Southwestern Pedestrian is a meditation on the uncanny and sublime within the American high desert. This beautiful & otherworldly terrain is all at once a familiar and foreign landscape. This lonesome but crowded space is naturally bereft of suitable living conditions so it was manufactured to be inhabitable, thus creating a cognitive dissonance. I explore this schism by juxtaposing constructed tableaus with the existing manmade environmental interventions. My practice utilizes observation, research, and construction to facilitate a dialog between these fabricated realities.
Technically speaking Fred Mitchell is legally blind, but through the miracle of optometry this German born artist was gifted the ability of sight. The youngest of three, he was raised by the daughter of a failed country music singer. Early on he dreamed to be a writer until he realized the amount of attention required. Naturally Fred devised the obvious fallback to become a professional rollerblader. Unfortunately, he lacked necessary coordination. Instead he studied and receive his BFA and MFA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas respectively.
