Tamarind Touchstones

Showcasing the broad aesthetic capabilities of lithography, Tamarind Touchstones demonstrates the diversity of the artists who have embraced lithography and their increased facility and comfort with the medium.

Garo Z. Antreasian (b. 1922) belongs to the great generation of innovators in mid-twentieth-century American art. While influenced by a variety of European artists in his early years, it was his involvement with Tamarind Lithography Workshop starting in 1960 that transformed his work. As Tamarind’s founding technical director, he revolutionized the medium of lithography. He discovered how to manipulate the spontaneous possibilities of lithography in the manner of the Abstract Expressionist painters. In addition to reflecting on his work, he writes movingly about his Armenian heritage and its importance in his art, his teaching, and his love affair with all sorts of artistic media. Illustrating his drawings, paintings, and prints, this book reveals Antreasian as a major American artist. This book was made possible in part by generous contributions from the Frederick Hammersley Foundation and Gerald Peters Gallery.

The remarkable photography collection of the University of New Mexico Art Museum owes its unique character and quality to the directors, curators, scholars, and artists who have taught, worked, and studied at the museum and in the university’s Department of Art and Art History. In this indispensable book, these distinguished scholars and artists reflect on the pictures from the collection that hold significance to them. Through their own professional and artistic practice, they represent different generations of aesthetic voices and intellectual directions. As one of the earliest collegiate institutions to begin collecting photography, the University of New Mexico Art Museum holds a stunning array of images that span photography’s 175-year history. In addition to iconic works by famous photographers, this book also features less familiar but equally masterful pictures. Together, these essays represent a unique history of photography and this renowned museum.

"Self Help Graphics at Fifty celebrates the ongoing legacy of an institution which had profound aesthetic, economic, and political impact on the formation of Chicanx and Latinx art in the United States. Officially launched in 1973 during the Chicano Movement by Italian-American Franciscan nun and artist Sister Karen Boccalero and queer Mexican artists Carlos Bueno and Antonio Ibaänez, Self Help Graphics served on the cultural front of the movement. The institution's commitments to art, dignity for all, and pride in ethnic heritage appear in every aspect of programming, including the Dâia de los Muertos festival; the Barrio Mobile Art Studio, which brings art education to underserved schools; and the printmaking program, which offers an accessible medium infused with activist aims. Looking at the multiple genealogies of art that intersect in East Los Angeles, Self Help Graphics at Fifty bears witness to the organization's influential role in US and global art histories"--