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Wayne (June) papers
LSC.0562
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Contributing Institution:
UCLA Library Special Collections
Title: June Wayne papers
source:
Wayne, June
Identifier/Call Number: LSC.0562
Physical Description:
114.0 linear feet
(228 document boxes, 10 oversize boxes, and 25 boxes of audiovisual materials)
Date (inclusive): 1909-2012
Abstract: June Claire Wayne was born on March 7, 1918 in Chicago, Illinois, where at the age of 15 she dropped out of high school to
pursue her career as an artist. In addition to her work in lithography, which revitalized the art of printmaking in America,
Wayne is well-known for her tapestries and visual explorations of optics and scientific themes. The collection consists of
correspondence, manuscripts, ephemera, and photographs related to the creation and exhibition of Wayne's work, including the
production of The Dorothy Series lithographs and film about the artist, Matsumi (Mike) Kanemitsu,
Four Stones for Kanemitsu.
Physical Location: Portions of the collection stored off-site. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. All requests to access
special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
Language of Material: Materials are in English.
Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located
on this page. Boxes 49-103 are closed until the year 2015.
Property rights to the physical objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright,
are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright
and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
CONTAINS DIGITAL AND AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS: This collection contains both processed and unprocessed digital and audiovisual
materials. Digital and audiovisual materials are not currently available for access, unless otherwise noted in a Physical
Characteristics and Technical Requirements note at the series and file levels. All requests to access processed digital materials
must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
Gift of June Wayne, 2000, 2011, 2012.
UCLA Catalog Record ID:
9946631193606533
[Identification of item], June Wayne Papers (Collection 562). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research
Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Collection was initially processed by Marisol Ramos-Lum and Christine M. Figueroa, 2002. With the additions in 2005, the entire
collection was reprocessed by Elizabeth Spatz. This reprocessing of the June Wayne papers was funded by a grant from the Getty
Research Institute. A 2011 addition of the collection was processed by Heather Lowe. Another addition was processed in July
2012 by Jasmine Jones and Mike D'Errico with assistance by Jillian Cuellar in the Center for Primary Research and Training
(CFPRT).
Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user
interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides
a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive
processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.
Portions of the processing of this collection was generously supported by
Arcadia
funds.
We are committed to providing ethical, inclusive, and anti-racist description of the materials we steward, and to remediating
existing description of our materials that contains language
that may be offensive or cause harm. We invite you to submit feedback about how our collections are described, and how they
could be described more accurately, by filling out the form
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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.
The collection consists of June Wayne's personal and professional correspondence and documents pertaining to her career as
a painter, lithographer, weaver, writer and political and civil activist. Different aspects of her career are highlighted,
e.g. her relationship with the Ford Foundation and the Tamarind Lithography Workshop; the process of working on the Dorothy
series and the John Donne's book lithographs; events such as exhibits and trips; the filming of the movie,
Four Stones For Kanemitsu, that later resulted in litigation; participation in radio and TV broadcasts, such as
You and Modern Art; and her involvement in the feminist art movement, e.g. the creation of the
Joan of Art seminar series, as well as politics and art when lobbying for better legislation for artists.
The collection is arranged in the following series:
- Correspondence
- Court Cases (Restricted)
- Dorothy's Possessions
- Employment Reports
- Four Stones for Kanemitsu
- June Wayne's Events
- Press and Publications
- Tamarind Lithography Workshop
- Photographs
- Audiovisual Materials
- Slides
- Artwork Photographs
- Writings and Public Speaking
Arrangement follows original order of collection.
Items Removed from the Collection
Rand McNally Guide to Chicago and Environs (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1924), catalogued and added to general library collection.
June Wayne Oral History Transcript, interviewed by Kathryn Smith, [1976].
Los Angeles : Oral History Program, University of California, Los Angeles, c1982.
Tamarind Institute Records (Collection MSS 574 BC). Available at the University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research & Special Collections.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Lithographers -- California -- Los Angeles -- Archives.
Audiovisual materials.
Photographs.
Women artists -- California -- Los Angeles -- Archives.
Tamarind Lithography Workshop.
Wayne, June, 1918- --Archives.
Wayne, June
- Collection Overview
-
Collection Details
- Conditions Governing Access
- Conditions Governing Access
- Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
- Provenance/Source of Acquisition
- UCLA Catalog Record ID
- Preferred Citation
- Processing Note
- Biography
- Scope and Content
- Organization and Arrangement
- Items Removed from the Collection
- Related Material