Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michelle Mansour. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Michelle, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I always loved creating from a very young age, but I think my mentors over the years have really put me on the path I’ve followed professionally. My high school art teacher– Jack Walther– had a really lasting impact via his encouragement for experimentation and creative problem-solving. I grew up in a family of health care practitioners, so had always thought I would pursue medicine, but I made the decision to select Art Theory and Practice as my major in undergrad right from my start at Northwestern. I studied with some incredible artists there (Ed Paschke, James Valerio, Lorraine Peltz), who helped me build my skills and start to think about my voice as a young artist. In my time in Chicago, I also found my love for education, so worked with Gallery 37– an incredible youth empowerment arts job training program for teens from across the city. After teaching for several years, I made the move to the Bay Area to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, and again my mentors (Amy Ellingson, Pegan Brooke, Tim Berry, Jeremy Morgan) helped me refine my concepts as well as build a strong work ethic in the studio. While at SFAI, three friends/colleagues/fellow grad students founded Root Division. They initially brought me on to help pilot what is now our Youth Education Program, in which we recruit, train, and place artists to teach free art classes to youth in under-resourced schools and community centers. In 2007, I moved into a leadership role, and have been dedicated to balancing the care of both the organization’s ethos of supporting artists as well as my own artistic practice. Each one feeds the other in a pretty dynamic way.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

This is a layered answer since I am an artist, educator, and curator as well as the current Executive Director of Root Division, a visual arts non-profit in San Francisco.

My own artwork is a meditation on the space between science and spirituality. Based initially on investigating the microscopic world of the body’s interior where beauty and illness mingle in the same fluids and membranes, my work has become a broader ontological reflection of where the physical and the metaphysical intersect. Growing up in a family of scientists, this focus intensified when my mother — both a nurse and devout Catholic — was diagnosed with and lost to cancer.

Forging a connection between the microcosmic and macrocosmic, the paintings push an imaginative space, exploring tensions and relationships between corporeal and mystical, body and mind. My process includes layering translucent color and building up a symmetrical system of intersecting strands of cells. In applying thousands of tiny dots, I create an ethereal space where constellations gather and disperse in an endless cycle. Particles accumulate, and I layer globules of silicone to emerge from the surface as tissue-like prayer beads. The result is the juxtaposition of jewel-like fields and manipulated surfaces, creating a tactile element for counting countless meditations. This exponentially cyclical process of repeating marks becomes a devotional practice in contemplating the exquisite balance between certainty and faith, presence and loss.

My work as been shown in a variety of non-profit and commercial venues such as the DeYoung Museum and Bedford Gallery, including solo exhibitions at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery, RB Stevenson Gallery (La Jolla), Berkeley Art Center, and Fourth Wall Gallery (Oakland). My work is in a variety of collections including Nordstroms, Hilton Hotels, and Kaiser Permanente, and I have also curated several exhibitions including co-curating a show called Metaphysical Abstraction: Contemporary Approaches to Spiritual Content.

As for Root Division, we are a multi-faceted art center and incubator program that provides discounted and free studio workspace to a diverse cohort of emerging artists in exchange for volunteer service in the community. Artists do this service in everything from teaching free art classes to youth in marginalized communities to helping produce dynamic exhibitions and public programming in our onsite gallery. The idea is that artists receive an affordable place to make their work, gain career related experience, and give back to the organization and our neighborhood in the process.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

As the director of an arts non-profit whose goal is building a thriving ecosystem, I think about this a lot. I would say that the key ingredients are 1) Having a diverse, inclusive community: That means opening the circle of the arts community to not just include folks who already know about/ appreciate the arts– meaning creating ways for those who feel excluded to be drawn in and engaged. In my opinion this includes harnessing the joy of art-making, story-telling, and participation at a young age via free, affordable arts education as well as finding intersections between art and themes and interests in other fields; and
2) Buying art. One doesn’t need to be wealthy to be an art collector, and it’s an easy and impactful investment to buy local, original works from artists.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

Probably the common thread between my work at Root Division and my artistic practice is connectedness. In my paintings, I’m thinking about the interconnectivity of body and mind, science and spirituality. In my role as a non-profit arts leader, I’m focused on how we as artists, educators, curators, collectors, etc.– despite coming from very different backgrounds and experiences– can understand our commonalities and work together to find mutually beneficial solutions.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.michellemansour.com / rootdivision.org
• Instagram: @michellemansourstudio / @rootdivision
• Facebook: /michellemansourstudio / /RootDivisionSF
• Linkedin: michelle-mansour / root-division
• Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/rootdivisionsf

Image Credits
Root Division Mural, Aik Brown