From beehive to hotplate to the artist's hand, encaustic has evolved as a versatile medium applied to almost every artistic style. A long-overdue look at a newly popular art form, this book explores 79 North American artists' feelings about their work in encaustic and how they use it to express their inner worlds and the world around them. Eight chapters organize the artists by geographical region and focus on how the heated beeswax and resin material is used to create seductive, skin-like surfaces and rich, layered membranes. More than 2,000 years old, this cross-disciplinary medium ranges from painting to sculpture, assemblage, collage, and printmaking and encourages risk-taking in a way that other materials do not. Its inherent contradictions--it can be hot or cold, malleable or solid, opaque or translucent, layered or thin, permanent or fragile--make it all the more fascinating.

From beehive to hotplate to the artist's hand, encaustic has evolved as a versatile medium applied to almost every artistic style. A long-overdue look at a newly popular art form, this book explores 79 North American artists' feelings about their work in encaustic and how they use it to express their inner worlds and the world around them. Eight chapters organize the artists by geographical region and focus on how the heated beeswax and resin material is used to create seductive, skin-like surfaces and rich, layered membranes. More than 2,000 years old, this cross-disciplinary medium ranges from painting to sculpture, assemblage, collage, and printmaking and encourages risk-taking in a way that other materials do not. Its inherent contradictions--it can be hot or cold, malleable or solid, opaque or translucent, layered or thin, permanent or fragile--make it all the more fascinating.

With a history that stretches back to the hauntingly beautiful mummy portraits of Greco-Roman Egypt, encaustic art is now enjoying a renewal of popularity among artists and art lovers alike. Today, museums are staging exhibitions of encaustic art, workshops in the technique are thriving, and art collectors and dealers are assimilating encaustic art into their collections and galleries. The word encaustic is taken from the Greek and means “to burn in.” In the encaustic process, pigmented wax is applied and then fused to a surface with heat. The result is a broad range of surface effects and a luminous translucency that is unique to the encaustic medium. Encaustic Art is a complete resource for artists who wish to learn to create fine art with wax. It features step-by-step techniques with easy-to-understand instructions and detailed illustrations, stunning examples of encaustic works of art (including sculpture), along with practical advice and thoughtful aesthetic observations from more than 60 professional artists working in the encaustic medium.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition devoted to the encaustic medium, Waxing Poetic: Encaustic Art in America examines a painting method first used by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The word "encaustic" derives from the Greek term "enkaustikos," meaning "to burn in." The basic technique calls for dry pigments to be mixed with molten wax on a warm palette and applied to any ground or surface. A heat source is passed close to the surface, burning in and fusing the colors. Currently enjoying a widespread revival among painters, sculptors, and even printmakers, the encaustic medium's resurgence has been bolstered by the availability of commercially prepared paints and the availability of electrically heated equipment. In this lavishly illustrated volume, featuring more than 100 art works, Gail Stavitsky examines the twentieth-century encaustic renaissance. She discusses the work of such well-known artists as Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Lyndia Vengalis, and many others who have turned to this ancient medium to express their aesthetic, philosophical, and environmental concerns. The other two essays in this volume are "Encaustic Painting and Revivals: A History of Discord and Discovery" by Danielle Rice and "Encaustic Painting as a Contemporary Paint Medium" by Richard Frumess.

From the founder of Encausticamp comes this guide to the wax-painting technique, including step-by-step demonstrations, innovative techniques, and examples of student projects and finished pieces.

Encaustic painting is one of the world’s most venerable art forms, having been practised consistently around the world since the ancient Egyptians first used it to decorate sarcophagi, and enjoying continuing popularity in the modern era with artists such as Paul Klee and Diego Rivera. In this new text, Jennifer Margell offers readers a comprehensive introduction to the medium, featuring instructive how-tos for encaustic art beginners, revealing interviews with some of the most celebrated practitioners of the medium, and a gallery featuring one of the largest published collections of encaustic art to date.

Collaboration in the arts is no longer a conscious choice to make a deliberate artistic statement, but instead a necessity of artistic survival. In today’s hybrid world of virtual mobility, collaboration decentralizes creative strategies, enabling artists to carve new territories and maintain practice-based autonomy in an increasingly commercial and saturated art world. Collaboration now transforms not only artistic practices but also the development of cultural institutions, communities and personal lifestyles. This book explores why collaboration has become so integrated into a greater understanding of creative artistic practice. It draws on an emerging generation of contributors—from the arts, art history, sociology, political science, and philosophy—to engage directly with the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of collaborative practice of the future.

"This is the book on women's art I've been waiting for--smart, deeply rooted, and up-to-date, with an overdue focus on women of color that fills in the historical cracks. Read it and run with it."--Lucy R. Lippard, author of The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Essays on Feminist Art "More than merely beautiful and ground-breaking, Art/ Women/ California 1950-2000 is also about the enriching interventions created by diverse women artists, the effect of whose work is not only far-reaching, but has also opened up the very definition of American art. It is about intellectual interdisciplinality and the dialectical relationship between art and social context. It is about the way various California cultures--Native, Latino, Asian, feminist, immigrant, politically active, and virtual, which are so different from the trope of the Western cowboy--have intervened in that entity we imagine as 'America.' "--Elaine Kim, editor of Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism "Rich and provocative. A pleasure to read and to look at."--Linda Nochlin, author of The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity "This book should greatly help everyone understand the remarkably diversified evolution of art in California, which is largely due to the great influx of women and the transformative effect of a new feminist consciousness."--Arthur C. Danto, author of Philosophizing Art: Selected Essays

More than just a technical guide, this book provides comprehensive information for those new to cold wax medium, as well as technical expertise and inspiration to those with experience. Featuring nearly 100 artists from around the world, Cold Wax Medium will strengthen your work and studio practice, suggest new directions, and support thoughtful self-critique.