Wrapping Up

Just a few more photos of the IEA Retreat at Carmel before I leave that subject. The photo above shows Rodney Thompson demonstrating a pour. His went perfectly. Mine at home ran down the wall behind my work table (poor aim) and the over heated wax was too yellow so I gave myself a blister on my pinky scraping the entire board back down. It isn't always as easy as the demo makes it look. And Rodney is the master. I love his quiet work.

The participants were urged to bring an encaustic for trade. The trades are wrapped and chosen by number. Here Miles is choosing one as the rest of us look on.

One of our demonstrations by Chris Paschke was on framing and boxing our work for shipping to gallery shows. The best way to protect fragile work is by double boxing. Above is the inner box.

And this photo shows the outer box which can be reused many times. The walls are of double thick foam core.

From Carmel we travel swiftly back to Portland where this morning I helped other IEA members pack up the recent show at the Brian Marki Gallery. The work that was unsold will be returned to the originating artists. I learned a lot by helping with this job; I got to see what worked and what was makeshift.

It's helpful if you have special instructions to the gallery to include a diagram as this artist has done.

The diagram is affixed to the lid of the box where is won't become lost. It is very easy to lose things with so many boxes to ship back to artists.

It is wonderfully helpful to tape an image of the work to the outside of the box. This will help you keep track of work in your own studio too. Notice the deckled edge on the wax in the crow painting above.

This is how you protect the fragile wax edges.

And then that box goes into another box with padding between the walls.

And here are all the boxes taped up and ready for the shippers to send back to the artists.

The latest in my counting series. You might just see another grid but to me they represent units of finite time. I've been feeling rushed and so have allowed myself to fall behind here and there. I need to live my life slowly and with consideration. It feels good to know that I can take a deep breath and do just that. (Waxing and waning.)