Mitch Lyons is a well-known and important part of the local art community, who over the past five decades developed a truly innovative form of print-making.

Lyons received his undergraduate degree in graphic design from the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts) and continued his studies at Tyler School of Art where he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in ceramics in 1971. Lyons worked as a traditional potter until 1980, the pivotal point in his career when he refined his method of printing directly from clay.

Like most traditional potters, Lyons is motivated by a love for the material and describes himself as a “clay person making prints.” However instead of firing the clay to a permanent state, Lyons captures a lasting two-dimensional image of the clay’s surface. This exhibition surveys the developments and experimentations in Lyons’ 50-year-long journey to inventing the clay monoprint.