Wayne, June 1918-....

June Wayne (1918-2011) was a painter and printmaker in Los Angeles, Calif.

Visual artist June Claire Wayne was born on March 7, 1918 in Chicago, Illinois, where she was raised by her divorced mother, Dorothy Alice Kline. At age 15, Wayne dropped out of high school to pursue a career as an artist. She had her first solo exhibition under the name of June Claire in Chicago only two years later, followed in 1936 by a second exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. By 1938 she was already on the WPA Easel Project in Chicago and had achieved prominence among world-famous writers, actors, artists, and scientists in an international milieu in which Wayne is still active. Around 1939, Wayne moved to New York, where she worked as a costume jewelry designer while continuing to paint at night and on weekends. In the 1940s, she began to work under the name of June Claire Wayne. After Pearl Harbor, she moved to Los Angeles and became certified in production illustration, intending to work in the aircraft industry. However, when she was offered a job in radio writing at WGN in Chicago, Wayne seized this opportunity instead, scripting several programs a day and honing a literary talent that would later produce influential essays on art criticism, artists' rights, and feminism. When WWII ended, Wayne left Chicago to settle in Los Angeles, where she became an integral part of the California art scene. Inspired by her training in production illustration, Wayne began to produce seminal works of optical art, including The Tunnel and the Kafka series, in the mid 1940s. She continued to expand her artistic horizons, taking up lithography at Lynton Kistler's facility in 1947. Ten years later, she began collaborating with master printer Marcel Durassier in Paris. In their groundbreaking work on the John Donne suite, Wayne invented many of lithography's current techniques, vastly expanding the aesthetic potential of the medium. In order to restore the art of lithography in the United States, she founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop with the support of the Ford Foundation in 1960. Now known as the Tamarind Institute of the University of New Mexico, this organization continues to thrive and help artists become free enterprise workers in the print world. Wayne began designing large-scale tapestries in France in 1970, once again embracing a new mode of artistic expression. In this and many other media, Wayne explored avant-garde connections between science, art, and contemporary issues. Motifs as varied as optics, the genetic code, stellar winds, magnetic fields, tsunamis, and temblors figure in her work as complex metaphors for the human condition. Wayne's art is represented in many museum collections in the USA and abroad, and she has received dozens of awards as well as honorary doctorates in recognition of her innovative and prolific contributions to her artistic fields.

June Wayne (1918-2011) was a painter and lithographer in Los Angeles, Calif.

June Wayne (1918-) is a painter and printmaker in Los Angeles, Calif.

Biography

Visual artist June Claire Wayne was born on March 7, 1918 in Chicago, Illinois, where she was raised by her divorced mother, Dorothy Alice Kline. At age 15, Wayne dropped out of high school to pursue a career as an artist. She had her first solo exhibition under the name of June Claire in Chicago only two years later, followed in 1936 by a second exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. By 1938 she was already on the WPA Easel Project in Chicago and had achieved prominence among world-famous writers, actors, artists, and scientists in an international milieu in which Wayne is still active.

Around 1939, Wayne moved to New York, where she worked as a costume jewelry designer while continuing to paint at night and on weekends. In the 1940s, she began to work under the name of June Claire Wayne. After Pearl Harbor, she moved to Los Angeles and became certified in production illustration, intending to work in the aircraft industry. However, when she was offered a job in radio writing at WGN in Chicago, Wayne seized this opportunity instead, scripting several programs a day and honing a literary talent that would later produce influential essays on art criticism, artists' rights, and feminism.

When WWII ended, Wayne left Chicago to settle in Los Angeles, where she became an integral part of the California art scene. Inspired by her training in production illustration, Wayne began to produce seminal works of optical art, including The Tunnel and the Kafka series, in the mid 1940s. She continued to expand her artistic horizons, taking up lithography at Lynton Kistler's facility in 1947. Ten years later, she began collaborating with master printer Marcel Durassier in Paris. In their groundbreaking work on the John Donne suite, Wayne invented many of lithography's current techniques, vastly expanding the aesthetic potential of the medium. In order to restore the art of lithography in the United States, she founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop with the support of the Ford Foundation in 1960. Now known as the Tamarind Institute of the University of New Mexico, this organization continues to thrive and help artists become free enterprise workers in the print world.

Wayne began designing large-scale tapestries in France in 1970, once again embracing a new mode of artistic expression. In this and many other media, Wayne explored avant-garde connections between science, art, and contemporary issues. Motifs as varied as optics, the genetic code, stellar winds, magnetic fields, tsunamis, and temblors figure in her work as complex metaphors for the human condition.

Wayne's art is represented in many museum collections in the USA and abroad, and she has received dozens of awards as well as honorary doctorates in recognition of her innovative and prolific contributions to her artistic fields.