Bio
Bill Mitchell is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Lancaster WI, exhibiting regionally and nationally. He is currently Gallery Director at Rountree Gallery in Platteville WI, a community run non-profit gallery with regional and national exhibits. He also serves as an appointed member of The Wisconsin State Arts Board. His involvement with nonprofit organizations goes back three decades with the Chicago Artist Coalition, Windy City Arts and Midwest Ecological Landscape Association. Having studied illustration, design and ultimately painting, receiving a BFA and MFA, with teaching assistantship, from Northern Illinois University in 1993. He has also worked extensively as a landscape designer in Chicago focused on contemporary, sustainable urban design for select clientele, with projects earning prestigious design awards. Additionally, he taught landscape design at Northwestern School of Continuing Studies, presented at numerous symposia and had work published in Fine Gardening, Chicago Home & Garden and among others. Bill lives on a small farm with his wife Angie, three mini donkeys, several cats and chickens.
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Artist Statement
Through a multidisciplinary approach the work explores and investigates the interconnected relationship of humans, the environment and other species. Seeking to examine and reveal the social, technological and spiritual constructs we employ as we interface with the organic and inorganic of our place and time, underpins the practice. Primarily through sculpture, land art, installation, drawing and mixed media, themes of equilibrium, symbiosis and time are continually present. Dichotomies -permanence/impermanence, care/disregard, extraction/replenishment - as part of the human condition are a common through-line, alongside reconsidering the notion of the human species as superior and in charge, rather than a mutualistic symbiotic partner. The work is viewed through the lens that medium and material are a manifestation of concept, fostering new interactions with process, media and meaning, challenging the constraints of a singular approach. Abstraction combined with references to science, symbols and common materials provide a familiar connection inviting the viewer to further engage, explore and interact with the work.
