Justin Quinn and Jenny Schmid
Highpoint is thrilled to announce the recipients of the 2020 McKnight Printmaking Fellowship Justin Quinn and Jenny Schmid!
This prestigious honor was bestowed on Jenny and Justin by panelists Mary Weaver Chapin, the Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Portland Art Museum, and John Lukavic, the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum. Both artists received unrestricted cash awards of $25K, extensive access and support in Highpoint’s printshop, and the opportunity to host invited guests Sarah Suzuki, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints at MOMA and Paul Ha, Director, List Visual Art Center at MIT for studio visits on separate occasions during the fellowship period.
The McKnight Printmaking Fellowship at Highpoint was established in 2019 with generous funding from the McKnight Foundation. The program is open to mid-career Minnesota artists who work in printmaking — defined here as artists who demonstrate a sustained level of accomplishment, commitment, and artistic excellence. The artists were selected based on the artistic merit of their work, and their dedication, interest, and continued growth in printmaking.
Jenny Schmid, The Conspiring (detail), Intaglio, 2019
Jenny Schmid operates bikini press international and is a Professor at the University of Minnesota Department of Art. She is represented by The Davidson Galleries in Seattle and her prints have been purchased for collections including Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Block Museum, The Spencer Art Museum and the Library of Congress. She received a Fulbright Fellowship to Slovakia, the McKnight Fellowship, the Bush Artists Grant, a Jerome Film and Video grant and two Minnesota State Arts Board grants. Recent projects include live animation performances with Ali Momeni for the Vertice Festival in Mexico City and for the Nobel Peace Prize Forum at Augsburg University as well as a residency at The Frans Masereel Center in Belgium. Her solo exhibition of prints Wildness Lost exhibited in 2018 at the Davidson Galleries as well as the National Gallery and Gradska Galerija in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Jenny is continuing her series of invented worlds where mythic figures and characters are confronted by contemporary situations that explore ideas of identity, equity, gender, excess, and consumption. Most recently her technical focus has been on intaglio and lithography as well as public art performances that combine drawing and animation.
Justin Quinn, Wall of Sound, copper place relief, 2019
Justin Quinn received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Superior and his MFA in printmaking and MA in art history from the University of Iowa. Justin is Professor of Art at St. Cloud State University where he has taught for twelve years, following five years at the University of North Texas in Denton. He is represented by Conduit Gallery in Dallas and Satellite Berlin. Quinn’s work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art in Print, New American Paintings, The Minneapolis Star and Tribune, The Dallas Morning News and The San Francisco Chronicle, and he was included in the book Living and Sustaining a Creative Life edited by Sharon Louden. Recent exhibitions include the solo show King of Cardboard at the Conduit Gallery in Dallas and Word Dance: Selections from the Collection of Joann Gonzalez-Hickey at the Denver Art Museum.
Justin works primarily on paper and canvas. His compositions start at the outside edge and pile their way inwards, leaving forms that meet in the middle or leave some kind of void. Lately, the work has been cumulative, with a little bit added every day. Justin said of his in-progress work: “I’ve been thinking about broken towers and ziggurats, trying to show multiple potentials at the same time. They’re sometimes at odds.”
Thank You! We would like to thank our panelists Mary Weaver Chapin and John Lukavic who selected this pair of McKnight Fellows. In addition to Sarah Suzuki and Paul Ha for conducting studio visits with the fellows in July and November respectively. Also, advance thanks to Faye Hirsch for moderating at the public conversation with the artists. Finally, Highpoint Center for Printmaking extends deep gratitude to the McKnight Foundation for its support of this program.
