CREATIONS: Dreaming Iris

UU World: The Magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association, May/Jun 2004

Dreaming Iris (1996), by Charles Mitchell. Monotype on canvas, 18 x 24 inches.

CHARLES MITCHELL SAYS that even after forty-five years as an artist, his work is "getting more satisfying"-in part because he has concentrated on a printmaking medium that encourages improvisation and spontaneity.

When he teaches monotype printing, he doesn't explain the technical process. "My theory is we'll jump into the pool, make a mess, and see what happens!"

Which is not to say that a lot of skill and preparation doesn't go into the work. Mitchell began working as a figurative illustrator and produced numerous illustrations for children's textbooks. In 1984, he was selected to illustrate a U.S. postage stamp depicting the grizzly bear for a series on endangered species. But for most of the past thirty years, he has woven figurative illustration into more abstract works, as evident in this monotype.

"The crow is known as the shape-shifter," he says about one of the motifs that appears over and over in his work. "That's the whole concept of time: As we get older, we change our shapes."

Mitchell is a member of the Fort Peck tribes, whose reservation is in northern Montana. "I consider myself multicultural," he says. "If you saw a show of mine you'd see references to Native American culture mixed in with, say, Celtic symbols, and so I'm combining symbolically the different cultures-my cultures-in my work."

He enjoys teaching in the Oneida Cultural Arts Center near his home in Appleton, Wisconsin. For the past decade Mitchell has taken an active role in "The Native American Experience," an arts and culture exhibition at the Appleton Arts Center, where he also teaches.

A member of the Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Appleton, Wisconsin, Mitchell chairs the congregation's art committee.