Christine Aaron is a conceptual and material focused artist whose work is exhibited nationally and internationally. She utilizes printmaking, wax, wood, metal and paper to create work investigating memory and the fragility of human connection. Aaron has received artist grants from ArtsWestchester/NYSCA, Surface Design Association and a residency and grant from Vermont Studio Center. She has received awards in printmaking and mixed media in exhibits at The Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Mamaroneck Artists Guild, Pen and Brush Gallery (NYC) and Silvermine Arts Center (CT). She has presented talks at The International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, MA in 2016, 2017 and 2019. Aaron was invited to present her work at The New York Print Club in 2019. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe. Exhibition venues include a solo exhibit at California Museum of Art Thousand Oaks, CA, and juried and curated exhibitions at The Hunterdon Museum (PA), Provincetown Art Association and Museum (MA), CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery, (Ireland), Fyns Grafiske (Denmark), Westchester Community College (Valhalla, NY), Castle Hill Gallery, College of New Rochelle, Iona College Gallery (both New Rochelle, NY), Silvermine Arts Center (New Canaan, CT) and Mamaroneck Artists Guild (Larchmont, NY). Aaron holds a BS from Cornell University and a Masters in Social Work from Hunter College. She lives and maintains a studio in Westchester County, New York.
Working in the abstract, Karen Bright’s painting and sculpture derive from an innate focus on the natural world and concern for the environment. The ancient method of encaustic – a fusing of beeswax and damar resin with pigment added for color – is harnessed through a process of heating and cooling the temperature. This aspect of materiality connected to each work’s intent serves not only as the control behind each work but as the driving force. Exhibiting since 1981, Karen’s work has won numerous exhibition awards and project grants from a wide variety of organizations including: Urban Coast Institute, International Encaustic Artists, and Monmouth University. Artist-in-residency appointments include: Weir Farm National Historic Site, Petrified Forest National Park, and Hot Springs National Park. Karen Bright, Professor Emeritus, recently retired from Monmouth University after a 39 year career in academia teaching all levels of graphic and interactive design, typography, and traditional printmaking. Previous academic appointments include: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, New Jersey; Parsons School of Design, New York, New York. Professor Bright owns and operates Studio Bright in Newtown Square (Edgmont), Pennsylvania. Academic degrees include an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and a BFA with honors, from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Debra Claffey is a visual artist who uses encaustic, oil, and mixed media in her work. She holds a BFA in Painting from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Tufts University and an Associate's Degree in Horticultural Technology from the University of New Hampshire. Claffey recently received the Juror’s Award at the 2019 Anything But Flat exhibition at the 13th International Encaustic Conference. Claffey has curated three Conference exhibitions, the most recent being The Space Between Shadow and Light at Gallery X in June 2017. She is a founding member and a Past-President of New England Wax.
David A. Clark teaches encaustic printmaking across the United States and beyond, most recently teaching classes at Zijdelings in the Netherlands, R & F Handmade Paints, the Palm Springs Art Museum and Idyllwild Arts. His work has attracted national attention for its technical innovation and soulful content and has been shown at OTA Contemporary Santa Fe, the Hunterdon Art Museum, Conrad Wilde Gallery, the Process Museum, the Cape Cod Museum of Art, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and the Palm Springs Art Museum.
Dorothy Cochran is an accomplished printmaker, who pushes the boundaries of how to create works on paper. With long time experience as an artist, educator and curator, she has developed innovative ways to work and layer substrates, creating prints of luminous quality. She is best known for her expertise and broad command of multiple print methods. Her works are represented in collections such as The Zimmerli Art Museum, The New York Public Library, Memorial Sloan Kettering, The Museum of Modern Art Library to name a few. She has won many honors and awards for her work. In 2017 two print curators from The Metropolitan Museum of Art included six of her works in two separate International Print Exhibitions, in one she was given first prize out of 632 entries. She is a featured presenter at the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, MA and conducts workshops throughout the country and tri-state area including California and Maui. Locally she teaches at The Montclair Art Museum and Manhattan Graphics Center, NYC. Dorothy has an MFA from Columbia University.
Richard Frumess has been manufacturing artist paint commercially since 1982 when he began making encaustic paint for Torch Arts Supplies in New York City. In 1988 he founded R&F Handmade Paints and two years later developed Pigment Sticks, R&F’s brand of oil sticks. In the intervening years, he conducted a series of comprehensive tests on the properties of encaustic as well as doing research into its history and contemporary use. Withdrawing from the running of the company in 2014, allowed him the freedom to investigate the underlying principles of the color line that had been developed intuitively over the years by him and R&F’s staff. The workshops that have evolved from this exploration are intended to ground color theory in the materials of color itself.
Isabelle Gaborit is a contemporary artist, though her preferred medium of encaustic is ancient.
She graduated in 2006 with an honors degree in fine arts in Ireland. Since then, she has been exhibiting work extensively nationally and internationally in, among others, The United States, Northern Ireland, China and France.
Her creative process goes hand in hand with her daily sketching practice where she explores mark-making and gesture, as she absorbs her experience of her surroundings and visual memory of place: forms, colours, textures and patterns. This experience is transmuted into her paintings, not in an overtly conscious way, but as a result of the embodiment of her experiences in her hand and body.
Isabelle is particularly interested in the geological processes built up in layers over time, that the harsh weather is slowly breaking down and revealing. Her art process echoes those geological processes. Like the natural forces that shape the landscape, each painting goes through numerous stages of construction, destruction, growth, and decay. As the paintings go through the physicality of what could be akin to an archaeological process, layers of pigmented beeswax are built up, scraped back while cooled, scored, and shaped, creating highly tactile surfaces. Website: www.isabellegaborit.com
Artist, Milisa Galazzi, is best known for her three dimensional hand sewn shadow drawings, her printed works on paper, and her richly layered abstract drawing and paintings - all of which explore the very nature of being human. Her work is held in private international collections as well as public institutions in the United States and her work is represented by, Miller White Fine Arts gallery on Cape Cod. She is an adjunct professor at Clark University - in addition she mentors artists internationally and teaches online courses with a worldwide following. Galazzi was 'boat schooled' as a child while she and her family traveled and lived aboard their thirty-one foot trimaran sail boat hand built by her father. She attended and graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, followed by Brown University where she also studied art in Florence Italy and she holds a master’s degree with Honors in education from Rhode Island School of Design. Galazzi works full time in her studio near Providence, Rhode Island.
Leslie Giuliani has an eclectic artistic background. Having graduated with a B.F.A. in drawing and painting, she continued her studies in esoteric art forms including fresco painting, Byzantine icon painting, gold leaf conservation, non-silver photographic processes, primitive rug hooking, digital embroidery and encaustic painting. Working at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT, she has taught hybrid forms of printmaking focusing on its application in Encaustic painting. Currently, her work involves creating monotypes, embellishing them with Digital Embroidery and sewing the pieces together to form larger works. Ms. Giuliani is the recipient of a 2008 Artist Fellowship Grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism for Craft and is the author of several published articles on rug hooking and cyanotype photography. Her work was included in the Farnsworth Museum’s show, “Beyond Rugs” and her work is in the permanent art collections of the Housatonic Museum of Art and the state of Connecticut. She has worked with well-known artists on special projects including the architect, Richard Meier and the Argentinian artist Liliana Porter.
Jeffrey Hirst has exhibited his work throughout the United States and Europe since 1987. He has his MFA from Louisiana State University and BFA from the University of Minnesota. His work has been showcased at national and international venues including the Minneapolis Institute of Art; Addington Gallery, Chicago, McKinney Contemporary, Dallas, and Bienal do Douro, Portugal. Hirst is a recipient of the numerous grants and was awarded a fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland where he has gone on four residencies. Hirst is represented by Addington Gallery in Chicago and Brandt-Roberts Galleries in Columbus, OH and his work is in numerous public and private collections in The U.S., Portugal and Ireland. In 2021, Hirst co-founded Catalyst Art Lab and teaches encaustic and printmaking workshops across the U.S. Canada, Mexico and Ireland. Jeff is a CORE instructor for R &F Handmade Paints.
Susan Lasch Krevitt received her BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She majored in Sculpture and Material Studies. Lasch Krevitt uses new and repurposed textiles, rubber, cardboard, encaustic and whatever it takes to build abstract, free standing and wall hung sculptural paintings. Her process driven work explores themes of structure, connection and transformation informed by observations in the natural world. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums internationally and throughout the United States since 1985. In 2016 she had work at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, Mass and in 2018 at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in Ptown. In 2021 her work was shown at the Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, California.
In her almost five-decade career, Joanne Mattera has had 35 solo shows and participated in about 10 group shows annually, both national and international. Her most recent solo, From Dawn to Dusk, took place at Odetta Gallery in Manhattan in late 2019. Joanne’s curatorial projects include Textility in 2012 at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit; A Few Conversations About Color at DM Contemporary in Manhattan in 2015; and Depth Perception in 2017 at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Dennis, Massachusetts, which she curated with Cherie Mittenthal. Joanne’s work is in the New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut; Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; Connecticut College Print Department; University Collections at the University of Albany; the U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C.; and numerous institutional and private collections. Joanne is founder and director emerita of the International Encaustic Conference and author of The Art of Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax. Her memoir, Vita: Growing Up Italian, Coming Out, and Making a Life in Art, was published in 2019 by Well-Fed Artist Press in Manhattan.
Kelly Milukas is an instructor, speaker, and art & science residency collaborator, an award-winning artist whose practice began as a sculptor and has expanded to multi-media painting including pastel and encaustic painting. Milukas’ solo exhibitions have been hosted at the Ronald Reagan International Forum, Washington, DC, the Museum at Palm Beach Photographic Centre, FL, and the Regenerative Medicine Forum in Berkeley, CA. Her artwork is in national museums, international private and corporate collections, and been visible at international art fairs such as Red Dot Miami, and Boston International Art Fairs. Her story and artwork have been featured in IAPS Globe 2021, ArtScope, Newport Life Magazine, Palm Beach Times, and The Pastel Journal, and in several books: “100 New England Artists”; ”Best of American Pastel Vol. 2”; “Artists Homes and Studios”, “A Woman’s Shed”; “The History of Little Compton, First Light: Sakonnet, 1660-1820”; and The Cortland Review. She’s served as a curator and juror, and her ability to communicate ideas has established her as a respected and sought-after instructor and speaker in, arts and science forums, universities, and corporate leadership programs. She is a juried artist member of the Salmagundi Club, NYC, the Connecticut Pastel Society & the RI Watercolor Society, she’s the founding President Emerita of the South Coast Artists, RI & MA, and a past President of the Providence Art Club, the 3rd oldest art club in the United States founded in 1880.
Patricia Miranda is an artist, curator, educator, and founder of the artist-run orgs The Crit Lab and MAPSpace, where she developed residencies in Port Chester, Peekskill, and Italy. In 2021 she founded the Lace Archive, an historical community archive of thousands of donated lace works and family histories. She has received grants from the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation (2022);Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (2021); two artist grants from ArtsWestchester/New York State Council on the Arts (2014/21); an Anonymous Was a Woman Covid19 Relief Grant (2021), and was part of a year-long NEA grant working with homeless youth (2004-5). She has been awarded residencies at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, I-Park, Weir Farm, Vermont Studio Center, and Julio Valdez Printmaking Studio, and been Visiting Artist at Vermont Studio Center, the Heckscher Museum, and University of Utah. Miranda has developed education programs for K-12, museums, and institutions, including Franklin Furnace, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian Institution. She is a noted expert on the history and use of natural dyes and pigments, and teaches about environmentally sustainable art practices. As faculty at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts (2005-19) she led the first study abroad program in Prato, Italy (2017). Recent solo exhibitions include: the Olin Fine Art Center (Washington PA), 3S Artspace (Portsmouth, NH), Jane Street Art Center, Garrison Art Center (Hudson Valley, NY), ODETTA Gallery, and Maine Window DUMBO (NYC). Group exhibitions include Spartanburg Art Museum (Spartanburg, SC); Dunedin Fine Art Center (Dunedin FL); HV MOCA (Peekskill NY), The Lyman Allyn Museum (New London, CT), Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NoMAA), Williamsburg Art+Historical Center, The Clemente Center (NYC), The Alexey von Schlippe Gallery at UConn Avery Point, (Groton, CT). Her recent work has been featured in Art New England (2022), Hudson Valley One (2022) and Brooklyn Rail, (2021).
Cherie Mittenthal, Director and Producer of the 14th International Encaustic Conference. She’s been working predominately in wax or encaustic paint while integrating tar, marble dust, pigment sticks, dry materials, graphite, collage and miscellaneous mediums. She has her MFA from the State University of New York at Purchase and her BFA from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. She’s the Executive Artistic Director of Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill since 2002. She serves on the board of Campus Provincetown, Provincetown Cultural Council, OCARC - the Outer Cape Artist Residency Coalition and is partners with Highlands Center & the National Seashore for the only Wood-Fired Kiln on Cape Cod. She won the 2019 Artist Fellowship award from the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.
Wayne Montecalvo received a BFA from the School of visual Arts in NYC. From 1998-2013 he worked in the Art Department at the State University of New York, New Paltz campus, and taught as an adjunct employee from 2010-2013. From 2014-2016, worked as a freelance artist from his own studio. From 2017-2022 Wayne worked as a prop builder for PRG Technologies, New Windsor, NY. Since the slow down of Broadway productions as a result of the Covid pandemic, he has spent more time teaching workshops on line from his own studio, while seeking other freelance options including teaching in other locations.
Wayne’s awards and honors include the Awagami Artist-in-Residence Program at Awagami Paper Factory in Tokushima, Japan; NYFA MARK ’09; Two Full Fellowship Awards for residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; Two Residencies at the Frans Masereel Zentrum voor Grafiek, Kasterlee, Belgium; John Michael Kohler Foundation Arts/Industry Artist-in-Residence, Sheboygan, WI; Women’s Studio Workshop Artists’ Fellowship, Rosendale, NY., Residency at The Cill Rialaig Project, Ballinskelligs, Killarney, Co. Kerry, Ireland, and an Artists At Work: New York State Council on the Arts.
Laura Moriarty makes prints, sculptural paintings and installations that resonate with the geologic. Laura’s honors include grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, as well as participation in numerous artist residencies including The Cill Rialaig Project in Ireland, and the Baer Art Center in Iceland. Recent exhibitions include Resurfacing, a solo exhibition at the Hunterdon Art Museum, and Streaming, a site-responsive public art installation at Albany International Airport. She is the author of Table of Contents, an artist’s book published in 2012.
Nancy Natale has attended all but one of the 14 previous International Encaustic Conferences and participated as an exhibitor, presenter, teacher and/or curator. Natale arrived late at a painting career after intending to become a writer and receiving a BA in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts. A BFA in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston followed. Natale has received a Pollock Krasner Award, an individual grant from the Artists' Resource Trust, and several grants and awards for shows she organized about the history of place. She Natale has exhibited throughout New England and New York as well as in several western states. Her work is included in the Cape Cod Museum of Art and has been collected by more than 30 major corporations such as Fidelity Investments, Boston Medical Center and Delta Airlines. Natale lives and works in western Massachusetts.
Lisa Pressman, an American abstract painter, was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1958. She earned a BA in Art from Douglass College of Rutgers University and an MFA from Bard College. Recent exhibitions include Susan Eley Fine Arts in New York, NY; Addington Gallery in Chicago, IL; and Circa Gallery in Minneapolis. Others include: The Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton NJ; The Cape Cod Museum of Fine Arts in Dennis, MA; and OTA Contemporary in Santa Fe, NM. In 2020 Lisa will be having a solo show at the Mulvane Art Museum in Topeka, KS. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the U.S. and abroad. Numerous private and public collections feature her paintings. In addition to teaching hundreds of independent workshops and private mentoring programs, Lisa’s credentials include: R&F Handmade Paints Core Teaching Artist and instructor for Gamblin Artists Colors. She is an annual presenter and educator at the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, MA. Her teaching goal is to cultivate the visual voice of each student in the mediums of encaustic, oil and cold wax throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Michele Randall is a visual artist and instructor. Her abstract and narrative work utilizes a range of mediums focusing on more traditional and process heavy techniques. She earned an MFA in printmaking at Penn State University. Her university teaching experience includes printmaking, foundations in drawing and foundations in painting. Currently she conducts group workshops and individual instruction in encaustic and cyanotype printmaking across the United States. She is represented by the Roaring Artist Gallery, https://www.roaringartistgallery.com/ and shows her work regularly in brick-and-mortar and virtual locations.
Jodi Reeb has been a full-time artist and teacher in Minneapolis for over 20 years creating paintings and sculptures. She received a BFA in Printmaking at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Her work has been shown nationally and is in numerous private and corporate collections. She received the Minnesota Artist’s Initiative Grant in 2018, is a CORE Instructor for R&F Handmade Paints and teaches workshops in her studio and across the country.
Marla Rice was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. After attending SUNY New Paltz, she moved to Wellfleet (actually, she went to Wellfleet for a weekend and never left). Besides working at nearly every restaurant in town, she spent most of her waking hours teaching herself and finally mastering the art of woodturning. This led to her current career as the owner of the Rice Polak Gallery in Provincetown, MA. The gallery showcases a diverse collection of contemporary art by nationally and internationally acclaimed artists. The philosophy of the Rice Polak Gallery is one of collaboration and exploration. The gallery is not media specific and shows a wide cross- section of artistic approaches including paintings, works on paper, sculpture, photography and installations. These diverse works are often motivated by their artists’ interests in questioning established boundaries. In addition, she has an art consulting business where she work closely with large corporations, architects, interior designers and private collectors. Marla is married to Kevin Rice, a successful playwright and ED of Payomet Performing Arts Center. Together, they share a passion for traveling and make it an active part of their lives. Deep relationships with her family and friends, pickleball, walking on a daily basis, and a love of art all add up to a very fulfilling, and fun-filled life!
Dale O. Roberts was born in Waterville, New York in 1959. Roberts is a painter, working primarily in the encaustic medium for over 35 years, as well as Silverpoint, gouache and egg tempera. Roberts graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing from Tyler School of Art in 1982. He is represented at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia PA, Blue Heron Gallery in Wellfleet MA, Marshall Gallery in Scottsdale AZ, the Gallery 1261 in Denver CO, Church Street Gallery in Westchester PA, and Art Nou Mil-Lenni Gallery in Barcelona Spain. He has paintings in many public and private collections including PECO, Cozen O’Connor law firm, Rutgers University Museum, Community College of Philadelphia Museum, The Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania Hospital and Vanguard Investment Group. He has presented many workshops unique to his practice as a painter throughout the united states and Canada over the past 20 years. Roberts is a father of two sons, Benjamin and Joshua and lives with his wife Lisa of 33 years in Norristown PA.
Darin Seim is the president and co-owner of R&F Handmade Paints in Kingston, New York. He studied painting and philosophy at the State University of New York at New Paltz. In 1996, he took a job making paint for R&F founder Richard Frumess. After a few years away from the company, he returned in 2005 to manage a rapidly growing production department and in 2014 he became president. Darin remains focused on R&F’s mission to create useful, unique, colors and tools in the realm of oil and wax through partnerships with artists around the world.
Bettina Egli Sennhauser is a mainly self-taught visual artist born and living in Switzerland. She developed her practice working with different artsts at Art Schools in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and the US and is a recipient of scholarships from the Internatonal Encaustic Association and the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. In 2018 she was a founding member of the virtual European Encaustic Artsts Group (EEA). Together with New England Wax and Ursi Lysser she initiated Transatlantc Fusion 2021, a collaboration between New England Wax and the EEA. Betna is represented by the frontoficycle Gallery in Basel, Switzerland. Her work has been shown at several Group Exhibitons in Basel, at the ARTE Binningen, the Trevisan Internatonal Art Gallery in Bologna, Italy, and the Juried Exhibitons of the Internatonal Encaustc Conference in Provincetown and the Atlantic Gallery in New York. In 2020 she started to teach Encaustic at her studio "kunstreiraum” considered the first large Encaustic studio in Switzerland, and launched the frst and only comprehensive Encaustic Online Workshop in German. As of 2022, she will teach Encaustc at the "Kunstakademie Allgäu" and the "Kunstschule Musebrink" in Germany. She is a member of the Internatonal Encaustc Associaton and one of two listed R&F Encaustc Teachers in Switzerland.
Kelly Williams’ background in social work influences both her art and teaching style and often takes on a psychological perspective. She is a Tier Instructor for R&F handmade paints and teaches both group and private sessions out of her studio. She has received multiple Project Grants from Portland’s Regional Arts and Culture Council to work with disenfranchised populations using art as a healing tool. She has presented at the International Encaustic Artists’ annual retreat, Portland City Hall and been interviewed in multiple publications and broadcasts. Kelly has taught at Arts & Communication Magnet Academy, and served on the educational committee of Sitka Arts & Ecology Center and the board of Portland Open Studios. Her work has been shown nationally, including the Museum of Encaustic Art, Portland Center Stage, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, and George Fox University. Her work can be found in many corporate and private collections and she is currently represented by Pearl Gallery in Portland, OR.
