Richard Newlin (right) printing with Hank Hine on a Nathan Oliveira lithograph, 1972
Tamarind Master Printer Richard Newlin and Yoko Saito founded their publishing and printmaking initiative in Berkeley during 1975.
Newlin had gone to Cirrus Editions in Los Angeles to help print an Ed Ruscha lithograph for the American bicentennial. Vija Celmins was drawing Ocean, 1975 at the next table. Bruce Nauman, Chris Burden, and Joe Goode came through. Someone recommended an unusual accountant in Santa Monica
named Neil Elias who helped artists become businesses. His office was a vintage airplane cabin. He wore a leather aviator pilot's cap and a propeller emblem that read "Keep 'Em Flying." He introduced Newlin to the wonders
of double entry bookkeeping and the business lifted off.
Newlin and Saito relocated to Houston, Texas and incorporated Houston Fine Art Press in 1980. For more than forty years they have produced and published lithographs, woodblocks, linocuts, and sculptures by invited, significant artists.
They have published under their imprint and co-published with the Museum
of Modern Art, the Menil Collection, and the Guggenheim important books
and monographs.