Encaustic Photography

Today was the first day of a visiting artists series on encaustic practices and alternative photographic processes. I helped Bronwyn Minton and Eve Marie (can't remember her last name from R&F) teach the class. We started the day off setting up for the class, testing polaroids, finding colors for the wax and the very important job of finding box fans to help with the fumes that come with the encaustic process. Eve Marie started the day off talking about wax, what can be done with it and just techniques in general. We then had a slideshow to show examples of encaustic work- diego rivera and many, many others whose names I can never remember. In the afternoon the photo part started and Bronwyn and I taught about polaroids, polaroid transfers, cyanotypes, and using marshall's to paint and draw on photographs! It was really cool and fun to see the students (all adult females) so excited to get started learning the processes. I was also assigned to computer duty (since I was the only one who knew photoshop- whooppee!) so I scanned, edited and then printed the students images onto photo paper, inverted images to print them on film (that's used for overhead projectors and in this case, cyanotypes) and did other computer related activities! The day, after that, was over, and it seemed to be a very successful first day of a visiting artists series!