First Thursday Downtown with New Artist, Missy Corey

She combines encaustic (molten beeswax, damar resin and pigment), with macro and microscopic photography, printmaking, and drawing. Several printmaking processes are integrated, such as monoprints, serigraphy (screenprint), suminagashi ink marbling, and etchings. They are further combined with ink, watercolor, graphite, oil paint, thread, gold leaf, and neopastel. The imagery used integrates site specific observation – most recently from geologically significant locations in Sweden, Iceland, Norway, and Idaho. She captures her experience of time and place by gathering on-site drawings, photographs, and biological samples to place under her microscope. These natural patterns are integrated with biological structures and functions, DNA mapping, cosmos, and topography. Encaustic is an ancient medium enjoying a modern revival. Encaustic comes from the Greek word “to burn in,” and it is a mix of beeswax, damar resin and pigment. It is applied while molten and multiple layers are fused with a torch or tacking iron, creating images with depth and luminosity. Encaustic was utilized by Greek artists as far back as the 5^th century BC. The best known, remaining early encaustics are the Fayum portraits – funeral portraits painted in the 1^st and 2^nd centuries A.D. by Greek painters in Egypt. A resurgence in encaustic began with the discovery of the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and a return of the art began in the 1950’s.