Light! Depth! Fuego!

I've been thinking more about my encaustic process lately, which you'll no doubt remember if you're one of the 3.3 (woot!) regular readers of this blog, and I've been spending a lot of time looking at the work of other artists I admire. Just in the year I've been working in this medium, there seems to have been a tremendous increase in the number of artists producing extraordinary fine art in encaustic. When I first got interested, all I could find online were crafters and collage, neither of which felt like what I wanted to do. Then I discovered Lissa Rankin, Cari Hernandez, Linda Womack, and (locally) Diane Rodman. Just recently, I took another tour around the web and found even more artists whose work inspires and amazes me: Lisa Kairos, Elise Wagner, and Molly Cliff-Hilts, among many others.

One of the good things about finding these artists and lots of online images of their work is that it gives me a chance to think about my work in relationship to theirs, not in terms of making it like theirs, but considering the elements in their work that I respond to, and how to bring those elements into my own form of expression.

an early experiment with
incorporating 3D objects

 Immediately apparent was the fact that the work I admired and responded to the most strongly had a depth and luminosity that my own work, for the most part, was lacking. As a photographer, it makes sense that I would be captured by the notion of the two-dimensional object that implies three dimensions; wax brings out an even more compelling interest in 3D for me.

I've experimented briefly with incorporating three-dimensional objects into my wax pieces but largely have not been wildly happy with the results. I've also attempted making the wax itself more of a three-dimensional feature, and I've liked those results a little bit better, although I haven't tried to do anything with the stiffer "modeling wax" designed for that purpose. At the end of the day, it's the magic I think I want to incorporate, the illusion of depth in something that is otherwise obviously flat. (Actually, I recognize this kind of "misdirection" is a fairly consistent theme in all of my work, the moment of wondering--however briefly--"Am I looking at what I think I'm looking at?")

Experiment with 3D wax

I have of course read plenty of information on bringing luminosity and depth into one's work. But encaustic is a tremendously hands-on medium; you really don't "get it" until you've done it a few times. So I've spent a few nights practicing these techniques, and while I achieved results I was initially happy with, now I can look at the pieces and see what would have made them better. This is the point at which I wanted to find myself; it lets me focus on refining my techniques, and makes me feel ready to move forward consciously and create with intent.

Front view of the experiment
in 3D wax. I actually like
this piece a lot.

Another thing I felt, looking at my most-admired artists' work, is that their work had a refinement that mine was lacking. This is a bit problematic for me and will require some further interpretation. Certainly in other media I have a tendency to be all over the place. During a particularly annoying grad school critique in which one very measured, precise and somewhat anal fellow student continued to hammer at my work for not being more like her own, the instructor finally interrupted (quite rare for him). In a tone of mild exasperation, he said "She's not you. She doesn't make your work. She hasn't done this in this way because she can't do it any other way. It's a choice. This isn't a failing, it's a style." (Thanks, Jeremy.) You can see the 3D work to the right is fairly chaotic, but I think it does have a refinement that makes it feel finished and "official." In other words, it feels like art to me.

In looking at the photos I've produced of my experiments in luminosity and depth (the illusion of 3D), I find I'm not really able to capture the subtleties all that well, and I think that's probably fine. I can see things that are not quite right with all of these pieces, and I will keep working on them to enhance them. I think a scan, rather than a photograph, is probably going to be the best way to capture them; the light from the scanner does a pretty good impression of ambient light's effect on the pieces and shows off the luminosity and depth a little better. But for the time being, here are some examples of where I hope to go:

You can see the glow of the little heart form standing out from the
surrounding darker wax, left. On the right, there are intimations of
depth conveyed by the layering of clear medium and pigmented
paint. These are actually opposite ends of the same piece, both ends
need some major refinement, but at least I've started to achieve
what I was going for.

In order to achieve these effects consistently and to refine them in the way that will work for me, I know I need to have better control over the wax, especially when fusing and heating the surface to apply more wax. My little craft air gun is a bit clumsy and it's really easy to go just past that "warmed" state into "liquid." While that's an effect I generally like (overfusing R me), sometimes you need for those layers to remain separate and relatively unadulterated if you're going to represent depth. My tacking iron offers me a little bit more precision, but it's easy to accidentally smear colors and layers in a way that makes them muddy--this is, I realize, largely a matter of practice. Anyway, there is one clear way to quickly heat the wax to the perfect temperature for fusing and for laying down more layers in a way that is precise and effective. And despite my anxiety over it, I've gone ahead and done it ...

... I bought a blow torch.

Okay, so I got the little one, light weight and butane-powered, but it has an adjustable flame and a trigger ignition, along with a switch to power a continuous flame. And it came with a little soldering tip, so my further adventures in metalworking (more on that later) can also be furthered. It *should* work fine, once I figure out what I'm doing. I'm still afraid of it enough that I haven't taken it out of its package, but give me a few days and I'm sure I'll be blazing away. It never takes me long to work up the courage to jump into something new, and once I commit to a process, I'm in all the way.

Think I'll get myself a fire extinguisher first, though. Just in case.

No Matter Where You Go, There You Are

Some things that have been bugging me lately:

If you're one of the 2.3 regular readers of this blog, you already have read my rant on POV. Some people seemed to think this was a cry for help, or some kind of problem I was having. It wasn't; and it's not. Thank you to my dear friend Judy Shintani for serendipitously reminding me that it's actually my process, and that makes it just fine. I need a POV. I get to decide that for myself. If you don't need a POV, I'm happy for you, yay! But I'm just as happy for me that I understand that I need one and have the sense to keep working toward it. And yes, it's discovery that comes from work. Generally, from a lot of work.

Second thing: I have seen posted on Facebook by a couple of very different friends an absolutely idiotic quote attributed to Andre Gide, "Art is a collaboration between God and the artist and the less the artist does, the better." I almost cannot express how much this pisses me off. Once again, intention, focus, engagement, concept, and conscious choice in artmaking gets dissed in favor of some special magical outside force we're all just channeling. Talent's not real, choices are meaningless; we're just empty vessels. If the work is good, it must be because we didn't have anything to do with it! If it sucks, it's because we participated too much in the creation of our own work.

You can perhaps see, I think, how these two things are related. Each assumes that an engaged intellect is either not necessary or not helpful in making art.

While there is something to the notion of avoiding paralysis by analysis and getting out of your own way, there is NOTHING in the notion that not being conscious and deliberate in your artmaking somehow makes it better. Having no conceptual underpinning (which is really artschool talk for "an idea about what you are doing") doesn't make your work special, it makes it rootless. I can look at my crafty things or the stuff I've done just for myself, and I can see that. I see it in others' work as well. It keeps it from being everything it should be.

And once again, a serendipitous post from Judy ... "Being quiet enough to listen and trusting is the only way into creativity." But she and I agree. We aren't listening for the voice of God or trusting some outside force; we're listening to "our own true voices."

Whew, I feel better. More fun next post and less pondering. I promise.

POV

"The Last Time I Went Fishing"

SOLD

I've sold another encaustic piece, and it's bugging me.

If you're one of the 2.3 regular readers of this blog, you'll know that this is not normal behavior. Usually when I sell anything, I'm thrilled. And of the encaustic pieces I've had up at Local Color over the past year, the ones that have sold are the three that I think are the best. Sure, it's been a little hard getting used to the idea of something selling and then going away forever--with photos, at least you get to keep the negative, so you always have your favorite pieces--but my painter friends have helped me get my head around that.

What's bothering me is the fact that I've been working in encaustic for a bit less than a year. My work is all over the place. I'm still experimenting with techniques, trying out different approaches. I've at least limited the pieces for sale to those that had an actual conceptual underpinning, the pieces that at least felt the most like "my art" to me. I guess I believed, on some level, that the approach that "worked the best" would be the one that would sell. But each piece that has sold has utilized a completely different approach. It's all still experimentation with technique and form.

"Textures of Fall"

SOLD

It doesn't have a clear point of view; it hasn't yet become my work.

This is unlikely to make sense to any nonartists out there. You're probably thinking, "you made it, so of course it's your work." That's both true and not true. I made it, yes. It is something I handcrafted and brought into being. But it's missing a consistency, a voice, a recognizable connection with me, an ability to see and portray and represent and comment on the world in a particular way that is not nominally mine, not superficially mine, but emphatically and unarguably mine. In photography, I recognize my work. I capture an image, review it, and immediately know if it's "mine" or not. I have not reached that point with encaustic, although I can feel it getting closer. I am already far enough along to recognize that certain techniques and approaches are not for me, even as I'm working with them.

But there are still things I haven't tried that I'm not sure about. I'm drawn to more three-dimensional approaches, to integration and representation of natural elements in a more elegant way than I've seen in most mixed-media approaches. I'm interested in subtle markmaking and fascinated by the process of revealing surprise hidden elements by using heat to draw back the layers of wax. I'm interested in pure abstraction, and I'm interested in approaches that are near-replications of more formal painting techniques--something I've quite literally never done, largely because I doubt I have the patience to learn. (I made a noble attempt at watercolor painting in graduate school, and it lasted all of one academic quarter--I couldn't get past the total frustration of not being able to master techniques fast enough to transfer what was in my head onto paper.)

"Hope is in the Body"

SOLD

The encaustic pieces that have sold include one inspired by (and implementing) oil painting techniques, one inspired by mixed media and graphic design, and one textural abstraction. All three of these pieces meant something to me, they "felt" right when I did them and I made myself stop touching them the instant I "knew" they were "done." From that perspective, I am content that they are art, and are a reasonable representation of me. But at the same time, I worry about that lack of a clear point of view. Maybe its absence made the work less encumbered and more accessible to the people who purchased it. But I have a hunch that those pieces could all have been stronger, more impactful, had the point-of-view been clear and consistent, even if the techniques were different. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter to the people who bought the art; they liked it, it spoke to them, they found it worthwhile and are happy to have acquired it. But it will always matter to me ... because artists are just like that.

... and, We're Off and Running ...

If you're one of the 2.3 regular readers of this blog, you'll already be possibly nauseatingly familiar with my ongoing narrative of being jobless. Well, I'm pleased to announce that the narrative has changed. Not only do I have a job, I have a great full-time job that pays real money and has fantastic benefits, at an organization that isn't going anywhere anytime soon. My sincere apologies to my Tar Heel and Wolfpack friends (and most of the rest of the Atlantic Coast Conference), but I have accepted a position at Duke University. I are a Blue Devil now. (To the friend who asked if I could feel myself starting to hate UNC's basketball team yet, the answer is "I don't have to." During the offseason I am permitted merely to be dismissive of them, elevating that stance to rooting against them during the regular season. I am not required to hate them as a condition of my employment until the ACC tournament.)

I'm posting this on my art blog not just because it means I will be able to afford art materials again (and there IS an enormous deeply-cradled wooden panel and about 80 pounds of encaustic medium in my future), but because of how people responded to me during what is a fairly normal part of the interview process ... the musical question "why did you move to North Carolina?"

I've answered this question a bunch of times in a bunch of different ways, but it was only when I was talking with my friend from the Triangle Land Conservancy that I really figured it out. I knew it had something to do with money and with California starting to disappoint me in a lot of ways. I had thought about it from the perspective of what the move allowed me to move away from, but not ever about what it allowed me to go toward. A kind of perfect storm of events seem to have occurred over the past few months that made it all make sense. To make a very long story a little bit shorter, those developments are these:

* The idea for the Free Atelier, and the personal commitment to make it happen.

* My involvement with Local Color, the gallery co-op in Raleigh.

* My small web updating project with Triangle Land Conservancy, that turned into a separate special project creating a video for them, and that hopefully will turn into the larger art project I've envisioned.

* The understanding that I am an artist, that artmaking and helping other artists is an enormous part of what the counselors call "life satisfaction" for me.

* The understanding that I need--on a lot of different levels--to make my own money and enough of it to do an effective job of supporting myself and that having job security is an important part of my creative verve.

A lot of these things are outside the "artist" stereotype. I don't want to live in a garret and starve, I'm not made more creative by suffering or insecurity. I don't regard money as a necessary evil, or as any kind of evil at all. But I've never been the super-ambitious, money-motivated go-getter they liked to see in Silicon Valley. And finally when the first person at Duke asked me why I moved to North Carolina, I knew the answer and said it straight out: work-life balance.

I lived for 18 years in a place where many organizations really thought you weren't committed if you weren't having dinner at the office at least twice a week. I worked for organizations where some of the employees (programmers, usually) actually slept under their desks from time to time. I had the distinct feeling in job interviews there that, when asked "where do you want to be in five years," if I didn't tell the hiring manager I was gunning for his or her job (or better yet, his or her supervisor's job) I was losing points in the hiring race.

As expenses rose in California and my pay shrank, I knew that to stay I would have to either have the kind of job that eats you alive and consumes you entirely without leaving room for anything else, or (possibly AND) work for a company that did things I was not proud of, didn't agree with, and couldn't embrace. And I didn't want to have to be a broke artist, or dependant on someone else, or a person who only had work and no room for anything else in their lives. Just. Not. Me.

I don't know if it's just different times we live in, or that it is such a different place, but every time the words "work-life balance" came out of my mouth, everyone at the table nodded sagely and not only looked like they understood but frequently actually said something to assure me that This Job Was Not Like That. This means the Free Atelier can go forward and I don't have to worry about making it pay. I can continue to experiment with encaustic and work big and work often and not have to worry about how much money I'm spending on "learning." I can sign up for pole-dancing class and go out for drinks with friends and meet new people and do goofy things (like dance all night in ridiculously high heels on the uneven outdoor patio at Tony's Bourbon Street Oyster Bar) and know that no one will be angry that I'm not spending Friday night at the office.

It's not just a job, it's a release into all the things I wanted, all the things I need to keep doing. I don't have to give up anything that I've come to love. It's a beautiful perfect wonderful situation, and I damn well deserve it. We all do. And I think the trick is finding that point of view that lets you see what you're moving toward that opens the doors and lets it all pour in.

Art/Work

If you're one of the regular 2.3 readers of this blog, you'll be aware that I am sadly unemployed at the moment (in terms of a job that pays money). I finally followed up on one of the organizations that caught my interest shortly after moving here: the Triangle Land Conservancy. Being a nonprofit, I figured they might not have very much in the way of money or staff, and checking out their website I discovered that their communications person clearly wears about 500 different hats and appears to have little-to-no help.

Score!

I decided to email them and see if they could use a volunteer with my impressive and slightly insane professional skillset. Good opportunity, right, to continue to add to my portfolio and build new connections in the nonprofit community. Long story short, they were thrilled to have help, and I'm embarking on a project to update a cute little web series they started but abandonned on ways to play on Triangle Land Conservancy-protected space. I'll be updating the writing, but in order to make sure that the various activities they mentioned are still available, I'll be traveling around to a variety of locations throughout the area. I'll get to explore nature and surrounding communities, making discoveries and highlighting all kinds of things. I got permission to rearrange the web pages a bit to accomodate photographs, and started to feel pretty pleased with the whole thing.

Then I had an idea.

Back in California, where I lived for 18 years before moving to NC, there was a nifty little local TV show called "Bay Area Backroads." The host, an engaging jeans-clad local celeb named Doug McConnell, every week drove his Jeep to some of the interesting, amusing, and lesser known pleasures and delights of the Bay Area. The show featured beautiful drives, adventure activities, lovely unique little places to stay, artists, restaurants, farms, and peculiarities of all kinds.

Now I'm not a TV producer, nor have I played one on TV. But I know my way around a video camera and an editing suite. So I threw the idea out there for TLC; how about a little bit of video on these adventures they've already identified, posted to a special YouTube channel and promoted on the web site as a regular feature?

It went over super-well. So that's a go.

And then it hit me.

Photos. Video. Visits. Journal notes. This isn't just a volunteer freelance job, it's an art project.

So I'm announcing it now, the birth of this multimedia art project built around TLC's protected holdings. It reminds me of what I did at Pt. Reyes while I was in graduate school. There will be photographs and video pieces. Books and a web site and found objects. Journaling, mapping, and K-12 curriculum. An interactive component. It's not just a project, it's a show.

To be continued ... !

Drifting Into the Zone

If you're one of my 2.3 regular readers, you'll know that I am kind of hard to impress when it comes to art instruction, and encaustic instruction in particular seems to be a challenging arena. Nothing has been more painful than reviewing the encaustic "instructional" videos on the generally-hapless Expert Village channel on YouTube. The class I actually paid for in encaustic was good for seeing a little bit of basic technique demonstrated and getting a chance to play around with some warm wax, but since the electrical capacity of the room couldn't actually handle the draw from the heated palettes and the heat gun simultaneously without blowing a fuse, other basic techniques were just sort of ignored or glossed over. The first book I purchased on encaustic was a great introduction ... to the specific encaustic style of the author. Searches for information online produced an awful lot of the same stuff over and over. Not surprisingly, yelling at the screen that I didn't WANT to do Xerox transfers or see how to use collage materials AGAIN didn't make any difference.

So I started looking at the web sites of encaustic artists, and found some who were doing work I found compelling and interesting. I followed up on any references or links those artists offered. Eventually I found an artist who had written a book, and when I looked at the book I loved it. It was full of other artists I found fascinating, and in investigating those artists, I came across more workshops and reference materials and descriptions of technique.

Most of the workshops, sadly, are where I used to live instead of where I live now, a difference of about 3,000 miles. A number of them are exhorbitantly expensive and probably designed to appeal to the ro/md crowd (that's Retired Ophthalmologists/Monied Dilettantes, for those of you who aren't regular readers), because after all most artists can't make a living making art, so teaching is the next best thing and teaching other artists or actual college students is also notoriously unprofitable. But I did discover that one artist I particularly admire had recently produced a DVD on "advanced encaustic techniques," and given my response to her work, I kicked down the $60 and ordered it.

The DVD is "Wax Twist" and the artist is Cari Hernandez. Like me, her deep background is photo and video, and also like me she's drawn to sculptural forms and abstract renderings. Her work is not graphic-design based, and although she uses mixed media, it doesn't reference collage. Almost the first words out of her mouth were "we are not going to cover Xerox transfers." Already my $60 felt well-spent.

If you're interested in encaustic and have passed the basic stage of instruction, and like me find yourself on the other side of the country from Cari Hernandez, this DVD is a good buy. I learned a lot of new techniques, as well as ways to refine techniques I'm already working with. She expanded my thinking as to what's possible with encaustic. But the best moment in the DVD had nothing to do with technique; it had to do with what being an artist is all about.

She was in mid-demonstration, having layered an article of clothing onto a waxed panel. She used her tacking iron to form the wax in different ways around it, talking about how useful the tool was when working with tight spaces and flammable materials. But as she spoke, you could see her slowly leave the "real" world and become engaged by the piece in front of her. It was speaking to her, she was hearing it, she studied it and smiled and tweaked her and there, and her disengagement from everything else in the world was palpable. She was in the Zone. She was no longer making a video on encaustic, she was making art and the process just happened to be in front of a camera.

After just a minute or so, she recognized her own absorption, and laughed, saying something along the lines of "before I get too carried away with this piece ..." and continued to make her instructive point. I appreciated not only the lapse into ArtMind, but also her acknowledgement of it, and the fact that she left it in the DVD for all the rest of us to see.

I've tried to explain this state to non-artists; they don't quite get it. It's not about thinking, really; but it's also not about not thinking. The most accurate description I can find is that word "hearing." The piece is speaking, telling you what it wants to be; there's a mesh with your conscious understanding of what you want the piece to say and what it wants to say, and you begin to respond to the piece, to the materials, instead of to any kind of "plan" you might have for it. This doesn't mean we don't plan, or that what we do in the Zone is intuitive; there's a strongly intellectual component to it, it's almost like you have to be thinking clearly before you can hear the voice of the work come through. And then you have to be technically able to execute, but the approach you choose to execute ... well, that comes to you from what a former professor of mine (not an art professor, interestingly enough) used to call "a different way of knowing."

At the end of the DVD, Cari talks about the difference between technique and vision, how easy it is when you're learning something new to become fascinated by technique and forget about what you're trying to say and whether those techniques are appropriate. My own opinion is that the only thing to do, really, is to make a LOT of work. Some of those pieces will just be explorations of technique, you instructing yourself through experience. But some of them at unexpected moments will begin to speak to you, you will hear them, and at that point you will find yourself in the Zone, making art--and ultimately that's where we all want to be.

Learn more about Cari Hernandez
Learn more about her DVD and instructional web site, "Wax Twist."

Art/Life/Joy/Frustration

So it's been sort of a shitty-ish day. That means this post probably is not going to meet the expectations of you, my loyal 2.3 readers, in terms of creative brilliance. It's going to be a little bit more like a rant.

Contributing to the overall tone of the day is a little problem I had with an art piece earlier. I decided to make one very last final tweak to an encaustic piece I was very very fond of, and managed to destroy it in the process. I liked this little piece so much because it was small and cute and sweet in a way; I was thinking about my awesome former students in Boone when I made it, and it was one of those magical little moments when a little bit of experimenting and flailing results in something even better than what you were trying for. I'd already signed it and named it, I liked it so much, and I was trying to come up with a strategy for framing it for presentation.

And then I screwed it up.

"No More Snow"
3.5 x 4 inches
2011
no longer available
because I ruined it

This really, really upset me for several reasons. The obvious reason is that I crapped up something I loved, followed closely by the fact that I knew better than to touch it again after I'd decided it was done and yet I went and touched it again, so the blame for the destruction was entirely mine. A third factor: it underscored how far I am from really being able to work my new medium and command my new tools, heightening my frustration with the process of gettting what's in my head out onto a panel.

The fourth: it heightened my interest in and desire for some form of in-depth instruction from someone who has a process and/or produces work that I resonnate with, who seems to work in a way that would actually inform my own.

This is a problem, because that instruction is available. Two artists I admire very much are holding a four-day workshop in the San Francisco area at the end of May. This is a location I know I will have no problem getting around in, nor any difficulty in finding a cheap or possibly free place to stay. I looked at airfares, and they are not as high as one might imagine if you're willing to take the reddest red eye ... and for this I would be. The problem, even though this is being promoted as both an encaustic technique and practice workshop and a sort of "self-confidence building" workshop FOR ARTISTS who are serious enough about their practice to want to commit themselves to it full-time, is that the workshop "early bird" registration fee is $899, and it goes up to $999 after April 1. This fee includes lunches, snacks, materials and instruction. Lodging, dinner, breakfast, incidentals and getting around are entirely on your own.

The refund policy basically states, "we don't refund your money for anything."

I'm sure the organizer would say "It's your LIFE! It's your WORK! Isn't it WORTH that kind of investment?" Why, of course it's worth that kind of investment. I'm sure every serious artist I know would be more than happy to invest $899 in the futherance of his or her career ... IF WE HAD THE MONEY TO BEGIN WITH.

Yes, the organizer is an artist, and a very good one. I like her work. But she has mentioned in the past that she makes six figures as an artist. And she came into that place of being from making six figures as a physician. Is she perhaps a bit out-of-touch with the reality that the rest of us live in?

This is why founding the Free Atelier has become so important to me.

I'm tired of looking at "residencies" that sound wonderful until you get to the inevitable statement in the description that runs something along the line of "You pay us $500/week for the privilege of living in this empty cabin on our swampland and making art. No stipend. Meals extra."

News flash: I can sit in my own house on my swampland and make art without a stipend, and my meals are included, and it's NOT going to cost me an extra $500/week.

I'm sick of "opportunities" to focus on your work as long as you don't focus on the fact that you're still paying your rent at home and yet you're supposed to feel privilged and special because you've been selected as the lucky new payee--er, I mean, artist in residence--for some organization that owns a loft attached to a thrift shop that will let you have the run of the place as long as you pay them $300/week and for any "materials" you happen to use from the thrift shop, work one shift downstairs at the cash register (unpaid), help install the next show (unpaid) and keep the kitchen clean (meals not included).

I'm pissed off by "workshops" that sound like they offer things that would truly be helpful for real, practicing artists, but are priced more to appeal to retired ophthamologists and monied dilettants. (In case you haven't experienced this, monied dilettants may not be the best critique partners to have.)

So, this workshop ... $899 x 30 slots / 2 instructors = $13,485 for three-and-a-half days. (Yes, encaustic materials are expensive. But they're not THAT expensive.)

Bring me a monied dilettante or two, who love the art they do and just want some honest critique and are willing to pay for it, and some artists who have a typical artist's income but would relish the time to spend a week thinking, eating, breathing and dreaming art. I bet Free Atelier can do them both one turn better.