Dennis Lee Mitchell: Playing With Fire

Jerald Melberg Gallery is pleased to present Playing With Fire, a solo exhibition of works by Dennis Lee Mitchell, an artist who creates works on paper purely with smoke from a burning flame. The opening reception will be held at the gallery on Friday evening, September 15, with the artist in attendance from 6-8pm. 

Dennis Lee Mitchell lives and works in Washington, D.C. and is a recipient of a Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant. His recent works are smoke and colored smoke drawings, elegant mandalas that resemble the organic forms of large-petaled flowers and spiral shells. Mitchell’s work is in the permanent collection of the Illinois State Art Museum, Chicago, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City and the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam. 

My work is a result of my connection with nature — the fact that nothing lasts forever.  Smoke is the point where something becomes dust.  It’s where the magic happens.  

-Dennis Lee Mitchell