Encaustic painting is painting with heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. In an era when collage is being explored deeply, encaustic is a natural medium, since it allows both painterly explorations of color and the possibility of embedding objects and layering. The technique has been around since (at least) ancient Egypt, when it was used to create mummy portraits.

In 1955, Jasper Johns used this technique to create one of the first of his flag paintings. The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the process:

“The painting consists of three separately stretched panels of cotton fabric joined at the back: the forty-eight stars area; the seven upper stripes to the right of the stars area; and the long area of the six stripes below. The painting is predominantly in the wax-based medium of encaustic. Johns worked on each panel separately, first laying down the overall flag design in charcoal. After applying a thin ground of unbleached, translucent beeswax, he built up the stars, the negative areas around them, and the stripes with applications of collage: small cut-out pieces of newsprint, other paper, and bits of fabric. He dipped these into molten beeswax and adhered them to the surface while the wax was hot. He then joined the three panels and painted over the entire surface with short, deliberate strokes of more unpigmented beeswax and touches of white oil paint.”

I have been poking around the internet, gathering more information on this technique. The most fascinating bit that I have found so far is a 12 page booklet titled, “Examples of Stencils and Masks” by Linda Womack from the 2008 National Encaustic Conference. Linda is the author of a book on the topic, Embracing Encaustic (which I have not seen yet) and the teacher of a recent workshop at the John C.Campbell Folk School. She has posted lots of exciting photos of the workshop on her blog.

The Second National Conference of Encaustic Painting at Montserrat took place June 6-8, 2008. Several bloggers have posted their comments on the conference, including an online presentation of the talk, “Encaustic with a Textile Sensibility” (Thanks to Joanne Mattera for this list!):

• Linda Womack’s Embracing Encaustic: Conference, Day 1; Conference Days 2 and 3; Linda’s Critique with Kay WalkingStick)
• Judy Wise’s blog: Encaustic Conference, Part 1; And Judy’s close encounter with Norman Laliberte
• Deanna Wood’s Artist Emerging blog
• Nash Hyon’s Encaustic Process blog
• Supria’s Encaustic Musings blog
• Daniella Woolf’s Encaustifiberopolis blog, which features an excerpted look at her talk “Encaustic with a Textile Sensibility” She begins, “I opened the door to encaustic from my perspective as a textile sculptor. The encaustic “medium” energized my work, and forever changed me.”

I’m not sure that I am ready to take the plunge into encaustic, but the layerings give me some inspiration for ways to take my acrylic paintings and textiles!

images:
top: Metropolitan Museum of Art via Flickr artist ggnyc
middle: Elise Wagner
bottom: Linda Womack

To stay fresh in textile arts, I like to spend time reading about and doing pastel drawings and paintings. This week I have been going through the painting blog of Nancy Reyner who has a wonderful idea for shaking your creativity loose.

“Turn Up the Volume on the Inner Voice
I discovered an easy and surprisingly beneficial painting warm-up exercise. This 20 minute exercise, performed daily for one month (or even less) will do wonders for increasing your creativity, getting rid of artistic blocks, and finding new styles or shifting your work. I came up with this after reading ‘Writing Down the Bones’ by Natalie Goldberg, a popular book for writers to increase their writing and creative abilities. Natalie suggested that writers should ‘clear their head’ by filling notebooks, and write in a stream of consciousness fashion, by writing without thinking, very directly, and not editing. I decided to transform this freestyle writing exercise to something that would work for painters. This is how it works: First get a pile of inexpensive painting surfaces that don’t feel precious to you. I gessoed some scraps of canvas that I had lying around. Gessoed sheets of paper, or cardboard work well too. Just don’t get too small in size. My scraps were actually around 16′ x 20′. The night before you start set everything up for painting so that you can just jump right in without any preparations. Pick a time, preferably first thing in the morning, and stick to a schedule for a length of time. Pick what works for you,perhaps trying one week to see how it goes, but you need at least 5 days in a row to make a good assessment. Make a commitment to acting out your very first thought. Now here is the key. Your first thought is the inner voice. Your second thought is the ‘parent’. We are so accustomed to paying attention to the second voice that the first is sometimes faint and barely there. This exercise will strengthen that first voice, sometimes called the ‘inner child’. I like using the phrase ‘first voice’ better or I feel like I am in therapy.”

Go to her blog and read the full entry. You may recognize yourself in her tale of shaking free. Reyner also has a new book, Acrylic Revolution, which I’ve ordered and am eagerly awaiting the postman’s delivery!

Balsa Foam, a new material for aspiring stone carvers with limited space or strength for whacking away with a hammer and chisel. I came across this material on the Flicker space of icklebird ( a pseudonym for a girl named Su in Las Vegas – which is a pseudonym for…)

From what I can tell, Su is a middle school art teacher – what I would have given to have an art teacher like her! From my middle school art experience, I remember a hot attic room and drawing brown paper bags and bleached cows skulls – for months. She has some wonderful school projects at Flickr!

I love the expressions and the detail on these sculptures! Trying to find out more on this material, Balsa Foam, Dick Blick glowingly describes it: “Balsa Foam is an amazing plastic foam that carves like butter and paints like wood. It’s ideal for sculpting and model making because it can be carved, chiseled, sawed, textured, or embossed with sharp-edged detail.”

A more detailed technical report on the stuff tells us: “With the 7 lb. density, a fondue skewer makes an effective stylus. Any kind of hand saw will cut easily through Balsa-Foam I and II. You can also use a steel ruler to make push-cuts. A series of push cuts will enable you to cut out complex interior shapes. Just be careful to keep the ruler at a 90 degree angle…..Since Balsa-Foam has no “memory” or rebound, it will hold an impression. This means that you can create many different types of surface detail by simply pressing the appropriate object into the surface. Surface texture can be enhanced using a tool to make impressions. The rounded end of a thin paint brush handle, for example quickly dents the foam for a brown stone surface effect. If you need a specially shaped rectangular, triangular or odd-shaped hole, consider carving the positive counterpart for a piece of wood. This technique, which is unique to Balsa-Foam, can save a lot of time on repeating detail. Balsa-Foam III is too hard to impress easily, but the right metal tools can make effective small impressions.”

Sounds like a trip to my local art supply store is in my near future!

We always new that textiles were electric! Turns out that they are more powerful than we ever guessed, or at least that they might be:

“Georgia Tech researchers have taken an important step toward creating fabrics that could generate power from the wearer’s walking, breathing, and heartbeats. The researchers, led by materials-science professor Zhong Lin Wang, have made a flexible fiber coated with zinc oxide nanowires that can convert mechanical energy into electricity. The fibers, the researchers say, should be able to harvest any kind of vibration or motion for electric current…

By the researchers’ calculations, a square meter of fabric made from the fibers could put out as much as 80 milliwatts–enough to power portable electronics. The development could make shirts and shoes that power iPods and medical implants, curtains that generate power when they flap in the wind, and tents that power portable electronics devices.” MIT Technology Review

Pretty amazing. Then again, will we need an electrical engineering background to hookup our dress?

In this morning’s New York Times, there is an article about Cal Lane, sculptor who whittles thick industrial metal into graceful lacy motifs reminiscent of your grandmother’s wedding dress or of delicate Scherenschnitte.

Ms. Lane, 39, grew up on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, and studied welding, planning to use the technique to make art (and, if that proved impossible, simply to make a living). Some sculptors, including Richard Serra, who has called welding “a form of stitching,” use the technique to join pieces of metal. Ms. Lane, by contrast, uses her torch to cut baroque patterns into such mundane objects as shovels, Dumpsters and old oil drums.

The work is about the contrasts between the industrial and the fanciful, the opaque and the transparent. Ms. Lane described herself as ‘a person who always has opposites in my head.’

In an artist’s statement, Lane says about her work:

“I like to work as a visual devil’s advocate, using contradiction as a vehicle for finding my way to an empathetic image, an image of opposition that creates a balance – as well as a clash – by comparing and contrasting ideas and materials.This manifested in a series of “Industrial Doilies”, pulling together industrial and domestic life as well as relationships of strong and delicate, masculine and feminine, practical and frivolity, ornament and function. There is also a secondary relationship being explored here, of lace used in religious ceremonies as in weddings, christenings and funerals,

In this Structure I hand cut lace trimming patterns into 9 I-beams, then constructed a tower, simultaneously macho, and of delicate finery. The metaphor of lace further intrigued me by its associations of hiding and exposing at the same time; like a veil to cover, or lingerie to reveal. It also introduces a kind of humor through the form of unexpected relationships. Like a Wrestler in a tutu, the absurdity of having opposing extremist stances is there for reaction and not rational understanding; the rational discussion arises in the search for how one thing defines the other by its proximity.”

Links to more of Cal Lane’s work:

• Cal Lane’s web site
• Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
• Page and Strange Gallery

Designer Stefan Mumaw (co-author a book on jumpstarting your creativity, Caffeine for the Creative Mind) created a list of 17 Rules For Designers. This list was originally published in the How Blog. I edited the list down a bit to a few jolts that might inspire the lagging artist:

1. Pay attention to detail and everything that surrounds you.
A designer should have to be able to pay attention to the small details in both design and life. Sometimes the details that most individuals would either overlook or be too lazy to pay attention to will make a project great. Spell check everything, find value in correct punctuation, calibrate your monitors, color-correct images, go to press checks, make sure it works on every browser and every platform, build a mockup, name your layers, organize fonts, call…don’t email, backup your files and stop naming things FINAL. Like insurance, the positive and negative results are usually magnified in crisis. This is true of one’s environment too. Noticing the details of an eroded piece of wood might lead to you using it as a brush or background image in a project that you’re working on. Design is all around us wherever we go (even nature has it’s own design), and being able to pay attention to it often helps in some way or another.

2. Outwardly express your passion.
Passionless design is like a grill with no propane. If you’re not passionate about what you do, your work will show it, your character will show it, your life will show it, so find some charcoal or do something else.

3. Fail triumphantly.
This is stolen from Disney’s “Meet the Robinsons” but it’s 100% true. If you’re not willing to go so far out on a limb that you fail miserably, you’re not getting any better. Success may not be at the end of the branch, but anyone and everyone can grab the answers that are around the roots.

4. Know your limitations.
My kids often bite off more than they can chew at dinner and the result is really uncomfortable to watch. It usually involves watery eyes and a fresh napkin. Know what we have the ability to do and where we’ll need help early in the process. There’s nothing wrong with getting help or saying “no.”

8. Remove thy pride.
We pour ourselves into our work, we’re proud of the solutions and ideas we generate, but what separates us is the client. We do this for them, we are communicators first, and as such, we need to be able to put aside our pride for the sake of the client and their wishes/goals/business. It’s completely acceptable and encouraged to defend one’s work, but it’s also equally acceptable and encouraged to be able to remove our own pride from a situation and serve the client.

10. Play.
Ideas don’t always appear when you’re sitting in an expensive business suit and staring at your computer monitor. Put on a Mexican wrestler’s mask, play some office hockey, finally set up and execute that practical joke on the new guy. Sometimes being able to play and laugh releases ideas that are stuck inside your brain. Designers should be curious creatures, and with curiosity comes playfulness. You don’t have to be silly or a jester all day long, but a certain measure of playfulness goes a long way to promoting creative thought and it certainly makes what we do a lot more fun.

13. Never, ever, ever stop learning.
The moment you think you know everything, your learning/growing/executing curve stops right there and you will be doomed to a life of simply repeating what you know. This industry is constantly turning over with new technology, new avenues of communication and new techniques to reach new people. The desire to constantly relearn the technical skills required to execute our ideas is crucial to our future success, but moreover, our desire to improve our ability to generate better ideas and conceptualize stronger solutions is of greater importance. Anyone can use Photoshop. Only you can decide why to use it.

14. Assemble the right group.
Surround yourself with people that are smarter than you and truly support your creative endeavors. Don’t under estimate the importance of people who genuinely encourage your passions. You’ll need them. Alot.

15. Look behind everything that is in front of you.
The obvious may be the right answer, but you’ll never know until you’ve looked beyond it to see.

16. Fall in love with the aesthetics of the world.
Typefaces, color, architecture, music, the human body… There are even beautiful curves to emotions and conversations. Pay attention to the beauty in mediums outside of that project on your desk and you might find that inspiration you’re looking for.

Poking around on the internet, I also found a taste of the book itself: three exercises from creativity:
The following three exercises are excerpted from Caffeine for the Creative Mind, by Stefan Mumaw & Wendy Lee Oldfield, published by HOW Design Books:

1. There are signs posted around every office in the world, signs that warn us of impending danger, bathroom segregation, or even which way the exit is. What if those signs were changed to an international pictorial language that not only identifies, but adds art to the space? Forget the shapeless figures and celebrate the difference between men and women, janitors and upper management! Create new signs for:
a) Men’s/Women’s Room
b) Fire Extinguisher
c) Janitor’s Closet
d) Executive Washroom
e) Parking Garage
f) Exit

2. Every one of us has dreamt, at some point in our lives, what it would be like to be rich and famous, living in Beverly Hills, shopping on Rodeo Drive, walking overtly pink poodles with more bling around their neck than the NBA bench-warmer down the street. We’ve imagined what that life of luxury is really like. Oh, the crazy things we would own! Let’s imagine it one more time. Your task is to write down 10 things a single woman living in Beverly Hills would own.

3. Point of view can make the difference between good and great. By looking at problems from another point of view, we often find solutions we’ve never seen before. On a piece of paper, draw nine triangles, all of equal size and composition and equally spaced across the entire paper. Now, interpret those triangles from another point of view by making a drawing using the triangles. Create something out of each triangle that sees it from the point of view of:
a) Mad Scientist
b) Baseball Player
c) Dancer
d) School Bus Driver
e) Mortician
f) Street Cart Hot Dog Vendor
g) Fish
h) Lawyer
i) Zookeeper

Through an article in the NY Times, I am becoming interested in the possibilities of communicating visually via the role-playing game/community Second Life:

“…the Infinite Mind outdoor visual event is available on the sim. It replicates the photography exhibit, Our Walls Bearing Witness – Darfur: Who Will Survive Today?, that was projected onto the walls of the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. during the Thanksgiving week in the U.S.

The virtual exhibit was scheduled to be dismantled on December 12, however, in light of the circumstances, it may remain until the interview can be rescheduled. It also includes a video of the real world exhibit installation. Don’t miss out. Take a few minutes and teleport over. This is yet another example of the powerful communications tools Second Life affords.

Halocaust_005 I often refer to ‘360-degree’ content when urging clients and colleagues to rethink information presentation in 3D spaces. By that, I don’t necessarily mean an object which an avatar can walk around, through or physically interact with. I also mean rethinking more powerful content through multimedia….” Public Affairs in Second Life: Crisis in Darfur with Mia Farrow

Creating art (or curating the art to create a statement, such as this photography exhibit) on an intimate level is nice, but the potential for creating public art, at your desk, via your computer, which can communicate to the multitudes seems incredible! No more waiting for exhibition space at the local coffee shop or trying to persuade a gallery owner of the merits of this exhibit. This will make it possible to have multiple exhibits in a short period of time, assuming that one has the content to mount them.

Now all I have to do is get my avatar designed and moving around… deep sigh.

I like snowglobes, as a concept, though few meet the requirement of mystery that the snowglobes of my childhood all possessed. Thanks to a pointer from Kim Carney’s blog, I have found a whole series of snowglobes by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz that not only have the mystery of my youth, but go way beyond in possibilities to ponder. Plus, since it is currently 70 degrees today, here in the Carolinas, it gives back some of the romance of winter. There is a catharsis in the bleakness of an ice storm, that just doesn’t come with extended months of humidity and leaf-mold allergies.  A review of their work below:

“Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz, in their recent work entitled Travelers, reconstruct the journey as transition, adventure or mishap and they monumentalize it by means of a snowglobe, a symbol of souvenir and memory, which since the 19th Century, has aimed to capture the beauty of the snowscape and the silhouette of cities in a winter fantasy.

The snowglobe seems to encapsulate in a fictional mockup that quaint, kitsch tale of the sublime experience as a formulation to popularise the intensity of the romantic journey.

Each of these snowglobes has been constructed and designed to contain a snowy tale that is later on photographed. Inside the sphere, life becomes a transition to nowhere, characters appear lost in a hostile environment and vainly try to find a path which has ceased to exist: they are a metaphor for the modern world, constructed as a continuous landscape of spaces of transit and paths, lines of communication or waiting areas….

The work of Martin and Muñoz certainly connects with these proposals of a constructed reality to the extent to which it acts as a mock-up, but on the other hand distances itself from them by tackling a world of fantasy, inscribed on the imaginary and without contact with the credible, putting to one side any bleeding between reality and fiction. Their winter no-lands are spaces which take in the imaginary occurrence of small individual disasters, extolled as monuments of daily desolation

Schubert’s Winterreise isn’t a journey through a landscape, but an itinerary of feelings and passions which lead to an interior which is both shredded and wished for, a decisive journey which leads to one’s own rescue. In this way, the snowglobes in Travelers construct a journey to the interior of fear. The snowglobe is only apparently innocent: it contains black humor, it’s an impossible tale of modern terrors. Travelers who haul their suitcases through the snow, a couple meet and embrace, blessed out, on the tip of an impossible iceberg, a couple who drag a prefabricated cottage through an inhospitable winter or some drivers detained by a soldier amidst a snowfall….” Winter Journey by Santiago B. Olmo