HELENA-WEST HELENA - A special reception is slated at 5 p.m. on Thursday, March 12, to celebrate “Juke Joints – Live From the Mississippi Delta,” an exhibit of work by award-winning photojournalist Panny Flautt Mayfield of Clarksdale.

“Juke Joints – Live from the Mississippi Delta” pictures life in the small blues clubs of the Delta over several decades as recorded by Mayfield. The exhibit recently received critical praise in a review published in the internationally respected “Aperture” magazine.

The reception will be held in the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street in historic downtown Helena-West Helena. Admission is free; the reception concludes at 6:30 p.m. The exhibit will continue through Friday, April 3.

“Mayfield’s shots are like the very best picks from a very good party,” the “Aperature” reviewer wrote. “She brings her subjects and their world into sight with a lively immediacy no less compelling for all its casualness.

“In Mayfield’s works, the clubs have funky names like Red’s and Bobo’s Grocery; the subjects are the likes of Bilbo Walker and his dancing daughters, Tater and Super Chikan; and the down-home club setting is fueled by hard-driving blues and a hard-drinking culture,” the reviewer wrote. “These photographs resonate with unfiltered affection for their subjects and their culture. We are left to wonder if these photographs are the last innocent evidence of an extraordinarily vivid and valuable culture.”

Many of those portrayed in the photos are local musicians, club-goers, and friends of Mayfield, though she also sights several celebrities through her lens, including bluesmen B.B. King, Charlie Musselwhite, and rocker and well-documented fan of Delta blues Robert Plant.

Mississippi-born Mayfield, raised in Tutwiler, is the public relations director of Coahoma Community College where she also serves as director of the Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival. A charter member and publicist for the Sunflower River Blues Association, she is also a recipient of the Early Wright Blues Heritage Award.

Mayfield has won many awards from the Mississippi Press Association, the Associated Press, and the College Public Relations Association of Mississippi. A former features editor at the “Clarksdale Press Register,” she was named Clarksdale Citizen of the Year in 2006.

Gallery hours at the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street and the nearby DCC Depot at 95 Missouri Street are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. “King Biscuit Time,” the nation’s longest-running blues radio program, is hosted each weekday at the DCC Visitor’s Center by “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, from 12:15 to 12:45 p.m. “Delta Sounds,” hosted by DCC Assistant Director Terry Buckalew and Payne, is broadcast each Friday at 1 to 1:30 p.m.

For more information, interested persons can call the Delta Cultural Center at (870) 338-4350 or toll free at (800) 358-0972, visit the DCC online at www.deltaculturalcenter.com, or email info@deltaculturalcenter.com.

The Delta Cultural Center shares the vision of all seven agencies of the Department of Arkansas Heritage – to preserve and promote Arkansas heritage as a source of pride and satisfaction. Other agencies within the department are the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Old State House Museum, the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, the Arkansas Arts Council, and the Natural Heritage Commission.

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