Photography show opens Thursday at Mary Patterson Gallery

EAST LIVERPOOL -- The Ohio Valley Regional Arts Council opens its second exhibition of the fall season at 6 p.m. Thursday with a reception for photographer Richard Mitchell, whose exhibit titled “Frogs and Snakes and Deer—Oh My!” runs Oct. 16 - Nov. 21 at the Mary Patterson Art Gallery downtown.

Richard Mitchell is a Professor Emeritus of Art at Youngstown State University. Trained as a painter and sculptor at Illinois Wesleyan and Ohio University, he introduced photography as an academic discipline to the YSU Department of Art in the mid-1970s. Through the YSU extended teaching service, he continues to teach both studio and photo history.

Raised and educated in the Midwest, Mitchell has traveled extensively in Latin America to photograph and research Pre-Columbian Art.

“My travels to more than 50 Pre-Columbian sites from Bolivia to Mexico continue to influence my work,” Mitchell said. “It was in Latin America that I truly learned to appreciate the past and connect it to the present with a sense of cultural dignity.”

In the late 1980s, Mitchell printed 300 glass-plate negatives made in Youngstown from 1900 to 1910 and presented “A Family Decade – Almost Lost” at the Western Reserve Historical Society symposium in November 1989.

As a volunteer curator of the photographic archives at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society and its Arms Museum of Family History, Mitchell has researched and presented exhibitions dedicated to family history. He introduced many students to the value of their own history and its preservation while offering them an opportunity to work with primary photographic artifacts.

A trip to Beijing China in the spring of 2002 provided material for “China: Levels of Discernment,” an exhibition initially hosted by the McDonough Museum of Art in September of that year.

Mitchell’s photographs have been exhibited in a variety of museums and college art galleries, including the Galleria Jorge Martinez in Guadalajara, Mexico; the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Warren, and Salem; McDonough Museum of Art; Westminster College Art Gallery; and Zone VI Photography Gallery in Dayton.

Thursday’s reception will include a brief presentation by the artist and free refreshments. The gallery is located on the second floor of Kent State’s Mary Patterson building at 213 East Fourth Street.