To mark the special exhibition Art, Fashion, Symbol, Statement: Tattooing in America, 1960s to Today (on view through October 13, 2024), we hope that you enjoy this print in our collection. If you visit the museum, this work is on view in the exhibition.

Rosalyn Drexler (American, b. 1926)
Woman and Roses, 1972
Monotone screenprint on Rives paper
29 5/8″h x 23 1/8″w 
Collection of the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts
Gift of Dr. Samuel Mandel, A2536,86.0341

In Woman and Roses, Drexler created a composition that resembles a Surrealist collage and reflects her interest in appropriating fragmented images from popular journals and pulp cinema. At the top, a woman with an elaborate hairdo (composed of black ink and white flower-shaped patterns) gazes at the viewer indirectly. Below, isolated roses abound and two portions of her face and lips are scattered. By rearranging these reproduced forms in space, she invites us to ponder their origins and association with traditional female gender roles and love-related symbolism. About her use of collage, Drexler wrote in the script for her play, The Writer’s Opera (1979):

If you want to be a writer
Learn to cut and paste
Nothing is worth saving but waste.
Any small scrap
might carry within it
a great idea
So whatever you find
that’s broken
splintered
or loose,
gather it up
make it whole
tape it down.

Although she has had a wide-ranging career, Drexler is perhaps best known for her Pop art paintings and as the author of a novel adapted from the film, Rocky (1976), published under her pseudonym, Julia Sorel. A painter, printmaker, and sculptor, Drexler currently lives and works in New York City.

Drexler’s prints share parallels with the drawings of tattoo artist Constanza Ballerines (see one example below), which are on display in the exhibition Art, Fashion, Symbol, Statement: Tattooing in America, 1960s to Today. Completed in a micro-realist style, Ballerines’s work is characterized by fine black lines and attention to detail. Like Drexler, she is interested in representing fragmented images, especially portraits. In Ballerines’s design, a woman gazes at the viewer but her eyes, face, and neck are divided into segments and arranged into a swirling form that resembles a floating ribbon. Ballerines’s approach is similar to that of Drexler, an artist whose prints feature carefully drawn portions of body parts, as seen in her lithograph

Constanza Ballerines (American, b. 1991)
Tattoo design, 2022
Pen and ink on paper
Collection of the artist