Wax Works: An exhibit featuring Somerville's Encaustic Artists

Somerville City Hall
93 Highland Ave.
through April 15th, 2004
Reception: Thur., Feb. 19th, 6-7pm

City Hall hours: Mon., Tues. & Wed: 8:30am - 4:30pm
Thur: 8:30am - 7:30pm
Friday: 8:30am - 12:30pm
Work hangs in main lobby and upstairs in the Mayor's offices

Tracy Spadafora, "Lawn Ornaments," 2002, Mixed media encaustic

About the show

The Somerville Arts Council is thrilled to showcase the talents of local artists in a highly trafficked public venue like City Hall. Special thanks to Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone for requesting locally produced art to hang in his offices. Out of his request, this exhibit was born. "Wax Works" was curated and produced by the Somerville Arts Council.

Encaustic is the name for both a medium, pigmented wax, and a process, painting in layers of pigmented wax. It is an ancient practice, predating oil painting by roughly one thousand years. The most well-known early encaustic paintings are the Fayum portraits, poignant funereal works created in Egypt from 100 B.C. to A.D. 200 (see a few at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts). In the modern era, famous American artist Jasper Johns began painting with beeswax in 1954. In Somerville at the dawn of the twenty-first century, the medium is well represented--as a tour of Somerville Open Studios will reveal (May 1 & 2, 2004). It should be noted that among the artists in this exhibit, Tracy Spadafora is a regionally renown encaustic teacher and rightly considered a guru by her local peers.

The artists in this show either live or work in Somerville and/or play an active role in the Somerville arts community. Some artists in "Wax Works" use the medium in its pure form; others incorporate mixed media, using the wax as a natural adhesive. Akiyama, for example, includes petals within layers of wax; Spadafora, on the other hand, embeds schematic Big Dig plans within her paintings. Some of the work showcased here is abstract, some representational. All these artists use encaustic to create depth, luminous color and a rich sense of layering.

Riki Moss, "Gardens"

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