Who

Minter is best known for her hyper-realistic paintings of women's body parts bound up in jewels and layered in makeup.

Backstory

Minter grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, the daughter of a pill-popping recluse who practiced "the lost arts of eyebrow dyeing, smoking in bed, and lolling about alone." After attending college at the University of Florida and grad school at Syracuse, Minter settled in New York in the mid-70s. She was a quiet presence on the art scene until the 1990s, when she gained attention for her gritty yet glam work, which blurs the line between photography and painting, and satirically examines fashion, sex, and what she calls the "pathology of glamour."

Of note

It wasn't until she was in her fifties that Minter started to gain serious notice in the art community. She's had a busy few years since. In 2005, she had a solo show at the San Francisco MoMA, and was featured in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. (In fact, one of her works was the catalogue cover.) The same year Creative Time, an arts organization devoted to making art an everyday experience, put three of Minter's photographs on giant billboards throughout Chelsea, including a photo of a foot strapped in a bejeweled stiletto stepping into a dirty puddle. She's had a solo exhibition at Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn's Studio 94, aand her first monograph, which features 140 color photos of her work, was published in 2007. And although much of Minter's art critiques the fashion industry, she's shot ad campaigns for companies like Versace and Tom Ford fragrance.

Personal

Minter and her husband, a stockbroker, live in a Mercer Street loft.

No joke

In 1989 and 1990, Minter bought 30-second spots on The Arsenio Hall Show, Nightline, and Late Night with David Letterman to air ads called "Food Porn," which featured neither food nor porn, but rather Minter at work in her studio.