Elinor Randall, known to her friends as Randy, passed away in July at the age of 91. Originally from Connecticut, she had lived in Plainfield since 1992. A master printer, Randall was a charter member of Two Rivers Printmaking Studio in White River Junction and active in local and national art organizations. Over decades, she exhibited widely. Through her own Rung Rim Press, Randall turned out exacting works of art for friends and clients. And, of course, she created innumerable images of her own.
A current exhibition at Studio Place Arts in Barre presents 31 of Randall’s etchings, lithographs, lino block prints and monoprints. Aptly titled “Deep Impressions,” the survey puts on display not only her skill but also her fertile imagination and lifelong obsession with horses. Randall had loved and cared for the animals since her girlhood; later they became allegorical in her work.
“Randy used the horse as a surrogate for women — she saw the ‘beast of burden’ aspect of women,” said Mark Waskow, who organized the exhibit with help from Randall’s daughter, Dorigen Keeney. “Maybe today it would be called feminist.”
Waskow is the founder of Northern New England Museum of Contemporary Art, or NNEMoCA. Its holdings comprise his own massive art collection, maintained in private spaces in Burlington and Barre. Since a brick-and-mortar museum is still aspirational, Waskow said he intends to present occasional shows in local galleries. But the Randall exhibition resulted from another mission of NNEMoCA: to help aging artists — or, posthumously, their families — manage their extant work and legacy.
Waskow said he became acquainted with Keeney through a mutual friend and ended up organizing, cataloging and photographing a huge number of prints stored in Randall’s barn. “I suggested [to Keeney] we do a show or two,” Waskow said. “The first place was Studio Place Arts.”
When she attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Randall studied with Marshall Glasier, who helped introduce European modernism — particularly surrealism — to the American Midwest. (She later earned her BFA at Wayne State University in Detroit.) Glasier, in turn, was a disciple of the German American abstract-expressionist George Grosz. The influence of both these artists lingers in Randall’s work — though her magical-realist themes and compositions are all her own.
Waskow believes that Randall’s work is important for its content and its relationship to how she saw society. In addition, “she was pioneering in some of the etching and monoprints she did — she developed a multi-plate monoprint technique,” he said. “One has to appreciate her ability to use novel forms of perspective and integrate them into her images. The registration she could pull off was nothing short of amazing.”
What’s remarkable, too, is the poignancy and veneration that Randall delivered in strokes of ink. Call it equine-imity.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Elinor Randall’s Prints Leave ‘Deep Impressions’ at Studio Place Arts”
This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2023.
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