Such a pleasure exhibiting Deborah Kapoor's curated collection of recent works, INTO THE PINK (works on exhibit courtesy of the ArtXchange Gallery in Seattle). Perfect timing in celebration of Women during Mother's Day, the Spring season & our May birthdays!
Using found objects from the domestic and natural world, Kapoor creates pink vignettes that reclaim and revel in feminine matter. Borrowing from but subverting the vanitas painting genre, her use of temporal phenomena such as eggs, leaves, petals, skins, cork, fruit, insects, animals, clay, lace, hair and fur reify the sensuous, and the corporeal. Her tableaus reaffirm our need for beauty in a troubled world, offering respite, however precarious. This modern-day Cabinet of Curiosities exhibits themes of containment, accumulation, and feminine persistence in an ever-changing contemporary world.
These feminine iterations cooperate with an interest in formal concerns of artmaking and new explorations of encaustic. Encaustic painting is an ancient medium of beeswax, damar resin, and pigment recognized for its resplendent surface and rich color. Paint is fused together with heat, creating an enamel-like finish. Kapoor’s contained vessels appear to insist on preserving specimens or artifacts/relics of femininity in using wax, her chosen material. Paired with hot molten paint, her clay experiments with lace result in otherworldly creatures, a paradox for an everlasting material that in this presentation appear devastatingly vulnerable. Displayed works unveil an array of techniques including painting, printmaking, pouring, dipping, transfer methods, clay sculpture, and sewn fiber collage in her unique voice with the use of dimensional encaustic.
Deborah Kapoor makes mixed media works about the distilled poetry within cultural markers. Most recently she exhibited at the Basel Miami Art Fair, Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, and Sammamish City Hall. Featured in recent publications Fiber Art Now magazine, Surface Design Journal, and the new book Encaustic in the Twenty-First Century, she earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Delaware and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Texas.
Interested in learning more about the encaustic process? Here's your opportunity to learn from the best in these upcoming workshops:
Encaustic Fiber Collage
May 21, Sunday 10am - 4pm
Ages: Adult - 18+
Instructor: Deborah Kapoor
Location: Schack Art Center, Printmaking Studio
Learn how to incorporate fiber into 2-D encaustic works in this workshop. Using fabric, paper, thread and ephemera we will explore transparency, light, and methods of adhering to cradled panels. Bring a selection of fibrous materials, giving consideration to how they will absorb wax. Individual encaustic workstations are provided with heat plates, heating tools, encaustic paint, and brushes.
Encaustic Sculpture
Saturday & Sunday, June 3-4, 10am - 4pm (2 sessions)
Instructor: Deborah Kapoor
This workshop will explore the use of wire and plaster bandage to create simple sculptural forms, and treating the surface in encaustic. The application and heating of wax on a sculptural form as well as burnishing, incising, collaging and transferring onto the waxen surface to create 3-D works is covered.
Intro to Encaustic (highly recommended for beginners)
Bellevue College July 7, 8, 9 (stay tuned for online summer schedule to register)
Encaustic Collage
Bellevue College July 28, 29, 30 (stay tuned for online summer schedule to register)
(Deborah encourages the Intro class, because the other classes build on skills you learn in Intro class.)