by Eva Dameron
Daily Lobo
Lithography was in danger of becoming an archaic medium 50 years ago.
So June Wayne, who dropped out of high school at 15 to pursue art, got a Ford Foundation grant and started the Tamarind Institute in 1960 in Los Angeles.
In 1970, the institute moved to Albuquerque.
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Lithography is a printing process using a combination of chemicals to etch an image onto a stone tablet or another hard-surface plate. The image is then transferred to paper.
"She was having problems finding printers to work within the states," gallery director Arif Khan said. "The people she was finding were getting older, and the knowledge wasn't getting passed down to other generations. You had silk screen and photography and all these much easier ways of reproducing or making prints more prominent, and it wasn't being taught in universities."
Since then, the institute's reputation has grown in prestige around the world.
"We have a long-standing history of reputation," Khan said. "If you look at major shops around the country that publish prints, pretty much the vast majority of the litho people were taught at Tamarind."
Khan said many people aren't clear about how the Tamarind is affiliated with UNM.
When the institute moved to Albuquerque, a professor named Clinton Adams was working at UNM.
"He was trained at Tamarind in L.A. and approached the University saying this would be a great thing for UNM to have and be affiliated with," Khan said.
Tamarind takes a maximum of eight students a year, who apply directly to the institute.
"There's some overlap, like they take a history of graphic arts class in the art history department at UNM," he said. "Our guys aren't on the printmaking faculty at UNM; they're Tamarind master printers."
The UNM Museum gets two copies of every print series the Tamarind publishes, Khan said.
"They have a complete record of everything that's done at Tamarind," he said.
The institute has a residency program for artists all over the world to stay for two weeks and make litho prints. They stay in an upstairs apartment behind the institute.
"What's unique about Tamarind is they work with our master printers, so that means we don't have to invite just printmakers," Khan said. "We can invite installations artists, photographers, painters, and they have someone who knows all the technical means of developing a print. They don't have to worry about mixing inks, how to run the press, where the paper goes, so they get to focus on making their image."
There's a constant interaction between the printmaker and the artist.
"We're the only place that teaches litho printmaking in this fashion, really emphasizing the collaborative part," he said. "They're not learning about making their own art, per se, but how to get the most out of another artist. If you look around at our labels, we have the artist name, the title, but we always mention the collaborating printer, and they're accredited because it is such a close relationship."
Tamarind recently got $325,000 from the state to help it move into UNM's old architecture building
"The shop will be the downstairs; the gallery will be upstairs," Khan said. "Square-footage-wise, it's pretty close. But the way we walk around, the layout is much cleaner. The gallery especially will expand a lot more and have a lot more usable wall space. That's been very exciting."
Tamarind Institute
108 Cornell Drive S.E.
Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
