Maryland Printmakers
	JOHN BLAIR MITCHELL: A RETROSPECTIVE (Archived article from June 2000 - click here for current articles) John Blair Mitchell, Chilam Balam, 1996, 20" x 16", lithograph
	John Blair Mitchell, one of the early members of Maryland Printmakers and a board member for a time, will be honored by a major retrospective during the Maryland Arts Festival at Towson University. A teacher for fifty years and an artist for longer, his lifetime work will be surveyed in a tribute to his years at Towson University (1949-1996), where he taught virtually every course offered at one time or another. This exhibition, spanning sixty years, will present his paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, ceramics, and sculpture, spotlighting some never-before-shown paintings completed in 1999 just before his death in August. A full-color catalog will accompany the show. Prints will play an important part in the retrospective, and a number of early etchings created during the 60’s while Dr. Mitchell was earning his Ph.D. at New York University, will be shown. These will include the color intaglios, King Kong Meets the Atomic Bomb (in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Radioactive Man (in the collection of the Library of Congress). Many of these early prints comprised his 1964 solo exhibition, "John Blair Mitchell: Prints" at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and were juried into numerous Corcoran Gallery of Art area shows at the time. Representing his more recent prints, also included will be Chilam Balam (pictured here), a 1996 lithograph on stone, which was selected as a purchase award at the 1999 "11th National Drawing and Print Competition" at the College of Notre Dame in Baltimore, by Jan Howard, curator of prints at the Baltimore Museum of Art. This print, one of a large group of lithographs and etchings which incorporated Mayan images, was featured in Dr. Mitchell's last solo exhibition, "Recent Prints and Drawings", at the Hoffberger Gallery, Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, in 1998. This work then led, in turn, to the series of more than thirty oil/collages, painted in 1998-99, exhibiting the same Mayan influences; a small selection of these will appear in the retrospective. Gallery hours are Thursdays, 7-9:30 pm, Fridays and Saturdays, 1-5, 7-9:30 pm, and Sundays, 1-5 pm, or by appointment: 410-830-2808. The gallery is open during all Maryland Arts Festival summer theatre and music productions.