VAC Offers Mixed Media Encaustic Workshop

Our Changing Earth, by Mary Milelzcik. PC: Volcano Art Center

Artist Mary Milelzcik will teach the Mixed Media Encaustic workshop, which incorporates photography and image transfers on Saturday, February 29, 2020, from 10 am – 3 pm at Volcano Art Center Niaulani Campus in Volcano Village.

Encaustic is a mixture of beeswax, damar resin and pigment, which is applied to a solid absorbent surface. Each time a new layer is applied, it must be fused. The layers can be enhanced by carving with tools or drawing with pigment, oil sticks, etc. Photographs and images can be transferred and other materials embedded to create a variety of results with depth. Beginners and those advanced are welcome.

Mixed Media Encaustic is a hands-on workshop, where you’ll learn safe studio practices, all the encaustic painting basics and how to integrate encaustic painting into other media. Encaustic and photo transfer techniques, along with wet and dry shellac burns, will be demonstrated. After instruction and experimenting, you will have the opportunity to create encaustic paintings to take home with you.

Attendees will be provided panels and handmade paper to use as substrates, as well as an assortment marking tools and brushes, interesting papers, photographs, minerals, fibers and other natural and found materials for students to incorporate into their paintings. Students are encouraged to bring other items they’d like to incorporate.

Advanced students can consult with the instructor in advance regarding specific projects. You are encouraged to bring lunch and something to snack on. The class fee is $60/$55 for VAC members plus a $30 fee, inclusive of supplies. To register, call Volcano Art Center at 808-967-8222 or visit www.volcanoartcenter.org.

Milelzcik has a BA degree from Sonoma State University’s School of Expressive Arts, a radical two-year upper-division interdisciplinary experimental program that existed for several years in the 70s.

Her studio Arts Asylum is located in Pāhoa, where she teaches mixed media encaustic, papermaking and printmaking emphasizing the incorporation of natural materials as tools and/or part of the art. Her artwork has been shown internationally. She also has over 20 years of experience working with artists to advance their careers, and with nonprofits as a development strategist in Hawai‘i and California.

Volcano Art Center Niaulani Campus is located at 19-4074 Old Volcano Road in Volcano Village. The Volcano Art Center is a nonprofit educational organization created in 1974 to promote, develop and perpetuate the artistic and cultural heritage of Hawai‘i’s people and the environment through activities in the visual, literary and performing arts.