Photo Credit: Nydia Blas
Kelly Taylor Mitchell is an artist and educator who lives and works between Atlanta, GA and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Working across printmaking, papermaking, performance, installation, and soft sculpture her current work stems from inherited origin points in the American South and Caribbean. Kelly’s practice is one of Diasporic mapping that embraces found textiles, foraged plant matter, and functional spiritual technologies as the connective tissue that links kin beyond biology. Syncreticism, marronage, the language of revelry and the aesthetics of privacy act as points of reference and research. Kelly is the 2024 Inaugural Nellie Mae Rowe Prize Seed Awardee, a 2023-2024 Lyndon House Arts Foundation Fellow, a 2022 Atlanta Artadia Awardee, a 2021-2022 SMFA at Tufts Travelling Fellow, the 2022 Inaugural Spelman College Affiliate Fellow at The American Academy in Rome and a 2020-2021 Working Artist Project Fellow at The Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia. She has completed residencies with The Arts & Social Justice Program at Emory University, Midtown Alliance, The University of Texas at Austin, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Women’s Studio Workshop, and Atlanta Contemporary. Her work can be found in collections such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Harvard Fine Arts Library, Duke University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Walker Art Center Library, and publications like Burnaway, Art Papers, and Hand Papermaking. She has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Virginia Commonwealth University, Penland School of Craft and Dieu Donne.
Kelly is a co-founder of La Escuela de Papel based out of Boriken and an Assistant Professor of Art and Visual Culture at Spelman College.
Recent exhibitions include her solo exhibition Kelly Taylor Mitchell: mouth wide open, on view at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Currently on view: Talking Across an Expanse on view at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport through September 2026 and Seams To Be: New Approaches to Textile Techniques traveling through 2027.
Contact: kellytaylormitchellstudio@gmail.com
More:
Gathering Memories, Mapping Diaspora, Boston Art Review, Interview by Jordan Barrant
Performance, Power Objects and Papermaking, Kelly Taylor Mitchell Virtual Artist Talk at Dieu Donne
An Invitation: Ancestral Mapping, Burnaway, Kelly Taylor Mitchell
Kelly Taylor Mitchell: Masking Practice, Art Papers, Sarah Higgins
Papermaking and Materials as Witness, Kitumba with Sima Podcast
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