Crazy-working bees provide me with an abundance of beeswax to use in my encaustics, so I got back in the studio and started experimenting with some variations on my technique. In my previous encaustic works, I did an augmented monoprint technique of melting the wax together with pigments on a heated surface into a thick puddle, laying the vellum on the wax, and pulling the piece up slowly. The stratification effect comes from removing the vellum with a sort of dipping motion--as the wax is pulled onto the paper, it begins to cool, but the dipping motion allows sections of the wax to stay heated for a longer period of time resulting in less wax hardening on the paper. For this round of prints, I expanded on that technique with multiple pressings of the same piece into the wax in an effort to achieve more advanced layering of the translucent material. These works bring up so many nostalgic wonders for me--I think of the ghostly textures that misused dark-room chemicals left on my photographs in high school; of my grandpa's sand art that sat in the front window and mesmerized me for hours; of eroding lands and terraced hillsides and melting skies; of the art direction for the Nine Inch Nails album With Teeth (as well as my general sense of being when I am listening to Nine Inch Nails). As my eyes move across the works, some also remind me of the pathways of the bees flying through the air heading straight from bloom to hive in a direct zip or meandering through large circles of breeze to reach their home.
4 Comments
Brian
8/26/2014 03:01:49 am
Those are awesome. I think some would make a great background to a tour poster.
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Aunt Janet
8/28/2014 10:57:43 am
Love them! Love your bees! Love you!!
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Aunt Janet
8/28/2014 10:58:26 am
Oh, and Grampsie's sand art....how cool!
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9/18/2024 07:16:36 am
One present why galore businesses opt for postcards is because they are overmuch cheaper to be prefab and this can forbear a lot of expenses on the lengthened run.
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