March News

 

 

Flow, Fabric, Wax, Rust on Board, 2' x 8'

 

Workshops:

Beeswax Collage on Feb 25 at the Art Center Sarasota.

Beeswax with Mixed Media with Elena De La Ville
1 day workshop, 

 February 25, 2015
10:00am - 3:00pm
All levels
$130m/$160nm

In this workshop you will learn how to use beeswax together with your mixed media work, as you discover techniques such as layering, transparency, mark making and wax transfers. We will be working entirely with beeswax, so no glues are necessary.

Expand your vocabulary while seeing how this medium can be used in your work.

http://www.artsarasota.org/delaville

Encaustic Painting at Ringling College of Art + Design 

 Encaustic Painting
3 sessions, 18 hours, M-W, 10 AM-4 PM
VPTW824, March 9-11
$485, Elena De La VilleEncaustic (hot wax) painting is an ancient medium, first used by the Greeks, that has gained popularity with contemporary artists. A permanent and non-toxic medium encaustic often results in exquisite, luminous painting effects. Daily demonstrations are followed by hands-on studio practice. Learn about suitable grounds supports, encaustic materials, combining encaustic and oil sticks, tools for surface incising, and stencils. This intensive course is designed for all levels of beginning, intermediate, and advanced painters, as well as those familiar with encaustic. The returning encaustic student will be guided to develop and expand upon a personal style and theme, resulting in an integrated body of work. Tuition covers all encaustic and oil stick materials and supports. Early enrollment is recommended, as space is limited. Member benefits or promotional savings are not applicable. (Certificate Program Code: FE)   

 SUMMER AT WILDACRES

You can see forever... On top of the world and right off the Blue Ridge Parkway.

BEESWAX COLLAGE W/ MIXED MEDIA
Elena De La Ville
MM910A, Tuition: $395
Through personal experimentation using paint, collage and beeswax, create richly textured expressive images based on the fundamental principals of art combined with the exploration of the elements of chance and order. Beginners are encouraged to let their creativity bloom while finding their personal style; experienced artists are urged to take this opportunity to explore new directions in fresh and unexpected ways. A history of mixed media along with demonstrations and experimental techniques will be presented throughout the workshop. All skill levels are welcome in this fun, adventurous class. (Certificate Program Code: FE)
Register NOW

PAINTING WITH COLD WAX AND OILS
Elena De La Ville
MM915B: Tuition: $395
In this week long workshop artists explore abstract painting using cold wax medium, tube oils, pigment sticks, and layering with a variety of implements.  We will investigate new ways to create textures, color fields and mark making while focusing on developing a personal vocabulary emphasizing the process and its experimental nature. Participants will use an array of non-traditional tools and techniques to build layers and add depth.  Ample workshop time will be supplemented with periodic critiques, presentations and discussions. This workshop is well suited for those who have had some prior painting experience and beginners wanting to experiment with new techniques.   (Certificate Program Code: FE)

Register NOW

http://www.ringling.edu/learn/continuing-studies-and-special-programs/continuing-studies-and-special-programs/wildacres/

 Exhibitions:

 

Sun Circle Art Show

March 14th at Sapphire Shores Park.. Community artists showcase..

From 11 to 5 pm . Sarasota, FL

The N.A.W.A. Gallery – 80 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1405, New York, NY 10011

Voices: An Artist’s Perspective 

 Very happy to be included in this:Happy to be included in Voices: An Artist’s Perspective. At the NAWA gallery in NYC.. A feminist exhibition with 26 women artists raising their voices to tell individual stories that advocate for the fight for social, cultural, economic and political rights and the inclusion of all voices in its push for gender equality and identity using a woman’s voice as the visual narrative to effect change.
http://www.unitewomen.org/announcing-voices-an-artists-perspective/

 EX_PATRIA

Curating an exhibit at the Art Center Sarasota:

When I first envisioned curating this exhibition on Latin American women artists, I knew I wanted to create an exhibition to give free rein in a rich, multimedia platform where any person from any background could come and personally experience the incredible diversity, strength and talents of Venezuelan people from around the world.

Opening March 19th.

Stay tuned.. 

So honored to have 2 pieces in this important exhibit!

-->

Readable and downloadable Catalog for the Swept Away Exhibition @ CCMoA

Click here for link

First Museum Exhibition for Encaustic Painting on Cape Cod

Swept Away: Translucence, Transparence, Transcendence in Contemporary Encaustic at Cape Cod Museum of Art

Cape Cod Museum of Art will open its doors to Swept Away: Translucence, Transparence, Transcendence in Contemporary Encaustic on May 18. This is the first museum in the region to feature encaustic painting in a dedicated exhibition, and the first anywhere to focus on a particular and noteworthy aspect of the medium: its extravagant quality of light. Thirty one artists from around the country, all masters of the medium, have been invited by Michael Giaquinto, curator of exhibitions at the museum. Some 50 paintings, sculptures and prints reflecting a range of thematic expression will be shown.

Dates: May 18-June 23
Reception with the artists: Sunday, June 2, 5:30—7:30 p.m.

Location: Cape Cod Museum of Art, 60 Hope Lane, Dennis, Mass., off Route 6A

Museum information: http://www.ccmoa.org

Participating artists:

 

Tracey Adams, California                   

Lynn Basa, Illinois                              

Dawna Bemis, Maine                          

Michael Billie, New Mexico               

Binnie Birstein, Connecticut               

Anne Cavanaugh, Massachusetts       

Cecile Chong, New York                     

David A. Clark, California                    

Linda Cordner, Massachusetts                        

Elena De La Ville, Florida                  

Lorrie Fredette, New York                    

Karen Freedman, Pennsylvania                      

Milisa Galazzi, Rhode Island              

Lorraine Glessner, Pennsylvania         

Jane Guthridge, Colorado                     

Howard Hersh, California 

Joanne Mattera, New York                  

Cherie  Mittenthal, Massachusetts

Sara Mast, Montana

Catherine Nash, Arizona                     

Laura Moriarty, New York        

Nancy Natale, Massachusetts

Jane Allen Nodine, South Carolina

Lisa Pressman, New Jersey

Linda Ray, Virginia

Paula Roland, New Mexico

Marybeth Rothman, New Jersey

Toby Sisson, Rhode Island

Donna Hamil Talman, Massachusetts

Elise Wagner, Oregon

Gregory Wright, Massachusetts

About Encaustic

Like all paints, encaustic consists of finely ground pigments suspended in a medium. With oil paint, that medium is linseed oil. With acrylic, it’s plastic polymer. With encaustic, it’s beeswax. While there are many material qualities to encaustic—texture, malleability, even aroma—the most salient is the way it interacts with light. Entering the translucent surface of a wax painting, light reflects against the gessoed ground, refracting slightly so that it emanates as a soft glow.

In and of itself, refractive luminosity is not unique to encaustic; Rembrandt was a master of the oil glaze, employing its pigmented viscosity to capture light and return its refulgence to the eye of the viewer. But the substantive nature of wax allows it to do something that other mediums, even Rembrandt’s glazes, do not. Optically deeper than its actual thickness, wax seems to hold the illumination momentarily before releasing it. To look at a painting in this medium is to experience the sensation of light suspended.

A technical feature of encaustic is that the wax must be heated to be applied. Keeping the paint molten, the artist works swiftly to charge the brush and place the stroke, whether it be a quick daub, a filmy layer or a gestural swipe. Each layer or group of brush strokes must be fused with a heating tool  (tacking iron, heat gun or small torch) so that the surface, while comprised of discrete compositional elements, is structurally unified. Wax can also be poured and cast.

Though it dates to Ancient Greece and and was the material component of the Fayum portraits of Greco-Roman Europe, encaustic fell into disuse as less technically demanding paints such as tempera—later, oil and much later, acrylic—were invented. It became known in the mid-20^th Century when Jasper Johns adopted it as his medium of choice and is now more widely employed as studio artists integrate it into their practice.

Concurrent Encaustic Conference

Swept Away has been planned to coincide with the Seventh International Encaustic Conference, which takes place in Provincetown. The Conference, founded and directed by artist Joanne Mattera and now co-produced with Truro Center for the Art at Castle Hill, is the only fully professional event of its kind.  Devoted to the serious study of encaustic painting, the Conference brings encaustic into the discourse of contemporary art with three days of talks, panel discussions and demonstrations, and a keynote talk by Barbara O’Brien, director and chief curator at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, who will speak on the work of Petah Coyne. This year over 200 artists from around the world will convene May 31-June 2 . Workshops at Castle Hill will bookend the event. More information:
. www.encausticconference.blogspot.com

. www.castlehill.org/encaustic-conference.html

Invitational Swept Away

Translucence, Transparence, Transcendence in Contemporary Encaustic

Torso/Leaf
Encaustic, 2013

--> Cape Cod Museum of Art
60 Hope Lane, Dennis
May 18 to June 23
Opening: Sunday, June 2, 5:30--7:00 p.m.

Michael Giaquinto, Curator of Exhibitions, has viewed the work of  numerous artists who have participated in Conferences 5 and 6, and  invited 30 artists to participate in the show, which focuses on that most salient aspect of encaustic: light. 

Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, MA

 

Torsos

New work almost finished for the Museum show in Cape Cod
and 2 other shows on the Cape and Long Boat Key Center for the Arts.

TORSOS

The women photographed are personal friends of mine throughout the years, this body of work which started with the 5X5 exhibition at the Museum of Arte Contemporaneo in 1990, in which I captured images in 4X5 and 35 mm, black and white negatives and printed as silver gelatin prints. I kept on expanding on the theme. The current showing, made up of scanned and the latest photographed work, the Torso series, expresses our inter connectness of us in the world, to ourselves and to that around us.

Style Magazine Interview

STYLE MAGAZINE

ARTS BY SU BYRON

Elena De La Ville is a mixed-media artist with a passion for paint, rust
and wax. She was trained as a painter, photographer and textile designer
and her work encompasses all of these mediums. De La Ville studied textile
design at the Chelsea School of Art and Design in London and photography
at the Art Institute of Boston. She teaches photography and mixed media at
Ringling College of Art and Design and serves on the exhibition committee
at Art Center Sarasota. To view her work or make an appointment to see
her work, visit edelaville.com.

Usually this is a simple question, but in your case it isn’t: What’s your
medium?
I have been working almost exclusively with encaustic for the past 10
years, which is a mixture of beeswax and damar resin that’s applied while
hot and fluid. It dries very fast and provides texture and translucency at the
same time. I find it incredibly seductive. I combine that with film-based and
digital photography, plus other alternative processes.

What role does texture play in your artwork?
For me, wax is texture upon texture. It’s built up in layers that hide and
reveal at the same time. On some pieces there are over 20 such layers. Markmaking in the soft material provides yet another level that builds up relief.

Your work is filled with light and color. Is your sense of color intuitive
or is there a theory behind it?
I love color! I would say my color sense is intuitive. One of the reasons I
moved to Sarasota was to find that tropical sense of color after many years of
living in the Northeast.

What does your “Totem” series represent?
These pieces are very important to me because they came to me at a time
in my life when I needed to prove to myself I could accomplish them. I was
facing debilitating symptoms and wanted to work through them. The totems
are the biggest pieces I have produced; they’re more than 6 feet tall. I see
them as “protectors of space.”

Is there an implied narrative element in your artwork or are you simply
interested in form for form’s sake?
As I work, my mind is constantly thinking, evaluating, responding to the
work in front of me. I always work in series and let each piece inform the
next. In a way, I am creating a dialogue or story between them.

Who are your artistic heroes?
As a child I was influenced by Calder, Gego, Vasarely and Matisse. Later on
it was Rothko, Agnes Martin, Klee, Helen Frankenthaler and Anselm Kiefer.
My colleagues also inspire me.

Herald-Tribune 12/02/2012
Copyright © 2012 Herald-Tribune - All rights reserved.

Encaustic Conference

P-Town Harbor at dawn

Off to an incredible start, the 6th International Encaustic Conference is now officially under way. Have been seeing old friends, meeting new ones and enjoying the view.

Many openings will be happening all around town, got to take a peek at some of them yesterday; I have work at the Kobalt Gallery, opening on Fri eve.

Today, I am very exited to  be teaching an all day workshop at Castle Hill. It is a full class and materials are ready to go.

And was just informed that I have been selected to be part of:

The Future of the Past: Encaustic Art in the 21^st Century

The Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts

October 5- December 2, 2012

Opening Reception, 6 – 8 pm, October 5, 2012

I am one of 31 artists selected for this important show in Boston in the fall.

All in all, a very good week!

Almost Time!

Alligator Alley
7" x 7"

The Sixth International Conference will be held in Provincetown, Massachusetts this year.

I am so thrilled to be part of this..

Check the wonderful roster put together by Joanne Mattera and Cherie Mittenthal:
http://encausticconference.blogspot.com/

There will be 14 art openings that Friday in P-Town.!!!! Count them: 14… I am honored to be included in the CONFLUENCE show at Kobalt gallery. Opening Friday, June 1^st. and in The Schoolhouse Gallery on 494 Commercial Street, opening July 5^th.

I will also be presenting at the 6th International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, MA in June on Saturday, June 2, 2012, my demo, titled Photography and Encaustic is scheduled for 2 pm.

Also teaching pre conference workshop on Thursday, May 31st and post conference on Wed, June 6^th, at Castle Hill Center for the Arts (LINK)  Both workshops are full but you can sign up for weeklong Photo Encaustic class at Castle Hill from July 9^th to the 13^th

Call the center directly to sign up.. 508 349 7511

I have something special planned for the Hotel Fair on Sunday: without full disclosure I will say that:

An Old Florida Installation in a Waterview room # ???

just a peek ;) (Box # 2)

Also: Handmade recycled rubber bags and  small encaustics

will be available.
(See Alligator Alley, above)

Will be blogging as much as I can...

New Work

Spring Time in Florida

Me and my New Totems

So exited to present my new body of work: Totems # 5, 6 and 7…

Encaustic on board, cloth, rust, paper and wax. Aprox: 6.5 ' x 7"

I have been working on these for the past month and a half and feel a deep rooted connection with them. Me and my Totems, My totems and I, these have become Protectors of Space in one sense, in which my history and desires have been projected onto them. It all started 2 months ago when I visited a collector and saw one of my first Totems I had created. 

 

Totems and moi

Detail

It seems incredible that the 6th International EncausticConference is coming up in a couple of months…

This year has gone by in a big creative blur and I have attained most of my goals that I had set for myself. It has been a good year, so I am ready to go back!

Oh, yes,,, Springtime in Florida!!! The weather has been spectacular and have had wonderful, meaningful visits from sisters... so here is some of the fun things we did:

At Spanish Point Marina

Sashimi Tuna with Wasabi.... YUM!

Tapas at Happy Hour at Darwin's on 4th.

Art news

TORSO/LEAF

Allergy season is here in Fl... Hopefully it will rain tomorrow and I can go out and play some. I have been in confinement with windows closed and air on.... true: getting things done..

I am getting ready for a one of my busiest weeks of the year:

Teaching a 3 day encaustic workshop at Ringling College of Art + Design, set up on Monday, teach Tues, Wed and Thursday..

FACE/MAP

Meanwhile, I am one of the artists in the Creators and collectors tour which opens on Thursday evening and runs Friday and Saturday all day… whew!!!!

IT IS GOING TO BE A CRAZY WEEK!!!!!!!!

The Fine Arts Society of Sarasota (FASS) is a nonprofit organization whose objectives are:

• To promote and stimulate the appreciation of the Arts in Sarasota County: Painting, Sculpture, Literature, Theater, Music, Dance and Architecture.
• To establish a permanent collection of qualified works by locally and nationally recognized artists of Florida, which will be placed on public exhibition for the enjoyment of Sarasota residents and visitors.
• To provide grants, awards, scholarships, and prizes for talented and qualified organizations and students.

Last 2 weeks!

Only 2 more weeks to see ‘WOMEN AND WAX” show at the Art Center Sarasota…

If you have not seen it… you are missing one of the best art exhibits in Sarasota!

Encaustic, meaning: "to burn in", dates back to 5th Century BC.  Used as a contemporary medium it is a versatile method of painting with a beeswax based paint kept molten on a heated palette, Wax is a luscious medium, worked in layers, translucent and sensual.

What people are saying:

" ... Congratulations, these works are extraordinary: loved the way that they shine!”

“thank you for bring these encaustic artists to Sarasota”!

Art Center Sarasota

707 N Tamiami Trail

941 3652032

Open Tues through Saturday 10am to 4pm

Joanne Mattera
Diamond Life # 9

 

 

Diana González Gandolfi
HIDDEN LINEAGE

Karen Freedman
Ruche 0399

WOW! National Show of Encaustic Work

WOW! Women & Wax will feature the leading artists in the field who are dedicated to the innovation of contemporary art and ideas. Artists from around the country were chosen for their innovative and contemporary use of the Encaustic medium. The exhibit provides a platform for dialogue and education, while increasing the understanding and appreciation of encaustic art.

Encaustic is one of the oldest forms of painting wherein beeswax, resin and pigment are layered and then fused to produce a luminous surface that both captures and transforms light. These artists melt, layer, scrape, and sculpt to create their individual vision in wax.

Curated by: Elena De La Ville

At the Art Center Sarasota

 

Invited artists:

 

Binnie Birstein

Neverne Covington

Karen Freedman  

Diana González Gandolfi

Joanne Mattera

Laura Moriarty

Nancy Natale

Catherine Nash

Jane Allen Nodine

Opening Reception:  November 3^rd

Show runs: Novemver 3 – December 31 - 2011

Art Center Sarasota:707 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34236-4050
(941) 365-2032