When Dennis Lee Mitchell’s work was first shown at the 2018 Art Miami fair, the artist overheard visitors bewildered by the large pieces. Were they photographs? Or possibly pencil drawings? Standing nearby, he didn’t bother to correct them. Mitchell’s medium of choice, in fact, is smoke.

The amorphous, volatile substance captivates him. “It’s unpredictable and I like that. I believe in accidents,” he explains, adding, “I’ve always found that the best work I make is when I have an idea and while I’m working on it, the process takes over. It just happens.”

The artist also keeps what he calls a “library” of past works, amassed in tall files and piled on the floor and on tables in his sweeping, 100-foot-long studio in an industrial area of Alexandria. The works remain from commissions or experiments leading to a finished piece. “I keep them because something about them interests me. One day I’ll walk in and figure out what that is,” says Mitchell, whose art gives form to that perplexity.

Subtle and sensuous, his drawings may transmit the sense of a breath or a gentle breeze. In others, darkness ripples across and menaces the surface, blasting with the force of a tornado or folding upon itself, as in the velvety depths of a black hole. The impression hints at a natural world—softly soothing, bombarded with energy or combining the two.

Images may open like blossoms bursting onto a six-foot-square sheet of paper, though the artist rejects that prevalent view. “I never made these to be flowers,” he insists, pointing to the huge, circular forms. “I always considered them to be voids—more speculative on the interior than around the edges, a mystery.”

While the process of creation can happen in minutes or in stages, Mitchell has spent a lifetime arriving at this point. The acetylene torch he uses to make smoke is identical to one he employed over his 35-year career as a ceramic sculptor. (One example of earlier pieces lies beneath a worktable, its elongated clay form resembling the textured branch of a birch tree.)

Mitchell started using a torch to short-circuit the multiple steps involved in firing clay. His industrial blowtorch—typically used to weld metal—heats up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit and can fuse clay, which has a 3,200-degree melting point.

For decades, he taught ceramic sculpture at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago—until one day about 10 years ago, when soot from the torch flame chanced to land on a piece of paper. “I loved it right away,” says the artist, who immediately made a series of smoke-tinged drawings. To his surprise, they sold quickly. He has never looked back.

Near the front of Mitchell’s studio stands an enclosed exhaust booth where his monochromatic, black-to-brownish abstractions are created. Donning full-body protective gear, he attaches a sheet of paper to a large metal wheel that turns as smoke passes over the paper. The quicker the motion, the lighter the impression appears.

Colored imagery is handled differently. Standing at a long worktable, he sprinkles powdered pigments onto a paper sheet, lays a clean sheet under it, then heats up the top with a propane torch. “Smoke goes everywhere,” Mitchell explains, “down through the paper and into the sheet below. The image is made in that way.” Wearing a face shield and respirator, the artist demonstrates the instantaneous process. (The powdered pigments were developed by the military to produce colored flares.)

Mitchell also employs colored sticks about the size of chalk. Lighting one end creates a torch that disburses colored smoke directly onto paper or canvas. He generally discards 20 to 40 experimental pieces before deciding on one.

On a recent afternoon, the artist was preparing for two 2024 exhibitions—one in February at the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin, and another at Chicago’s Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in May. To illustrate a possible new path, Mitchell pulls out a piece made eight months earlier; its glowing colors appear shattered by a lightning bolt, overlaid with cascading black lines. “I really like this one,” he says. “It’s more complex and less circular, still referencing the earlier work but not so clearly.”

Commenting on the work’s ambiguous imagery, he notes, “It’s on that nice edge between something you can recognize right away and something you cannot, that’s more abstract.”

Reflecting on an unconventional career, Mitchell recalls his undergrad days, when his goal was to become a great painter. But painting classes proved too static for him. “The paint just sits there. It doesn’t do anything,” he remarks, adding, “It took me a while to realize that what I really wanted was some kind of a transformation during the act of making.” Attracted by changes that happen to clay in the kiln, he pursued two advanced degrees in ceramics—a master’s from Fort Hays State University in his native Kansas and a master of fine arts from Arizona State University.

Though Mitchell still enjoys the ceramic process, he points out, “it’s also not immediate and not associated with an action.” Asked about the contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang, who has used exploded gunpowder as a medium, Mitchell replies enthusiastically, “Of course, I’m interested in that explosive moment when everything transforms right away. That’s when it all happens. Where the risk happens. I love it.”

For more information, visit dennisleemitchell.com.