Dean Mitchell: A Record of Industry

Excerpt published online courtesy Western Art & Architecture Magazine, August/ September 2017

...And yet, even as we tear down the old and outdated and strive to reinvent and renew industry across this country, there are many left behind. Artist Dean Mitchell has spent his career bringing awareness to the plight of people lost in time, held bound within desolate landscapes and poverty; scenes all too familiar to him, having grown up in poverty in the rural, segregated South.

Over the last several years, Mitchell has traveled tp reservations in the Southwest where he turns an unflinch ing eye to the desperate conditions of Native Americans. “People’s lives are shaped and informed in these spaces and structures; they have psychological effects that can last for decades,” he says. “I have no fear of looking at the harshness of life through my work if I feel it needs to be seen for the betterment of humanity.”