Biography for June Wayne

Education

Wayne dropped out of high school but in 1934, when she was 16, in order to prove to her mother that she was still an educated person, she took and passed the entrance examinations to the University of Chicago but chose not study there.

Awards

June Wayne has recieved numerous awards such as being named the Woman of the Year for Meritorious Achievement in Modern Art by the Los Angeles Times in 1952, a commendation from the Los Angeles City Council in 1962 for the creation of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, an Oscar nomination for the documentary 'Four Stones for Kanemitsu' in 1974, honorary degrees in the Fine Arts from colleges such as the California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco in 1988, the Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia in 1991 and Rhode Island School of Design, Providence in 1994 and Lifetime Achievement Awards from Los Angeles ArtCore and the Nueberger Museum in 1997.

Employment

Due to the success of her first one-person show of paintings at the Boulevard Gallery in Chicago Wayne was asked by the Mexican Government to paint in Mexico resulting in a well received exhibition at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City in 1936 when Wayne was still only eighteen years old. During the following five years, she worked again in Chicago and on various projects including President Roosevelt's WPA Art Project. She also worked as a costume jewellery designer and stylist in New York and then as a writer for a Chicago radio station however by 1950 she was working virtually full time as an artist.
In 1958 Wayne bought a studio in Tamarind Avenue, Los Angeles. In 1959, she wrote to the Ford Foundation requesting support to restore lithography as an art in the United States by training master-printers to work with U.S. artists. She was successful and the Tamarind Lithography Workshop became a focal point for the revival of printmaking in the United States. June Wayne has continued to experiment with new techniques and has been particularly inspired by the feminist movement, which she had anticipated, and by developments in modern science.