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Painting during a thunderstorm

It is rainy season here in South Florida. It is actually hurricane season, but since no threat of a hurricane, I will just say rainy season. Had a day off from work and it was a stormy day. I love to paint when it is like that. I guess it comes from my childhood. Growing up in NYC, you only had 8 weeks of summer weather and my mom would not let you stay inside. We went to the beach almost everyday and even when it was not summer, we had to be outside in the nice weather. So I guess I feel guilty to be inside when I have a day off to spend in my studio. I keep telling myself that it is always nice weather in South Florida, and there is no winter, but you know how mom’s just get that “guilt” into you. So I tend to work very late at night, or when I have a rainy day and can’t be outside. So I worked all day on this one piece. I can’t think of a name for it, but since it is a dark painting and it was storming all day, I should name it “Storm”  I used my small little iron that I purchased while at the Third Annual Encaustic Conference. The iron works best with small pieces, and it was a challenge to use the small iron for this size painting. So I had to use the blow torch for most of it.  So if anyone can think of a name for this painting, I am open to suggestions. I must have 20 layers of wax on this piece.

see all the drips

encaustic wax and gauze

Miles Conrad 3D encaustic class at Monserrat

"twist" mounted and ready to hang

my little wax creations

I am still decompressing from the Third National Encaustic Conference. After the conference I took a workshop with Miles Conrad. It was titled encaustic in 3D. Sculpture has never been my thing, but this class was amazing. Too bad I didn’t have an extra piece of luggage to bring all my mini-sculpture pieces home (and the airlines would not allow me to carry them on) so I had to leave my little creations behind. So all have have are my photo’s to show what I did.  Miles set up the workshop so that everyone had all the materials for each project in small bags and each numbered so that we all started with the same “stuff” but each piece was unique to each artist. I will incorporate many of the sculpture techniques that he showed us. Her are a few photos of my wax sculptures

Fusing with the Hot Iron

When I walked into the vendor room at Monserrat College, there was a table with small irons that I have seen from the UK. Every demo that I have seen on the internet show this little iron, making landscape and floral paintings. Since my work is abstract I never thought of any use for this tiny iron. When I experiment at home, I have used a small travel iron, but have found that I can’t do anything but make a mess. So when Iwalked into my class this morning and saw that the iron demo was with this little aqua handled iron that I had already put on my list as do not bother with, I was in for a big surprised.

Teaching the class is Andrea Bird from Canada, and the AMAZING things that she showed us that you could do with this iron was beyond amazing. Of course I could not wait for the demo to be over, just so I could run back over to her booth to purchase my iron.  Here is the link to her site www.waxworkencaustics.com  for info on her and her iron. She also had encaustic medium that her son produces and it had the best label I have seen.

Andrea demonstrated how to make drips flat- I know that sounds odd, but flat drips just look great.

Here are pictures of the demo that Andrea pre

demostrating flat drips

collage with iron

texture created with the iron

sented

Andrea Bird

Friday I arrived at Monserrat

My flight arrived 30 minutes early into Logan Airport. I was surprised at how chilly it is up here in New England. Living in South Florida for 15 years has thinned my blood. So I have arrived at the Third National Encaustic Art Conference at Monserrat College of Art located in Beverly, MA.

Since Friday is an open Demostration day, I decided to stop by and say hello to Paula Roland. I have taken 2 workshops with Paula and I encourage everyone to go. You can find the link on this site. Paula also won honorable mention in the show that the college curated.(2 of her 3 paintings are shown in this post)

Here is a photo of Paula demonstrating monotype on her “HOT BOX”. The other photo is of her artwork that is hanging at the 301 Cabot Street gallery

Paula at the Hot Box

2 pieces from the 301 gallery

Going to another encaustic workshop

All set for Monserrat this weekend and I have signed up for Shawna Moore’s art workshop in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The workshop will be at the Art Association of Jackson Hole.  The class needs 8 students all paid up and confirmed.As of June 1st, they have only 6 artists paid and 2 with reservations. My concern is that I have non-refundable airline tickets and I am keeping my fingers crossed that the last 2 artists confirm their reservations. They will not host the workshop with less than 8 students. Since I am traveling from South Florida I needed to book my flight early as there are no direct flights to Jackson Hole from South Florida and flights fill up quickly. So if anyone is interested, please check out Shawna website at www.shawnamoore.com (she has a link to the Jackson Hole site) or www.artassociation.org. I am keeeping my fingers crossed that this workshop is a go.

All set for Monserrat

I just finalized my travel plans to attend the National Encaustic Conference in Monserrat. I can’t wait. I have not done any work in the studio since last November. Since I have a full-time non-art career that has been taking up ALL of my time. So I hope that this trip will get me back into the studio.

Thanks Shannon

Thanks to Shannon from www.beeswaxteam.com for introducing herself to me. She has a group of artists that work in encaustic and sell on Etsy. Thanks for letting me join and very interesting site. I hope to be participate in some of their activities come the New Year. Since I work in retail, this is the busy season so I have little time to work on my art. During the holiday season I end up working what feels like 2 months in a row. And it takes my until Feb. to recover from Black Friday. I am already having nightmares about that day. If shoppers think it is hard to stand on line and shop. Think how hard it is for the retail employee. I work about 17 hours that day after cooking thanksgiving, cleaning up, getting up at 5am to get to the store by 7, open the registers, open the doors at 8 and shoppers are waiting outside. I am lucky if I have time to go the bathroom, let alone get home for dinner and then get up on Saturday and do it all again. It is sheer madness. You see, I was writing about the beeswaxteam and I am already consumed with Black Friday.

Size doesn’t matter…

The local art guild had a call for artists for abstractions.  So I had worked on a small piece (8×10) and entered it. Of course, my husband always thinks that to show your work it has to be BIG. So as usual we had a LOUD discussion of which piece to enter. (just for the record, I didn’t ask him which piece, I picked one and he pointed to another in the studio and said how about that one the rest is the LOUD discussion) I always tell him that art is about content and not size. I remember in school, I would be so angry at the kid who asked the teacher after giving a writing assignment would have to ask how many words does it need to be. I always felt that I had to work at that persons standard and not my own.  I was always of the belief that it is about content and not how long the essay is. Same for me about art. My instinct told me to select and enter the small piece and I did. I won a judges recognition for my piece. I was so happy.  I am more proud of this piece because it is representative of my art style and also because the Juror mailed me a letter thanking me for entering with his critique. The last exhibit I won 3rd place and money, but the letter from the juror meant so much more.  This work is on display until Oct 4th at  Art Expressions Gallery, 1438 NE 26th Street, Ft. Lauderdale, Fl 33305

Staycation + Teaching=Creativity

I have been so busy on my “Staycation”. I started teaching classes in my study and working on a new series of work. While setting up my studio for classes,  I started to make tests boards, which led to my next series of work. Now that I am set up for “teaching” mode my creativity has kicked in. I guess when I see everything out and all “neat” it inspires me to work. Of course I made such a mess, that I had to “re-clean” the studio for the class. But tomorrow it is back to my “real” job, so I need to make the most of this creative time. The photo is of my new series (still trying to name it) made from beeswax/powdered graphite/encaustic pigment.