Tamarind Institute Explained

Tamarind Institute is a lithography workshop created in 1960^[1] as a division of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM, United States. It began as Tamarind Lithography Workshop, a California non-profit corporation founded by June Wayne on Tamarind Avenue in Los Angeles in 1960. Both the current Institute and the original Lithography Workshop are referred to informally as "Tamarind."

Origin and goals

Tamarind was founded in the absence of an American print shop dedicated to serving artists, and during a period when American artists tended to reject lithography and collaborative printing in favor of the more "direct...immediate" possibilities of abstract expressionist painting.^[2]

Faced with a paucity of opportunities on all fronts and a medium which seemed on the verge of extinction, Wayne sought to create more than just a studio:

Tamarind Institute's website lists the following goals, developed by founding director June Wayne with associate director Clinton Adams and technical director Garo Antreasian in 1960:^[3]

• To create a pool of master artisan-printers in the United States by training apprentices;
• To develop a group of American artists of diverse styles into masters of this medium;
• To habituate each artist and artisan to intimate collaboration so that each becomes responsive and stimulating to the other in the work situation encouraging both to experiment widely and extend the expressive potential of the medium;
• To stimulate new markets for the lithograph;
• To plan a format to guide the artisan in earning his living outside of subsidy or total dependence on the artist's pocket;
• To restore the prestige of lithography by actually creating a collection of extraordinary prints.

Impact

Tamarind can be credited with single-handedly reviving the medium of lithography in the US, both insofar as they made the medium "respectable" and viable and also in that their dedicated research led to technical and economic breakthroughs with a visible impact on lithography in particular and printmaking in general; e.g., lightfast inks, durable and consistent printmaking paper, precise registration systems, aluminum plate printing, and lightweight, large diameter rollers are but a few important aspects of printmaking which either originated at or were refined by Tamarind. The workshop also established several now-customary procedures for editioned prints, such as precisely recording and documenting every edition, and affixing both a workshop chop and a printer's chop to each proof or impression in recognition of the printer's important role.

Artists

Below is a partial list of some of the many artists who have created editions at Tamarind:^{[4] [5] [6]}

• Rodolfo Abularach
• Clinton Adams
• Kinji Akagawa
• Anni Albers
• Josef Albers
• Garo Antreasian
• Polly Apfelbaum
• Ruth Asawa^{[7] [8]}
• Sandow Birk
• Jack Boynton
• Hans Burkhardt
• Squeak Carnwath
• Willie Cole
• José Luis Cuevas
• Amy Cutler
• Elaine de Kooning
• Roy De Forest
• Dorothy Dehner
• Richard Diebenkorn
• Lesley Dill
• Jim Dine
• Burhan Doğançay
• Walton Ford
• Sam Francis
• Tina Fuentes
• Sonia Gechtoff
• Gego
• Samia Halaby
• Frederick Hammersley
• Margo Humphrey
• James Kelly
• William Kentridge
• Joyce Kozloff
• Robert Kushner
• Hung Liu
• Nicola López
• Eleanore Mikus
• Louise Nevelson^[9]
• Joseph Raffael^[10]
• Mel Ramos
• Willy Bo Richardson^[11]
• Ed Ruscha
• Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
• Kiki Smith
• Robert Stackhouse
• Hedda Sterne
• Donald Sultan
• June Wayne

Master printers

See main article: Master Printmaking. One of the principal goals of the Tamarind Institute is the training of printers. Over the years, the training of these professionals has evolved since its creation in 1960. What began as an eight-week basic training course eventually developed into a two-year program. There are five levels in the program: student printer, candidate printer, assistant printer, senior printer, and master printer.^[12] There have been over 100 Master Program certificates awarded by the Tamarind Institute.^[13]

The first master printer graduate from Tamarind was Irwin Hollander of Hollander's Workshop in New York City.^[14] Judith Solodkin was the first woman to complete the program.^[15] Joe Funk was the first Tamarind fellow, serving between 1960 and 1961.^{[16] [17]} From 1972 to 1973, Chen Lok Lee received a fellowship from the Ford Foundation, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, to study at Tamarind. Lee went on to found Mantegna Press II, with Richard Callner, in Philadelphia, PA.^[18]

Sources

• Book: Devon, Marjorie. Tamarind: 40 Years. 2000. University of New Mexico Press. 978-0-8263-2072-8.

External links

35.0805°N -106.6194°W

Notes and References

1. name="Tamarind website">Web site: Tamarind Institute: Lithography Workshop and Gallery . Tamarind Institute . April 30, 2015. https://tamarind.unm.edu/about/history/
2. Web site: Adams. Clinton. Tamarind Institute of Lithography An Informed Energy: Lithography and Tamarind. tamarind.unm.edu. 2022-10-07. en. 1997.
3. Web site: Tamarind Institute: Lithography Workshop and Gallery . https://web.archive.org/web/20150423074242/http://tamarind.unm.edu/about-us/2-what-is-tamarind-institute . 2015-04-23 . Tamarind Institute . April 30, 2015.
4. Web site: UNM Tamarind Institute. econtent.unm.edu. March 11, 2017.
5. Book: Devon, Marjorie . Tamarind Touchstones:Fabulous at Fifty . University of New Mexico Press . 2010 . 9780826347398 . Albuquerque [N.M.] . 165–176 . 511616366.
6. Web site: Seems. August 30, 2021. New Mexico Museum of Art, Searchable Art Museum.
7. Web site: Home and Away: The Printed Works of Ruth Asawa » Norton Simon Museum. nortonsimon.org. March 30, 2017. en.
8. Web site: Works on Paper – Ruth Asawa. Ruth Asawa. March 30, 2017.
9. Devon, 2000, p. 174.
10. Devon, 2000, p. 80.
11. Web site: Tamarind Institute presents No Modifiers. Smith. Shelly. April 30, 2019. The University of New Mexico.
12. Book: Devon, Marjorie . Tamarind Touchstones:Fabulous at Fifty . University of New Mexico Press . 2010 . 9780826347398 . Albuquerque [N.M.] . 177–184 . 511616366.
13. Book: Devon, Marjorie . Tamarind Touchstones:Fabulous at Fifty . University of New Mexico Press . 2010 . 9780826347398 . Albuquerque [N.M.] . 2 . 511616366.
14. News: Irwin Hollander, 90, Master Lithographer Who Revived Fine Art, Dies. Smith. Roberta. December 14, 2018. The New York Times. September 11, 2019. en-US. 0362-4331. Within a year he was the first master printer trained at Tamarind. As he said in his oral history, “I absolutely fell in love with the idea of working closely with artists all day.”.
15. Book: Hansen . T. Victoria . Printmaking in America : collaborative prints and presses, 1960-1990 . 1995 . H.N. Abrams in association with Mary and Leigh Block Gallery, Northwestern University . New York . 9780810937437 . 50.
16. Web site: Joe Funk. August 19, 2021. Tamarind Institute Document Archive, New Mexico Digital Collections. en.
17. Book: Devon, Marjorie. Tamarind: 40 Years. 2000. UNM Press. 978-0-8263-2073-5. 184. en.
18. News: Zaslow. Sandra R.. June 20–21, 1990. Art Show Set in Wyncote. Montgomery Newspapers.