My New Monday's with Alix!

After going to Alix's studio all day on Friday, I had decided I needed more. I have found that working with her has been a really good chemistry for me and my work. Alix is a former professor so she possesses many good teaching qualities while also still being new and unfamiliar with a lot of my pervious work which is a great combination for the birth of new work. I am so fortunate to have this experience. I am taking her Monday night classes from 5:30-9:30. I bring all of my own materials and I am able to use her studio space, hot plates and torches. She is there to teach me new techniques, provide direction and creative feedback. It is a great opportunity. This past monday I was in class with two women from the boulder area and it was really fun to see the projects they were working on. They were friendly and also gave me feedback on my concept as well the overall aesthetics.

Mia mentioned something at the last critique that I have been thinking heavily about. She mentioned that I was struggling the most with bringing my mediums together as well the over all two concepts of memories and manipulation / destruction vs preservation. I could not have agreed with this more nor could I really put my finger on what was not working with my first few ideas but they were in no way working.

The more I thought about this the more it started to come to life in my work. For me these memories exist both in the past and the present because my Grandfather is still very much a large functioning, active part of my life. However certain moments feel further away than present memories because I know how special, rare and ideal these moments are to me. The more I thought about this the more i found that the clear(ish) wax served as a medium to communicate this idea in more ways than one. It both manipulates the photo and preserves it. It holds the memory in place as well as sets it apart from the present. It appears to hold a fog or haze over the photo. It is relational to how we hold pictures in our memories of the past. I also found that using text is helpful for both my concept and the strength in my work. I have always gravitated to text and writing in my photos. I have found serval different ways to do this with encaustics and I am very happy with they way they are coming into play with this new concept and body of work.

For these Monday nights I have decided to try and work with 3 new images each time. I will try a new technique and keep notes as I work with the piece so I can see what is really working and what is not. So far it is going well. However I was only able to do this with two pieces last week. It is hard to set an image down sometimes.

Last week I decided to try and "overwork" and "underwork" although I do not know if I really overworked my first image too much.

I am really pleased with the first image and ready to keep working with scraping some of the wax away on the second one. The second image was done using a flooding technique. It is tricky and uses a tone of wax but can have a very interesting effect on the image. I especially like this idea playing into the concept of memories.

*** I am going to take new images on Sunday with Maynard and I am really looking forward to it!