MARYLYN DINTENFASS PARALLEL PARK
Hard Press Editions is pleased to announce the recent publication of MARYLYN DINTENFASS PARALLEL PARK. This is the first book to document Marylyn Dintenfass' life-long love affair with automobiles, especially the culturally iconic high-powered, sporty, sexy muscle cars that streamed out of Detroit from the late 1950's to the mid-1970's. The book critically explores how Dintenfass' drawings, monotypes and paintings are the genesis for Parallel Park - a 30,000 square foot, site-specific installation, wrapping the four facades of The Lee County Justice Center Parking Garage in Fort Myers, Florida. It is one of the largest and most transformative art installations in the United States of the past decade.
MARYLYN DINTENFASS PARALLEL PARK is richly illustrated with more than 175 full-color plates, and includes a scholarly essay by Aliza Edelman that provides an innovative and gendered look at the artist's primary and biographical sources in postwar automobile culture.
A complete series of Dintenfass' automotive themed oils and monotypes is presented with a detailed account of the project's commissioning by Barbara Anderson Hill, Consultant to the City of Fort Myers Public Art Program.
An introduction by scholar and public art specialist, Michele Cohen, PhD, explores how this government commission successfully unites architecture with artistic vision and technological innovation for an operatic achievement that pushes the boundaries for the artist and art in the public realm.
A photographic essay of the installation includes incisive commentary by the architect, the artwork's printer and members of the construction team. Dintenfass offers a comprehensive narrative on her artistic vision of Parallel Park's evocative subject matter and challenging fabrication.
Finally, John Driscoll's interview with public art expert, Jennifer McGregor, places the project in context and discusses the qualities that distinguish Parallel Park from many public art projects in recent history
Marylyn Dintenfass' work is in major public and private collections in Europe, Israel, Japan, and throughout the United States including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her 2011 Babcock Galleries' exhibition Souped Up / Tricked Out was identified by Modern Painters magazine as one of The 100 Best Fall Shows worldwide. Parallel Park was highlighted in the January 2012 issue of ARTnews, described by Donald Miller as having "raised a parking garage in Fort Myers, to art status." NY ARTS magazine also profiled Dintenfass and Parallel Park in their spring 2012 issue. Dintenfass has had recent solo shows at the Mississippi Museum of Art (supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation), the Greenville County Museum of Art and the Flint Institute of Arts, and her work was included in the Inaugural Exhibition of New York's Museum of Arts and Design.
Dintenfass has twice been a MacDowell Fellow and has received both an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and two Project Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Dintenfass was, for ten years, a member of the faculty at Parsons School of Design.
The artist is the subject of a previous monograph entitled MARYLYN DINTENFASS PAINTINGS by Lilly Wei (Hudson Hills Press, 2007). Dintenfass is represented by Babcock Galleries in New York.
"Rarely does art and architecture form the seamless bond evidenced in Fort Myers' new parking garage, a studied improvisation in form, color, and light. Marylyn Dintenfass' PARALLEL PARK, like alchemy, transmutes the ordinary into the extraordinary, providing both a physical and imaginary civic gateway."
- Michele Cohen, from the introduction, PARALLEL PARK MARYLYN DINTENFASS by Aliza Edelman, 2011, HARD PRESS EDITIONS
Read the full introduction.pdf 
