Michi Meko creates large-scale paintings that address and process “the African American experience of navigating public spaces, particularly in the American South, while remaining buoyant within them.” The artist’s powerful subject and impressive approach to making these works were brought about by a near-drowning, which shifted his perspective on how he exists in nature. While pursuits in the water or woods like fishing or hiking have historically been fraught for Black individuals, often restrictively codified as “white” spaces in the U.S., Meko’s exuberant art and passion for fly-fishing reclaim these nonurban sites, demonstrating that nature has always been a thriving source for Black creative expression.

Meko’s immersive paintings evoke turbulent skies, undulating seascapes, and billowy marshes with spray-painted gestural markings, while also incorporating forms and navigational lines in white color pencil and beacons of gold leaf sparkling in the night sky. The artwork’s inky palette and the exhibition’s title, So Black and So Blue, take inspiration from Louis Armstrong’s interpretation of the jazz standard “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue,” Ralph Ellison’s evocation of the song’s racial protest dimensions, and Imani Perry’s groundbreaking text Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People. Contextually and lucidly, Meko maps an optimistic framework of resilient expedition and profound change.