“Quilting is a dynamic, evolving artform linking Africans in the diaspora and those on the continent. I honor tradition as I reshape it, paying homage while challenging convention. My needlework moves Black women’s legacy of the clothesline and onto museum walls.”

Erin LeAnn Mitchell is a textile artist from Birmingham, AL who received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Master of Arts in Art Education from Columbia College Chicago. Her work is an expansion of the southern quilting tradition, using a mixture of textiles and collage gathered in textile markets and fabric stores. These multidimensional assemblages render the realities of southern Blackness into radical new imaginings.

Mitchell has showcased work at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Abrom-Engel Institute for Visual Arts, Kravets Wehby Gallery, FLXST Contemporary, The Other Art Fair, EXPO Chicago, Future Fair, FNB Art Joburg, Untitled Art, and on the nationally syndicated Fox television series, Empire. In 2019, Mitchell was commissioned and honored to present a work to Dr. Angela Davis for her humanitarian achievements by the Birmingham Committee for Truth and Reconciliation.

Hometown: Birmingham, Alabama