"I think I run on indignation," June Wayne says.
Well, that's a relief. The artist known for reviving lithography, pushing aesthetic boundaries in a large body of prints, paintings and tapestries -- and speaking her mind on politics, feminism and art world issues -- has not mellowed with age.
And age is a sore point.
Wayne doesn't deny that she will turn 90 on Friday. But she's so full of energy and ideas that getting old is "a terrible handicap," she says. "Nobody makes business deals with someone my age. . . . A show is not less than a year away always, and sometimes three or four. If I want to take on a big project, people look at me and ask, 'Is she going to be around?' "
With a keen sense of justice and a compulsion to articulate her ideas, Wayne has been visibly and audibly "around" for a long time. A champion of free speech and artists' rights -- and a thorn in the side of conservative politicians -- she joined an artists' union in 1938 and testified before a congressional committee on behalf of a failed effort to preserve Works Progress Administration art programs as permanent agencies.
Fifty-two years later -- in 1990, when the National Endowment for the Arts was under attack for funding exhibitions deemed offensive by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and others -- she delivered the keynote address to the annual meeting of the College Art Assn., the nation's largest organization of visual arts professionals. The anti-censorship lecture, "Obscenity Reconsidered," brought thunderous applause and a standing ovation.
Wayne's activism has often overshadowed her art. But she is still ensconced in the light-filled industrial building in Hollywood where she has lived and worked for decades. And the petite artist with a cap of white hair has much to celebrate.
Rutgers University, which established the June Wayne Archive and Study Center in 2002 when she donated a large collection of graphic works, recently published "June Wayne: The Art of Everything." The richly illustrated, 464-page book documents her work from 1936 to 2006. The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris has a complete set of her prints. Individual works are in dozens of other public collections, and she has compiled a huge international resume of exhibitions.
But she still has much to do.
