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.

When Does Art Become Product?

Here's an early peek at the card for the Pick Up the Pieces/Red Dot event that Conrad Wilde Gallery is hosting beginning May 1st. In case you can't read the names of the artists whose work is shown, they are, beginning at the top left and continuing in a clockwise rotation: Emilia Arana, Mo Godbeer, Nancy Natale and Eileen P. Goldenberg. I was pleased and surprised to be included on the card, and I like the blue/orange combo that is one of my favorites.

I hope that Conrad Wilde Gallery is able to make enough from this special sale to reimburse the artists whose work was stolen. The donated works will also be available for purchase online from the gallery. (Click here for a link to Conrad Wilde Gallery with more info on the show.)

How Does It Feel?
Last night I spoke to reporter Yael Schusterman who is doing a story on the Gallery and the show for the Arizona Daily Star. She asked me what I felt when I found out that my work was stolen. I told her that I didn't have much of an emotional reaction about the theft of my own work; I felt much worse for the gallery and for the other artists. I don't know why that is exactly except that I think once my work leaves the studio, I really disconnect from it. It's different when the work is still in the studio.  I remember when I first began making art and the strong connection that I felt to my work. When I first sold a piece, it felt like parting with my firstborn, but that's no longer the case.

I was in the home of my "biggest collectors" last week.  They are friends who have been very supportive of my work and have purchased a large number of pieces over the years. Looking at my work on their walls was a little surprising to me because I had forgotten some of it, and I was pleased that I thought most of the work was successful. There were a couple of pieces that I would rework a bit, but all in all, it was OK. Did I feel a big connection? Not really, although I could envision myself putting down the strokes and making the works. However, I no longer felt that the work was a part of me.

Dumpster Diving
After I got off the phone with Yael, I was (as usual after I talk to a reporter) filled with regret about my runaway mouth. I have yet to learn the lesson that many times less is more and the less you say, the less can be taken the wrong way and come around to bite you in the ass and/or make you look like the fool you (sometimes) are. I guess what got me going was the reporter's revelation that the three recovered works (my two plus one by Deanna Wood) were found not just in an alley, but in a dumpster!

I had visualized them lying picturesquely against a mossy wall somewhere, but the reality of their being tossed in a dumpster along with the tailends of someone's supper, painted a different picture for me.

Marketing Art
Well, discovering that the dumpster was the place where my work wound up, of course made me say that I wouldn't be surprised if all the work ended up in a dumpster somewhere. What I meant by this is that the paintings could not be readily exchanged for the fast buck the way that electronic equipment could be, that they would have to be marketed. How would crooks market art? Especially art by artists whose names are not among those totally recognizable by any household? (The question of which names those would be will be put aside for the moment.) For the most part, this art requires an intermediary to attest to its value. This is the important role that the gallery plays in marketing art. If you are a crook and are trying to sell art on a street corner (or out of a dumpster), chances are you will not hold the same position of critical authority in the art market.

When I first heard about the theft and saw all the stolen pieces together on the reward poster, I thought that someone had stolen a nice collection for their walls. All that work would look great hanging in someone's house! But that's a delusional view based on the belief that someone who makes their living (apparently) by breaking and entering will want to surround themselves with original art. I think that unless the stolen pieces can be exchanged for cash, drugs or some other "valuable" commodity, they are worthless and will end up in a dumpster or out in the desert where they will melt. (That sounds even worse than going to the dumpster.)

Note to Tucson police and/or other interested Tucson resident: map out all the dumpster locations in town and make regularly-scheduled investigatory visits. 

What's It All About, Alfie?
(Unless you are Of A Certain Age, that heading, the movie and the song of the same name will mean little or nothing to you.) So there I was after the conversation with the reporter, thinking how little connection I felt to the art I made and how the art on its own became just so much dumpster filler. Is there a spark that originates in the artist and infuses art with meaning like the finger of God bringing Adam to life on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

So here I am again, brought back to my funk and pondering Life's Deeper Meaning with no result in sight. It's a good thing that I am picking up a doggie house guest this afternoon to cheer me up. But more about that later.

Call for Art - Pick Up The Pieces Show

The Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson is calling for donations of art in any medium with a maximum size of 16" x 16" to be sold in their Red Dot "Pick Up the Pieces" show running at the gallery from May 1 through May 29th. Work will be priced below market value for quick sale to benefit artists whose work was stolen from the gallery at the end of March. Get full details at the gallery's website: http://www.conradwildegallery.com/

Back Story
For five years the Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson has been hosting an annual encaustic invitational show. This year was the first time that I submitted work and it was accepted for the Fifth Annual Encaustic Invitational in February. Some time after the show closed on Saturday night, March 26th, the gallery was burglarized. Not only were all their computers and electronic equipment stolen, but so were 13 paintings from the show. The gallery had self insured the artists' work, meaning that they guaranteed to reimburse the artists for their work if anything happened to it while it was in their care.

"Redacted" - one of the recovered paintings.

"Tale of Shadows" also recovered.

The gallery offered a reward for the no-questions-asked return of the paintings, and a few days after the theft, they got a call that alerted them to three paintings that had been left in an alley. Two of those were my paintings. They are slightly damaged, according to Miles Conrad, but probably can be repaired without too much trouble. Deanna Woods' piece was the third piece found, and I don't know the state that it was in. So there are still 10 paintings missing. Here's the link showing them all: http://www.conradwildegallery.com/returnthepaintings.html If you should happen to see any of them, please alert the gallery.

Meanwhile, please take a look around your studio and see if you have some small pieces that you can donate to the gallery. This is really a worthwhile cause. The Conrad Wilde Gallery is a small but influential gallery run by really fine people. Please help them and the artists whose work was stolen to recover from this contemptible theft.

Powering Up

I'm working on my Power Point presentation about encaustic for the Smith College class in Historic Methods and Materials. The 8-10 students are coming to my studio next Tuesday for a demonstration of encaustic painting and then we'll go over to Smith so I can show my PP. On Thursday they will come back and experiment with the medium themselves.

Artists painting a sculpture of Herakles, Red Figure Apulian Column Krater.
GREEK Anonymous , 4th BCE Greek Classic Ceramics
Earthenware | Italy. | New York. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

I was finally able to get this picture from a classical Greek vase dug up in Italy . The image appears on the cover of the 13th edition of Gardner's Art Through the Ages, as I saw on Amazon, but I couldn't get it from there. Neither did it turn up on the searches I made of the Metropolitan Museum which now owns the vase.  Google eventually found it at  gallery.sjsu.edu/arth198/painting/encaustic.html. Where would we be without Google?

Here is the painter's nude assistant manning the charcoal brazier containing cylinders of molten encaustic and heated tools.

And on the other side of the statue, the bearded artist applies the paint to Herakles's lion skin cloak.

I also found an image of these tools, called cauteria in the plural (cauterium, singular), that were used to apply and smooth the wax.


I wish I knew who the figure was that is shown above the assistant. I guess it must be the god Herakles (also known as Hercules) watching his statue get painted. I didn't think that Hercules was a god, but I just read up on him and found that he was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman and so was a god. (Note: one of our dogs is named Hercules and we treat him like a god.)


Addendum: Joanne Mattera sent me some images she took of this vase at the Metropolitan Museum. These are just great for getting a sense of the size of the piece and clarity of the images.

When you look at these images, you can see that it is Daddy Zeus above the assistant on the left and then Herakles (Hercules) in the flesh looking on at the painting from the right.

You can tell it's him because of the lionskin cloak and the club.

A very big thank you to Joanne for sending me these irreplaceable images of what is believed to be the only depiction of an encaustic painter plying his trade on a statue.

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On another note...

So encaustic is much on my mind, and looky here, what I got via email:

I am so happy to be included in this show and to have an image (cropped) of my work appear on the card and in the press release. I wish I could go to Tucson for the opening but it's not in the cards right now. Maybe next time. The wonder of it all is that I know just about every one of the artists included in the show thanks to the encaustic conference. And of course I know Miles Conrad from the conference, too. That is such a nice feeling to be among friends even in absentia.

Days Like This

Some days when I'm in the studio I make all the "right" decisions. Things just seem to go smoothly and I'm in the flow of it all, moving toward a conclusion or completion. Other days - such as today - I'm just in my own way and feeling too scattered to get anything done or even make a good start.

On the highway to studio hell (not really)

I began five or six different pieces today and was dissatisfied with all of them. I started building something and put two pieces of wood in the wrong place three different times! All I could do was laugh at myself and be happy that I had noticed before the glue dried and it was too late to move them.

One side wasn't talking to the other - or maybe they were both talking at once.

Days like today used to worry me because I thought I had lost "it" - that magical essence that allowed me to make art. But after many years I know that I was just overtired and unfocused. I started a new job (project) this week that drained my energy and took away too much studio time. And there was my poor brain today - stuck between hemispheres: the left brain being the bookkeeping I've been doing all week and the right brain being me foundering in the studio.

So I just kept going, moving from one thing to another, trying to make a good move. I was working on one of the special projects New England Wax has taken on: using encaustic with paper. I didn't like the size and the paper didn't allow me to work the way I usually do, so I had to invent something new and it just wasn't happening. Finally, when I was just ready to go home, I think I came up with something that had some potential. We'll see.

Some Good News: I was invited to participate in the 5th Annual Encaustic Invitational at the Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson, AZ in March. Wouldn't I like to take a trip out there for the opening! March is a great time to leave New England - for any reason, and I'd like the opportunity of visiting Tucson. I hear it's a great place.