Home Sweet Home
Datebefore 1999
MediumSavannah Grey brick, wood, glass, leather, string, fabric, porcelain, oil paint, mother-of-pearl, adhesive, metal, resin, and paper
Dimensions47 5/8 × 28 1/4 × 14 5/8 inches (121 × 71.8 × 37.1 cm)
Credit LineGift of Larry D. and Brenda T. Thompson.
Object number2021.3
Copyright© John M. Mitchell.
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Label TextSavannah-based artist John Mitchell believes that a home is more than a simple edifice. Rather, he argues that the sociological, psychological, architectural, and historical associations embedded in the structure “tell us about our culture, our lives. It tells us about where we come from.”
Mitchell grew up in a shotgun house in North Carolina, a style of vernacular architecture that is particularly prevalent in the South. Mitchell fills his sculptural homes with objects of metaphorical and symbolic importance. In Home Sweet Home he includes the American flag, a photograph of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and a china plate depicting The Last Supper, among other items that convey a personal and historical narrative. He notes that making art acts “as a ‘record’ of experiences. My bittersweet past, growing up in the segregated South, inspires the content, focus, and narrative of my work.”
Text written for the exhibition Complex Uncertainties: Artists in Postwar America, Rotation 10, May 6, 2021-May 1, 2022.
