We are so pleased to feature these speakers and presenters at the conference:.Nancy Azara is an artist who has exhibited her sculpture and collages in New York City, through out the U.S. and abroad. Her work is carved, assembled and painted wood often gilded with gold and silver leaf and encaustic as well as mixed media collages. Her use of encaustic evokes a sensuality and softness in her sculpture in contrast to the hardness and durability in her wood carvings. Her interest in gender issues and women in art dates from the early 1970s. More:
www.nancyazara.comWorking with encaustic, both two-dimensionally and sculpturally,
Kim Bernard exhibits her work nationally. Bernard is represented by Arden Gallery in Boston, Boston Sculptors, Bowersock Gallery, Provincetown, Mass., Hawthorn Gallery, Birmingham, Al., Lucky Street Gallery, Key West, and McGowan Fine Art, Concord, N.H. She teaches at the Maine College of Art, Montserrat College of Art, and regionally as a visiting artist. Bernard is the founding member of
New England Wax, a professional association of artists working with encaustic, and has offered numerous presentations on encaustic and sculpture, acted as an invited juror and guest lecturer. More:
www.kbernard.comKathryn Bevier works at
Enkaustikos Wax Art Supplies where she is in charge of customer relations and oversees research and development for the encaustic department. She also teaches pastels and encaustics at Rochester Institute of Technology through the extended studies program. Kathryn earned her B.F.A. at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts.
Andrea Bird studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto and R&F Encaustics in Kingston, New York. She is a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, and is inspired by the natural world, often using organic collage elements in her work. (Branches, ash, rush, leaves, seeds, etc.) She fell in love with encaustic many years ago (when she saw a piece by Michelle Stuart) and now combines it with other mediums. The versatility of encaustic never ceases to amaze her! Waxworks Encaustic Supplies has just been launched in response to students’ requests to buy tools and encaustic medium. More:
www.andreabird.com and
www.waxworksencaustics.comBinnie Birstein is an award-winning artist originally from New York City. Most recently she received second prize in Housatonic Museum’s
Why Not? juried by Helen Klisser During; first prize in
Thinking in Wax, juried by Joanne Mattera, in 2007; second prize in Artworks Gallery 2008 summer show, and honorable mention in
Particular Places, curated by Bernard Chaet. Binnie was awarded Best in Show by Ann Temkin in
Art of the Northeast at Silvermine Guild in 2002. She has shown throughout the country, extensively in the Northeast in many prestigious exhibitions and invitationals including: The Chautauqua National, Everson Biennial, Barnum Festival at the Discovery Museum, Salem (Mass.) State College, SUNY Brockport, Fingerlakes at Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY, and
Gaining Your Voice Through the Arts at the Greenwich (Conn.) Arts Council, which she also curated another year. Binnie has taught and lectured on her work. She lives in Weston, Conn., with her family.
Darla Bjork is an abstract painter working in encaustic. Exhibiting in New York City and abroad, her paintings consist of repeated gestures, layers of translucent to opaque strokes in vibrant colors; a meditation on open space, landscape, and light. She is a founder of Ceres Gallery, a women's collective gallery in New York City, where she was a member from 1984 to 1997; she has been a member of SOHO20 Gallery since 1997. More:
www.darlabjork.com
Mary Bucci McCoy is a longtime contributor of reviews and other writing to
Art New England magazine. Writing from her perspective as a painter, she has covered the work of a wide range of regional, national, and international artists. In addition, she designs web sites and print materials for artists, and gives workshops for artists on writing artist statements and promoting their work. More:
www.buccimccoy.com
Miles Conrad is the Director/Curator at
Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, which hosts nine exhibitions a year including the
Annual Encaustic Invitational. Miles has been working in the encaustic medium for 16 years and has exhibited his 3-D works nationally. Miles holds a B.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts and an M.F.A. from San Francisco Art Institute. He regularly offers classes in encaustic at all levels at his Tucson studio.
Danielle Correia is an interdisciplinary artist who received her B.F.A. in Photography & Sculpture from the University of Montana in 1998. She has been working at R&F since 1999, where she discovered encaustics, and has been incorporating it into her work ever since. As General Manager at R&F, she plays several roles including technical advisor and instructor. She has lectured at The Gay & Lesbian Community Center in New York City & has taught encaustic classes from Florida to Alaska. Her work has been featured in group and solo shows regionally and nationally.
Elena De La Ville is a mixed media artist with a current passion for encaustic; she works with paint, wax, photography and collage. She is also a beekeeper. Residing in Sarasota, Florida, she teaches Digital Photography and Encaustic at Ringling College of Art, Art Center Manatee and Longboat Key Center for the Arts. Her work is in the Collection of Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Caracas Sofia Imber (MACCSI) and Museo Acarigua-Araure, Venezuela, plus numerous private collections. Elena continues to explore different avenues of expression: "I connect my life experiences with the different materials available to me. I am a teller of tales. I weave the story of my life within each piece I create."
A graduate of the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn,
John S. Dilsizian was the president of Eastern Mohair & Trading Co.,Inc. and its Dilco Refining Division for over 45 of its 77 year history. Dedicated to the production of quality refined and bleached natural waxes, such as beeswax, candelilla and carnauba, as well as wax blends, Dilco Waxes has become recognized as one of the leading wax refiners in the U.S. Dilco services a broad spectrum of end users with its products and technical services. These range from cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, the arts, and industry to the Space Program. In March, 2007, Dilco Refining merged with Strahl & Pitsch Inc. of West Babylon, N.Y. Since that time, John has remained active in the industry as the president of the Dilco Refining Division of Strahl & Pitsch. The combined companies now produce the same fine waxes that established Dilco's reputation. See more at
www.spwax.com.
Shana Dumont is the Assistant Director/Assistant Curator at
Montserrat College of Art Gallery in Beverly, Mass. She has curated several exhibtions including
It’s Getting Hot in Here (spring 2008) and
Merging Influence: Eastern Elements in New American Art (fall 2007), both in the Montserrat Gallery. She authored or co-authored the catalogs "Enlightened View: Artists Teaching on Cape Ann" (2007) and "Stages of Depiction: Drawings from India, 17th – 19th Centuries" (2006). She was previously the Manager of Hurst Gallery in Cambridge, Mass.; received her M.A. in Art History from Boston University and B.A. in English and Art from Colby College, Waterville, Me. Her most recent curatorial endeavor,
Many Kinds of Nothing (Fall 2008), was reviewed in the
Boston Globe and
Art New England. She recently taught a seminar at Montserrat College of Art entitled "Spirituality in Contemporary Art," and is organizing a ceramics exhibition,
Fixed Chaos, to take place in the Montserrat Gallery in Winter 2009.
Hylla Evans is the founder and paintmaker of
Evans Encaustics based in Sonoma, California. Her 20 year's experience teaching painting has evolved into encaustic methods training for art teachers. She continues to paint in several media and lecture on copyright law in the arts.
Richard Frumess is a painter who has worked in a variety of mediums, including encaustic. He has been manufacturing encaustic commercially since 1982. In 1988 he founded
R&F Handmade Paints. He has since written numerous articles on the history, materials, and techniques of encaustic. His essays have appeared in
Waxing Poetic: Encaustic Art in America, published by the Montclair Art Museum, and
Encaustic Works 2005, published by the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. He has also written a monograph on the life and work of Rifka Angel, which accompanied an exhibit of her work at the Gallery at R&F in 2005.
Eileen Goldenberg received a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission in 2007 to install a solo show in that city. She curated
Tangible Wax, at the Christopher Gallery in Chicago, in March 2009 and was the juror for
Working in Wax at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek Calif., May-June 2009. She is a past president and one of the founders of
International Encaustic Artists based in California. Her work is shown in galleries all over the U.S., including Himmelberger Gallery in San Francisco, and Conrad Wilde Gallery in Tucson. She teaches in San Francisco.
Lynette Haggard is a painter who works with encaustic, oil, and mixed media. Her work is exhibited nationally and is in several collections. A founding member of
New England Wax, Haggard is also a member of the Copley Society in Boston, and is represented by the Hanback Gallery in Lenox, Massachusetts. She teaches workshops from her Saxonville studio. More:
www.lynettehaggard.com.
Cari Hernandez is an artist working in mixed medium with encaustic being the common element, as its unique qualities create a visual language of continuity. Prior to working as a full-time artist, she was trained as a fine art photographer and operated her own commercial photography studio in San Francisco for over seven years. She teaches encaustic workshops and lectures nationally on encaustic and other topics. Cari serves as a founding Executive Board member of the non-profit artists group
International Encaustic Artists, working as director of the annual Retreat and Conference. She resides in Northern California with her daughter - painting, hiking, cooking, playing, and having fun most days (that is, most days). More:
www.carihernandez.comMelissa Hronkin is an encaustic artist, teacher and beekeeper from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Her recent shows entitled
Icarus Rising: Lessons from the Bees and
Wintering: Into the Hive explore the folklore and mysteries surrounding beekeeping. Through her work she also hopes to raise awareness of the current plight of the honeybee. Melissa holds a B.F.A. from the University of Alaska Anchorage and an MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design. More:
www.melissa-hronkin.blogspot.comJeff Hirst is a Minneapolis-based artist who has been showing his work since the early 1990s and has conducted numerous encaustic and painting workshops throughout the Midwest. His paintings are included in the traveling exhibition
The Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic, curated by Reni Gower
. His work is also featured in numerous collections, including SAP America, Arcstone Technologies, and Great River Energy. Hirst recently was awarded a 2009 Minnesota State Arts Board grant. More:
www.jeffreyhirst.comDeborah Kapoor works in two and three-dimensional formats, combining encaustic with non-traditional grounds such as lace, paper, fabric and paper mache. The result is a heightened visceral effect, blurring the line between painting and sculpture. She is represented by ArtXchange Gallery in Seattle, whose focus is to promote cultural exchange through art. You can find more of her work at
www.deborahkapoor.com and
www.artxchange.org . She lives and works in Seattle.
After receiving her M.A. in sculpture at Ohio State University,
Sue Katz studied ceramics with Peter Voulkos, U.C. Berkeley, and art history with Irving Sandler, New York University. She taught ceramics and contemporary art history at New Jersey City University for five years. After moving to Western Massachusetts, raising kids and making production pottery, she took up graphic design and some teaching in community colleges. Next came co-founding and co-directing two Amherst community art galleries. Primarily she makes art – “contructs” combining painting and mixed media. Exhibitions include galleries in the Amherst-Northampton area and other New England cities. More:
www.suekatzart.comKandy Lozano initially began in the world of fashion as a designer for an international women’s apparel company in Chicago. She subsequently designed children’s apparel and opened a Children’s boutique in Southern California. With a desire to return to painting and pursue her art career fulltime, she explored various mediums and found encaustic to best suit her practice. Her first request to paint larger came from her Dallas gallery and in return, introduced her into a broader collector base. Directing more and more energy to large-scale works over the years, she has found working large to be most rewarding. She resides in Malibu, California, with her family and animals. Her work is exhibited and collected worldwide.
An avid artist,
Maura Joy Lustig has been drawing and painting all her life, and over the years has taken numerous courses and workshops, using such mediums as watercolour, acrylic, oil and photography. Through a twist of fate in 2003 she the ancient technique of encaustic and committed herself to the magic and mastery of painting with wax. Her work is collected internationally and she participates in shows in Canada and the United States and Europe.
She lives in Peterborough, Ontario, with her husband, Jeff Lustig, a Chiropractor. Maura is passionate about health, travel, painting, reading and writing and personal development. Since 2004 Maura has combined her creativity with her business acumen and training to create “Healing Art” and to serve others as a lifestyle and cleanse coach. She is co-president of the
International Encaustic Artists, a professional artists’ organization that seeks to raise the level of excellence in fine art encaustic work by providing global information exchange and raising interest about encaustics in the art world and with the general public.
Julie Shaw Lutts is a mixed-media artist who lives and works in Salem, Massachusetts. She works in assemblage, collage, painting and the book arts. Using found objects, paper ephemera, photographs and old books she combines these elements to create fresh visual narratives. Currently Julie has a solo show called ‘Artifacts’ at the Kensington-Stobart Gallery in Salem. More:
www.julieshawlutts.com.
Nathan Margalit is a painter, printmaker and educator. Raised and educated in South Africa, he completed his M.F.A. at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Since taking up residency in the U.S. he has had numerous solo and group shows and given a range of presentations and workshops throughout the Northeast at institutions such as the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven. He is currently associated with the studio arts programs at Trinity College and Mount Holyoke College. Nathan has been working in the encaustic medium for more than 15 years. More:
www.nathanmargalit.com
Alexandre Masino has been exhibiting for the last i5 years in public and commercial galleries across Canada, the United States and Europe. Since 2001 he has been painting exclusively with encaustic, developing a rich vocabulary where representation and the physicality of the medium enhance each other. Masino has published three catalogues accompanying solo exhibitions. His paintings can be found in various public and private collections throughout North America and Europe. You can see his work at
www.alexandremasino.ca and read his blog on
www.alexandremasino.blogspot.comSara Mast is a widely exhibited artist whose paintings are included in over 30 public and private collections in the United States and abroad. Her work is included in two publications:
Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax, authored by Joanne Mattera and published by Watson-Guptill of New York (2001), and
New American Paintings (Western competition, 2001), published by The Open Studios Press, Wellesley, Mass. She recently participated in an invitational exhibition entitled
Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies at the Schneider Museum of Art at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Or., and has an upcoming a solo exhibition at the Gallery at R & F, which opens on June 13, entitled
Excavating Wonder. Sara lives and works in Bozeman, Montana. More:
www.saramast.comJoanne Mattera has shown her work, which she describes as “lush minimalism,” throughout the United States and in the Philippines. In New York City she has had solo shows at the Stephen Haller Gallery and at OK Harris Works of Art and has participated in many group shows over two decades. This year her work was included in
GeoMetrics at Gallery 128, curated by Gloria Klein, in the burgeoning Lower East Side, and in
Material Color at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, N.J., curated by Mary Birmingham; she was also an invited curator for
Blogpix, a show that featured artists whose work has a connection to the blogosphere, at Denise Bibro Fine Art in Chelsea. Joanne is represented in galleries around the country, including Arden Gallery in Boston. She is the author of
The Art of Encaustic Painting, and the founder/director of this conference. She invites you to visit her
Joanne Mattera Art Blog.
Sandi Miot lives and works in Northern California and has been painting in encaustic for over 10 years. She shows her work both nationally and internationally and her paintings have appeared on the sets of popular TV shows such as
Friends, ER, and
CSI: Miami. She is represented in California by Art Pic in North Hollywood. Sandi teaches at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and Mendocino Art Center and is active in the artist community of Marin County. More:
www.sandimiot.com.
Over the last five years
Cherie Mittenthal has been working predominantly in wax or encaustic. Her recent work is concerned with the ritual of layering, exploring the spaces between structure, fluidity, density, and the visible effects of light through pigment to create a moment in time. Cherie has an M.F.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase and a B.F.A. from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. She is the Executive Director of Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill since 2002. She serves on the board of Campus Provincetown, The Provincetown Cultural Council and partner with Highlands Center.
Barbara Moody is a full-time professor at
Montserrat College of Art, where she also served as Dean for nine years. She earned M.Ed. and Ed.D. degrees from Harvard University, as well as a B.F.A. from Syracuse University. She has had four solo shows at the Kingston Gallery in Boston’s SOWA district; her next solo show is scheduled for January, 2010. Barbara’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Riverside Art Museum, Calif.; Murphy Gallery, St. Paul, Minn.; and in Lake George, N.Y.; as well as at the DeCordova Museum, Mills Gallery, Pepper Gallery, Essex Art Center, South Shore Art Center, and Schlosberg Gallery in Mass. Barbara received a Massachusetts Cultural Council finalist grant in drawing, and she recently completed two large-scale commission mural projects for a corporation in Fall River, Mass.
More:
www.barbaramoody.com.
A long time resident of Tucson, artist
Catherine Nash, M.F.A., specializes in hand papermaking, sculptural artist books and mixed media drawing/painting. She teaches for the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum Art Institute and within her own studio, Desert Paper Book and Wax. Her love of travel and different cultures has inspired her to live, research and teach on four continents. Her work has been included in recent national book and paper exhibitions by invitation at the Raymond Ave. Gallery in St. Paul, The Center for Book Arts in New York City, the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, N.J., at Coburn Gallery, Colorado College, and in
Paper Cuts: The Art of Contemporary Paper, which toured nationwide through October 2007. In the
22nd Annual North American Sculpture Exhibition in Golden Colorado, Nash was awarded a major prize for her cast paper work. Nash’s mixed media paintings, artist books and environmental installations have been shown across the United States, Japan and Europe. More:
www.catherinenash.com .
Nancy Natale paints in encaustic and other mediums and shows her work regionally and nationally. She is co-chair of
New England Wax and webmaster for ther site. Nancy acquired a digital camera a few years ago and reveled in the ease it brought to documenting her artwork. Undaunted by the vast scope of Photoshop, Nancy conquered the small section needed to edit most digital photos of artwork and wants to help other artists lose their technophobia by understanding the editing process. More:
www.nancynatale.com.
Chris Paschke has been a custom framer and industry educator/consultant since the early 1980s. As the framing industry mounting specialist she has been teaching mounting basics and frame design at trade shows, industry open houses, chapter events and internationally ever since. She writes the monthly column, "Mastering Mounting," for
Picture Framing Magazine, and has written four trade books including her most recent,
The Mounting And Laminating Handbook, Third Edition, launched March 2008. As both an encaustic artist and with her extensive background as a custom frame designer Chris can truly offer a complete picture to conferees on how to handle their completed art. In an attempt to resolve encaustic framing challenges she has recently created the Platform Float Frame concept specifically designed for use with encaustic panels and cradles.
Paula Roland has had 16 solo exhibitions and 100 group exhibitions at galleries and museums in the United States and Europe. Paula’s grants and awards include The National Endowment for the Arts, The Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, The Santa Fe Art Institute and The Virginia Center for Creative Arts, including their Fellowship Award Program in France. Her commissioned works include the American Embassies in Uganda and South Africa. Roland developed a curriculum for the little-known process of encaustic monotypes in 1996. In addition to her workshops in Santa Fe and at Ghost Ranch, Paula has taught the process across the US and in Europe. Paula’s work is featured in
The Art of Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax, by Joanne Mattera,
Embracing Encaustic by Linda Womack, and Alexia Tala’s
Installations and Experimental Printmaking . More:
www.paularoland.com.
Provocative and whimsical,
Jeff Schaller propels the viewer into scenes of seemingly unrelated subjects, creating his own captivating and complex sonatas. Simultaneously, they are pop and edgy, esoteric and direct. Using encaustic paints, Jeff weaves lost and found images and words to paint with a precision and intricacy not normally found in encaustic paintings. His approach is expressionistic, contemporary, and painterly, with powerful brush strokes that are set instantaneously. More:
www.pinkcowstudio.com .
Tracy Spadafora is a painter who has been teaching the encaustic technique for the past 12 years at locations throughout the northeast, including Peter’s Valley Craft Center, the DeCordova Museum School, Women’s Studio Workshop, and R&F Handmade Paints, Inc. Her work is included in several books, including
The Art of Encaustic Painting by Joanne Mattera and
Embracing Encaustic by Linda & William Womack.
Rodney Thompson was born in Eugene, Oregon, but has lived in California most of his life. While pursuing a medical career with the left side of his brain, art and creativity found a balance on the right side. He currently lives in the country in Northern California, shares a custom art panel business with his wife, paints in encaustic and works one day a week at a medical clinic. More:
www.rodneythompson.com.
Charyl Weissbach is impressionist encaustic painter living in Boston. Her diverse art background enables her to bring a unique perspective and style to her encaustic
paintings, which she applies to seascape and landscape scenes. Charyl is one of the founders of "The Luminous Landscape," a collective of landscape painters working in encaustic who have been exhibiting throughout New England. More:
www.charylweissbachfineart.com.
Cynthia Winika is the Education Director/main teacher for R&F where she has worked since 1993. She has been an artist/lecturer at Yale, Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco Art Institute and other schools and art centers. Her encaustic book arts are in the collections of: The Harvard Fine Arts Library, Yale University, Skidmore College, Cleveland Art Institute and other artist book collections. Her paintings and technical info are featured in:
The Art of Encaustic Painting by Joanne Mattera ,
College for the Soul by Paula Grasdal,
New American Paintings vol.56. Encaustic and Fireworks prints on paper in:
Installations and Experimental Printmaking by Alexia Tala She is represented by A.I.R. Gallery, NYC.
More here.
Influenced by her childhood in Hawaii,
Linda Womack incorporates abstractions of nature, exploring connections between past and present and the passage of time. She is the author of
Embracing Encaustic: Learning to Paint with Beeswax, and exhibits nationally. Her work was recently published in Studio Visit Magazine. More:
www.lindawomack.com.
Daniella Woolf holds an M.A. in Design (Textile Structures) from UCLA. She is a 2007 recipient of the Gail Rich Award for excellence in the arts, and a 2008 Recipient of the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship. Over her career she has worked in a variety of media, including jewelry and metalsmithing, fiber and textiles, collage and installation. She teaches workshops for R & F Paints and WaxWorksWest. Her current work is about identity, privacy, and memory. She is an active member of the Surface Design Association, International Encaustic Artists and The International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists. She writes a blog entitled
Encausticopolis about all things wax, under the name Dotty Stripes. More:
www.daniellawoolf.com.
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