Rini Price

Rini Price (March 9, 1941 – October 19, 2019) was an American painter and visual artist from New Mexico. Her work is included in the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History's permanent collection and the Capitol Art Collection at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe, in addition to many private collections. Although she is generally identified as an abstract or figurative artist, her body of work defies definition, and she never considered herself a member of any school or movement. She completed thousands of drawings and hundreds of paintings during her career. She remained reclusive in that she voluntarily removed herself from academic art and the commercial gallery system, showing only occasionally in one-woman and group exhibitions. She died on October 19, 2019.

Early life and education Rini Price was born of Sicilian and German ancestry to S. Jack Rini and Marjorie Herman Rini in Gary, Indiana. The family, including her siblings Jim and Jacki, moved frequently during her childhood. Her father was a chemical engineer working with vegetable fats and oils, and the family relocated for jobs throughout Indiana and in Chicago, Boston, and ultimately Memphis, where he was Vice President of Research and Production for Kraft. Price was thirteen when she landed in Tennessee. She had never before witnessed discrimination and racism to the degree prevalent in the South during the time of Jim Crow laws, and they outraged her.

She left Tennessee as soon as she was able, relocating to Albuquerque in 1958 to study art at the University of New Mexico. "I checked the encyclopedia and found that New Mexico had very few people per square mile," she later said. "I also saw that it had mountains… so here I am." Her best and most enduring friendships, including those with track stars John J. Cordova and one-time world-record holder Adolph Plummer, frequently originated outside artistic circles, though she also forged lifelong friendships with such classmates as Richard Masterson and Richard Hogan.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s in particular, Price emphasized her more abstract work over the human form, such as in her 2004 "Circles, Stripes, and Squares" show at Galerie E in Albuquerque. "At the moment," she said at that time, "I am rather discouraged with my species."

Yet later that same year, she hung the "Our Species" exhibition at the American Institute of Architects. This collection of work showed several nameless people in various states of emotion, as well as pieces featuring figures from literature. "The famous figures I draw, mostly women, are usually just objectified through art," she explained in an interview. "I try to explore them and how they might have viewed things." "She always looked at life as a gift," he said in an interview. "Christmas is a time of delight, and she wanted to retain that delight and gratitude for every little pleasure we could take." The book is dedicated in her memory.

Personal and family life Rini Price met the poet and journalist V. B. Price in Albuquerque in 1967. The two attended the University of New Mexico simultaneously in the previous decade, but did not meet until both were working with the Westinghouse Learning Corporation. They married in 1969 and shared a home in Albuquerque's North Valley for fifty years. They have two sons, Jody Price who lives with his wife Amy in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Keir Price of Kinnelon, New Jersey, and two grandchildren, Ryan and Talia Price.

In 1979, Price was diagnosed with a virulent form of thyroid cancer that recurred twice by 1984. She underwent two major operations, and the third occurrence was deemed inoperable and uncurable. Yet she survived her cancer. She attributed her survival in part to her humor, her determination, and her artistic discipline. She reduced the frequency of her public showings after 1984, however, driven with renewed fervor to make art more than to do anything else with it. She frequently met with and supported other people with cancer, offering some help and guidance for their own hopes of survival. Her mother died in 1980, her father in 2005, and her sister in 2014.

Rini Price continued making her art nearly every day, even during the early years of her dementia, until the condition made creating impossible. After nearly five years of advancing dementia, during much of which her husband served as her primary caregiver, she died of respiratory failure at Lovelace Hospital in Albuquerque on October 19, 2019.

Notable shows and exhibitions

The Albuquerque Museum, permanent collection, 2010 The Albuquerque Museum, "Albuquerque Now" invitational exhibition, 2010 Price-Dewey Gallery, Santa Fe, "The Art of Journaling" invitational group show, 2006 Artspace 116, Albuquerque, "Death Self" with poems by V. B. Price, 2005 American Institute of Architects, Albuquerque, "Our Species" one-woman show, 2004 Galerie E, Albuquerque, "Circles, Stripes, and Squares" one-woman show, 2004 Off Center Gallery, Albuquerque, "Ranting and Raving" group show, 2004 Capitol Art Collection, Santa Fe, permanent collection 1998 Albuquerque Festival of the Arts, "Magnifico! Invites" group invitation show, 1991 Pannell Library, New Mexico Junior College, Hobbs, one-woman show, 1979 Mariposa Gallery, Albuquerque, eleven invitational theme exhibitions, 1974–1998 Mariposa Gallery, Albuquerque, "The Doll Show" and "Ritual and Ceremonial Objects" invitational group exhibitions, 1977 & 1979 The Albuquerque Museum, "Woman's Show," 1978 "Easter Eggcelebration," Albuquerque and Hartford, CT, 1976 Workshop Originals Contemporary Gallery, Albuquerque, one-woman show, 1974 Navajo Gallery, Taos, and Talisman Gallery, Santa Fe, MS Six group shows, 1972 Double Mporium, Corrales, NM, one-woman show, 1968

Books and publications

Death Self, with poems by V. B. Price, Wingspread Guides of New Mexico, 2005. Cover art, Innocence Regained: Christmas Poems, by V. B. Price, Casa Urraca Press, 2020. Cover art, Memoirs of the World in Ten Fragments, by V. B. Price, Wings Press, 2018. Cover art, The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones, by Margaret Randall, Wings Press, 2013. Cover art, Broken and Reset: Selected Poems 1966 to 2006, by V. B. Price, UNM Press, 2007. Cover art, Mythwaking: Homeric Hymns: A Modern Sequel, by V. B. Price, St. Elizabeth Street Press, 2004. Cover art, The Oddity, by V. B. Price, UNM Press, 2004. "Angel on Hard Times," painting reproduced as Wingspread Guides of New Mexico's annual Christmas card, 1998. Cover art and illustrations, The 7 Deadly Sins, V. B. Price, La Alameda Press, 1997. Art Director, illustrator, cartoonist, Century: A Southwest Journal of Observation and Opinion, 1980–1983. Cover art and internal art, Semblances, by V. B. Price, Sunstone Press, 1976. Cover art and internal art, The Cyclops Garden, by V. B. Price, 1969.