The once-popular style is seeing a resurgence and is considered the fastest growing medium in North America, said Douglas Mehrens, founder of the Encaustic Art Institute in Cerrillos.
The name of the beeswax and resin art style comes from the Greek word enkaustikos, which means “burned in,” Mehrens said.
Encaustic art is relatively inexpensive, he said. A hot plate, wax, damar resin and a hairdryer are all that is needed to create this work. From there, artists can make just about anything from it.
“It’s a medium that, once (artists) start, they love it. And it goes all the way through the spectrums, sculptures with clay ... We have artists all over the map. We have photographers and water colors, and that’s why it has just taken off,” Mehrens said.
One of the institute’s goals is to raise awareness by traveling throughout the school systems in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, he said. Even though encaustic art is on the rise, it is still relatively unknown, and he hopes encaustic art will take off in a university setting.
“You start using it and you can just see how it flows. Unlike oil and acrylic and watercolors, this has a lot of depth to it and you can just keep layering. It’s really different,” he said.
Nancy Treviso, UNM art history department administrator, said out of the different forms of art, encaustic is not included in the curriculum but only because the University does not have a faculty member experienced in it.
“It would be like asking ‘why don’t we teach the language of Mongolian.’ Meaning we can’t hire a faculty member that knows every language on earth,” Treviso said. “And it’s the same with art. Encaustic art is just a niche, and nobody does it, so we don’t teach it.”
Patricia Simmons, owner of Wild Lily Art Studio, said she recently did her first live encaustic art show at the Rail Yards Market, where she made prints in front of a crowd. Surprisingly, many children were interested working with beeswax.
“I thought it was a great opportunity, and I love the rail yards,” Simmons said, who has been creating encaustic art for two years. “I just love the atmosphere, and I think it’s great for Albuquerque.”
Simmons has been practicing encaustic art for two years and explores beeswax as a medium for many out-of-the-box uses including image transfer, prints and event jewelry. The unexplored art form gives Simmons the ability to create abstract art, which is one of the reasons she likes it so much.
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“You can do so many different things with it, it’s so forgiving,” Simmons said. “If you don’t like it, you can melt it off, you can add and subtract things, and you can even change things years later.”
Lauren Marvin is the assistant culture editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at cultureassistant@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
