Jeff Mitchell

Art in the cafe...

Tamara Lea Kaufman


"pretty ~ ugly"


February 2026



Artist Statement Tamara Lea Kaufman’s personal artwork ranges from serious to quirky, dark, adult-themed humor. She creates multimedia assemblage, collage, and dioramas made from HO-scale railroad hobby miniatures, preserved insects, paint, embroidery, found objects, and typically discarded materials such as candy wrappers and the overlooked debris of everyday life. Her work explores topics of consumption, waste, desire, relationships, psychology, politics, societal pressures and the levity of humor needed to survive it all. It gives her joy to repurpose materials into something new, useful, or...
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Friday, December 3, 2010

"Tenderly apocalyptic music from the Midwest. Jeff Mitchell's songs are flashes of memory, emotion, and dry humor. His raw approach to fingerstyle guitar swerves from pedestrian to mind-melting without warning. His live shows have earned him a reputation for emotional intensity, lyrics that silence a room, and genre-bending roots-rock that can bring the house down.

Jeff claims influences that range from country-blues greats Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt to experimentalists like Ween and Mr. Bungle. His lyrics offer abstract impressions of small-town life and a bewildered view of humans in general.

Mitchell has played everything from metal in dive bars to jug band music in grade schools, sharing the stage with folkies, punks, honkey-tonkers, barbershoppers, hip-hoppers, yodeling cowboys, and cardboard robots."

Music