Conference Overview

By Joanne Mattera 

Back in 1999 when I was writing The Art of Encaustic Painting, my intent was to advance the dialogue about art made with this complex and beautiful medium while providing technical information for artists who wished to learn to paint with wax. The keen response to the book, published in 2001, sparked a next-step thought: What if there were a national conference to bring us all together?

As an artist with demanding studio practice I quickly dismissed the idea. But the universe sometimes has other plans. Over an emerging high-speed internet, I began to receive emails from artists. Hundreds of artists over the course of several years. Some were in the book and wanted to stay in touch. Some had read the book and wanted to make contact. Others, using that new search engine, Google, wrote asking for technical advice, classes,  consultations and exhibition opportunities. I channeled those requests as best I could (mostly sending them over to R+FHandmade Paints, which was establishing a technical outreach program with a newsletter, workshops, slide file, internet forum and, crucially, a Biennial exhibition, Encaustic Works, which took place for the first time in Kingston, New York, in1997).
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In 2005, I received an invitation by Alan Sofer to attend a conference he was putting together in Wallingford, Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia). Aha! So someone else is thinking about this! Preparing for a solo show, I was unable to attend, but I suggested some artists he might contact and wished him well. Then in 2006, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at an event in Novato, California, organized by Sandi Miot.

The Conferences Before The Conference
I've asked Sofer and Miot to offer their recollections:

Alan Sofer on his Encaustic Conference in 2005: "We did a wonderful National Encaustic Conference at the Community Art Center in Wallingford in May, 2005. It was a one-day conference with an exhibition accompanying it, Oil & Wax: Chapter and Verse, which upon conclusion traveled on to four other sites.  One of those sites was in Northern California, which Sandi Miot organized.  Another site was [at The Rivertree Arts Center] in Kennebunk, Maine, which Kim Bernard helped with. 

"We did a very nice job on a shoestring.  Jeff Schaller did the catalog design and many others worked very hard as well.  It was a lot of fun, got nice reviews, decent sales, and furthered the hot wax technique.  I learned a lot from fellow artists, I must say. Encaustic is still my medium of choice."

Sandi Miot brings Oil & Wax to California: Miot was the impetus behind the exhibition space at Hamilton Field in Novato, north of San Francisco. Hamilton Field, a former Air Force base that has been taken over by the city, has a lovely exhibition space (which Miot has since been instrumental in turning into the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art) and many buildings that serve as artists' studios. "At about the same time, The West Coast Encaustic Artists (later to become IEA) was forming," Miot remembers, and she asked them to participate in an ancillary show.  "They were invited to submit one painting  each to be hung in the lobby and halls in conjunction with the Oil & Wax show.  And some of them did."   

A concurrent regional conference, organized by Miot and others, took place in November during the run of Oil & Wax. I flew out to be their keynote speaker--my topic was not wax but professional presentation--and I have a number of memories from that whirlwind trip: the exhibition itself, nicely installed, as well as an atmospheric painting with a beautiful surface by Cari Hernandez in the ancillary show; demonstrations and talks by Miot, Mary Farmer, and Tina Vietmeier and Adele Shaw; an impressive display of panels with a variety of substrates and grounds by Rodney Thompson; and the introduction of a new paint company with a lovely range of hues, Evans Encaustics, named for its founder and paintmaker, Hylla Evans.
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The International Encaustic Conference

As Miot was preparing her event in Novato, I was thinking about how to harness the interest The Art of Encaustic Painting had engendered through North America. With an email list of some 1600 artists, but without a hosting venue, I began to envision an annual conference that would draw artists from around the country (and maybe even Canada) and build from year to year. The basic elements remain in place today: a keynote speaker of national note, a Saturday morning panel, and an exhibition juried by a gallerist or curator highly regarded in the art community—events conceived to place encaustic within an art-world context—and a menu of slide talks and technical demos to satisfy the particular interests of each conferee. Many new features have been added since then. The Conference is now the International Encaustic Conference, renamed to better reflect the nature of its constituency and, most important, The International Encaustic Conference has a new and permanent home in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

An overview for each year to date, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 is contained within the tabs just under.the header, with 2014 and 2015 coming soon.
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The Retreats Before and After The Encaustic Conference
A history of The International Encaustic Conference would not be complete without a look at the retreats organized by Cari Hernandez for the IEA out in California. I am a huge fan of what Cari organized and achieved, as I felt that the rural retreats she organized--in no way conferences in those early years--offered a complement to the more highly structured schedule of the International Encaustic Conference I was running in Massachusetts.
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In a long e-mail exchange, Cari recalled her involvement with those early retreats. I have condensed her remarks into the Q&A you have here.

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Q: When did the first retreat take place?
A: “The first gathering was at Rodney Thompson's home and studio in Redding, California, in 2006. He organized it. I believe there were 35-40 folks over the two days. They were mostly from Northern California, but a few were from Washington and Oregon. We gathered to share methods, techniques, and materials. There weren't any invited guests or speakers. It was a very informal group of folks getting together to share what they were doing. I then directed the next three retreats, in 2007, 2008, 2009.”

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Q: What made you decide to organize and direct them?

A: “I always started from the perspective of  ‘What would I like to go and see/hear/talk about for three days?’ 
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"The first IEA retreat was held in Carmel Valley, California, in 2007, then in June we all gathered for your first Conference [in Massachusetts]. You had created a true conference with multiple events and exhibitions. What I felt after being in attendance at the First Encaustic Conference was an inspired feeling to create a rich and robust program that was set in a low-key, retreat-like environment. I focused on what could be an interesting format that did not take from or rehash topics or presentations that had been given elsewhere."
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Q: Can you recall some specifics: location, number of participants, number of presenters, topics?

A: “In 2007,we had just over 40 participants; by 2009 there were nearly 100, and we had to wait-list folks because of space limitations for dining.
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"That first year I invited Chester Arnold, a local artist and college instructor, to give a presentation. He taught an Alternative Materials course, and in it he included encaustic. He shared a traditional rabbit skin glue gesso recipe and his methods using encaustic.

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“The other main component of the gathering, was setting-up a huge area so that each attendee would have a place to work. It was an interesting idea. We had 40 artists at their own work stations set up under a massive tent on a huge deck space. I had an electrician come and install special equipment to handle the electrical draw, and ran what felt like miles of cable under the protective drop cloths. “
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Cari notes that many of the activities, especially in the evening, had an almost camp-like fun quality to them, communal dinners and, one year, a costume event. In 2008 Cari invited the painter Heather Hutchison to be a keynote speaker. In 2009 she invited the painter Tony Scherman, San Francisco gallery owner Andrea Schwartz, Los Angeles art consultant Josetta Beglia, as well as two of the most esteemed residents of Kingston, New York:  Richard Frumess, founder of R&F Handmade Paints, and Pamela Blum, exhibiting artist and art professor at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie.  

You can read about these events on the IEA Retreat blogs for 2007, 2008 and 2009.

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“I was definitely inspired by your Conferences, as I attended the first four years. It was important to me that I made contacts on my own, and thus created what I hoped was original programming. What is important to note, is that by attending your Conferences for the first four years, I was able to keep and grow connections with artists and industry-related folks, thus bringing that awareness with me when developing the 2008 and 2009 IEA events. I loved the spirit of creating "more" rather then copying or taking from. While directing those three events, I always felt supported by you, as there was a comfortable openness in communication.

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“I could not pretend for a moment that your book, personal counseling, early West-Coast lectures, and the development of your Conference did not have a profound influence on both my artwork and work in directing the IEA events.

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“What is also interesting, is that I felt pressured by some members in 2008 and 2009 to formalize what I was doing. Basically, they wanted a more formal conference with informational packets, product samples, multiple-event options. I wanted only one schedule; it created a different feel to have everyone attending the same lectures and (remember, this was started as a retreat). Some of the folks wanting these things had been attending your Conferences, and wanted to have what you were creating given/brought to them in Carmel Valley.”

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After organizing her last retreat in 2009, Cari has been attending and presenting at the International Encaustic Conference in Massachusetts.