My friend Kim and I were accepted to a very exciting project with the Harlow Gallery in Hallowell, ME called CSA - Community Supporting Arts.  We were paired with a local farm, Wholesome Holmstead of Winthrop, ME,  and we are going to create a body of work based on our inspirations from the farmland, the farmers, and their community interaction.  We've visited the farm twice so far and have been having an amazing time.

We went back today, hoping to spend all day on the farm painting and taking photographs, but today's temperature and wind was just too much for us to handle!  We literally only lasted 10 or 15 minutes outside. We couldn't feel our fingers after taking our photo adventure.


So we went to the farm stand to purchase some food to take back to my warm studio and ran into our farmer who taught us about cheese making.

Kim's a great fiber artist and recently taught me how to weave. We first bonded with each other about being photographers so we thought this was a great way to combine our interests and connections. The idea is that we'll take tons of photographs over the seasons, focusing on how the farm and farmers are woven into their community. (all puns intended)   Our first joint effort -- a prototype/work-through sketch of a fiber and photography project we have in mind. These are photo transfers of farm images we have taken so far.  

First couple of shots with the Impossible Film

Ready for some fun!

I must have spent a small fortune on Polaroid film back in the day. But the satisfaction of an instant image spitting out of that camera and knowing that it was the only one of its kind was fantastic.  As a painter, I really enjoy the unexpected color and light that a Polaroid camera and film capture.  I can't tell you how sad I was when they closed their factories and stopped producing film.  But I hung on to most of my Polaroid cameras hoping that the film would make a comeback one day.  Well, that day has come!

The Impossible Project is now producing film to be used in Polaroid cameras.  They purchased an old Polaroid factory in the Netherlands and have resurrected it to make artists like us happy.  You can read all about their story on their website here.

They had an in-person only sample sale of their expired film a little while ago and I begged anyone in the NY area to please stop by their studio and pick me up some....through the fate of "putting it to Facebook," as my family and I now say, my friend happened to be walking down the same street and checking FB from her phone.  So she called me, went in, and mailed me my purchase!!

I've only taken three photos. The first one was a complete dud but the next two came out ok (above.)  This pack had an expiration date of August 2011 so they're not very much past their expiration date yet they had some neat effects. There are some areas of high grain which is pretty interesting.  The brown areas at the top may be from my rollers needing to be cleaned; I'll experiment with that for the next photographs.

I'm very excited to work with this film again-- it handles differently than original Polaroid film so there's going to be a slight learning curve but I'm ready to dive in and see what happens.

This painting has decided to declair war against me!  I can see the General plotting it out now.  He thinks he's so smart and he had me in a corner for a long time.  But I finally pushed forward and I think I may have bested him.  Only time will tell.  I hope to meet him on the battlefield tomorrow.  There's much to do but I will stare him and his cronies square in the eye and charge towards him, Braveheart style!

Today I started working on 2 new paintings.  In a previous post I stated that I usually have a few pieces going on at the same time and that's no lie!  Currently. I have 3 encaustic paintings and 1 oil painting in progress.  The oil hasn't been touched in a while but it's still there staring at me jealously.  The encaustics include 1 that is waiting for the final step; still unsure how to proceed and finish my thoughts on him.  

Ghosts of the Past 2
Encaustic, embedded Photograph, & Grass on found wood
9.5" x 9"
September 2008

Available in my Etsy Shop or through JamieRibisi.com

Looking closer- a brief exploration of art:

This painting incorporates the technique of embedding objects in the wax. The grass and the photograph are both embedded and it's a pretty simple task!

First, I fused one layer of encaustic onto my substrate and fused it. Then I brushed encaustic medium onto the back of the image and a little bit on the area that it was heading to live and smooshed them together real fast. Using a flat tool, I got all of the air bubbles out and then layered another bit of medium on top of the image. Fuse and repeat the layers of medium until satisfied with the result.

The grass is done in a similar manner but takes a bit of adjusting the blades because they are so small and fragile. Embedding natural objects into wax is really fun because the material will change as it adjusts to the heat and to the wax. They tend to brown and dry out slightly as they sit in the pool of molten wax. Just like nature-- you never know what's going to happen and that's the best part of encaustic painting-- in my world, anyway!

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If you liked my little behind the scenes venture into painting, keep following my blog for the "Looking closer" series and learn what I do, how I do it, and why!

For the encaustic dreamers, I will also be creating a tutorial that will give you detailed in-depth tips, tricks, & techniques with lots of technical info so that you will feel safe and armed with the knowledge to feel comfortable creating your own beeswax art! I'll post it here once it's ready for sale (& some freebie opportunities, too!)