Explore the dramatic surge of women printmakers in recent decades and the women who shaped collaborative printmaking over the past 60 years.

Head of a Woman explores the dramatic surge of women printmakers in recent decades and the women who shaped collaborative printmaking over the past sixty years. As Tamarind was instrumental in launching the American print revival in the 1960s, Tamarind’s history and its many contributions will be a central part of the dialogue. Additionally, printers and experts outside of Tamarind will be included in the program to shape a broader understanding of collaborative printmaking and its parallel history with the women’s movement.

This focus on women in printmaking was developed around the ideas generated through the 2019 Frederick Hammersley Artist Residency with New York-based artist Danielle Orchard. Her depiction of women in domestic spaces references early 20th century art history, redressing the limited representation of women as subject and muse. Her own visual language borrows openly from Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Vuillard, Bonnard, and many others. Orchard inserts her bold contemporary women into these historic tropes, skillfully complicating the narrative, with figures that bear the weight and posture of current problems and anxieties. The monumental lithographs created at Tamarind during her residency prompted the title for the symposium, with a nod to the many anonymous subjects throughout art history simply titled Head of a Woman. In this context, Head of a Woman also plays on the idea that the American print renaissance as we know it was launched by the imagination, perseverance, and conceptual will of three prominent women: Tatyana Grosman, who founded ULAE in 1957; June Wayne, who founded Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1960; and Kathan Brown, who founded Crown Point Press in 1962. From the head of a woman came the field of collaborative printmaking.