Are you looking to create new and unique marks, subtle washes, or interesting repetitive elements in your work? This course combines the ancient art form of painting with encaustic and traditional methods of fabric production. It is for those who want to expand their technical and visual vocabulary and to explore the possibilities of fabric and encaustic. Susan Stover draws on her extensive background in textiles and painting and encourages participants to explore the possibilities of adapting tools and processes and to use them in a contemporary way.
The workshop will start by making some of our own tools based on traditional ones used in the production of textiles. Participants will use these tools to create lines, shapes, motifs and repetitive mark-making on silk to produce unique fabrics that will be embedded into encaustic. We will also use these tools directly with the encaustic process. Techniques to include: wax stamping, working with a tjanting tool, watercolor effects, collaging fabric, incising, stenciling, batik, silk-painting, and shibori. Demonstrations will illustrate how the fabrics and encaustic can produce results not possible in encaustic alone; how transparency, scale and color interact compositionally; and how to effectively combine these two mediums. Participants will be encouraged to draw on their own history and interests to further develop their voice and art practice.
This class is for those with a basic working knowledge of encaustic, but no textile background is required.