Artist Statement

As a mixed media artist, my creative practice is grounded in the study of African American history, culture and representation. Themes range from ethnography and folklore to visual culture, language and religious traditions. I am particularly interested in the ways these complex relationships are woven into the fabric of everyday life. Through the language of visual art, I seek to draw a correlation between historic memory and contemporary African American life. The Color Code exhibit investigates the social complexities of race, the vagaries of color and celebrates the indelible expressions of Black life.

About the Artist

M.F.A. (Textile Design), University of Michigan, 1983

B.F.A. (Art), Hampton University, 1975

Marianetta Porter has worked as a product designer for Armstrong World Industries, Inc. and for Ford Motor Company. She served on the faculties of the School of Design at North Carolina State University and University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design. Awarded the UM Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award, Porter was granted Professor Emeritus status in 2021.

Porter is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Smithsonian Senior Research Fellowship Award, the Smithsonian Laureate Award, and Rockwood National Fellowship Award. She has served as a visiting artist at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Art Institute of Chicago’s Ox-Bow Program and East Carolina University. Her work has been exhibited widely including in Bremen, Germany and Beijing, China, as well as at the California African American Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, Charleston’s Spoleto Festival, the Harriet Tubman Museum, the Charles H. Wright Museum, and the Hampton University Museum of Art.