Other women want diamonds and fur coats. I just want to live in a factory.
Beverly Pepper, artnet
Known for his distinguished acumen for collaboration and innovative printmaking techniques, Garner Tullis is regarded as one of the most prolific printers of the 20th century. Born in Cincinnati in 1939, Tullis’s fascination with print- and papermaking began in earnest while a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania. His non-conformist approach to papermaking led to a Fulbright Scholarship in Florence, where he studied the art of bronze casting and came to understand the importance of creative teamwork.
Upon his return to the United States in 1965 for a Carnegie Fellowship at Stanford University, Tullis formed close friendships with Arnoldo Pomodoro, Mark Di Suvero, and Peter Volkus, which provided welcome encouragement in the exploration of printmaking while Tullis was simultaneously working to introduce younger artists to the practice. With that end in mind, he opened the International Institute of Experimental Printmaking in Santa Cruz in 1972 and was able to place emphasis on two areas in which he excelled: papermaking and the communication ideas and the transfer of knowledge.
Over the course of his career, Tullis would work with over 200 artists (some multiple times) including Richard Diebenkorn, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Nolan, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Ryman, Sean Scully, Emilio Vedova and Friedel Dzubas. The creation of monotype prints, his primary focus, appealed to both painters and sculptors and many times, the ideas born in Tullis’s atelier would go on to inform the practices of the artists once they had returned to their own studios. He continued to open a succession of workshops throughout California, New York, Philadelphia, and Italy while also holding teaching positions at Bennington College, California State College, Stanislaus, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Davis, and Harvard University. He was also the first recipient of the Ralph T. King Award for outstanding contributions to printmaking from the Print Club of Cleveland. Today, he is remembered for his groundbreaking printed works and the formative relationships that enabled their creation.
Out of this community comes a third thing, the art. If there weren't different people involved, there wouldn't be this magic.
Garner Tullis
Beverly Pepper 1922–2020
Beverly Pepper was a groundbreaking American sculptor known for her monumental works in steel, iron, and stone, and for her pioneering contributions to site-specific and land art. Over a career spanning more than six decades, Pepper forged a singular path in the male-dominated field of large-scale sculpture, becoming one of the first artists to regularly integrate industrial materials and techniques with sculptural forms that echoed both the ancient and the modern.
Born Beverly Stoll in Brooklyn, New York, she studied advertising design at Pratt Institute before turning to painting. She later studied in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and worked briefly as a commercial art director. After traveling in Europe and North Africa, she settled in Italy in the early 1950s with her husband, writer Curtis Bill Pepper. It was during this period that she transitioned from painting to sculpture—a shift inspired by her exposure to ancient artifacts and architectural ruins in Cambodia.
Pepper’s early sculptural works were figurative and made of carved wood, but by the 1960s, she had begun working in welded steel and exploring abstraction. She gained international recognition after participating in the landmark 1962 Sculture nella città exhibition in Spoleto, Italy, where she exhibited alongside artists such as Alexander Calder and Lynn Chadwick. Her work soon evolved into a unique blend of Minimalist aesthetics and expressive form, characterized by crisp geometry, surface modulation, and a keen sensitivity to landscape.
Pepper often created works that were intended to remain permanently integrated with their environment. Her earthbound forms—part sculpture, part land art—invite viewers to move around and within them, blurring the lines between object, architecture, and nature. Notable commissions include Amphisculpture in L'Aquila, Palingenesis in Zurich, and the Denver Monoliths.
Pepper’s work is held in major museum collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Centre Pompidou. She received numerous awards and honors over her lifetime, including Italy’s Order of Merit and the International Sculpture Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and remains a towering figure in the history of modern sculpture.
