Saturday, May 14, 2011

HOT WAX COLD METAL

This exhibition brings together a group of New England artists who have incorporated salvaged metal into their work with the ancient medium of encaustic.

I hope you can stop by to see the show. And come to the reception May 19 from 5 - 8 pm!

HOT WAX COLD METAL
May 16 - July 9 31 (extended!)
Art at 12 Gallery
12 Farnsworth Street, Boston, MA 02210
Gallery hours: Monday through Friday, 11am - 6pm
Saturday 11am - 4pm

Juried by Zola Solamente, director of Boston’s Arden Gallery
Artists participating: Kathleen Austin, Jeanne Borofsky, Debra Claffey, Barbara Cone, Pamala Crabb-Burnham, Pamela DuJong, Jane Deutsch, Ken Eason, Patricia Gerkin, Jeanne Griffin, Sue Katz, Dorothy Simpson Krause, Munira Naqui, Beverly Rippel, Lelia Stokes Wienstein, Donna Talman, Julie Vohs, Charyl Weissbach.



I don't usually work with metal so this was a bit outside my comfort zone, but exciting! I chose a wire tree planting basket recycled from a recent landscape planting. I always love opportunities to meld the disparate parts of my life together.

I used the flattened tree basket as a line drawing and created a shadow drawing in black wax underneath. Then I cast leaves shapes in wax, incising the leaf veining and placed them around the wire 'lines' as if they were falling from the sky in a summer storm. The final step of painting in translucent leaves completed the work.

It's both related to my current work with abstracted foliage and still-life objects, but also a stretch into three dimensions. It's a direction full of potential that I might not have found without this group's challenge to use unfamiliar materials.