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August 2005: Katherine Mitchell

The Works of Emory Artist Katherine Mitchell on View at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center

Katherine Mitchell, abstract artist and drawing and painting professor in the Emory Visual Arts Program, is currently exhibiting a ten-year retrospective of her work at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in a show titled The Krems Suite, Labyrinths, and Related Works. On exhibit through August 13, Mitchell’s 45 pieces are placed in two areas at the Contemporary, reflecting the differences between her earlier and later works.

“There is a definite evolution,” says Mitchell, referring to the differences. “People would recognize the work as being all mine, but the colors change and the materials change, as well as the images.” Mitchell explains that her work shifted in 2003 as the result of a month-long residency in Krems, Austria, a medieval Austrian village situated on the Danube River. “I was influenced by the qualities of light and color there, by certain colors used in the architecture—by the golden colors of the monastery of Melk, for example. These kinds of colors were a great influence and had not been colors I’d normally worked with.” Along with the golds and yellows of Melk and the blues and grays of the Danube, Mitchell incorporated the imagery that she picked up from her long walks around the city of Krems. The Labyrinth series, for example, reflects the grid-like layout of the streets there. According to Helena Reckitt, formerly of the Contemporary and curator of the exhibition, Mitchell’s work regularly shows the influence of “modernist legacies and architectural metaphors.”

Always an Artist

A Memphis native, Mitchell says she has always been drawn to art. “Of course, in Memphis there wasn't a lot of it to see at that time,” she explains. Some of her exposure came through the bookshop that her mother owned and ran. “She had an area devoted to the arts, even in the '50s,” she explains. “My mother often brought home books, sometimes just for me to see, sometimes as gifts for me.”

Mitchell explains that if she could point to one event that pushed her into becoming an artist, it would be when, at the age of 15 or so, she happened to visit the Brooks Art Gallery (Memphis Museum), which at the time had a Phillip Guston piece titled Beggar's Joy. “I was just stunned when I saw it,” she says. “It was as if suddenly I saw the meaning of life. It was a revelation. I had never seen abstract art before.”

Mitchell, on the Emory arts faculty since 1985, is a long-time Atlanta resident, having come here originally to attend the Atlanta College of Art. She left for a while to attend graduate school at the Rome, Italy, campus of the Tyler School of Art, part of Temple University. When she returned to Atlanta, she began working in the area as an artist. Around this same time, she married her first husband, Edward Ross, a teacher at Atlanta College of Art and himself a vibrant Atlanta artist.

Watching the Emory Visual Arts Program Grow

“After the death of my first husband, I finished my master’s,” she explains. She then started teaching art at a number of schools, including Georgia State University and Emory, where she was a frequent substitute in the Art History Department. It was during this time that she met and married her current husband, Jack Lawing, a lawyer and photographer. She continued teaching in this peripatetic manner until 1985, when she was offered a permanent position in Emory’s Visual Arts Program.

Over the years since she joined the Emory faculty, Mitchell says that she has seen quite great progress in the Visual Arts Program. She explains that the Art History Department started offering art classes as a way to give their students some exposure to art—exposure, but not credit. “Gradually, the program moved into a more serious position,” she says. Students began to take these classes for credit, and eventually they could minor in visual arts. “Then in '94 or '95, we got a new building, which is now the studio of our current location,” she says. Although the building represented a big step up for the program, the faculty still had no offices. “The joke was that we had to wear cargo pants,” Mitchell says. “You would see us crouching in the halls with our laptops.”

With the opening of the Visual Arts Building and Gallery in March this year, faculty members now have their own offices, along with a beautiful new art gallery. “We are just thrilled with the progress we’re making, and we’re hoping to continue,” says Mitchell. In addition, Emory now offers a joint major in visual arts and art history.

Walking for Art

When Mitchell isn’t painting or teaching at Emory, she is reading and walking— both of which, fortunately for us, lead her right back into her art, as her history and her current exhibit demonstrate.

The Krems Suite, Labyrinths, and Related Works will be on display through August 13. In 2006, Mitchell will have a solo exhibition at the Factory, Kunsthalle Krems, in Austria—“a very nice place to exhibit,” she says, and a fitting return for the work that grew out of her relationship to Krems.

Mitchell is represented in Atlanta by Kiang Gallery.

Written by Nancy Condon
Communications Coordinator
Arts at Emory

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