[Julie Mehretu: "Mural"]
[New York City]
--Okay, so then, what we're going to do is
--we're going to make it two inches lower than where it is,
--and two inches shorter.
There is a moment when the painting is completely finished,
where it just feels ultimately complete to me.
And I felt that way until I looked at the painting from the exterior.
--That hexagon is important.
--Once you have the trees planted,
--you won't see the top half of the painting...
Certain shapes that were in the painting
that I intended to operate a certain way from the exterior--
it just seemed a little small.
So that from a distance, you have one experience,
and you have a different experience from up close,
but they don't battle each other.
From the way the whole painting was structured from the beginning,
there was no part of it that was completely determined ever.
It was always just, like, the beginning lines,
then the next shapes, then...
So it's been this additive process
with certain shapes that I wanted to include
but not sure where, when, how.
--Yeah, just the outline of it.
--That's perfect.
I put another layer of drawing in the computer.
--Then you can at least just plot that.
--And then I'm going to get the blue tape.
And parts of it come onto the painting--
we move it around
or change the shape on the painting.
So there's always this kind of back-and-forth.
So I think that there's a lot of meaning in the painting
that I would never want to articulate
a direct statement.
Maybe, also, that's a big reason that I work with abstraction,
so that you can't necessarily pinpoint a specific narrative.
But overall, whether it's just a plain square
or a more anthropomorphic shape,
I think that these all bring up something
that means something more
subconsciously or poetically within us.
And that's it!
These shapes we have to put in...
Hopefully nothing else.
Hopefully I won't... [LAUGHS]
we won't come in tomorrow with another surprise!
[LAUGHS]
"Ah, it needs this!"