February 22 – March 30, 2025
Gallery Artist Bruce Mitchell assembles a selection of his wood sculpture and prints, an evolution of work from two decades of work, 2006 to 2025. It’s a retrospective look, presenting abstract wood sculptures— freestanding totemic forms, pedestal sculptures, and some recently crafted wall sculptures—wood-inlay abstractions and finely-carved fish. The most recent work, a series of woodblock prints on rice paper, is focused on the triangle, circle, and square.
Here, Mitchell takes a new direction, creating a new language of forms. He shapes complex printing blocks on the lathe, then transfers their patterns to colored papers with ink or by making rubbings with crayons and adding details with colored pencils. This series reflects his longtime interest in abstract motifs in textiles, pottery, and painted border art from cultures around the world. His wall sculpture Random Weave pays homage to the “wedge weave” created by Navaho weavers in the19th century.
Mitchell began acquiring wood working skills in his late teens as assistant to sculptor JB Blunk. Then, inspired by a Japanese aesthetic, he created hand-carved, wooden, sculptural vessels for 25 years, many of which are now in museums. His fine-art sculpture is varied and imaginative, inspired by excursions into dreamworlds and reverence for nature.
Mitchell writes, The central focus of my work in wood has been to use the language of sculpture to bring my ideas about form into life.
