Encaustic Workshop

I'm leading another encaustic workshop in March.

Here's the info...

Saturday, March 30, 2013
12:00pm until 4:00pm

At my studio
854 W 5th St, Winona Minn.

Pay with PayPal or by check/cash
Contact me at monta@montagaelmay.com if you don't want to use PayPal.
Workshop Cost: $80
Class fee ($40) + Materials fee ($40)

Register at montagaelmay.com/workshops

You can also order Take-home Kits - 3 varieties
All kits include 6 – 40 oz. paints and an Ampersand cradled 6" x 6" Encausticbord™
See website for descriptions of kits

Ages 14 & up


A demonstration of materials and techniques will be followed by supervised work time where you will have a chance to experiment with the paint and tools. You will leave the workshop with several paintings.

I provide pre-mixed encaustic paint, beeswax and pigments for mixing your own colors, brushes and paper/boards.

Consider bringing interesting items to embed in the paintings:
     photos*
     clippings from newspapers & magazines*
     small flat items (rocks, buttons, fabric or other sewing notions, etc)

     * these items will give mixed results – but we're planning to experiment, aren't we?

Participants will receive a discount code for your first order from RF Paints.

Please register by March 26

NOTE: You must register by 3/20 if you want to order any of the Encaustic Kits and have them arrive by the workshop date. You can of course order them after the 20th and pick them up from me when they come in.

Photos from the October workshop:

Encaustic paintings

Two new encaustics

Consanguinity, 30 x 22", encaustic on paper

Solstice Fire, 22 x 30, encaustic on paper

One of these will be in a show in Minneapolis from March until October...

Not the best photos of the paintings. I didn't set up the photo studio, just took quick photos.

Thomas Kinkade

Well... not a fan, but you most certainly mastered your craft. Even so, I would never have named you The Painter of Light... but rest in peace, Thomas Kinkade. The world is lessened by your passing.

Thomas Kinkade dies at 54; artist was called the 'Painter of Light' - latimes.com

Still... the idea of selling reproductions as art disturbs me.

About a month ago I had the "reproductions vs. art" discussion with some friends. We were sitting in a local diner that had Kinkade-ish prints spectacularly framed and hung on the walls. Like a fool, I mentioned my disdain for the practice of treating prints of paintings as paintings... I then had to try to put hours and hours of thinking about this into a coherent statement during the 25 minutes our meal would take. I wasn't eating, so at least I didn't have to give up chewing time.

One of my companions said that he was in favor of "Kinkadeing" since it put art in the hands of people who couldn't ordinarily have art (of that quality). He thought it was perfectly fine for an artist to create originals and photograph/scan them to create printed reproductions AND call those reproductions art.

Leaving alone the fact that Kinkade prints weren't cheap enough for the people he was referring to to purchase, I tried to explain my view on the whole idea...

I believe that for most artists selling reproductions of their work do so purely for a financial reasons, not for some altruistic desire to put art in the hands of less-affluent patrons (an exception to that, I suppose, is the ego boost of having your "art" purchased by people and the warm glow that it creates deep down inside you).

For the most part, I have no issues with the practice of selling reproductions. It's hard to make a living doing art. But I believe that the artists who sell reproductions as if they are art are making a mistake. In fact, I think it's the biggest mistake we make - plus it's a bit like snake-oil... 

The primary reason it is hard to make a living making art is that we have a predominantly ill-informed/under-informed audience. They already don't see making art or being an artist as a realistic career. Unless they are among those who idolize artists (and this group is just as likely to be ill-informed), they tend to think we're all dreamers and misfits who have yet to "grow up and find a real job." They don't recognize the validity of an art career or the benefits of having art in their life. They don't know how to determine the amount of work that goes into creating art or the monetary value of that work.

So we have an audience, a client base, a market, that has no method for determining the value of the work we want to sell (for me, being unsure about the cost/value of something makes me less likely to purchase it). Selling reproductions as art compounds the problem by cultivating the point of view that art should be inexpensive. 

Someone said to me that I only felt this way since my work (they meant mosaics and sculptures) do not work as prints (no one is confused thinking a photograph of a sculpture is a sculpture or even art). While I will concede their point, my argument is not a sour-grapes point of view... I do make art that could be sold as reproductions - my encaustic abstract art would make fabulous giclee prints...

I guess I just think that the only visual artists that should be selling prints as art are the printmakers...

To do or to write about doing

I've been focused on doing rather than writing about doing lately. When I get home I need to do something with my hands instead of typing. I've been looking at a computer screen for around 9 hours a day at work, and the last thing I want to do is turn on a computer when I get home.

Luckily, I have plenty of art to do.

I am participating in a community Art Tour in December. Members of the community go around by foot and vehicle to various artist studios, and hopefully find items they want to buy. Most of my art is probably too highly priced for most Winona people, and I hesitate to underprice myself. Underpricing one's not only hurts the artist who is cutting prices, but also hurts other artists who then feel pressured to lower their prices.

I sell my paintings for between $95 and $300, my tapestries between $75 and $1,500, and I will be selling mosaics for between $100 and 500. None of those are going to be of interest to most of the people coming to the Art Tour.

So I pulled out all the gourds that I had on hand, and purchased some additional small ones, and I've been doing some gourd pieces that should sell from between $30 and $100 - except for the gourd drums, which will sell for between $250 and $400.

Assorted gourd work in various stages of completion.

Here you can see some bowls, some sculptural (non-functional) pieces, some musical instruments (snake gourds - the otter in front and the unfinished gourds in the upper right; and the beginnings of a large gourd drum, upper center. and some shakers, near the drum and near the leather dye), some bowls with lids and a couple some hinged boxes.

The Lion Roars, mosaic, Venetian glass tiles.
I am waiting for more glass tiles to come from Tile Shack.
The Lion Roars is based on the textile work of Jude Hill.

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I really don't get upset if my art doesn't sell. I am not trying to make my living off of it - which makes it even more important that I don't underprice and handicap other artists.

More Bird Art

WoodBird, 2008, encaustic on driftwood, 6" x 2" x 30"

Another piece working with bird imagery - albeit in a very abstract manner. Although it is not very apparent in the photograph, the lines for the bird follow the grain patterns (head and body) and cracks (legs and feet) in the wood. You can sort of see this in the abstract feet of the bird. On the actual piece of driftwood the grain is very noticeable - with some of the grain swollen by the long submersion in the Mississippi River, and some parts eaten away by that submersion. In the photograph the dark circles are knots in the wood.

Some of the colors here are from my own paints. The colors that I have been making have mostly been from pre-ground purchased pigments that I have mixed with melted beeswax and damar resin.

When Abelisto's hives get established I will try using our own beeswax and propolis instead of damar resin. Propolis is a substance created by bees that is made up of resins found around the blossoms and buds on trees and at sites of wounds on trees. The bees change it chemically a bit, and use it as "glue" for sealing gaps in the hive and covering foreign objects. They use it to weatherproof the hive. Propolis is what gives beeswax its color and odor. Abelisto thinks that early encaustic painters probably did not add tree resins to their paints, but that they incorporated propolis into the mixture. It could have been purposely added, but most likely it was just part of what would have been considered wax, which would normally happen in a wild or unframed hive. If an analysis of the paints in early encaustic paintings was done, the scientists may have mistakenly thought the resins in the paints had been added - especially if the research was done by someone who did not know that much about bees. If a person was using purified beeswax you would need to add resins. The resins keep the wax from "blooming" when subjected to temperature changes (think refrigerated chocolate bar).

Just thinking about it I realized that since I am mixing my paints using unpurified beeswax I may not need to be adding damar crystals anyway. The ratio of wax to damar crystals should be between 8:1 and 10:1 by weight.

Of course I could be totally wrong about this. I will have to experiment with it. One thing is for certain; any paintings I do will certainly be subjected to pretty substantial temperature changes. Right now the house is hovering around 60 degrees (on purpose, that is what we set the thermostat at - outside is below zero, for the 13th day in a row), and during the summer it sometimes gets above 90 inside (we do not use air conditioning). So if my paints are going to be prone to blooming I am certain to see it.

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Bird Art

Heron, 2008, encaustic on driftwood, 12" x 4" x 28", views of both sides of sculpture

The Flock, 2008, encaustic on paper, approx 17 x 22", mostly handmade encaustic paints. Work-in-process.

Don't have much time for posting right now. I am teaching an advanced graphic design class in a few minutes. Just wanted to get these two images up of the most recent work I have been doing.

The Flock is a painting I have been trying to actualize for months. I wanted to speak to diversity in community and this image (out of all the images inside my head) seemed to keep coming to the front of the stack...

Heron was a more spontaneous creation. Months ago - before the world here was covered in ice and snow - Abelisto and I went beach combing at a park along the Mississippi River. I picked up one particularly gnarly piece of driftwood (probably a root section) thinking that some creature was present in the wood. After months of laying around in my studio it finally decided to let me know what it was and that I was holding it upside down when I would pick it up. Initially I thought the thicker part was the head/top part and the long skinny part was the tail... shows you how wrong you can be when you make unsupported assumptions...

more later

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Made more paint

Last night and tonight I worked on making some paint for a painting I want to do. The painting is of some exotic birds - unreal birds. I needed some intense colors as well as some additional beak and bill colors. I am trying not to use the toxic, heavy metal-based paints. These encaustic paints are all colored with simple earths and/or synthetic, opalescent dry pigments.

I melted and mixed 10 parts well filtered beeswax, 1 part damar crystals (sticky, messy stuff, that...) and 1-3 parts pigments. You can see the small stainless steel bowls (around 2.5 inches diameter at the top) sitting on an electric griddle. It takes about 3 hours to get the mixture melted and mixed well enough to keep the pigments suspended in the wax/resin medium. I try to heat it very slowly on barely enough heat to get it flowing. Too much heat can release harmful volatile gases into the atmosphere (and my lungs). Not a good thing.

If the bird painting comes out decently I will share it here. I think it was almost as much fun to make the paints as painting the picture will be...

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Starting again

Okay. I've been busy, or maybe just lazy. At least lazy with this blog. Time to get back into then habit of writing here.

Now for a quick synopsis of what the last month has brought.

Currently I am putting together my CV, so that I can send out some applications to a few universities. I would like to be able to teach for real, rather than just being an unofficial faculty member. Right now other faculty members ask me to help teach their courses, but the university will not consider hiring me as faculty. I am fed up with it.

Abelisto is also fed up with the university too. His sabbatical was turned down, and not for a good reason. Read here, and here, and here. We need to find a school that needs a sociologist and an artist.

The website redesign at work is just now getting started. This past week my fellow team members and I filled out a fairly detailed questionnaire for the discovery phase. We meet with the Atomic Playpen team on the 3rd.

Daughter-2 has gone back to Las Vegas, enrolled in UNLV and hopes to get the 7 credits necessary to finish her BA there. The registrar at our university was wonderful when daughter-2 went to speak with her about the options.

Daughter-2 was due to fly out of La Crosse on Christmas day - at 6:30 pm on the last flight heading to Minneapolis/St. Paul. I love flying out of the La Crosse airport - it's 25 minutes from our house (unless we get stuck on the wrong side of the railroad tracks). All flights go out of gate 2... I don't think there is a gate 1. I know there's not gate 3... It's great - they actually have an area where you can wait with your loved ones up until maybe 20 or 25 minutes before their flight leaves. Then they go through a short and quick security check and get on the plane. No more driving two and a half hours, dropping someone off and giving them a quick hug on the street, trying not to get hit by the crazy drivers or yelled at by security.

Anyway, when we got to the airport around 5:30 on Christmas day, we stood outside for a little while (it was not very cold, compared to the previous few days) while daughter-2 and daughter-3 shared a last cigarette together and then wheeled, dragged, carried the luggage into the airport. They ended up coming back out, dragging the luggage with them. Turns out the flight to Minneapolis/St. Paul was canceled, not due to weather - which was our first assumption - but due to a mechanical problem with the plane. Since it was to be the last flight out that day, the best we could do was come back at 4 am for the first flight of the next day. Daughter-2 was not happy at all, and actually I did not relish getting up at 3 am to make the trip all over again. The clerk, seeing our faces, said "what a shame, the only ticket left on that flight is in first class..." Daughter-2 promptly stated that she would take it. So she got to fly not only between La Crosse and Minneapolis/St. Paul, but all the way to Vegas in a first class seat.

Since she left I have been a bit sad. I really did not get to spend much time with her while she was here. All her old friends kept her quite busy. I had forgotten (and I think she had too) how many firends she has here and what a social creature she was (is). I am hoping that everything works out in LV school-wise. She really wants to finish her BA.

I have a few projects in process right now

• a 4 yard swath of linen/rayon/cotton fabric that I am weaving. It will end up being a garment of some sort. I have about 2 feet of it woven as of tonight.
  
  
• two encaustic projects - one on driftwood and one on heavy watercolor papers
  
  
• a quilted vest for Abelisto. We keep our house between 60 and 62 degrees and sometimes a sweater, sweatshirt or jacket is too much, but a turtleneck is not enough.
  

I think there is something else, but right now it escapes me...

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Making Paint

Tonight I made my own encaustic paints. I melted some beeswax, ground up some damar resin, and mixed it and the various pigmenting agents in the beeswax.

I ended up with six or seven very interesting colors and a couple not-so-interesting ones. I will use the ones that are not so interesting as base/background colors.

I used commercially prepared ground pigments. I am looking to move away from the paints that have heavy metals in them - even though those colors are the most intense. I do not like working with them because they are so toxic. I may end up working with a totally different color range in order to be more health and ecology focused with my practice.

I eventually want to grind my own pigments. But that will have to wait for a while. I need to figure out if I can grind the pigments without using a binding agent. I think most binding agents would not mix well with the beeswax.

Maybe I will make some more handmade paper and see how these handmade paints work on it...

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A productive day, I think...

It seems like today was a fairly productive day. I have been stressing over this upcoming art show and the fact that my summer schedule has not been what I thought it would be. I do not know why that surprises me, since when has my schedule been what I thought it would be...

Read more...
Today, though, went well. I managed to (not in this order):

1. Begin work on the triptych piece I have been wanting to do for the show, which involved:

a. going to Menards to get some boards and a new vice (picked up a sweet Dremel vice that is perfect for the small work I do)
b. digging through bins of fabric in my studio to find the pseudo-leather fabric
c. customizing the small brass hinges that I got yesterday (again at Menards) with the vice and a 6 oz. tack hammer
d. cutting and sanding the boards
e. gluing the boards to the fabric (in very precise places)
f. attaching the hinges to the boards (over the top of the pseudo-leather fabric)

2. Do some organizing in the studio, although it is still a huge mess, and will be until we get back from Indiana.
3. Lay down for a short nap (which is why I am still going, full of energy, at 9:45).
4. Make lunch (Abelisto made dinner)
5. Spend some time trying to convince my 18 year old son the importance of taking care of someone else's tools better than you would care for your own.
6. Read the last 5 or 6 short stories in Charles de Lint's Moonlight & Vines.
7. Brush Sheldon (Abelisto's cat) to remove some of the mats in his fur.
8. Pack the encaustic painting supplies and tools for the trip to Indiana.

There was more, but this was enough to list.

Looking back on it, listing all this here, it feels like a really productive day. Now if I only had a whole other month of days like this, I might feel like I was ready for the art show.

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