Coming Soon: Another Encaustic Conference Hotel Fair

The International Encaustic Conference, founded and directed by Joanne Mattera, is held annually at the beginning of June in Provincetown, Mass. with pre- and post-conference workshops at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill in Truro, Mass.  This year will be the ninth annual conference, and there are a few diehards, myself included, who have attended the conference every year since its inception.

After moving to the Provincetown Inn in 2011 in its fifth year, the conference has featured a hotel fair on Sunday morning, open only to conferees. What better way to look forward than to loIok back at some scenes from the 2014 hotel fair in the aptly-named (by us) "Three Queens Suite" of Susan Lasch Krevitt, Binnie Birstein, and myself.

Our Art News cover on the door to the Three Queens Suite

For the first time, three artists were featured on the cover of Art News and, imagine that(!}, it was us. This year, I heard that Art in America was sending a photographer.

Here are some images from our suite. First up, Susan Lasch Krevitt who installed her work on the kitchen cabinets. (We are generally not able to hang work on the walls because we don't want to damage them.)

Susan's Installation on kitchen cabinets

Since neither Susan nor I took more installation images, here are some closeups of the work.

Susan Lasch Krevitt, FT6 (open), 2014, 18 x 6 inches
Canvas, rubber, silk, twine, encaustic

Susan Lasch Krevitt, FT4, 2014, 9 x 6 inches
Canvas, rubber, silk, twine, batting, encaustic

Susan Lasch Krevitt, FT1 (closed), 2014, 18 x 4 inches
Canvas, rubber, silk, twine, encaustic

Susan and I shared the living room/kitchen for our work. Here are some images of my pieces.

Nancy Natale - mall pieces on the wall.
Through the doorway is the bedroom with Binnie's work.

Some other pieces of mine laid out on the coffee table.

A closeup of four works from the hotel fair

And finally, Binnie Birstein displayed her work in the bedroom. (Note that the sheets and pillowcases were covering the hotel's artwork which was left in place.)

An open portfolio on the bed showed encaustic monotypes and collagraphs

Binnie's matted collagraph and small paintings

Binnie herself speaking to a visitor about her work

Again this year we will all be showing our dynamic artwork and welcoming fellow conferees to our 3Q Suite. Hope to see you there!

We found this crown in a Provincetown shop. Too much?

P.S. If you want to look at some hotel fair shots from 2013, here's the link to my Art in the Studio blog.

Painting in Fayum Style With Encaustic and Cold Tools

This is the fifth year I have hosted students from Smith College Museum's "Historic Methods & Materials" class in my studio. I teach them a little about encaustic with a Power Point about encaustic's history and then they experiment with encaustic painting. This year we spent one afternoon painting in the Fayum style using a four- color palette of encaustic paint based on four mineral colors: red ochre, yellow ochre, white (powdered gypsum or calcium carbonate) and black (ash).  (For more detail, see my 2010 blog post about the Homage to Fayum workshop taught by Francisco Benitez.)

Students worked from color copies of a Fayum portrait owned by Smith College Museum. They painted their portraits on small plywood panels that I had prepared with a greenish-black encaustic gesso. Using small brushes and fusing with small tools and palette knives that they heated by holding them on electric palettes, they each made their interpretation of the portrait. You could have heard a pin drop in the studio as they intently worked.

xxx