The Tamarind Prints, 1965

The Tamarind Lithography Workshop was founded by June Wayne in 1960 on Tamarind Avenue in Los Angeles and vastly expanded the possibilities of fine art lithography in the United States. At the suggestion of her former teacher Josef Albers, who had previously printed there himself, Asawa was invited to do a residency for two months in 1965. During her short time there, she worked closely with seven printers to produce fifty-four radically experimental prints.

Asawa’s unique prints featured family members, flowers, plane trees, and chairs, as well as abstractions, of which some are on view in this section. She drew or painted directly on slabs of limestone or aluminum plates with a waxy pencil, crayon, or liquid ink, after which the printers would fix the image, ink the stone or plate, and pass the sheets of paper through the press. While never again focusing as intensively on printmaking as she did during her late summer and early fall at Tamarind, Asawa remained convinced of the merits of the medium, resisting “the myth that the crafts and printmaking are less important than painting and sculpture. A good piece is important regardless of category.”