News on the Encaustic Front

I am happy to say the little painting that was shown on the last post won an award of merit.

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts has a prestigious show biennially in the main gallery of the school. It is only open to Sevier County Residents and has gained popularity through the years.
This year's juror was Ms. Teri Alea. She is the Executive Director for Tennessee Craft, a leading statewide craft organization which provides professional development for craft artists across the state.

I entered "The Jester" and received one of three of the merit awards. It was exciting for me to be recognized in my own community for my artwork. Here I am with my painting.

The "Jester" is offered for sale.

Please visit my etsy store: 

www.notsobland.etsy.com

Please visit my etsy store: 

www.notsobland.etsy.com

Here is what I did at Penland!

I did finish a few paintings, in between making medium, and listening to all the wonderful
demos Lisa gave us. She is a very generous teacher with her techniques.

One of the exercises she gave the class was a challenge to do a series of small studies using black and  white with shades of gray in between. I was intrigued and thought I would try it also. These are my results.

























I will share more of my work in the next post.

Working with a hot palette

Working on an encaustic collage

The image of the bird in this painting is an image transfer on wax. Transfers on wax are so

simple to do. A copy of the image is made on a toner copy machine. The image appears in the reverse, so if there is any text it will have to be reversed before copied. The image is then turned face down and pressed to the surface. A wooden spoon or burnishing tool is now used to press the image into the wax. The back of the image is dampened with water and let rest for 3-4 minutes.  Begin rubbing gently with fingertips in a circular motion until all the paper pulp is removed. The toner ink image is left. See below for the finished painting.

Urban Landscape
22" x 22"

Sunflowers
6" x 6"

Carolina Wetlands
18" x 18"

Plumage 8" x  8" 

New work, a new beginning and a commitment to share...

The last year has been devoted to encaustic wax. With construction finished on my new studio with it's custom ventilation system, designed by husband, I have been spending hours and hours working with beeswax, oil paint, oil paint sticks and oil pastels.

My  Encaustic show in January at the Emporium Gallery in Knoxville was great and I'd like to share images from the exhibit.



This piece, Shoreline, is the largest one in the show, and the largest I have done to date. It really used a lot of wax and as the size goes up so does the material costs. I can see why most work that is seen in this medium is usually in the 12" x 12" format. The surface is highly textured and embedded with shell fragments, sand from the beach, feathers, and cheesecloth. Other texture is created by letting the wax cool slightly before applying, and adding layer after layer. The finished piece has 8-10 layers of medium.You can almost smell the salty sea air after taking a closer look at this piece.

Shoreline
24" x 28"

detail of surface

Working in Wax

Looking at art has become an obsession with me lately and these encaustic pieces have caught my eye so I will share:

Semiotics
16" x 16"
Jann Gougeon

I find the composition in this work beautiful and the way she has juxtaposed the symbols a perfect contrast to the grid like background.

8" x 16"
Mary Philpot

For artists that love to draw, the beeswax medium works so well for detail. A sharp stylus, needle, nail or awl is used to incise the surface. Oil sticks or oil paint is then rubbed into the scratched surface. The result is amazing fine line work.

Not That Fragile
6" x 6"
Mary Black

Encaustic with collage always works for me. So much to look at and contemplate.

Dunkel
Mark Perlman

Another colorful approach to painting with beeswax. A very nice geometric design.

Taking Encaustics Outside the Box

Nancy Natale

This painting is a collage of papers that have been dipped and painted with encaustic paint. Nancy works with old book spines, found and painted papers, and collage.

Lorraine Glessner
One of the things that draw me to this artists work is her delicate use of line. She uses long strands of human hair collaged under the encaustic medium to achieve this technique.

Brenda Mallory Capsules, 2006-2011,
 Waxed cloth, nuts, bolts, 11 units, each 10" x 10" x 17"

Beautiful three dimensional cloth objects can be encased in wax to give strength to an encaustic piece

Exciting texture can be added by imbedding paper and cloth into the surface. The wax also acts as an adhesive if heavier objects are to be imbedded, and they need not be completely submerged in the wax.

Perfect Specimens, Encaustic Collage
Lynn Corsi Bland

Exquisite detail can be achieved by transfering a photo copied image directly to the surface of the wax. The lines were drawn on the wax with a sharp needle and then filled in with black oil pastel.

Lynn Corsi Bland
encaustic and oil pastel


Another method to add drawing and line work like this piece, is to start with a drawing on paper. Watercolor paper is collaged to the surface of the board and the sketching is done on the paper before the wax is added with oil pastel. The painting can be completed using pigmented encaustic paint. 

The artists for these beeswax pieces are anonymous, but they show us the grace and beauty that nature gives us everyday. We, as artists, try, but the perfection evidenced here cannot be duplicated.

National Collage Society 2011 Exhibit

PRESS RELEASE FOR 2011 SIGNATURE MEMBERS

Lynn Bland, Gatlinburg, TN, has been granted Signature Membership in the National Collage Society.  This is the highest distinction awarded to collage artists who have been selected by juries for the Annual Juried Exhibit.

The National Collage Society, Inc. (NCS, Inc) is a non-profit art education foundation with headquarters in Hudson, Ohio.  The purpose of this organization is to educate the public about the only new fine art medium of the 20^th Century, collage.  Collage is defined as a work of art with another layer glued on the surface.  It was found in many craft forms until 1912 when George Braque glued a piece of wallpaper on the surface of one of his paintings and created fine art.  He was sharing a studio with Pablo Picasso in southern France and they both pursued this new medium extensively.  Their collages can now be found in museums around the world.

NCS, Inc was founded by Gretchen Bierbaum in 1982, then incorporated in Ohio and obtained the IRS classification 501 C 3.  Membership has spread around the world with web presence www.nationalcollage.com.

Each year a new three-person jury selects the Annual Exhibit from hundreds of entries.  A museum curator, art history professor and professional collage artist provide a balance of opinions to maintain a high standard of collage and assemblage.

Assemblage is 3-dimensional collage.

Literacy Series: Book I

This assemblage is a combination of collage and pen and ink drawing with encaustic. I have used the beeswax to coat the altered book and the background surface. The twigs and mica are adhered with the wax and found objects such as an old key, a small carved wooden cross, stones and an acorn are added for dimension. Check out this link to view the exhibit:
http://www.nationalcollage.com/2011_exhibit/2011.html

Photograph by Jill Greene

Encaustic Collage

Artist:	Bascha Mon
Title:	ADRIFT
Medium:	ENCAUSTIC AND COLLAGE ON PAPER
Size:	22 x 30 inches

These collages are from the Tsunami Series and are heavily layered and impressive in size. This is an example of an artist expressing her sorrow through her art. Creating something beautiful out of a horrific natural disaster.

Artist:  Bascha Mon Title:  Searching For Paradise (Lost?) Medium:  encaustic & collage on paper Size:  30 x 22 inches

Artist:	Bascha Mon
Title:	Searching For Paradise (Lost?)
Medium:	encaustic & collage on paper
Size:	30 x 22 inches

Artist: 

Bascha Mon

Title: 

Searching For Paradise (Lost?)

Medium: 

encaustic & collage on paper

Size: 

30 x 22 inches

To see more work by this artist, please visit her website with this link:http://www.neoimages.net/artistportfolio.aspx?pid=3339

Encaustic Institute Juried Show

POETIC TEXT

Photograph by Jill Greene

One of my recent encaustic paintings, " Poetic Text"  has been selected for the upcoming national show in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is an encaustic collage with my personal journal pages fused to the surface of the painting. I have used a sgrafitto technique with oil paint sticks to create the line work. The work measures 9.5" x  11.5" The show will include 40 encaustic artists and will open on October 8, 2011.

Here is a link to the press release for this show and a list of artists http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1105780002034-22/EAI+Juried+Show.pdf

Thanks to my friend and photographer Jill Greene for the beautiful photos she takes of my work.

Encaustic Vessel

This graceful form by Katherine Glover is a three dimensional encaustic piece.
Her vessel is a combination of pleated silk and encaustic medium and was chosen for the Encaustic 2009 Juried Exhibit.  To view this show or find out more about encaustic paints, and the upcoming Encaustic 2011 call for entries visit this link:   rfpaints.com

 Visit Katherine's website to see more of her work  

http://www.katherineglover.com/gallery/encaustic.html

An evening of Food, Wine and Art

Ready to begin

The Display of my paintings

The afternoon of the event
Later that evening there were so many people on the street you couldn't see the door!

in process
It was a very busy evening and I talked for 3 hours straight. It was wonderful to introduce so many people to the encaustic process. Everyone was fascinated with the concept and had so many questions.