IMPACT Awards 2018

Mernet Larsen, born in 1940 in Houghton, Michigan, grew up in Chicago and in Gainesville, Florida. She holds a BFA from the University of Florida (1962) and an MFA from Indiana University (1965). Larsen is Professor Emeritus at the University of South Florida, where she taught painting and drawing from 1967 until 2003. Over the course of her tenure at USF, Larsen was awarded numerous grants and awards, including the Jerry Krivanic Distinguished Teacher Award. Larsen also served on numerous boards and committees outside USF, including the Artist Advisory Committee of the Hillsborough County Arts Council, and the acquisition committee of the Tampa Museum of Art. Research supported by USF travel grants to China, Japan, and India continues to inform her work.

While always exhibiting an independent and meticulous approach to painting, it was in the early 2000’s that Larsen came to a crucial turning point. Taking inspiration from the geometric abstractions of El Lissitzky and the narrative stylization of 12th Century Japanese scrolls and early Renaissance paintings, Larsen evolved narrative paintings as often vertiginous spaces in reverse or parallel perspective. She has said: “I want nonspecific viewpoints, a sense of vertigo, so that you are holding each situation in your mind almost as if you are wearing it. Renaissance, isometric, and reverse perspectives interact, visible as systems, not illusions. …These paintings are at once a tribute, affectionate parody, and critique of Renaissance narrative painting. They reflect a longing for something lost, and a desire for a sense of space and narrative unity more in accord with contemporary concepts of reality….”

Since 1970, Larsen has been featured in more than 100 group exhibitions, including at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY., the White Cube in London, and the New Wales Gallery (museum), Sidney, Australia. She has been the subject of over 35 solo exhibitions, including a comprehensive 60-year retrospective of her work at the Tampa Museum of Art in 2017 and a 30 year retrospective at DeLand Museum of Art (FL) in 1992. Her work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Tampa Museum of Art; and the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts.

Since 2005, solo shows at The New York Studio School, Vogt Gallery, and James Cohan Gallery in NY, and Various Small Fires in LA, launched national and international interest in Larsen, who has recently been rediscovered by the art world as a significant voice in the “extensive, possibly global conversation about how to portray modern, three-dimensional life on two-dimensional surfaces” (Roberta Smith, The New York Times). A monograph, Mernet Larsen, with a text by John Yau, was published by Damiani Press in 2013.

Larsen, with her husband artist Roger Palmer, lives and works between Tampa, Florida and New York. She is represented by James Cohan Gallery in New York.

Sources include: Mernet Larsen and James Cohen Gallery www.jamescohan.com/artist/mernet-larsen

Graphicstudio, based at the University of South Florida, is a nonprofit workshop that collaborates with visiting artists to produce limited editions of fine art prints and sculpture multiples. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, Graphicstudio was founded in 1968 by Dr. Donald J. Saff as an experiment in art and education.

Graphicstudio began as part of the renaissance in American printmaking, when artists associated with the burgeoning Pop Art movement collaborated with printmaking studios to satisfy a growing demand to collect affordable art. Margaret Miller serves as the fifth director of Graphicstudio while also leading the USF Contemporary Art Museum and Public Art program as the director of the Institute for Research in Art.

Leading and emerging artists from around the world are invited to work in residence at Graphicstudio, located in USF’s Research Park on the Tampa campus. Artists collaborate with the master printers and fabricators to develop new artworks that expand their artistic practice into realms that would not be possible without the resources of the studio and the expertise of interdisciplinary faculty and staff from across the campus. Tom Pruitt, Studio Manager, directs production and technical research and oversees a production staff that includes Robert Aiosa, Tim Baker, Will Lytch, Gary Schmitt, Matthew Squires, and Sarah Howard for special projects. Staff supporting education, promotion and sales include Emily Burch-Aiosa, Kristin DuFrain, Mark Fredricks, Kristin Soderqvist, and Randall West.

Graphicstudio’s early collaborations with artists like Jim Dine, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and Ed Ruscha, and more recently Diana Al-Hadid, Iva Gueorguieva, Trenton Doyle Hancock, and Christian Marclay have established a reputation for bold experimentation and innovation. Artists working in residence are inspired by the legacy of the studio and the artists who have come before them, exploring new directions by reimagining traditional printmaking techniques such as intaglio, lithography, silkscreen, and relief along with photogravure, cyanotype and pigment prints. Sculpture multiples are produced in a range of media including bronze, steel, aluminum, wood, rubber; less traditional materials including lava (basalt) and pigmented resins; and utilizing 3D printing, CNC and laser cutting techniques.

Over 150 emerging and established contemporary artists from around the world have produced more than 1,400 limited edition prints and sculpture multiples at Graphicstudio. Graphicstudio editions have been acquired by leading museums and corporate and private collections all over the world. In 1990, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. established an archive of Graphicstudio editions and organized a major exhibition, with an accompanying catalogue documenting the history of Graphicstudio. In 2014, the Tampa Museum of Art presented a major survey exhibition, also accompanied by a significant publication, which focused on works produced in the last two decades. Graphicstudio works are also archived as part of the USF Collection, managed by the Contemporary Art Museum and valued at almost 8 million dollars, allowing for study by students and exhibition globally.

Education remains at the core of Graphicstudio’s mission. The studio plays an important role for students and the community by bringing relevant artists to campus; participating in current art world discourse; serving as a laboratory for artistic practice; and offering lectures, internships and graduate assistantships. The studio is open and accessible to the public, each year hundreds of visitors of all ages visit Graphicstudio to observe the creative process and make connections with some of the most important artists of our time.

Its fifty-year history of inspiring generations of artists and educating art enthusiasts is a testament to Graphicstudio’s mission to create innovations in art and education.