Rini Price

Rini Price



The artist Rini Price (Nancy R. Price) passed away October 19, 2019, at 8:48 in the morning at Lovelace Hospital on Martin Luther King Boulevard. A passionate civil libertarian and human rights champion, Rini would have appreciated the association with Dr. King. She died of acute respiratory failure brought on by pneumonia and complications from advanced dementia from which she suffered for nearly five years.

Rini is survived by her sons Jody and Keir Price, her grandchildren Talia and Ryan Price, her daughters in-law Amy and Helena Price, her nephews, Chris Fuqua and his wife Deanna Chavez, and Marc Fuqua and his wife Geri, her brother Jim Rini and his wife Nancy Kendall, by her husband of 50 years V.B. Price, and by a large community of friends and intimates, all of whom miss her profoundly. She was preceded in death by her parents, S. Jack and Marjorie Rini, her grandmother Helen Herman, and her beloved sister, Jacki Rini Fuqua.

A memorial event and reading and showing of Death Self, a collaboration with her husband, will be held at George Pearl Hall on UNM's campus March 9th, 2020 at 5:30 p.m.

Rini came to Albuquerque to attend the University of New Mexico in September 1958 from Memphis, Tennessee, where her father S. Jack Rini was head of research at the Kraft Foods Humko division. Her family had moved to Memphis from New England and the Midwest. Rini despised the racism and Jim Crow laws she encountered in parts of the South and found relief in New Mexico among its varied cultures and with her friendships with African American and other athletes on UNM's track team, especially her dear pal world record holder Adolph Plummer and her friend of 50 years John J. Cordova.

Rini studied art and art history with professors Les Haas, Bainbridge Bunting, John Tatschl, Kenneth Adams, as well as with her close student friends Richard Masterson and Richard Hogan. She pursued an MA in fine arts under Clinton Adams and Van Deren Coke, but left the program. Rini worked as an artist virtually every day of her life until her final illnesses. She considered herself a recluse in the sense of refraining from both academic art and the competitive and commercial gallery system. A master with the pencil who produced literally thousands of drawings including guardian angels for her special friends and children, and many hundreds of paintings. Rini always said she "never wanted to be a great artist just to make great art." She added "art is not who I am but what I do with who I am." A range of over 400 of her works can be experienced at her website, designed by Don Michaelis, at riniprice.com. Despite her reticence, Rini's work appeared in dozens of group and one person exhibitions and is in numerous public and private collections, including those of the Museum of Albuquerque and the Capital Arts collection in the Roundhouse in Santa Fe. Rini was also the art director and cartoonist, along with her brother Jim, of Century magazine, published in New Mexico in the l980s.

In l979, Rini came down with a particularly virulent form of thyroid cancer, had two major operations, and a third occurrence which was considered inoperable and uncurable. She survived cancer though grit, self-confidence, humor and discipline for 40 years. From time to time, she found herself being useful to others in surviving their own cancers. Her kindness, poise, generosity, and common sense were gifts to all who knew her.

While it's impossible for the family to thank all of those who helped with Rini's care during the last years of her life, special friends of the family, McKenna Minor, Lynne Reeve, and Claire McNally chief among them, were deeply beloved by her. And the care she received from caregivers at Home Instead and from the residential facility Angel Wings was exemplary in its loving gentleness and sound

efficiency.