texasWAX/houston: Encaustic Conference Report

Monday, July 28, 2008

Encaustic Conference Report

This is the follow-up report on the 2nd Encaustic Conference that I promised to make, belated though it is. First off, the conference was well worth all the effort it took to plan and attend. Planners should be congratulated on such a successful event. From my standpoint, everything ran like clockwork. The only complaint from most attendees was about the hot temperatures that came upon us half way through the weekend. The planners had no control over that. People who stayed in the dorms suffered most because there is no air conditioning provided in those spaces. We all suffered through however, and managed to have a great time anyway!

The conference itself ran from Friday through Sunday with "early bird sessions" offered Friday for those attendees who came in early. Below are images from the two early sessions I attended.

Above: One of the "early bird" sessions, a demo by artist Julie Shaw Lutts on her take on encaustic collage. I found most interesting her process of using collage and assemblage with materials like metals and wood combined with paper and wax.
Below: Charyl Weissbach on "The Luminous Landscape" described the process by which these artists put together this exhibition.

Sessions during the conference can be characterized in three ways; demos of particular techniques, presentations with slides or videos regarding various related subjects, and professional developmental type presentations. Sessions are not long enough to include hands-on activity by participants.

I attend three conference sessions that included demonstrations; Nathan Margalit's demo (pictured below) on collage, Russel Thurston on large format painting and Sandi Miot on textures.
Nathan Margalit

Below: Russel Thurston at work during his session.

Above: Sandi Miot. Below: Some of Sandi's samples of textures and Below that: Her palette.

This is Sandi's palette. I was told these nice lidded paint pots come from the children's department at IKEA. I was planning to run over there first thing when I got home from the conference to get myself some but haven't done it yet!

Above: This is part of Sara Mast's presentation about working large. I found her work quite wonderful and her presentation very interesting and informative.
Below: Daniella Wolfe's presentation was equally intriguing. She presented work by artists who combine encaustics and textiles. You can find these artists on her blog---Encausticoplis.

Additional hands-on workshops were offered on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after the conference and these ran the full day. The fee for each workshop after the conference was extra.

In-between all these activities were four exhibitions up for viewing. Three were located in the conference building (the school) and one at 301 Gallery down the street. Therefore & Because: Decoding Norman Labiberte, Hue Again, works by Joanne Mattera and The Diptych Show, collaborative works by artists from IEA and NEW were the three in the main building.
Receptions were held at special times for each of these exhibitions.

These two photo's below are of some of the diptych's from that collaborative exhibition.

All images below are from "On the Edge" exhibition at 301 Gallery. I am missing attribution information for several of these images so many apologies to those artists. I did want to bring attention to these anyway.