JUNE WAYNE・ART & SCIENCE
The Celestial Works

For more than 45 years until her death in 2011, June Wayne focused like no other artist on the relationship between Art and Science, with new discoveries as her starting point for broader meditations on the cosmos and our place in it. The six celestial sections in which this exhibit is divided show the incredible incredible reach of Wayne's vision as she contemplated phenomena far outside our human experience.

Space was for Wayne “what the Rockies of the American West were to Albert Bierstadt” (Pat Gilmour). Convinced that the arts needed a change, she strived for "a futurist mindset—like that of Buckminster Fuller, not Boccioni” (Arlene Raven). Her approach was “the scientific method”, but her visionary art expands our possibilities, far beyond any literal depiction.

Our thanks to the Estate of June Wayne.

MB Abram

 

Since 1947, when space pushed into human consciousness like the ‘camel’s nose under the tent flap’ June Wayne was pre-occupied with giving form to her perceptions of light, space and time through the multiple media she employed in her art: lithography, painting, tapestry, collage.
— James Goodwin
June Wayne has painted the heavens. She aspires to immensity. She calls up the sublime.
— Arlene Raven
 
June Wayne realized that the cosmic imagery that had inspired generations of poets had been superseded by a new vision of the cosmos that scientists were now discovering.
— Robert P. Conway
In addressing herself imaginatively to our post-Sputnik universe, she has considered the nature of energy from protoplasm to galaxy, and with it the inevitable philosophic questions concerning origin and destiny.
— Pat Gilmour
 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

James Goodwin, Organizer of Westweek Pacific Design Center whose creative gatherings included Frank Gehry, Jonas Salk, June Wayne, and many others; Director Emeritus of the LA Craft and Folk Art Museum (Craft Contemporary); Mixed-Media Artist, Collector, and Entrepreneur.

Arlene Raven (1944-2006), Curator and Author “June Wayne, A Retrospective, Neuberger Museum of Art, 1997, Exhibition; Art Historian; Chief Art Critic for the Village Voice; Co-Founder: the Women’s Caucus For Art; the Los Angeles Women’s Art Building; and the Feminist Studio Workshop.

Robert P. Conway, Curator; Author of “A Catalogue Raisonné 1936-2006, June Wayne - The Art of Everything“, Rutgers University Press, 2007. Director Emeritus of Associated American Artists, New York.

Pat Gilmour (1932-2021) Founding Senior Curator of Prints: Tate, London; Senior Curator: National Gallery of Australia; Contributor: Print Quarterly, London; Author: “A Love Affair With Lithography—The Prints Of June Wayne”.