Sunday, July 22, 2007

Yesterday Was Sunny - Today it's Rainy

This is what I was working on for my demo, it's not finished but more interesting than the last two. Don't you think?
I spend twelve hours on my feet yesterday demonstrating encaustic wax painting. The weather was perfect for a garden show blue skies 70 degrees. But I was inside the Craftsman home by the tall windows with the sun beating in so combined with the heat from the wax I was so hot I felt like a wax figure at Madame Tussards Wax Museum : Help I'm melting, melting. Or better still a wax figure I commissioned of me. How bizarre is that? If I left, my wax figure could stand in for me.

While there weren’t hordes of people at my demonstrations the people that came totally intrigued with encaustic wax and asking tons of questions. I am doing my part to spread "The Cult of the Wax" (I coined that expression). There was a sign up sheet for people interested in the workshop I plan to have one day soon. I collected quite a few names. I talked to a lady from Germany whose adorable granddaughter about 9 years old did the interpreting. We chatted gleefully about Encaustic Wax the wax techniques she used. Basically drawing on heavy stock paper with wax crayons and heating it with an everyday iron pushing the wax around. From what I gather encaustic wax is very popular in Europe. I love encaustic wax painting and I am enthusiatic about showing what I've learned and finding out what others do. I even wanted to raise my own bees but after I watched a bee keeping demonstration and a dry lecture I am not as excited to keep bees in Alaska. We have own special problems like long dark winters and the angle of the sun white snow and dark skies make the bee fly upside down and in the cold their muscles won't let them fly then they freeze.

I did not sell anything yesterday but that was not my goal. I am not heart broken. Then today Briony Fryfogle called me and wanted my art in their gallery and asked permission to put some photos my art in their local magazine Make a Scene. Like Carmen said: We'll all do a little "cross pollination" and make the valley Bloom even more.

2 comments:

Lisabeth and Jeff said...

sign me up for the future demo/class too Judy. sorry i didnt make it on saturday.
cheers!
L.B.

Patti Gibbons said...

You never know WHAT will come of your networking and doing demos like that! Bravo! I wish I were there!! xxpatti