2011

20 in

18 in

She Contains Multitudes (2020)

Global Matrix III: An International Print Exhibition (2012)

Cultural/Historical Context

Calvin Likes to Lick the Spoon Minna Resnick Lithograph, Screenprint, Photocollagraph, 2011 The title of the exhibition “She Contains Multitudes” resonates throughout the work of Minna Resnick. In the piece Calvin Always Likes to Lick the Spoon, three women from different historical periods are layered within the image, making eye contact (or the absence of!) they offer themselves to the viewer. The layering and repetition of the stereotypical figures points a critical eye and reiterates the history of how women are represented in art and media. Resnick often appropriates source material from historical art, advertising, and illustrated books to create incredible layered compositions. With incredible drafting skills and a background in design, her ability to construct complex narratives is remarkable. One summer I assisted Resnick at her printing press in Ithaca, NY to print an edition in which she cut apart a beautiful earlier work and reassembled it to print with a new image. Reflecting on this time in her studio brings me joy as she always has a drawing in progress on her desk and great conversation, I loved learning about her process and viewing works from her career in her flat files. Resnick’s daring compositions and wit are abundant throughout her work. Jennifer Scheuer, Assistant Professor, Printmaking In my almost five-decade career as an artist, my work has broadly focused on the visual meaning of language. Communication is elusive and dependent on historical and cultural contexts. Words and images that appear common to one generation may be unknown to another. This allows my work to examine the changing nature of experience over the course of time and aging, and to comment on themes of expectation and reality, the ideal and the everyday, including the personal and internal debate which occurs when women confront themselves and their role in contemporary society. I present this intergenerational mix-up by using images from early- and mid-twentieth century manuals on home management, décor, repair, health and education, along with contemporary imagery, including home photos. I am particularly fond of the saturated and charged imagery of fashion magazine advertisements. In addition to using appropriated images from books, I use toile wallpaper patterns as source material. The romanticizing of domestic history is particularly marked in toile wallpaper and thus integral to my work. This mixed media print (photocollagraph, lithograph, silkscreen), in particular, showcases all of these appropriated source categories. My aim is to encourage information displacement and disorientation. Remixing the narrative creates new associations. Each method changes and deconstructs any hierarchy of information and both presents and confronts a new reality. Generally, my work uses actual text, taken out of context from one of my appropriated sources, as the impetus for conception of the work, and the title of the image. I hope to do this while still retaining a sense of humor. Minna Resnick, Artist