Today is the first day of the Fifth International Encaustic Conference. This year’s conference is being held in Provincetown. Provincetown is known for its beaches, harbor, artists, tourist industry, and its status as a gay village. Commercial Street is a colourful narrow one-way street with more pedestrians, bikes and pedicabs than cars lined with shops, restaurants and galleries. Provincetown is wonderful!
Never having seen monotype in person I was thrilled to attend the Monotype Marathon – three back-to-back sessions from three encaustic monotype masters. Dorothy Furlong-Gardner who pioneered encaustic monotype thirty-five years ago, gave wonderful introduction to wax prints, David A. Clark demonstrated monotype stenciling, and Kathleen Lemoine demonstrated adapting monotype for wood panels and objects.
Kathleen Lemoine, David A. Clark, Dorothy Furlong-GardnerThe History of the Monotype with Dorothy (Dottie) Furlong-Gardner
As a printmaker Dottie was doing monotypes in the traditional method of transferring oil-based inks on paper with the use of an etching press. She began experimenting to combine the directness and immediacy of the monotype with the richness and luminosity of encaustic painting. The result was the first “Encaustic Monotype” a process that eliminated all the toxicity of inks and solvents of print making in the traditional way on a press.
Dottie demonstrated how to use a hot box to create a monotype print, positive and negative prints, ghost prints, cognates (a 2nd generation print from a print on the plate), prints made from multiple pulls and how to register to ensure that the paper is in the same place each time it is placed on the hot box surface.
Monotype Stencils with David A Clark
With a flamboyant style David demonstrated stencils print making. He outlined four variables in monotype print making: heat, paint, paper and pressure. If you change one of these variables then you may need to make adjustments to others as well. If you use a different paper you may need more paint, a higher temperature, less pressure. David cuts his stencils from Dura-Lar acetate although any heat-resistant acetate will work. David uses paints from different vendors and highlighted a number of his favourite colours, I’m going to want to head to the vendor room following the presentation.
Adapting Monotype to Wood Panels and Objects with Kathleen Lemoine
Kathleen used a wooden panel that she got from Jane’s Frames in the Vendor room. She put puddles of medium on the hotbox and pulled the panel in the medium. She works at the edge or the hot box a lot. You don’t need to fuse again as the hotbox is doing the fusing as the medium is picked up. In addition to wood panels Kathleen demonstrated printing using cubes of wood. You can work directly on untreated wood panels but Kathleen likes to treat with gesso first. She highlighted the new holy grail coloured gesso’s from Evans Encaustics
This was a great introduction to wax print making. I think it would be exciting to give encaustic monotype printing a try but I don’t want to purchase a Hotbox. I’m going to have a look at an Anodized Aluminum Plate from Encaustikos which converts a pancake griddle into a printing plate.
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Thank you for the terrific summary, Ruth. I arrived at the conference somewhat later than I had originally planned and I missed most of the monotype presentation.