December 2016

Fusion - Photographs + Beeswax

Melinda Downing

ArtHop Reception:

Thursday, December 1, 2016
5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Artist's Reception:

Sunday, December 11, 2016
1:00 PM - 4:00 PM

Friday Photography Live: Encaustic Process

Friday. December 2, 2016
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Melinda is a digital photographer who has been photographing for over 40 years, working eight years as a professional portrait photographer. With an entrepreneurial spirit, she has owned a travel agency, a yoga studio, worked as a web designer and created a business selling handcrafted goods. She currently works as a yoga instructor, a wedding and event designer and has also established an e-commerce business. Photography has factored heavily into all these occupations.

With a foundation in traditional darkroom photography, she has always been drawn to the process of exploration after the image capture. These processes include collage, hand coloring, printing on alternative substrates such as fabric, Japanese rice paper and blank pages from old books.

After attending an encaustic photography workshop with Leah Macdonald in Canada two years ago, Melinda began incorporating beeswax with her photographs. The works in this exhibit are printed by the artist, sometimes with digital manipulation, then applied to either wood panels or vintage book covers, then sealed with a mixture of beeswax and damar resin.

The wax is painted on in many layers, each layer scraped with a razor blade and fused with a heat gun. It’s messy and unpredictable yet forgiving. A satisfying diversion from the hours spent processing images on a computer, it almost feels like being back in the darkroom. The wax reveals and conceals creating a veil, giving the photos an ethereal softness, texture and even a sweet aroma of the beeswax that lingers long after the work is complete.

This collection of images is from a broad and diverse range of sources including churches, museums, sacred places and abandoned buildings captured throughout Europe, Asia and the US as well as in her own back yard and home studio. Traveling is of the utmost importance, for photographing, inspiration and renewal.