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Art#encaustic
#flowers
#hands
#memory
#plants
#waxMarch 2, 2021
Grace EbertAll images © Valerie Hammond, shared with permission
In Valerie Hammond’s series of wax drawings, protection is two-fold: the artist (previously) encases dried flowers and ferns in a thin layer of wax, preserving their fragile tissues long after they’ve been plucked from the ground. In outlining a pair of hands, she also secures a memory, or rather, “the essence of a gesture and the fleeting moment in which it was made.”
Centered on limbs lying flat on Japanese paper, the ongoing series dates back to the 1990s, when Hammond made the first tracing “partly in response to the death of a dear friend, whose beautiful hands I often found myself remembering.” She continued by working with family and friends, mainly women and children, to delineate their wrists, palms, and fingers. Today, the series features dozens of works that are comprised of either hands tethered to the dried botanics, which sprout outward in wispy tendrils, or others overlayed with thread and glass beads.
Although the delicate pieces began as a simple trace, Hammond shares that she soon began to overlay the original drawing with pressed florals, creating encaustic assemblages that “echoed the body’s bones, veins, and circulatory systems.” She continued to experiment with the series by introducing various techniques, including printmaking, Xerox transfers, and finally Photoshop inversions, that distorted the original rendering and shifted her practice. Hammond explains:
The works suddenly inhabited a space I had been searching for, straddling the indefinable boundary between presence and absence, material and immaterial, consciousness and the unconscious. For me, they became emblematic not only of the people whose hands I had traced but of my own evolving artistic process—testimony to the passing of time and the quiet dissolution of memory.
Hammond’s work recently was included in a group show at Leila Heller Gallery. Her practice spans multiple mediums including collage, drawing, and sculpture, all of which you can explore on her site and Instagram.#encaustic
#flowers
#hands
#memory
#plants
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More“EQUILIBRIUM” (2023), hand-burnt lines, indigo-dyed reed, and wire on paper, 30 1/4 x 44 inches. All images © Katrina Hildebrandt, shared with permission
Katrine Hildebrandt Embraces Symmetry in Paper, Wire, and Reed
September 4, 2024
Art
Kate Mothes
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Katrine Hildebrandt is captivated by geometry and symmetry, drawing on mathematical or scientific diagrams as a starting point for her precise mixed-media compositions. “At the same time, I find beauty in imperfect, non-tangible, and fleeting moments,” she says. “I think my work blends the relationship between the controlled and wild.”
The Boston-based artist employs natural materials like indigo dye, rattan, and pigmented fabrics. She also uses a wood-burning tool that sears lines into the surface, referencing the duality of permanence and impermanence. The work is “symmetrical yet not perfect,” she says.
“REFLECTED RIPPLES” (2023), hand-burnt lines, reed, and wire on indigo-dyed paper,30 1/4 x 44 inches
Hildebrandt creates color from natural sources, and while the dyes are as lightfast as possible, she embraces the inevitable changes due to time and the elements. “Nothing is permanent, nothing is perfect” she says, “life and the work is in constant flux.”
Beginning each piece by loosely sketching compositions on paper, Hildebrandt intuitively selects the materials based on the color or texture she’d like to achieve. “I always leave room for play and interpretation throughout the entire process,” she says. With meticulous and methodical attention to detail, the artist starts in the center of the paper and works outward to map the composition, using repetition to create a sense of visual rhythm and harmony.
With the help of her studio assistant, artist Ciara Scales, Hildebrandt is working toward a number of projects, including an exhibition with Uprise Art scheduled to open in June next year and SCOPE Art Fair in Miami this December with Soapbox Arts. If you’re in New York, you can also find her work presented by Uprise Art at Art on Paper this weekend.
Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.
“MIRRORED RIPPLE” (2023), hand-burnt lines, reed, and wire on paper, 21 x 30 1/4 inches
Detail of “MIRRORED RIPPLE”
“DISTORT” (2023), hand-burnt lines and indigo ink on paper, 12 x 10 inches
Detail of “EQUILIBRIUM”
“DOUBLE VISION” (2023), hand-burnt lines, indigo ink, reed, and wire on paper, 12 x 10 inches
Detail of “REFLECTED RIPPLES”
“MIRROR” (2023), hand-burnt lines, indigo ink, reed, wire, and oak on paper, 10 x 12 inches
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