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</td><td align="left" VALIGN="top" width=350><font face="Arial" size="4" color="#f000000"><b>Art Talk:</b></font><br>

<font face="Arial" size="2"><b>Designing This Magazine: Ezra Wube & Mixed Media</b></font><br><font face="Arial" size="1">By: Mikael Awake<br><br>


<img src="art2image1.jpg"><br> Jolie, oil and acrylic on canvas, 10" x 10", 2005. by Ezra Wube.<br><br>


If you’ve noticed that the pages of TADIAS

look a bit different in this issue,

there’s a reason. The reason’s name is

Ezra Wube, and when he’s not redesigning

entire magazines, this 24-year-old Brooklyn

resident is busy lining the walls of galleries,

lofts, and upscale restaurants all over

New York City with his paintings, which

have been quickly getting the attention of

older artists, curators, and art-goers alike.

<br><br>


It’s a hot day in the city when

we meet. Along with our drinks, we too

perspire. “It was insane,” Ezra says of

his ﬁrst years in the States as an undergraduate

at Massachusetts College of

Art. “I was taking eight classes a semester.

I barely made it.” This, he explains,

is why he never had the time to meet

new people, let alone other Ethiopians.

<br><br>

“When I was in Boston, I rarely

interacted with Ethiopians,” he says.

“Sometimes I would go to church, but…”

He pauses and lets the thought die. He

takes a sip of his iced coffee, which sweats

onto the green marble tabletop where

we’re sitting. One can understand why

Ezra now, six months after having moved

to New York, is so eager to take the reins

as this magazine’s guiding artistic voice.

<br><br>

“It’s always good writing,” Ezra says of his initial response to the

magazine. “It was my ﬁrst time realizing

that an Ethiopian magazine was

capable of that level of sophistication.”

<br><br>

His enthusiasm bubbles over

from time to time. He speaks in precise,

often one-word sentences and

moves in his chair, motions with his

hands, once in a while stroking his

goatee and staring out into the street.

<br><br>

“It’s important to have that

sense of identity and community. I like

that the magazine is doing something

good for Ethiopia and also to think that

there are people out there interested in

what I’m interested in. And hopefully

people outside the community will really

start to know more about Ethiopia.”

<br><br>

He has a bundle of dreadlocks

tied behind his head, and in between a

pair of two calm, far apart eyes, is a black

smudge. People are always asking him

about it. They think it’s a religious mark.

Th ey ask him if he’s recently been married,

or if he’s Hindu. Polite as ever, Ezra usually

smiles and explains the rather mundane

fact that it’s only a birthmark. But

for those who have seen his paintings,

one might be inclined to believe it’s something

else, something more mysterious.

<br><br>

The response, however, to

his paintings – most of which sport

intimidating four-ﬁgure price tags

– has been anything but mysterious.

<br><br>

Eerie birthmark aside, Ezra has

been slowly, steadily carving out a singular

space in the cutthroat New York art

world. He has an unmistakable talent

for bringing very disparate themes and

ideas together on a single canvas, infusing

elements of autobiography, Ethiopian

religious art, abstract expressionism,

and jarring elements of street culture and

the absurd. One of his most captivating

works portrays an old man staring into

the sky, where, impossibly, a giant ﬂower

has bloomed. The work is called Jolie, after

Ezra’s girlfriend, who is also an artist.

<br><br>

By the time I got around to asking

him if he was aware that Pablo Picasso

had a painting by that name (“La Jolie”),also, coincidentally, done with his girlfriend

in mind, we had fully digressed

from our original topic – to talk about

his approach to designing this issue of the

magazine – and were talking about art and

being an artist who’s always struggling to

speak both for himself and for his culture.

<br><br>

“Picasso was just a Spanish

painter for a long time,” says Ezra. “But

then he stopped being just a Spanish artist

and started taking from African art. If

you saw his studio, it was packed with African

masks. Packed. He was not restricted

by culture. Th e moral is you should learn

from any culture.” Before I can offer a rebuttal,

Ezra is quick to catch himself: “But

that doesn’t mean I’m going to deny who

I am, which I couldn’t do if I wanted to.”

<br><br>

I wondered aloud, so who is Ezra

Wube? What are his inﬂuences? Picasso?

<br><br>

“Even this. Now,” he said, gently

rapping the table with the side of his

hand. “I’m very inﬂuenced by life, by

this conversation.” He admitted to not

playing favorites, and we left it at that.

<br><br>

This whole time, we had kept an

old copy of Tadias in front of us. Finally, I opened it up and began to ﬂip through

it listlessly. Ezra stopped me on a page

and pointed to one of the numerous, conspicuous

advertisements that littered it.

<br><br>

“Ridiculous, man,” he says,

throwing his head back in laughter. “Most

of the ads are just…I don’t know what

they’re trying to do. It’s just too many

ideas in one area. Cheesy. Flashy. They

bring down the quality of the magazine.”

<br><br>

And then he drew my attention

to what he saw as an epidemic problem

facing graphic designers as a whole, and

especially Ethiopians. It’s a problem Ezra

terms the ‘excitement about technology.’

“Seems like someone was just too

excited about Photoshop,” he smiled.

<br><br>

It may seem odd for a ﬁne artist

like Ezra to try his hand at designing

a magazine like this one, but for him, it’s

all part of it. “I enjoy designing,” he says,

though admitting that he’s a ﬁne artist

ﬁrst, and a graphic designer second. “With

ﬁne art, you’re creating everything from

scratch and trying to make a statement.

You’re trying to make sense of the world.

But with design, I already know the statement

and you just have to stay on line.”

<br><br>

“It’s structure,” he continues.

“Structure ﬁrst and then freedom. There’s

a system to most things. The computer I

put this issue together on is a system…I’m

not creating anything. I’m just putting it

together.” In many ways that’s also true

of the artist, he said. He admits to being

a ﬁnder more than a creator, a storyteller

more than a philosopher, and being

as resourceful as he is diligent. It is

this humble approach to his craft that is

so refreshing. His distaste for cheesy ads

aside, Ezra has no illusions about what

should and shouldn’t be considered art.

<br><br>

“Everything is made out of life,

and life is made out of all different elements.

Everything is useable, functional.”

He started pointing to objects on our

table and calling out what they were and

what they were made of. Coffee, marble,

wood, light, paper, ink, bathroom sign…

<br><br>

Bathroom sign?

<br><br>

“Okay, don’t write that I said bathroom

sign.” 


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