June Wayne established the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1960 and was key to the burgeoning interest in printmaking in general and lithography in particular among the highest ranking artists working in the USA during the 1960s and '70s.

Her own prints show her concern with exploring surface and texture- something which tied in directly with her fascination with scientific developments of the time. In her catalogue entry for this print the print historian Pat Gilmour writes: "The four majestic states of this landmark print suggest transitions in the flash of an atomic bomb......The print is the culmination of Wayne's water-tusche and salt experiments, and her inventive use of sand, twigs, wood, paper, glass and other materials as stop-outs......when Wayne, by then deeply interested in out space, visited Palomar Observatory in 1987 and saw an enlarged picture of the Andromeda Galaxy, she felt the astonomers had copied her. The title celebrates the fact that Tamarind's numbering system, initiated by its first Associate Director, Clinton Adams, had reached 1000 and the staff set the number aside for the Director's use. In fact, Adams, who did not want record numbers with less than three digits, began the sequence with number 101. It is therefore likely that Wayne' print was actually earlier in the sequence."