MARILYN MINTER (b. 1948, USA) lives and works in New York. She has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2005), the Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, Ohio (2009), La Conservera, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Ceutí/Murcia, Spain (2009), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio (2010) and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany (2011). Her video Green Pink Caviar was exhibited in the lobby of the MoMA for over a year. In 2015, the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas will host Minter’s retrospective, which will travel to Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, the Orange Country Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum.
What new or old tools are you
attached to in your art practice?
The most useful tool is probably digital media—Photoshop, digital cameras, and advanced editing equipment. I feel sorry for artists that don’t take advantage of these tools. It’s made everything a lot easier/faster. For instance, I used to draw paintings out by hand or make collages and then project them onto the canvas using an opaque projector. But now using Photoshop I can really play with the images. Usually I integrate sections of 10 to 20 different photos into one reference/mockup for a painting. Then I can use a digital projector to blow each piece up to scale—my paintings take up to a year to make, and this way I can try out several ideas before committing to a final piece.
What tools have you rejected?
I never use tricky, gimmicky filters in Photoshop—they look so bad and unreal—but I’m open to anything that will assist me and further my vision. As a teacher I always try to dispel the myth that there is only one way to make art. I’m a firm believer of using whatever tools make you a better artist.
What have the tools
done to your art?
These are great questions. I probably would have been okay with just painting in the studio by myself forever, but fuck it. I wanted to take photos and make videos and I think it’s made me a better artist, the experiences expanded the scope of my work and how I think. Everything I do in photography changes the way I make paintings and videos and vice versa—everything I do in my video work changes the way I paint and take photos.
