Deep Impressions: Elinor Randall, Master Printmaker
Curatorial Statement

Elinor Randall, known professionally as E. Randall to her clients and colleagues, and Randy to her friends, expressed a talent for visual art at an early age and went to Bennington College, Bennington, VT, University of Wisconsin at Madison (Studied with Marshall Glasier), Art Students League New York, NY (Studied with George Grosz), and finally earned her BFA from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. She became a master printer, one who creates and pulls prints for others.

As a youngster, Randy spent much time with horses, and identified with them to the extent that she admitted to having few friends, and found herself spending most of her waking hours working with and taking care of horses. These became a dominant theme in her artwork. She connected the beast of burden role of horses with the role of women in society. The travel of horses, often with loads, traversing over icy roads and frozen lakes, became a metaphor for the tenuousness of society’s expectations of women in their multi-responsible domestic and personal roles. Randy was acutely aware of the role assigned to women by society at that time, and created powerful allegories of this.

 Strongly influenced by her long association with Marshall Glasier, a significant figure in Magical Realism who became a central character in a movement to bring surrealist stylings related to those prevalent in certain Western European urban areas, most notably Paris, to the American Midwest. He soon became Randy’s mentor. Marshall taught at the University of Wisconsin at Madison as an Artist-in-Residence from 1936-1946. Later, intermittently, over a long period of time, he lived with Randy and her family, and became, in essence, an extended family member. Marshall had been a disciple of George Grosz, the German expatriate and member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity movements, who emigrated from Germany to the United States in the early 1930s and became an American citizen by 1938. Her work was strongly influenced by both of these mentors, and at a time when Abstract Expressionism was becoming the dominant paradigm in art, she moved in the direction of Magical Realism, which much later had a resurgence. She definitely was a pioneer in this style, in her generation. Randy later claimed a direct lineage from George Grosz through Marshall Glasier to her work in her personal notes and planned a book detailing this information which was never published, but the beginnings of a draft for its text was created.

The exhibition history of Randy’s work stretches from 1954 through 2013, and involves many group and solo shows in nine states as well as several foreign countries. The core symbolism in her art continued to resonate within her and her audience, as she found ways to develop her printmaking acumen. She pioneered a multi-plate monoprint technique and produced prints with neo-futurist/neo-cubist imagery. These types of imagery were also expressed in some of her later etchings. This may represent her most advanced works.

While at the height of her artistic output, she started Rung Rim Press, and created commercial works for individuals, authors, and small businesses. Sometimes, she would do work on spec, seeking out opportunities that she selectively approached and in which she had interest. Her husband was a poet, and she created prints to illustrate and accompany many of his books. Randy was also a founding member of the Two Rivers Printmaking Studio in White River Junction, VT. Her work appears in at least one of their Portfolios in 2006. Additionally, she was also a member of the Women’s Caucus for the Arts, Art Resource Association, Vermont Council of the Arts, Artist’s Conference Network, California Society of Printmakers, Artist’s Equity Guild, and Graphic Arts Workshop, San Francisco.

 This exhibition is a survey of Randy’s printmaking, and provides works representing most of the various forms that she examined in her career.

Mark S. Waskow, President
Northern New England Museum of Contemporary Art