Sunday, October 11, 2009

Encaustic Art with Leah Gold (and other cool updates)

Yesterday, we did encaustic collages with Toronto-based artist Leah Gold (http://www.leahgoldart.com/) at her studio, located in the midst of Chinatown’s busiest marketplaces. For those who don’t know (like myself, who humbly had to ask what it was we were about to do exactly), encaustic painting, a.k.a. hot wax painting, involves heated beeswax with colour pigments applied to a clean, wooden surface. Apparently this technique is ancient — I’m talking 'Egyptian mummy portraits' and '6th century iconic paintings of saints' ancient. Encaustic techniques were even used in Kut-Kut, which is a lost form of Philippine art from the 1600s.

Enough facts — the encaustic workshop was a revelation to me. I didn’t know these art forms existed and we oooh’d and ahhh’d outloud upon every step Leah introduced us to.

Our project was to collage photos and tiny objects into to the wax/wood panel that would express ourselves. Leah told us not to be afraid of “messing up” and that the self-expression will come on its own. So we jumped right into it and mentally zonked out for more than three hours, eyebrows furrowed in fascination at what WE were coming up with.
This particular collage, which I took from my phone cam, is a work-in-progress for sure. I still think I’m missing something. But I like how the horse-turned-unicorn’s horn is a map compass…

Anyway, the workshop was a success and I was addicted to the art form. Hopefully we’ll bump into the talented Ms. Gold once again. (Plus her studio is a sweeeet dig)

Update on past CLUTCH weeks: 1. Short film “Perched” — we're still working on it. We really want to produce something we can all seriously be proud of. Romeo Candido’s workshop on video editing truly pushed us to think out of the box in terms of sound effects and musical tones to fit the sort of mood we want to convey. It’s getting there…

2. PSL’s Charity is Our Second Lanuguage event a.k.a. Nuit Brun — the CLUTCH girls were there that night to help out with the balikbayan boxes for the Typhoon Ondoy victims, but also to breathe in the energy of the spoken word artists and bask in their creative pool of poetic language. Words can’t describe the outcome of that night. Let’s just say it was a packed house and I had chills the entire night.

More to come soon...

DG

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