Versatile artist receives recognition for work

Published: Monday, November 30, 1998

Monday, November 30, 1998

ART: Retrospective of Wayne's thought-provoking creations illustrates futuristic vision, effect on others

By Sandy Yang

Daily Bruin Contributor

For Los Angeles artist June Wayne, "The future is now."

A futurist artist and founder of the world-renowned Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Wayne's work now appears at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

In the 50-year retrospective, Wayne expresses ideas of science, literature, social issues and personal experiences through many media, including lithographs, paintings, collages and tapestries. Yet only now is Wayne drawing the long overdue recognition for her versatile and thought-provoking vision.

"I think the moral of the story as a futurist is to outlive everybody," Wayne says.

Having recently celebrated her 80th birthday, Wayne has no grievances about the belated recognition. Rather, the artwork speaks for itself as a true attestation of Wayne's ongoing interests and views of varied subjects.

In her career, Wayne has dealt with the beauty of parallels and contrasts found in nature and science. She has integrated the elusive connection into the concrete form that is her art. Working with ideas of astrophysics, quantum physics and quantum mechanics, the artwork tries to capture relevant visual images linked to the subjects.

"I think these things are relevant to a visual expression and how well I accomplish that is a measure of my art," Wayne says.

"I'm interested in certain cutting-edge ideas in science. There are certain ideas that are relevant to visual art and what I try to do is in those situations is to give a visual metaphor that expresses the idea."

Also included in her work are natural phenomena, including tidal waves, earthquakes and tornados - the great forces that affect living beings and the mechanisms that make them possible.

"I think my work is intimately connected to many things that are going on in many disciplines, that are going on in music, in literature, in technology and so on," Wayne says. "I find parallels in what I'm doing across the cultural spectrum. I think for a long time, I've been kind of far from the '40s, which in the '40s looked very strange, (but now) they can accommodate (the audience)."

Even if her work was not noted at the time of their premiere, Wayne has never succumbed to the pressure of "making it" if it didn't mean being true to her own expressions. Art was never a means of fame or money, but a constant search for answers to questions that haven't yet materialized.

"She's always had her eye on what was happening around her," says Barbara Isenberg, a feature writer and author of the upcoming "Ahead of the Wave: An Oral History of California Creativity," a book of interviews featuring about 50 prominent California artists, including Wayne.

"I've always been outside the mainstream, and I don't care about that," Wayne says. "The mainstream would be a terrible bore for me because the art that is acceptable at any given moment is art that already has an answer for the public. I'm more interested in the question to which I wish to find my own answers. My art is in that sense futuristic. I tend to pick up on ideas to which there is no common rhetoric."

Wayne's unorthodox ideas and her experience in lithography, the art of printing on smooth plane surfaces, would spring her into prominence.

In 1960, she founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in her own Hollywood studio to prevent the art form from dying out in the United States.

As the studio gained prominence and would later move to the University of New Mexico, Wayne cut ties with her once-infant project to devote her attention into her art again, but not without conflicting interests.

"Unfortunately, because of Tamarind and its success and the fact that I took my own work off the market during those 10 years at the time, I was - in effect - speaking for a great many artists and I didn't wish to be competitive (with them)," Wayne says. "So I took my work out of public view, and I had to reestablish my own mean and person, not as a foundation but as a working artist. So Tamarind was, in effect, a handicap to me and a benefit to the country."

John Milant, a print publisher for 30 years who opened Cirrus Edition, can attest to the claim. Trained at Tamarind, Milant attributes the existence of the art form to Wayne.

In a Los Angeles Times article written about Wayne by Isenberg, Milant said, "I've always felt that June was the person who was responsible for the whole print-publishing revolution in America.

"She was Tamarind, and it was her vision that created all of us. I think most of the people in the business can somehow be tied back to Tamarind."

But Wayne has never suffered regrets at the happenings in her life - even the situations that couldn't be controlled, such as being a female artist in a male-dominated business.

"It was not any important grievance for me because I am what I am," Wayne says.

"The work is its own testimony. I'm not interested in being a personality. I wish to advance my work to represent me."

Today, Wayne's work is finally gaining visibility.

Cover stories in the Daily News and Los Angeles Times have written about the exhibit and given it positive reviews.

But Wayne is not about to stray from the ideas and beliefs that propelled her this far as a cutting edge artist and "an important commentator on the Los Angeles art scene," according to Isenberg.

"I think L.A. is a little late in recognizing me," Wayne says. "But that's the hometown handicap, and I don't really mind."

ART: "June Wayne: A Retrospective" is showing at LACMA through Feb. 15, 1999. For more information, call (323) 857-6522.CHARLES KUO/Daily Bruin

June Wayne (not pictured) displays her work at LACMA until February.

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