Ann E. Resnick
Mid-Career Fellowship in Visual and Fine Art
"Adieu"
(365 screenprinted and cut paper zinnias, blacklight, electric fans)
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"Prayer for a Happy Death"
(burnt paper)
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"Commemoration"
(burnt paper/burnt mylar)
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Trained as a printmaker, Ann Resnick has engaged a broad
range of materials and process, from wood burning to digital signal
processing and uses that range to produce large-scale,
thought-provoking, sui generis works. Beyond that however,
Ann Resnick is a cultural entrepreneur, and dedicates a large portion
of her time each year to activities that advance the arts as a whole.
Alongside a 20-year history of exhibitions stretching
from Maine to New Mexico to Japan, for the last 10 she has operated
Project Gallery out of an abandoned warehouse in Wichita, Kansas,
showcasing the work of local artists as well as the work of artists and
critics from around the country.
Resnick has served as a mentor in the Artist Exchange
program at the Salina Art Center and as an instructor at WSU’s
CRATEL (Center for Research in Art, Technology, Education and
Learning). As director of Project, she established monthly discussions
devoted to contemporary art and organized several panel discussions
that dealt with issues of importance to the Wichita art community,
including “FutureWorld: An Art Community for the 21st
Century.”
Subject of more than 50 reviews, recipient of a 2000
Kansas Arts Commission mini-fellowship and a Sedgwick County AHC grant,
her latest achievement was the 2007-08 planning, organization and
staging of Wichita’s first River City Bienniale, a multi-venue
curated exhibit and grant program (similar to Kansas City’s
Charlotte Street Foundation) designed to draw attention to the
achievements of the Wichita artistic community.
Artist Statement
Artist and advocate, Ann Resncik has for twenty years
engaged the central issue of our time – how does one appreciate
what is truly important? By turns an artist, gallery owner or
instigator, she draws on a broad range of skills to craft elegant
solutions to both the practical and philosophical aspects of the
problem, using an intuitive, problem-solving methodology that consists
of the same two questions, asked over and over. What needs to be said?
And what is the best way to say it?
Is it a reminder of the dangers of loss? She will
acquire and place thousands of plastic flowers, one at a time into a
funeral topiary, to honor and question our fragile relationship with
pets and nature. Is it a concerted display of local artistic
force? She will agitate into existence a biennial exhibit to promote a
city and its artists.
Relying on skills acquired from studying with master
printmakers, her work uses the labor-intensiveness of printmaking to
present ideas about hard work and its inherent reward; the sacrifice
inherent in creation.
More recently, she has explored the transitory nature of
our connections to others - in one instance, burning shop manual
instructions into wooden plaques to mourn the knowledge lost with each
passing generation; in another, burning Latin prayers as petitions for
the protection of friends and family. Current work utilizes ephemeral
materials - chalk, fire, paper silhouettes. Using media that is hardly
there, she celebbrates vulnerability and mortality, things we can't
escape.
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