Some Artists at the 2013 Encaustic Conference Hotel Fair

The hotel fair is an exciting component of the wonderful annual International Encaustic Conference organized by Joanne Mattera with Cherie Mittenthal of the Castle Hill Center for the Arts. We owe a debt of thanks to Debra Ramsay and Cora Jane Glasser for originally introducing what became an integral participatory way for conferees to show actual examples of their work. Real live work is such a treat these days instead of the flattened digital imagery we've all become so used to. (By the way, these images will all enlarge if you click on them.)

My work in the hallway outside our room
at the Provincetown Inn:
The Black One and The White One

Here they are from the other direction: The White One and The Black One

Work by Binnie Birstein outside our room - what lies beneath: reflect (left) and
what lies beneath: red line (right)

This year Binnie and I decided to bring some larger work to show in conjunction with our joint book: Gesture & Geometry In Material Exploration.

(Still available online for a mere $15. Just click the link in the sidebar to the right of this post.)

We also brought the more typical smaller work, as did most of our peers. Here are some photos I took of 22 artists and their work in their hotel rooms. This number is only about 10 percent of those who attended the conference and nearly everyone showed work at the hotel fair. I'm sorry that I was only able to visit a few of the rooms due to time restrictions and I apologize to those I have not included. Maybe next year!

Binnie Birstein

Nancy Natale

Rae Miller

Jane Guthridge (sorry I caught you blinking, Jane)

A work by Jane Guthridge

Helen Dannelly

Cheryl McLure with her innovative art mountain

Judy Klich

Susan Lasch Krevitt

A work by Susan Lasch Krevitt

Sandi Miot's ethereal jellyfish project scrolls

Sandi Miot

A few more of Sandi's jellyfish

Graceann Warn

A closer look at some work by Graceann (that black and white striped one in the
second row is now at home with me thanks to Graceann's generous trade.)

Mitchell Visosky

Susanne Arnold

A closer look at Susanne's work

Work by Lynda Ray

More Lynda Ray

A Lynda Ray work I had my eye on that Joanne scooped. Love it!

David A. Clark

Tracey Adams on the right with her work and a friend

Deborah Winiarski

Annette Liebling

Michele Thrane

Jane Nodine

Ruth Hiller

Installation by Milisa Galazzi

Patricia Dusman

Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi

A closer look at Diana's work

And finally, Binnie's stacked blocks with that wonderful view outside.

Reflecting on the Conference

Morning shadows along the public walkway that encircles the Provincetown Inn.
In the absolute foreground, the bench where I sat each morning to call home
and in the absolute background, the Monument.

click on pix to enlarge

Where to begin? I just came back last night from the encaustic conference/post-conference and living for a week in wonderful Provincetown. I had forgotten just how beautiful it is there. The sky is like nowhere else, and from my bed at the Provincetown Inn, I could look out the window and see that lovely sky above the sea and moors. That alone would make it worth the trip, but there was more, so much more.

Sky and low tide - view from our room near the breakwater, looking out
toward the hook of Cape Cod

The Conference Experience
This year's conference had a much different feeling to me, as a veteran of the other four. With the exception of a very select few who live on the Cape, we all had to travel some distance to arrive at our destination, and when you go to Provincetown, you're at the end of the road, you are not passing through on your way to somewhere else. The experience of the journey, the arrival at the beautiful place with its mix of small-scale architecture, gardens, seaviews, honkey-tonk, tourist traps and trappings, gays gone wild, art and art history, transformative light reflecting off ocean all around you and so many old and new friends joining together to exchange ideas and enjoy each other's art and company was incomparable. Whew!

David Clark during Monotype Marathon
in the Mayflower Room

Friday at the Conference
The Binster and I arrived around noon on Friday but were unable to get into our room until 3:00. That meant we couldn't unpack the very full mini-van, wash up, change and get ourselves settled until later in the day. Binnie, apparently not being as obsessive as me, was very interested in attending the Monotype Marathon and calmly watched the demos by Dottie Furlong-Gardner, Kathleen Lemoine and David Clark. I, on the other hand, was a restless type, counting the minutes to unpacking and more interested in saying hello to friends as they arrived, inspecting the wares in the Vendor Room and generally not being able to light until I got the key. Next year we plan on arriving Thursday so that my apparently all-consuming urge to arrange my things will be satisfied by the time the conference starts on Friday. Now we are hearing hints about the conference beginning even earlier than Friday with a pre-con session, so who knows how far in advance I may have to get there. I do like to have things organized.

Self Portrait by Marybeth Rothman, winner of the conference Juror's Award

Gallery Openings
It was quite a crush at Kobalt Gallery on Friday night where the conference show, Beeline, was being exhibited. Marybeth Rothman's large self-portrait work was prominently displayed and was given the Juror's Award by gallery owner, Francine D'Olimpio. See Marybeth's blog here for more info. Lots of wonderful work in encaustic was being shown and I recognized many names of friends. Of course it was great to see work in the flesh made by artists whose work I had only seen online.

Catherine Nash, Tsunami: Spirit Boat, winner of "Wax in Motion"
at Bowersock Gallery and awarded a solo show in 2012

There were also encaustic shows at Bowersock Gallery, where Catherine Nash was chosen for a solo show next year (see more here) as the winner of "Wax in Motion", juried by Steve Bowersock and Kim Bernard. And at Ernden Gallery, where Misa Galazzi was invited to show her work along with Deanna Wood, a gallery  artist.

Misa Galazzi, "Hatching" - not this piece but other work made with lace was shown at Ernden

"Comfort", a work by Deanna Wood, related to work shown at Ernden

At Rice Polak Gallery, Joanne Mattera, along with gallery owner Marla Rice, curated a show called "Surface Attraction." Several artists represented by the gallery exhibited their work along with that of Lynda Ray and Joanne. This show, not limited to work in encaustic, selected works that emphasized materiality - and also beautiful color.

Lynda Ray, "Terreplein", 18"x 24"

Joanne Mattera, "Uttar 295", 36"x36"

Wandering The Street
My band of friends (along with many other bands) wandered up and down Commercial Street from gallery to gallery as the night wore on and finally got to eat a delicious meal at Saki Sushi. By the time we finished eating and talking, it was fairly late and since no one was in the mood for clubbing or dancing (at least not that they told me), we headed home to the Inn. It was a long day after all the driving (and unpacking) so the comfortable beds were most welcome.

And speaking of beds, while there is much more to post, I'm winding down now and will be back with more soon - very soon.

What Makes a Professional Artist PLUS What's New?

What Defines a Professional Artist?
Yesterday I was at the hospital getting a "procedure" done. (Nothing serious and it all turned out OK. And, no, it wasn't a facelift or boob job.) While waiting on the table for the doctor to come in, I  chatted with the nurse. She asked what I did and I said I was an artist. Why is that so problematic to understand? Most people just have no conception of what that entails. I gave a one-sentence description of what kind of work I was doing when she asked, but I know she had no idea what I was talking about. She said that she could probably call herself an artist too because someone had told her that you're an artist if you sell something you have made and she had sold a couple of things. This was on the order of "my aunt paints" or "my cousin used to do art," that kind of thing. I said nothing much in response.

This image has nothing to do with what I'm writing about but I thought it was fun to look at. It's from "Hair Wars", a touring show of African-American hair extravaganza. Here's the link.

The chat and her comment really started me thinking about what it meant for me to be an artist. How to explain what the life of a professional artist is like? Would I call myself a professional just because I have a studio? I'm not represented by a gallery right now. Does that fact exclude me? I know that what I do is different from a hobby artist or Sunday painter, but just how would I define "professional?" What makes me any different from her outside of the amount of time I put in - or is that fact in itself a defining parameter?

The nurse told me that the technician who was going to assist in my procedure was also an artist and liked to talk about it. The idea filled me with dread - not another hobbyist, pullease. I'm here on the operating table, a captive audience, and in no condition to be tormented! But it turned out that he was what I would call somewhere between a hobbyist and a professional. We had a nice discussion about ricepaper and water media. He was a plein air painter (he used that term) and did landscapes in watercolor on a very thin ricepaper. He was influenced by Chinese brush technique. He defined success for himself by how many pieces he sold through an art group in Rhode Island where he displayed his work. I liked his attitude toward his work because I could tell that he really enjoyed it. He said that he liked to be spontaneous and experimental, and his work was painted in one session and was either framed or trashed.

Later that night I finally brought downstairs to my desk a huge armload of slides in plastic sheets - maybe 200 sheets of 20 slides (that's 4000 slides!). I had to go through them because I need to get some made into digital images. Those slides represented most of the work I had made from about 1990 to 2001, ten or eleven years worth. I would say there were 600 or 700 works pictured in the slides. Looking through them, I could see all the phases that my work went through after I graduated from MassArt in the late 1980s. From my current perspective, I could recognize what makes my work my own and has been there from the beginning. Isn't it weird that I could keep returning to the same thing time after time? And of course this is not something that's peculiar only to me. Each artist has his/her interests and approaches that makes him/her distinctive.

If you have any thoughts on what defines "professional artist" for you, I'd like to hear them.


A Wrinkle in Time - A New Show of Work by Binnie Birstein Opens This Weekend
I'm going down to Fairfield, CT on Saturday to my pal Binnie's opening. Her new work is really spectacular. It's very dark and powerful.

Be there or be square.

The Fifth Annual Encaustic Conference - Joanne Mattera announces the new location for 2011
This is really exciting. The conference will be held in Provincetown next June 3-5 at the Provincetown Inn with post-conference workshops at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill in Truro. Here's the link for all the details. What a perfect spot for a weekend-plus of hanging out, hearing great talks and attending workshops. I will be participating in the Saturday morning panel on media talking about blogging (what else?). I am psyched that the Binster and I have already reserved a great room on the water with its own little deck. It looks out over the breakwater to Long Point and the moors. We're gonna be the pahtay room. Grape soda all around!

An aerial view of the Provincetown Inn that looks like it's from an old postcard.

A very pink sunrise looking out along the breakwater toward Long Point. The Ptown Inn is on the left and perpendicular to this view.