Tamarind Institute: Ready for a new home
Friday, August 8th, 2008
My art explorations in New Mexico are at an end, but before I fly out I’m able to visit the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico. Tucked into an unassuming stucco building on Cornell Drive SE in Albuquerque, Tamarind has focused on restoring the art of lithography in the United States. It was established as a result of June Wayne’s visionary proposal submitted to the Ford Foundation in 1959.
Tamarind is dedicated to traditional lithography, a planographic process that depends upon the mutual repulsion of grease and water on a heavy slab of limestone. Once the artist has finished drawing with the greasy black pigments upon the limestone slab, an artisan printer takes over and chemically treats the stones to stabilize the image for printing. (more…)
