Openings Connecting: encaustics

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

SAFE: your voices have been heard!

Protected BEE ART
Safe on a sill with the remains
of many past walks and
sweet memories

i listened to all your comments: the don't melt it ones. i really didn't think i would. i feel like i've been made the caretaker of a delicate part of nature here. amazing work. LOOK AT THAT LAST CLOSE UP...mind-boggling.
i first thought that i'd be unwrapping a big clump of yellowish wax, not THIS. i guess the beekeeper cuts off the 'overflow' of cone? and i was astonished to see this. so, i'll just order up some wax. and leave this masterpiece beeeee.

please click on the last photo to enlarge it. such perfect geometry..

Monday, February 15, 2010

OH, HONEY, WHERE ART THOU?

yesterday's best gift
delivered with chocolates
from my photographer friend

mary whalen dropped by yesterday with handmade chocolates
for my husband and i...and brought this delicate work to me.
she'd been photographing her neighbor's beehives, and knew
i was beginning to experiment with encaustics...
now.
how
can i possibly melt this?

p.s. it's 16 inches long

FOUR DIRECTIONS/FOUR VISIONS: Two Graces: First showing for me, JUNE 3, 2011

With no directions home, I found Taos in the late 60s. It felt like home immediately. It still does. I know this sentiment is familiar to countless others.

The mountain stopped me in my tracks, and I stayed for several years. Since that time, I circle back annually.

To me, that circle is symbolic of this body of work at Two Graces. This is a time in my life when I've been fortunate enough to experiment with art making. Not surprisingly, I found myself drawn back to the images in the Ektachrome slides that I'd taken in the early 80s of Chaco Canyon, the San Francisco de Asis Church, dusty roads, and the ever changing skies of Northern New Mexico. The spirit of this adobed land lingers in my core and manifests itself within these works.

This past Michigan winter was spent creating enlarged negatives from my thirty year old slides, pulling part of my past into the present via today's tools of scanner and computer. Using traditional silver-gelatin darkroom processes, these resurrected and modified negatives acquired a new life. The majority of these prints are the result of this mediated reincarnation.

The smaller images took me into photographic processes from the mid-1800s. These handmade platinum/palladium prints are created coating vellum, for translucency, with these metal salts and exposing them to ultraviolet light. They are then bathed in the alchemy of the darkroom. The tonal qualities are unique in each print. Finally, 24k gold is layered to the backs of the prints, emanating the warmth, glow, and depth of these beloved places.