Tamarind Institute announces New Editions Summer 2014 opening in the Tamarind Gallery Tuesday, May 27, and running through Friday, July 18. The gallery is free and open to the public, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
 
From birds to monks, Tamarind introduces new lithographs created during the past six months by artists Stuart Arends, Charles Arnoldi, Lesley Dill, Hung Liu, Mary Mito and Mônica Nador. Each year Tamarind invites five to ten artists to create lithographs that are sold at art fairs, online and in our gallery. Because Tamarind does not subscribe to a single aesthetic viewpoint, the New Editions exhibitions is sure to have something of interest to everyone.
 
Charles Arnoldi was invited to Tamarind Institute to create the 2013 Collectors Club print.  During his residency, he made four additional lithographs which will be included in New Editions. Collectors around the world regard Arnoldi as one of the most significant contemporary abstract painters, sculptors and printmakers of our generation. His work can be described as experimentations in color, form and structure, or, as he states in an interview at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, "art with a sense of dignity, honesty and integrity."  Arnoldi's work can be found in hundreds of public collections around the world including the Art Institute of Chicago; Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California. Born in 1946 in Dayton, Ohio, Arnoldi now lives and works in Los Angeles, Calif.
 
Stuart Arends did his second residency at Tamarind Institute in March of this year and created five lithographs. Although Arends lives in Willard, N.M., his presence is international. Works by Arends can be found in permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Berlingieri Collection, Italy; Kramarsky Collection, New York; Microsoft Corporation; Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano, Switzerland; Palazzo delle Albere, Italy; and The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Arends's work reflects his concern with the physicality of the materials he uses to create his images, abstractions in which the marks become the subject matter. Color shifts, sometimes subtle and sometimes not, as well as fluid lines and rich surfaces that contrast with hard edges, produce a seductive elegance in the lithographs, including a three-dimensional piece, that Arends created in his collaborations with Tamarind printers.
 
Lesley Dill uses collage, thread, poetry and printmaking to portray relationships between language, the body, emotion and society. As stated in a press release published by the Hunter Museum of American Art, "words are Dill's 'spiritual armor' and she freely stitches and weaves them across the surfaces of her multi-layered works." Born in Bronxville, N.Y., Dill earned a BA in English, an MA in art education from Smith College, and an MFA from the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore. Dill's works are included in museums across the United States including the Art Institute of Chicago; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Rhode Island School of Design; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Yale University Art Museum, New Haven, Conn. Living in Brooklyn today, Dill continues to explore language and art through works on paper, sculpture and performance art.
 
Hung Liu returned to Tamarind in early August to create lithographs with Tamarind printers for the fourth time. Born in China in 1948, Hung lived in Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, when she was sent to the countryside to do hard labor as part of the Communist "re-education" effort. She eventually attended the University of California at San Diego and developed a distinguished career in the United States as a teacher and artist. She says that she arrived in the United States "with a 4,000 year old culture on my back and a late 20th century world in my face."
 
Hung Liu is known for her hauntingly beautiful paintings and prints that address issues of marginality and displacement. Looking for the "mythic pose" behind the human figure, Hung Liu takes her subjects from Chinese historical photographs and adds traditional, symbolic motifs to create a dialogue between ancient and contemporary history.
 
Mônica Nador was invited to Tamarind to work with high school students participating in Working Classroom, a program aimed at professional training in the visual and performing arts for youth from historically ignored communities. Assisted by Tamarind's one-year Professional Printer Training program students, Nador and the student artists created lithographs and stenciled banners similar to the murals Nador creates with her community in Brazil.  Her two new lithographs echo the vibrant murals she orchestrates throughout the poorest neighborhoods of São Paulo, Brazil. The titles of these works on paper, About Homes I and About Homes II, remind the viewer of Nador's ongoing work in Brazil. Working with the community and basic materials, she teaches them to create stenciled patterns on neighborhood walls, beautifying and creating a sense of pride in their environment. More about the project can be found online at http://tamarind.unm.edu.
 
Mary Mito who lives and works in Santa Fe, N.M., worked for months to draw the minutest details of her almost photo-realistic lithograph. Critic Arden Reed describes Mito's work: "With uncanny skill, Mary Mito brings the world into focus: ripples on the water's surface, a stick's shadow a scattering of sand. She devotes as much care to crafting dry weeds as Raphael did to folds on the Alba Madonna's cloak. She makes the rudest things eloquent. And because they are compelling to her, these things move us as well. She sees so that we may see."
 
Tamarind Institute is an internationally recognized fine art lithography workshop affiliated with the College of Fine Arts of the University of New Mexico. The institute preserves and promotes lithography through education, research, exhibitions, and artist residencies, and is credited with expanding the accessibility to and popularity of printmaking among contemporary artists around the world. Tamarind frequently sponsors programs with diverse populations, locally and internationally, benefitting University, Albuquerque, and New Mexico constituencies. For more information, call 505-277-3901, or email tamarind@unm.edu