EncaustiCamp Collographs

Yes, I'm going to show you some of the collographs that came out of the EncaustiCampers but first wanted to share one of the three palettes Willow Bader paints from on. Because images like this make us encaustic artists' mouth water. All that waxy goodness.

But for the collographs we are working with the wax only to create textured plates that we can ink up with Akua waterbased inks and then print onto paper.

The above image shows the acrylic plate with a matrix of wax that has been inked and is ready to print.

And this is the print. We had the loan of a pin press which some of us used as well as printing with barens. We experimented with damped as well as dry papers; many varieties.

The inked encausticbord above.

A print pulled from the encausticbord.

Print.

Same plate for the print above, turned in a different direction.

And above is the acrylic plate and wax matrix that created it.

The acrylic inked plate above along with the print it produced.

Another inked plate.

Same thing - inked acrylic plate.

An encausticbord with wax matrix and Akua inked.

Acrylic plate waxed and inked, ready to print.

After we pulled prints from the encausticbords we kept the boards themselves as substrates for further work or as finished works in themselves.

Several students made triptychs.

Really cool.

We also made small encaustic pieces to "bomb" Pioneer Square and other locations in downtown Seattle. That was really fun and the local news station showed up to report on the fun.

This is a momoprint in the above photo. I missed posting it yesterday.

I only did one little sketch during my stay. We kept very busy socializing, napping and gadding about. Trish left little love bombs outside our doors each morning and I got quite a collection of them. Her practice is generosity and kindness; her goal is to promote artists and leave a legacy of a better world. It's pretty amazing and wonderful.

Perhaps I should say that on the last evening the entire camp honored me with a retirement champagne party complete with slide show and tearful good-byes. After 4 years of teaching at camp the time came for me to admit that younger and more energetic teachers deserved their chance to shine. Erin Keane and Amanda Jolley will be stepping in and they're going to be fabulous teachers.  

I'll still pursue teaching at other retreats however. I can't imagine my life without that connection. And I'll be visiting EncaustiCamp next year to bring you a report and this time photographs of the participants there. My beloveds. Those who have and continue to enrich my life both in person and in memory.