Margaretta K. Mitchell: A Retrospective

Description

Margaretta K. Mitchell: A Retrospective

Exhibition runs: April 26–June 1, 2013

Reception: Saturday, May 11, 2–5pm

Closing Reception and Artist Talk: Saturday, June 1, 2–5pm



Also open for:

Oakland Art Murmur: Open Late, Friday, May 3, 6–9pm

Third Thursdays: Open Late, Thursday, May 16, 6–8pm



Gallery hours: Fridays/Saturdays: Noon–6:00pm, and by appointment

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PHOTO presents a retrospective of the photographic works of Margaretta K. Mitchell. The work selected, which spans over the past 25 years, emphasizes the beauty and interconnectivity of nature with the human body.

Margaretta K. Mitchell is an author, photographer, filmmaker, and educator. Besides photographing people, gardens, and other assignments, she exhibits her fine art photography nationally. She is the author of five books (including Recollections: Ten Women of Photography in 1979, for which she also created a traveling show that was exhibited at seventeen American museums), and Ruth Bernhard: Between Art and Life. (Chronicle Books, 2000). She is a contributor of both text and images to many more books and publications.

Her fine art portraiture brings her many years of faithful clients from the greater Bay Area and the East Coast. Her latest book, The Face of Poetry (the University of California Press, 2005) features her black and white portraits of a significant selection of remarkable American poets set in conversations with their poems. (Co-author is poet Zack Rogow.) The traveling exhibition has traveled to The University of Southern California, and Smith College among other sites.

Her photography was included in the book and traveling exhibition, A History of Women Photographers, (1994). On January 31, 2000 Berkeley Symphony performed the world premiere of a symphony, commissioned by Kent Nagano, entitled “Berkeley Images”, which was inspired by Margaretta’s photogravure portfolio, Dance for Life.

Her work has also been exhibited in Boston at the Pepper Gallery, in New York at the Marcuse Pfeifer Gallery, The International Center of Photography, The Gallery at Lincoln Center, and at the Witkin Gallery, at the Sandra Berler Gallery in Washington, D. C., and in California at the Oakland Museum, the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House Gallery, The Shapiro Gallery, The Robert Tat Gallery, Gumps Gallery, PhotoCentral, Spectrum and Viewpoint. Her most recent exhibitions were at PhotoCentral in the East Bay, and Viewpoint Gallery in Sacramento in 2009.

Prints and/or portfolios are in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The International Center of Photography, Stanford University Museum, The Oakland Museum, The New York Public Library, Princeton University, UCLA, The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, Smith College Museum and the Royal Print Collection, Windsor, England, among others, including many private collections.

Margaretta has taught at UC Berkeley and UC and UCSC Extension, The San Francisco Botanical garden, Gamble Garden, Palo Alto, Bay Area Garden Clubs, De Anza College, the Academy of Art, San Francisco, and Hawaii Photo Retreats, and is a consultant to private clients. She was President of the Northern California Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers for which she also served two terms as a National Director. She is a graduate, magna cum laude, from Smith College, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received her MA in Visual Studies from the University of California, Berkeley where she has served on the Alumni Board of the College of Environmental Design.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

The task of life is to become who we truly are. The role of art is to awaken the senses, to find an inner truth by connecting with others across the centuries and with the natural world. As artists we become part of the continuum of those who seek to express the simple joy of being alive. By observation of, say, a flower, or a naked body, or the head of a small child, we make a connection that teaches us about the meaning of life, of love, of the highest part of our psyches. Most people see only the outer form, but the meditation on that form through a discipline such as photography, reveals messages from another realm. We are reminded of an ancient era when spirit inhabited everything in nature, including human nature. My work is essentially a meditation on that connection. I am not exactly thinking. I am identifying with the subject, listening, reading the gestures, and letting it/her/him speak through me.

The act of making a photograph is tied to time: the decisive moment or the endless stretch of imagination –or both. Black and white photography is a language of light and shadow with which I strive to transcend measured time, or with the click of the shutter, to stop time, if only for a second. I want to show you what I see. I want you to love the physical world as much as I do, to be alive, awed and connected to beauty in such depth that your heart will find nourishment and the sharp edges of the day will soften. Perhaps—if I am successful—you can discover a place to rest your spirit, remember a moment in your childhood when each moment was new, full of meaning and you were at peace with the world.

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