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Happy is the house that shelters a friend.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of my students brought a brand-spanking-new copy of Patricia Seggebrush’s Encaustic Workshop to class. Though I didn’t get a chance to read the whole thing, I DID page through and can tell you it’s a juicy one! It’s a technique book chock full of lush, inspiring how-to pics. We passed it around the class (lots of oohs and ahs) and everyone seemed to find something take inspiration from. Highly recommended for students and teachers of encaustic.

My love affair with the The Sartorialist is over. I deleted photographer Scott Schuman’s blog from my blogroll for posting too many glamorized pictures of cigarettes being smoked and for aggressively moderating anti-smoking comments out of his conversation while allowing pro-”ciggy” voices to hold sway.

There are good arguments both for and against the use of destructive imagery in art (yes, I think glamorized images of smoking are destructive). John H. Richardson’s personal take in, “My History of Violence,” is great and though his focus is on violence his arguments apply to all images that depict self-harm or the harm of others. An excerpt:

When I was a cub reporter starting out at the Albuquerque Tribune, I found a report in the police blotter about a pair of 16-year-old lovers who gassed themselves in a car. I about choked on how great a story it was, did a little reporting, found out they did it in a closed garage and that their bodies were discovered by the very same parents who were trying to split them up. Then I pitched it to my editor. no way, he said. I said, “What? Are you crazy? It’s Romeo and fucking Juliet!” He gave me a sad look. “If I run this story, and give it big play and a nice layout, I guarantee you there will be a copycat suicide. Maybe a bunch of them. Do you want that on your conscience?”

I said, it’s not my responsibility what crazy people do. It’s the truth and that’s what I want to write, the truth. Would you tell Shakespeare to stick to comedies? Would you tell Tolstoy to write Peace and Peace?
…

Somehow, my editor managed to resist my blinding rhetorical onslaught. He didn’t run the piece. And I thought, this little burg is just too small-town for me, baby. These people don’t understand art. They don’t understand transgression. So I went to Hollywood. And just after I got there, some guy made a movie called The Program that had a scene where some kids lay down on a highway divider as a dare—and sure enough, there were copycats out in Pennsylvania who laid their dumb asses down on highway dividers and got squashed. And the studio said, hey, it’s not our responsibility what crazy people do. These people just don’t understand art…”

You can read the whole article on Paste.

Those of you charmed by bee imagery should check out Bees in Art, a virtual gallery of lovingly rendered images of honeybees, bumblebees and other Hymenoptera.

Worker Honey Bee, mezzotint engraving by Andrew Tyzack

Curator, artist and beekeeper, Andrew Tyzack, has assembled a collection of vintage books, paintings, drawings and prints that enhance his dramatic paintings of beekeepers at work.

Honey Farming, oil on linen by Andrew Tyzack.

The collection has a storybook quality that’s earnest and sweet and not at all didactic.

I love the softness of this bumblebee.

Bombus Terrestris, print by Richard Lewington

Happiness! Joanne Mattera just posted the preliminary roster for the 2010 Encaustic Painting Conference. I will be there (presenting “Wax Fetish” a new talk/slide show about beeswax, materialism and encaustic paint, more details later.) Readers, If you plan to go, let me know. I’d love to connect with you.

Something warming from the NYTimes, a slide show about a woman who likes to walk.

P.S. I know I’ve been a delinquent blogger lately. It’s been a hectic couple of months. I have missed you.

A new painting.

“Psychopomp, Gold and Blue Bird,” encaustic, ink and gold leaf on panel

psy•cho•pomp
noun
In Greek mythology a guide of souls to the place of the dead.
The spiritual guide of a living person’s soul.
In Jungian psychology the psychopomp is a mediator between conscious and unconscious realms personified in dreams as a wise man or woman or sometimes as a helpful animal.

Please join me for a lecture/slide-show about beeswax at BMoCA on Tuesday evening. I’ll be speaking about beeswax, how it is made by the bees, its uses in contemporary art and what it means. Free and open to the public.

Wax Fetish:
Beeswax, Materialism and Encaustic Paint
Tuesday, October 20th
7:00 – 9:00 PM
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
1750 13th Street
Boulder, Colorado

This looks like a terrific event despite the clunky description (and very nearly warrants a special trip to New York). Check out each panelist’s link to see something interesting.

Theory and Practice: Encaustic Painting Today
Artists Talk on Art
October 30th, 2009
7:00-9:00pm
The School of Visual Arts
209 East 23rd Street, New York, NY

Panel discussion with encaustic artists and people involved in the world of encaustic art who will explore the growing popularity of encaustic painting over the last 15-20 years and address the question of what in the climate of the arts and the times has revived the use of this ancient medium amongst contemporary artists when for so long it was used only occasionally, at best.

Moderator: Ellen Koment

Panelists: Richard Frumess, Nancy Azara, Michael David, Joan Giardano and Gail Gregg

Plantai #3, encaustic on panel, 15″ x 15″
By Ellen Koment

Prosperity, encaustic, ink and gold leaf on panel, 20″ x 16″

I know it’s recession time, but the weird, lush summer we had here in Colorado left me feeling like we passed through a dreamlike period of prosperity. The painting above, inspired by a first harvest of gooseberries (from a prickly, nearly forgotten shrub we planted three years ago) is on display at the main library in Boulder, Colorado as part of the 2009 Open Studios show.

My downtown Boulder painting studio will be open to the public from noon to 6 on Saturday and Sunday October 3rd, 4th, 10th and 11th. You’re warmly invited to stop by and say hello.

Open Studios 2009
October 3th, 4th, 10th and 11th
Noon to 6:00 pm
In the alley between Pine and Mapleton at 15th in Boulder, Colorado

New puppy!

More pics here.

“Space, and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.”

- Max Beckmann

Breathtaking, eh? More here.

Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302

“What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour — fast enough to travel from Earth to the moon in 24 minutes!”

Flow•er
noun Botany
The seed bearing part of a plant consisting of reproductive organs.

verb • figurative
To be in or reach an optimum stage of development. Develop fully and richly.

There’s a beautiful story about the evolution of flowers in today’s NYTimes.

The Drive Home, encaustic and ink on panel, 10′ x 8″

The painting above was inspired, in part, by salad burnet.

Burnet stem and leaves

Burnet is a cucumber scented salad herb. Like many herbs, it’s a vigorous grower but wilts quickly when picked. Its leaves are soft and flimsy and it has beautiful curving stems. Though I don’t often use serrated leaves in painting (too zig zaggy) I’m happy to make an exception for burnet leaves. They remind me of an animal’s hands, and when painted brown, they remind me of oak. Either way, they charm me. I hope you like them, too.

Strangely, the lines I get when I draw from the real offer more surprises than those that spring from my imagination alone. All my current work is inspired by plants. I don’t aim to copy them, but use them as a way to ground my hand.