Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The conference (aka: the motherlode)


                 paper and wax play well together...who knew?



My head is still spinning from the 3rd annual Encaustic Conference at Montserrat College of Art which I attended this past weekend. Approximately 250 artists (mostly women (as in 98% women)) from 8 different countries gathered to wax poetic for three days and nights.  Barbara O'Brien was an inspired choice for the keynote speaker to kick things off friday evening and her honesty, intelligence and humor set the tone for the weekend.  Over three days I learned about working large, working on paper, monotypes, framing, transfers, development of imagery and the use of wax in artist books.  The amount of information and inspiration I gleaned from my teachers and fellow students was truly a gift.  I am working to make sense of all my notes and ideas and plan to copy them into a journal while they are all still fresh in my mind.  I kept bumping into the idea of working on paper and so today I spent a wee bit of time in the studio working on wee bits of paper shown above ( 2" x 3" artist cards to be precise)...very interesting indeed!

ps:  at the conference i purchased a small fusing iron ( woohoo! i will share the sure to be interesting (meaning messy) results later in the week!)

7 comments:

Janice La Verne said...

I love going to conferences. This sounded great. Can't wait to hear more about all these processes. I'm going to a 2 week workshop in July and I'm way excited.

and... thanks for the kind words on my blog...

Janice

mummysam said...

Oh I absolutely love the background texture....love love love!

Sleepandhersisters said...

I am glad you had an inspiring time, sounds just wonderful... One day I want to go to some art conference thing in the states, they sound so great!

I look forward to seeing your experiments with the fusing iron.

artslice said...

Sounds dreamy! Especially the part about using wax in handmade books.
PS love your new painting of the lady in the water... saw it in your shop today. It's a beauty.

tangled sky studio said...

janice-a 2 week workshop...that's awesome!
sam-thanks, me too.
katherine-the great thing about the conference was that it was all talk and demo instead of hands on so i really had time to process the information....
brenda-thank you (i love her).

Jamie Ribisi-Braley said...

I just bought a fusing iron, too! How do you like it? It's helping to make some really nice textures that are completely uncontrolable- haha! That's how I did the ground work in my current painting in combo with my heat gun. And tricks that you've learned for using it?

belinda marshall said...

hi beth, have missed a couple of posts, and feel the need to catchup. this would have been so great. we are on the same wavelength again ~ i just did my 'the conference' drawing last week that i had named and been meaning to do for a couple of months!!
funny.
off to read the next installments :)