Jenny Schmid currently lives in Minneapolis Minnesota, where she runs bikini press international and is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Department of Art.
She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and is represented by The Davidson Galleries in Seattle, Washington. Her work has been published by Cannonball Press, White Wings Press, Egress Press and Slugfest Printmaking. She has been a visiting artist at many schools, including The University of Kansas, The University of Wisconsin, Cranbrook Academy and Northern Illinois University. Her prints can be found in collections including The Royal Museum of Fine Art in Antwerp, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Detroit Institute of Arts and The Spencer Art Museum.
She had the Fulbright to study in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1998 and has returned to the Czech and Slovak Republics often enough to speak a muddled form of both languages. (Her friends refer to her as “The Last Czecho-Slovak”) She recently received the McKnight Fellowship and the Bush Artists grant, which has allowed her to make bikini press international the tripped-out paradise of her dreams, which one visitor speculated was “The Taj Mahal of Print Studios”.
DžR Space Výlet, 9”x 12”, Photolithograph, 2006
Bunny Girl, Mushroom Lover, 2006, Mezzotint, 4” x 8”
ARTIST STATEMENT JENNY SCHMID
My work explores the ideas of gender and liberty through images that draw from the tradition of social commentary yet create a decidedly contemporary and humorous take on the question of how roles are constructed (and destroyed).
I enjoy the tension between contemporary issues and the aura of history that I am able to simulate through the use of print media. Printmaking is essential to portray these ideas, to edit them into a history that they were left out of.
I also work with animation to create loose narratives for my characters. I have been collaborating with the artist Patrick Holbrook for these projects and we have completed two: “Minneapolis” and “Utopia: In Progress”. I have recently started to draw directly into the computer and the freedom to correct and edit quickly has loosened up my drawing style.
My current project: “The Vistas of Gender Utopia: Views of Known and Invented Places” includes images from Central European landscapes, sampled works from print history and drawn materials to make prints and a collaborative animation. This Utopia combines the influence of Central European Baroque and Renaissance landscapes with a Chinese scroll format to give the viewer engaging simultaneous narratives.
This ideal land is a place where boys lounge around reading or bathing and the girls are active- playing drums, skateboarding and sailing ships. This imagery humorously reflects on changing roles and expectations and expresses the desire for feminism to be realized through the liberation of both boys and girls. In my invented country, the boys are usually on display and the girls are watching them, but all the characters appear to be enjoying their plight.
Jenny Schmid
