The second week I was at Arrowmont, I took an encaustic painting class. Encaustic, for those unfamiliar, is essentially painting with hot wax. The instructor was encaustic painter and ceramic artist K Rhynus Cesark. Her crossover talents created a perfect learning environment for me and I was able to learn a lot of different approaches to encaustics, including painting on board, painting on ceramics, and casting with wax.

I think the most interesting photos I have are from the casting process, so I decided to share those with you. Luckily, if you recall from the last post I already had a ready-to-use plaster mold left over from my last class, which casts one half of an opened book. The clay book was “F” for Fox, so I decided on “R” for Rabbit for my wax book.

To begin the casting process, the plaster mold had to be soaked in water for about 25 minutes in order to ensure the eventual release of the cast wax. Otherwise you end up with wax permanently affixed to your mold. When the mold was ready, liquid hot wax was poured into the mold:

Now, I didn’t want the thing to be solid since that would use up an unnecessary amount of wax. And by the way, anytime in this post I say “wax,” what I am really referring to is “wax medium.” Which! I should mention! is beeswax mixed with damar resin: NOT just 100% beeswax as one might think. The resin helps the wax cure to a harder and more durable finish. However, its fumes are also toxic, so we had fans going constantly in a well-ventilated space. This is part of what made this process, while not imminently life-threatening, the most dangerous thing I attempted this summer. The other two factors were: 1) the hot wax is about 200 degrees F when you are working with it, 2) there was much handling of razor blades, and 3) we used propane torches!! Safety first!

I wish I had an ultra-cool picture of me working the blowtorch to show you but alas, I have no such photo. What I can show you is a profound piece of blowtorch wisdom brought to us by the metals class:

Anyhow, after casting several layers of wax into the mold to make a hollow page, I repeated the process to make the opposite page. Popped them both out and here’s our book:

But it still needed a back cover. So I cast a flat slab, manipulated it some with the aid of the aforementioned blowtorch and the heated flat griddle we all warmed our wax on, and attached it:

There’s a real, bonafide book in the background I used to help get it right. After the attachment it was time for the fun part: adding the rabbit design.

One of the really neat things about wax is its ability to grab onto images on paper. If you stick a drawn or printed image down on the wax and rub it in with a spoon, the image will actually transfer down onto the wax, due to the stickiness of the wax layer. It’s reminiscent of the silly-putty newspaper transfers I did as a kid. The caveat is that certain types of printer ink work better than others, and we had a whole run-around with that at the workshop, going all over Arrowmont’s campus to find the ideal printer for wax transfers. It also turns out that regular pencil graphite from a sketch transfers beautifully. I sketched my rabbit drawing on onionskin paper and transferred it on.

Here you can see a close up of the rabbit’s back in graphite, as well as the coordinating clover I drew up in the top right corner. You can see here that I’ve already started carving each individual clover into the wax.

That brings us to the next step: the carving and filling process! In ceramics we have a similar technique called mishima, so I kept thinking of this as mishima on wax. I used the guidelines of my transferred sketch to thoroughly carve out each element of the drawing. Then, using black oil paint and black encaustic paint, I filled in the carvings. It looks a mess initially because when you apply the black paint it just goes all over the place. Eventually, you scrape the excess back with a flat edge razor blade and reveal the design. Here’s a photo where I’ve just begun the scraping process, so you can see scraped and un-scraped areas:

Finally, after all the carving and scraping is done, we have the final product!

We interrupt the entry I was supposed to do next to say: Goodbye, Arrowmont!! It’s my last day here this summer and I’m truly sad to go. It really couldn’t have been a better experience and I will definitely never forget it!!

On that note, here is a silly picture of everyone I worked with this year. (I’m in the back right doing a crazy arm pose.) It’s been, great, everyone!

I wanted to show you all some images from a Monoprinting on Clay class that I took this summer with Arthur Gonzalez. I can’t say enough good things about Arthur, seriously, he was very open, personable and a great instructor to boot. He teaches at CCA and maintains a Facebook page for the ceramics department there. His personal site is here. Check it out!

In the class, which, by the way, was filled with a truly wonderful group of people, we learned how to monoprint on clay. Here are my in-progress shots from the process.

In the first step of monoprinting, we drew the image on a plaster slab with ceramic underglazes. I first drew the image in pencil onto the plaster, then I colored it in with black underglaze, and then I scratched through some of the underglaze to make the texture on the fur and branches. It’s important to remember that the image will be reversed later in the process as it’s pulled up onto a sheet of clay. That’s why in the original drawing, the letter “F” is backwards.

Here’s the opposite page of the book. In the upper left corner, you can see where I’ve begun to “mask” off the branches with white underglaze. I wanted to add some sponged-on black as an atmospheric background to my forest scene, but I didn’t want the black getting into the white marks on the branches. The masking essentially “closes” that layer of the print from any other marks or colors that are added later. It’s helpful to think of it as working backwards: you lay the foreground down first, then build back to the background, masking areas that you want to protect as you go.

Here’s the fox side, all masked off. I then sponged on a layer of black before masking the entire image again with white slip. This time, I masked the image in a big rectangle to fill the whole “page” with a white background.

Before I go on, I should mention that a book-shaped mold is the eventual destination of this print. I measured the “page” area of the book mold before starting. That measurement told me how big to make the fox and branch images in the first place. The next step is for me to print the image onto a clay slab and drop it into the book mold.

The printing process happens fast, so I missed getting a photo for you. What happens is, you must cover the masked image with a layer of thick slip, then slam down a slab of clay on top and roll it on firmly with a rolling pin. After about an hour, you peel up the slab and the image should adhere itself to the clay. after I printed both pages and dropped them into the book mold, this was the result:

If you look, you can see the subtle cloudiness in the background made by my sponged-on black layer. The sides of the book weren’t printed, so I painted them with slip and then added a back cover.

And here’s the result!

The piece in the photo hasn’t yet been fired. Earthenware, which is the clay we used in the workshop, will usually turn a more orange color after firing.

Stay tuned for the next “evolution” post, where I will show you how I recycled this book mold to use with wax casting! See you soon!

Well dear readers, here I am at a summer art assistantship at none other than Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in the Smoky Mountains! Arrowmont is an amazing place with a supportive and lively work culture and I couldn’t be happier to be here. I applied for this assistantship way back in February and was thrilled when I found out I’d been accepted.

It’s the beginning of July here and it is super, super hot. We’re talking 100+ degree days where you feel as if you practically have to swim through the air. Arrowmont has a cool, clear swimming hole nearby in one of the parks and we have visited often!

When I’m not enjoying the swimming hole I am working for Arrowmont doing a wide variety of assistant-type things. We do everything from mail and supply runs to helping with evening presentations and locking up studios at night. In return, Arrowmont provides us with free room and board, and we also get free classes for half of the time we are here working. I am here for six weeks, so I get to take three classes. I have already taken two: one with Arthur Gonzalez about monoprinting on clay and another with K. Rhynus Cesark on encaustic painting. I have plenty of great pictures and stories to share with you about those classes so stay tuned for that! As soon as I can grab another minute of free time I will pop back in here and tell you all about it. See you again soon!