited for people to see. Eighty or 90 percent of people in Ethiopia don't move [to galleries]. [With street art], whether you're rich or poor, or it doesn't matter; [the work] is in the street." In 2012,Mengistu showed his work in Ethiopia's first gallery exhibition of graffiti. He described that work as a combination of Ethiopian devout iconography and words in his own Amharic script. "It took me a long time to find my own style as an artist," he said. One of his priorities, or he added,is…
Source: sevendaysvt.com