Ali Mahjouri

I have always found comfort and full expression in my drawings. My first drawings were imaginary floating cities - some in water, some in air when I was very young - maybe 10 years old.  I would also draw portraits of musicians I loved - Johnny Rotten (Sex Pistols, P.I.L.) to Michael Stipe (R.E.M.) My first drawings were resting between the technicality of a measured drawing and the liberated expression of human forms.   My charcoals continue this relationship - a back and forth between the limits of my hand movements and the mutuality of the media and the paper.   Upon my first experience as a university student at a summer program for high school students interested in architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, I took a great interest in the visual studies course.  I pursued an architectural education at Georgia Tech where I learned about charcoal, which turned out to be the most natural means of getting ideas across for me. My Master's in Architecture from Rice University found me seeking out the relationship between the drawn line and sound in architectural construction.  I noticed that the tire smudges on an airplane runway, for example, are a a dynamic form of drawing architecture.  Each one of those smudges has a sound applied to it.  I often wonder what the significance of a single line is - a line means so many different things depending on what role it is assigned.  A line drawn by an electrical engineer can look exactly the same as a line drawn by an architect.   Yet the meanings are vastly different.  One line carries a charge, the other line signifies concrete.  Yet the language is the same.  When I start my works, I allow the charcoal to stabilize the paper and the paper to stablize the charcoal.  I am interested in finding new forms of possibility in space with my drarwings.