Live from the Encaustic Conference

I arrived at the Fourth Annual Encaustic Conference at Montserrat College of Art about 5:00 p.m. on Thursday night. There was a moderate amount of activity - early arrivals were registering and checking into the dorm and vendors were setting up their tables. Here are a LOT of images. (Note that you can click on the images to expand them to a larger size.)

First view of Best Foot Forward in the second floor hallway of the Hardie Building. This shot was taken around 6:00 p.m. Thursday night.

Here's a view looking in the other direction.

I'll be posting more images of Best Foot Forward as people arrive and hang their work.

VENDORS
Vendors open at 10:00 a.m. this morning (Friday). What great products they have! And some special sale items also.

Hylla Evans of Evans Encaustics - her usual wonderful colors plus those great hake brushes in 3 sizes

R and F Paints - great "scratch and dent" sale on pigment sticks!

Conrad Wilde paints and other supplies - luscious colors

Rodney Thompson's fabulous panels

Enkaustikos paints - a large selection of paints, brushes and tools

New vendor Kama Pigments has lots more than pigments...

including these fabulous giant spatulas

I have left out Paul Roland's encaustic hotboxes for monotypes and all the great encaustic books, including the beautiful new book by Daniella Woolf - but more about those in the next post.


WAX LIBRIS II - The Library Show

I scurried in and took a few shots in the library. I wanted to see how my own work looked of course. So here are a few - not intended to be all inclusive but just to whet your appetite for more.

This show was curated by Joanne Mattera and nicely installed in this book shelf and on the surrounding walls. My three deconstructed book works are on the wall at the left.

Top shelf: Julie Shaw Lutts (sorry I cut off the top of her work), middle shelf Miles Conrad and bottom shelf Gwen Plunkett.

Two works by Laura Moriarty, sort of geology in book form.

Top shelf left Deanna Wood and right Cynthia Winika. Bottom shelf Josie Rodriguez.

A work by Sandi Miot (sorry I don't have the title).

Installation of work with found objects and book covers by Mindy Nierenberg.


This is a long, image-filled post but I thought you might like to see some familiar faces from previous conferences. It is really great to connect with people in person.


THE LUMINOUS LANDSCAPE - the opening of the show at the Kensington Stobart Gallery in Salem.


Many of the early arrivals at the conference headed over to Salem for this opening of encaustic works in the gallery at the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem. The place was packed and it was a little difficult to see the work. So instead, I'm just showing you a few crowd pictures (and featured individuals). You'll have to get to Salem to see the work at a less crowded time. Click to get Kensington Stobart Gallery hours, directions and info.

New England Wax member Deb Claffey in the doorway to the gallery.

Greg Wright and Kellie Weeks, also NE Wax members.

Greg with his dynamic painting displayed in the gallery window

A shot from the opening - in center Charyl Weissbach, also a NEW member and an organizer of the LL group

What an appealing assortment of food presented by the gallery! And so refreshing to see fruit and vegetables instead of the dreary taco chips and salsa.

A shot of the opening crowd. See any familiar heads?

Another shot that also shows that some paintings were hanging on the wall.

Whew! What a lot of photos. I'll be back with more later.

Lush Dorm Living (The Real Post)

Well, maybe not lush, but definitely very nicely done. Nancy Drew brings you a preview of the Helena J. Sturnick Village - the new Montserrat College of Art dorm where a number of lucky Encaustic Conference conferees will be staying. (The rest of us will be over at night to hang out in your lounge areas.)

(By the way, I understand that the dorm has a good, working wireless network. I'm crossing my fingers.)

Entrance to the dorm. I loved the landscaping - simple, rugged and low maintenance.

Dorm lobby with reception desk. 

Each floor has three or four suites that are like individual apartments with a lounge area, kitchen, 3 or 4 bedrooms, a shower room and 2 or 3 half baths. This is a view into Unit 1C looking through to the lounge area at the back.

Kitchen area seating.

Kitchen microwave and standard oven.

Refrigerator duo - note that each unit has two refrigerators.

Kitchen sink and stove.

This lounge area is in the lobby of the second floor, but there is also a lounge area in each apartment unit.

Double sinks in unit bathroom. There are also two shower stalls in here.

Each unit also has two or three half baths with sink and toilet.

This bath on the 3rd floor is more traditional with two toilet stalls plus two sinks and one shower.

Here is a typical dorm room with two beds, two desks and two (unseen) wardrobes.

View from 3rd floor lobby lounge. The brick building across the way is the Hardie Building.

The view above looks out on this sustainable green roof planted with succulents and sporting a wire sculpture.

Back view of the dorm complex from the stairs of the public library on Beverly Common.

I was really impressed with this dorm. It has only been used by one year's worth of students and doesn't show much wear and tear. I liked the organization and layouts that seem very conducive to living in a group setting without feeling crowded. It's a fitting tribute to Helena J. Sturnick, the College's former president.

Next up: Live conference blogging beginnig Thursday. I hope that this year I'll have a workable wi-fi connection.

Ahead of the Crowd

I delivered my work to Montserrat today for the library show and did some pre-conference snooping around in my best Nancy Drew style. My investigation was strictly above board and I was accompanied by the Conference Director herself, Joanne Mattera. I took many pictures - so many that I'm dividing this post into two parts: Part One being the conference itself and Part Two (appearing  Wednesday a.m.) on the lovely new dorm.

Second Floor Hall Way Grid - this is where each conferee may hang one of their works.

One section of the grid showing the screw in place for hanging.

Note:  Don't forget to bring the label for your piece. See Joanne's label instructions here. Look for the red font.

Wrapped works for the library show, Wax Libris II. Ariel is patching the wall above the bookcase where pieces will be installed.

Justin readies drop cloths for painting the library wall.

Upstairs, one of the two vendor rooms with vendor supplies stacked in readiness.

Griddles and frying pans are ready to roll.

Rachel prepares a second floor demo room by wrapping the table.

Another demo room on the third floor stands ready for action.

A view from behind the podium in Room 201, a lecture room with internet connectivity and digital projector.

Outside, Beverly Common waits tranquilly. We saw the truck arriving with the tent that will be set up for serving lunches.

Down Cabot Street, the 301 Gallery quietly stands ready.

I'm peering through the window at a single preparator inside as he observes paintings he has hung for the Flow and Control show.

Still no sign of the wax balls that will be installed in this window of the gallery. I'm looking forward to seeing those.

Mighty decorative graffiti outside the 301 Gallery.

Farther down Cabot Street, the church where the assemblies are held has a new coat of yellow paint that gives it a fresh and non-traditional New England look.


This was a fun peek behind the scenes. It gave me some inkling of the vast amount of work entailed in running our wonderful annual encaustic conferences. Three cheers for Joanne Mattera who has a hand in everywhere - from organizing the wonderful roster to maintaining the vast and engaging conference blog to organizing boxes of vendor supplies and moving demo tables. What a dynamo!


Tomorrow: A look at the brand new Helena J. Sturnick Village dorm.

Tribute to Louise Bourgeois by Tracy Emin

Tracey Emin on Bourgeois' legacy (from BBC News)

Bourgeois was still working at the age of 98

Tracey Emin spoke to Radio 4's PM about artist Louise Bourgeois, who has died at the age of 98.

Emin, who had recently collaborated with Bourgeois, explained what it was like to work with her, why the art world was in mourning, and her lasting legacy for female artists.

Quoting Emin:
I first became aware of her work in the mid-1990s. Stuart Morgan had curated an exhibition at Tate Britain and Louise Bourgeois was in this exhibition. I was under the impression that she was this young American wild girl, so I was delighted to find out that she was in her 80s and had been in it for 45-50 years.

It was an inspiration that a woman could have that longevity and still be making really exciting and appealing work which still looked really young, and youthful. It didn't look like something from the past. It looked like something from here and now.

The thing I really loved about Louise Bourgeois was that she wasn't afraid of her emotions; she wasn't afraid of being totally female and releasing those kind of emotions into the world through her art as a lot of men have done through history - whether it's Van Gogh, whether it's Edvard Munch with his jealousy, whether it is Picasso about love. Woman are actually much better at this kind of thing than men, and Bourgeois wasn't the Queen of this, she was the King.

'Deeply privileged'

I had been working with Louise on a collaboration for the last two years. It was a symbiotic thing. Because we both work with our hearts and what actually drives us emotionally, we connected very, very well and I have felt deeply privileged to have been able to work with her. So she's not really an influence, more of a kindred spirit.

Louise made a series of watercolours, which she then made into prints, which she sent to me and I had to work on top of them. It took me months and months and months and months to do it, and Louise kept saying to me "don't worry - there is lots of time". I eventually finished them a few months ago. When you see them as a series you can't tell they have been made by two different artists, they look like they have been made by one artist.

Emin described Bourgeois as a 'kindred spirit'

I carried those images around the world with me and every place I went I thought 'now I'm going to do it, now I'm going to work on them' and I'd lay them out on the floor and I'd be too scared to touch them. When I did, I was delighted and happy with the results and Louise was as well. It's really sad to me because we were supposed to show them. We will show them but she won't be here to enjoy them. Maybe she will from somewhere else, I don't know.

Louise was formidable. The first time I met her, she shouted at me. She asked me how many times I had been to New York and, when I told her, she said in French 'why haven't you ever come to see me before?' which I took to mean she didn't like me, but actually she was giving me a major compliment.

Role model

The last time I saw her, I gave her a flower and she just spoke French to me the whole time and she was very sweet and incredibly interesting. The last hour we spent together we looked through a book of Jung's art and images and talked about birth and life.

Right until the very end, she was completely together and amazing and still working, which was fantastic - 98 and still making art. If that isn't a really good role model for female artists then I don't know what is.

She never lost sight of what she was, which was an artist and a really fantastic artist. She was so amazing and so important - and this is why the world had paid heed to her death.

When Picasso died everyone fainted, now Louise Bourgeois has died and everyone is crying. It is a really sad moment for art, but a really fantastic moment for female artists because at last we have someone who is up there with the greats.

Just Thinkin'

Like all the rest of the 241 people signed up to attend the Fourth Annual Encaustic Conference at Montserrat College of Art, I am getting ready to immerse myself in all things encaustic. Part of that readiness for me is preparing my talk about art blogging - The Why, How and Who of Art Blogging. So I'm thinking even more than usual about blogging.

I am preparing my talk not in Power Point (dumb-dumb bullets) but in the form of a blog. So after my presentation on June 16th, I'll link to that blog on this one and you can see the results of my extraordinary concentration.

Meanwhile, I'm thinkin' about:

Finding me a patron like Christian Boltanski did. You've probably read about his show "No Man's Land", which is not a feminist separatist colony, but an exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory consisting of a huge mound of recycled clothing and a 5-story crane that continually picks up and deposits bites of clothes from the piles. A soundtrack of a human heartbeat accompanies the action. Boltanski means the work to refer to the futility of trying to hold onto anything in life and the impossibility of ascertaining the meaning of life itself.

I'm sure the piece is impressive because of its enormous scale and the repetitive motion and sound, but what most interested me in the review was the paragraph on page 2 that described the deal Boltanski has with an art collector and professional gambler named David Walsh. This uber-patron has agreed to pay Boltanski $2500 per month FOR LIFE to permit a video camera in his studio to document his "working life." Truly Art in the Studio, the video footage will eventually be transmitted 24/7 from a museum in Tasmania that Walsh plans to open in 2011. The gamble for Walsh is that Boltanski will die soon and reduce the price of the artwork, whereas Boltanski is banking on his life continuing. “Of course,” Mr. Walsh added, referring to the value of the work, “It would be absolutely great if he died in his studio. But I don’t think it’s ethical to organize it.” (quote from the linked NYT review). Such a deal!



Hoping my brain's not turning to mush the more I surf:
From the C-Monster blog, a report from Wired magazine by Nicholas Carr headed "The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains" about how online reading and hypertext linking are affecting the human brain. It seems that online reading makes us read faster, more shallowly and with less retention than reading a text. Is it because we are distracted by the embedded hyperlinks or because we're thinking about the next blog or website we're going to visit or is the boss looking over our shoulder? This is a pretty interesting article that also talks about so-called "working memory" versus long-term memory.

My cognitive load is shattering

Working memory (also referred to as "cognitive load") is used as a scratch pad for holding onto information until it can be stored more permanently. But, like a computer's temporary storage for copied and pasted material (whose name I can't recall due to a flaw in my long-term memory), items in the working memory only stay there until they are transferred or replaced by something new. When we are distracted, the working memory is unable to retain the information and transfer it into permanent storage where we can draw on it for use in deep thoughts of a complex nature. (Something beyond what the Kardashians are up to this week.)

So when we skip around through all those links or multi-task, we are dropping our cognitive load - sort of like Boltanski's piles of clothes. No wonder I feel like my brain is a sieve sometimes; it is!

    
Having my brain turned to mush by trying to decipher artspeak:
From Sharon Butler's Two Coats of Paint blog (see how many blogs I'm reading!), an item about Gerhard Richter being pissed off about being by-passed for the 2011 Venice Biennale in favor of a performance artist named Christoph Schlingensief. Curator Suzanne Gaensheimer says that she chose Schlingensief (now there's a mouthful of names) because he "challenges both the content and the form of decidedness while transgressing borders." Excuse me, but WTF is that supposed to mean? Why it means, "I view his work as a contribution to discussions about the deterritorialization of the arts and to questions regarding the social relevance of art," she says. So is all art going to be on Facebook?, I ask. Are we going to deterritorialize and social network it into nothingness?, I ask.

Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting)," 2009, oil on canvas, 84cm x 84cm

I know, I know, I'm a dinosaur who thinks painting and sculpture are far more important than (at least most) performance and video. That stuff is all so impermanent and fleeting - far too internettish and not a permanent load for my cognizance the way a Richter is.

Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild (Abstract Painting), 1994