Curiosity 63: Find Out Fridays – artistic creativity

Continuing in an artistic vein: I have been considering trying to find my way into the use of encaustic wax. Even though I am by no stretch of the imagination a visual artist. But I do love collage (well, some collage—there's also a lot of cheesy collage), and the look of collage finished off with wax can be really stunning. I posted a few links and examples at the end of 2017—so you can see, I've had this on my mind for a while. But... I'm not a visual artist, and that thought tends to stop me cold.

(If it took me a good couple of months to finally make my first loaf of sourdough bread, after carefully nurturing the starter daily all that time—and this despite the fact that I used to make bread fairly regularly—I guess six years is about right for me to sit on this tiny but dangerously bold ambition to do some sort of visual art. And leave it to me to make it as complicated as possible! Why stop at collage? Let's throw some wax at the whole thing!)

Anyway, this got me searching the internet for instructional or demo videos on encaustics and collage. And man oh man, there is no shortage! Which means I will need/want to take a bit of time to find some artists whose aesthetic speaks to me. (Since as I mentioned, there's also no shortage of cheesy art. Go ahead, call me a snob. I do like the above image, by artist Lynn Larkin.)

The first video (or set of three) I stumbled on is by Ivy Newport, who shows, step by step, how she created a small piece from scratch. Right up until the application of angel wings I was pretty wowed. Even the wings are pretty wow, but they were, in my view, unnecessary—except insofar as they fulfilled an aspect of the thing that kicked off her project to begin with: a box she received in the mail containing a stencil (of the doorway), a rubber stamp (on the back of the piece), some rustic wire (the wire is why the wings), and a Liquitex paint marker (Prussian blue).

The box was sent by artist Donna Downey, as part of her year-long collaborative enterprise Find Out Fridays. And I thought I'd just include a few YouTube videos from other artists who have been the lucky recipients of such boxes, because I find them so interesting in revealing process, from start to finish. (All the resulting pieces do not necessarily involve collage or encaustic.) First up, the Australian artist Tracy Verdugo:

Denise Alloca:

Kecia Deveney, creating a cute 3D piece (a two-parter, of which this is the first):

Claire Desjardins:

And finally, Annie Lockhart, with her colorful palette:

I selected these totally randomly, simply by going to YouTube and searching for Find Out Fridays. I imagine there are 40-odd more such videos out there. I may not be in love with the finished products exactly, but I do love watching an artist in the throes of creative thought and making. 

Though I am also daunted by all the stuff one needs to create all this beauty. Maybe I'll stick to words. They only take up psychic space.