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Minnesota Original
is made possible by
The State Arts and Cultural
Heritage Fund,
and the citizens of Minnesota.
edition of Minnesota Original,
Art historian, Julie L'Enfant
shares stories of Minnesota's
pioneering women artists
of the 20th century.
Kent Aldrich brings
old-world style
to contemporary letterpress
at his print shop,
The Nomadic Press.
I am not
the kid you knew.
And Communist Daughter performs
in Minneapolis.
now on Minnesota Original.
electronic music plays
guitar & saxophone play softly
(Julie L'Enfant)
Art, as a profession for women,
really began to open up
particularly in the 1920s.
are 8 artists whose work
each from the other,
so it's part of
a new conception
of modernism
response
to the
modern world.
Mairs,
Frances Greenman,
are really part
of a broader movement
of women moving
into the arts.
Clara Mairs was
an artist closely associated
with St. Paul,
with connections far beyond.
She's known primarily
as a printmaker.
She's famous
for her etchings,
and yet she was also
an important painter.
piano plays softly
a young artist
who was 22 years younger
than she was.
a very close partnership
until the end of her life.
Clem and Clara
decided that they would go
to Paris in 1928,
specifically to study etching.
the perfect subject matter
turn of mind.
She had a great sense of humor.
transform what is really
spectacle into
these very graceful images.
love of pattern,
her love of design,
the rather flat approach
that many modernists took
fit this subject matter so well,
and so she ended up
with a suite
of 16 circus etchings
that are really
some of her very best work.
part of that scene in Paris
that was quite experimental,
from conventions
a lot of the spirit
and a lot of the techniques
back from Paris.
This is
a rather intimate portrait
friend, Clem.
It's a naturalistic portrait
that she's
greatly simplified the forms.
very distinct areas of color
naturalistic,
an abstracted quality
in his blocky form, but it's
a simple, elemental portrait,
and to which she has put
a great deal of feeling.
she did many, many etchings,
and she used these as,
oftentimes as social commentary.
She was often interested in
puncturing social pretensions,
so some of her work is
kind of satirical,
The Thursday Club.
Clara really
moved away from printmaking
in the 1950s and '60s.
of her life,
of large-scale painting.
Paintings like The Visitors
show a different side of her
that these deal
and with inner states of mind
than let's say
the Circus Print Series.
She retained her very skillful
use of design and composition,
and yet she brings in, I think,
more human feeling and more
observation
of psychological states
than her early work.
Frances Cranmer Greenman
-portraits.
She loved people;
in establishing
a kind of life for herself,
very different
from the environment
in Aberdeen, South Dakota,
where she grew up.
for the high life,
and she did,
through her hard work
and her talent and perseverance,
she succeeded in creating
that kind of life for herself.
She showed artistic talent
at an early age,
situation of--
and her 2 parents
to her career as an artist.
to Washington, D.C.
They then accompanied her
to New York,
at the Art Students League.
In 1912, she went up
to the White Earth
Indian Reservation
with the goal of, she said,
of becoming the greatest
Indian painter in the world.
And there she painted
such characters as
Woman Riding on the Wind.
the White Earth Indian
Reservation rather depressing
and this says a lot more
about Greenman
than it does
about the reservation.
She was much more interested in
the glamorous life of society.
When she came back
to Minneapolis,
she married John Greenman.
and at least in the early years,
he was very supportive
of his wife's career.
& piano play
she made some experiments
using very bold, brash colors
distortions,
something of a wild painter.
And she quickly learned that
these kinds of experiments
were to establish herself
painter,
what she wanted to do.
The Janitor's Family
was also part of her effort
to look at social realities
and suggest
the conditions of modern life.
composition the empty table,
and there's
a real suggestion here
that the janitor's family is
suffering some privations.
treated with
of wariness
by Minneapolis audiences.
a radical painting,
maybe a little subversive.
with her agenda at the time,
in a rather gritty way.
Her husband, John Greenman,
stock market crash of 1929.
Her response to this was
across the country by train
and looking
for portrait commissions.
She took up residence
in Hollywood, and this
really seemed to answer her
desire for the glamorous life,
and she did portraits
of movie stars
and it was fun.
Seeing newspaper accounts, they
posed for a lot of pictures
in front of the portrait,
and I've always been amused
because Frances Cranmer Greenman
looks more theatrical than Mary
Pickford in these photographs.
permanently in Minneapolis.
When she did settle,
she had so much work.
of Alfred Pillsbury,
and in 1967,
of Governor Karl Rolvaag.
a fashionable portraitist.
for her.
There's been a continuum,
I think,
of women in the arts
in Minnesota,
and I think that is a tribute
to the progressive nature
of Minnesota.
Women have been very strong
in the tradition
and it's really admirable
that these women had the drive,
the persistence, the support,
independent careers as artists.
That's still very hard today
for male or female;
they were able to do it.
banjo plays softly
technically relief printing,
the kind of printing where
the ink gets put on
the raised area of the block
transferred to the paper.
a glorified rubber stamp.
When I first started printing
letterpress about 20 years ago,
it was essentially a dead art.
for the shop,
they were just taking up space.
In the last 8 or 10 years or so,
there's been a big resurgence
in letterpress.
comes from people's need
to have something tactile--
you can feel
into the paper.
need that today.
There's a lot
people interact with
that's very
2-dimensional.
a lot of time
in front of a lot of screens
and when you get
a letterpress invitation,
as something different.
in bright rhythm
I'm doing a wood engraving.
of different technologies.
I'll do a sketch
in my sketchbook,
of that sketch
and then the photocopy
gets transferred
onto an end-grain maple block.
That way I have my drawing
transferred
onto the block in reverse,
drawing gets cut away,
kind of a reduction process.
And the raised areas
that are left are the parts
then transferred onto the paper.
started keeping bees
a couple jars of honey
for a label for his honey.
Most of the commercial work that
I do is designed on a computer.
determines the color,
the type,
and I just execute what they've
decided needs to be done.
But once in a while, like
with this project, I get asked
to do a wood engraving,
which is nice to do.
It's very calming and centering.
disappears while I'm doing it.
I came into the Minnesota Center
for Book Arts
after they opened
and worked with them
for about 2-1/2 years.
And during that time,
master printers
from all over the world came in
to teach classes.
People were coming in
and cutting letters into stone,
coming in to do bookbinding.
So while I was learning how
to set type and run a press,
other things going on around me,
expert at what they did.
seemed like they were
happy with what they were doing,
they were pleased
with their days,
pleased with my days too.
I have
a lot of different clients
that come
into the Nomadic Press,
to me is an important job.
doesn't matter to me
who are getting married,
somebody who's starting
a business
some business cards,
or something to give to Nelson
Mandela when he comes into town.
They all present
their own challenges
and they all
have their own rewards.
here in my shop.
was built in 1957.
that I have was built in 1883.
It's essentially
the same technology
from image to paper.
The overlap of the ancient
equipment that I work with
and the modern technology
that the designers who hire me
work with is a lot of fun.
It's really something to see
of graphic design
sitting on a 110-year-old
cast-iron printing press.
There's just something about
that that kind of emphasizes
the continuum that makes me feel
part of a longer story.
Some people, when they go to
work, they go and do their job,
they're done with their job
and they are somebody else.
I'm already a printer
and I come into the press here
because it just is what I do;
it's who I am.
and take the time
to get things working right,
they work right.
spend a lot of time trying
they'll do whatever they want.
& guitar play
synthesizer plays
much more fascinating
that I can't see naturally
to bring those to life.
I'm Karen Gustafson, and I'm a
painter and a drawer.
In graduate school I was next to
a biology library,
in there and then that's when
of plants.
incredibly fascinating.
that I'm working on right now
I have 4 diptychs,
to processed food--
corn versus cornflakes,
garlic versus a garlic pill.
I also have raw ginger
to crystallized ginger,
so ginger and sugar.
Normandale Community College,
and in the biology lab we have
a scanning electron microscope,
different staff and faculty,
in using it, we could.
about the food series,
want to go look at the food
microscopes.
you're seeing the topography,
own landscape at that point,
and just the complexity
and the intricacies that
you find are just amazing.
I think I really wanted to see
between raw and processed food.
and gives us so many nutrients,
and processing food
and how it seems to take away
a lot of that nutritional value,
to kind of understand
and explore and see that.
The diptych I'm working on
right now is raw potatoes.
it's really a fractal image
of all these smaller potatoes
and this very tiny raw potato,
and then I also really loved
honeycomb-type pattern.
to have certain areas
and strong that come out,
and so what I'm doing
right now is
making them more dimensional,
so they get much darker.
pushed back in space,
quite a bit more.
about building individual marks
through variations of color,
variations of tone--
I just love creating depth.
spaces
really dark
hatching, a crosshatching,
to establish that value pattern
in the image.
The watercolor paper, since it's
not primed or sealed
the ink quite a bit,
pens, but it also allows
for a lot of different surfaces,
some really soft surfaces,
and some really kind of intense,
very crisp surfaces also.
I'm not sure why I'm drawing
such detail or obsessiveness.
I'm insane! laughs
of everything
just allows me to quiet down.
a lot of layers in life
and a lot of complexity,
to slow down
and really look at
what we can easily pass by.
being able to always be
honest with my work and have it
be something that makes me
want to come into the studio
and explore and learn,
in new ways and understand
and keep life interesting.
electronic music plays
establishing the beat
(man) 1, 2, 1, 2...
nothing to do.
around in circles,
Happy to hit the ground,
to just fall down.
very breathy
ha.
Ha, ha, ha.
we'd go down to the park,
We'd catch all the fireflies
and put 'em in jars,
that they'd die,
We never really
thought that far.
am not the kid you knew
the kid you remember.
makes a chimelike sound
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
When we were younger
we were scared of the dark,
the sheets over our heads.
We didn't want to see
what's there,
under the bed.
And now that I'm older,
I look back on those days,
I wish I had them back
the shadows are gone
they're not that strong,
As the shadows in my head.
I... I'm not the kid
you knew,
the kid you remember.
you knew,
I... I'm not
the kid you remember.
In 1985
with my name on it,
Climbing an apple tree
with blue shoes.
You think it was me,
I could swear it was you.
Oh... oh
I... I'm not the kid
you knew,
the kid you remember.
you knew,
I... I'm not the
kid you remember.
you knew,
the kid you remember.
I... I'm not the kid
you knew,
I... I'm not
the kid you remember.
applause & cheers
Molly Moore,
Communist Daughter.
A lot of the stuff
through in my life,
I'm a recovering addict and
alcoholic, and you know,
just a lot of that growing up
and having things in your life
not work out the way
that you hoped,
but finding a new path,
that's kind of inspiring to me.
the snow fields.
(Johnny) Molly told me
date me
cleaned up.
That's when I decided
to go into treatment
and get some help and sober up.
I cleaned my act up.
Things are working out
very well! laughs
applause & cheers
CC--Armour Captioning & TPT
(man) Minnesota Original
is made possible by
and Cultural Heritage Fund,
and the citizens of Minnesota.
orchestral fanfare