The Pelham Art Center held their third Artist Club Lecture of the year on February 17. These free public lectures are a way to learn about different styles of art and stories of artists from the art center’s Artist Club members. The three artists that presented were Janice DeMarino, Allison Ciampi and Kim White.
Janice DeMarino is an abstract painter who has worked with two-dimensional acrylic paintings, papermaking, and encaustics. She focused on the latter in her lecture, explaining her creative process in the making of her encaustic pieces. Encaustic painting originated from Ancient Greece using beeswax and was used in mummy casing in Ancient Egypt, said DeMarino. It involves a hot wax medium with colored pigments that are applied to a surface. A heat gun or blow torch are used to fuse the many layers of encaustic. DeMarino utilizes various materials like Chinese “spirit papers”, fabric scraps, and rubbings from objects to collage into her compositions.
When asked why she became involved in encaustics, she answered that she has always been interested in collaging, and encaustics was a way that she could incorporate it differently compared to her previous media.
“It feels like you’re not working on a 2D surface but a 3D because you’re building different levels of imagery,” she said.
Born in Pelham, Allison Ciampi learned to paint in the Dominican Republic. In the beginning of her art journey when painting was more of a personal hobby, she focused on technicality and capturing landscapes using earth-tone colors. However, now her paintings hold a more freeing style with a bright bold color palette that captures the rollercoaster of emotions she feels during her art process. Every piece she creates is a beautiful experience in itself, she said, and brings her a sense of happiness and peace.
“I love the feeling that I get,” Ciampi said. “I just know I want to do this for the rest of my life.”
Kim White is a visual artist, writer, and transmedia artist. In the past, she wrote short poems on the back pages of the New York Press which are now published in her book “Scratching for Something”.
Currently, she is exploring hybrid textual and visual storytelling found on scrimshaw and renaissance emblems. Scrimshaw is what whalers in the 18th century carved out of whale bone and ivory to pass the time on long sea voyages. These engravings often told stories about the whaler’s life and were given as souvenirs to loved ones. In White’s Trophy Series, she used porcelain tusks, ink and paper, and beeswax to tell the struggles of a fictional tusked woman hunted down for her prized body parts that are taken as a trophy.
She has also recently started a project called Fable Weaver in which she experiments using generative AI to write classical fables with contemporary themes and ideas. Through working with AI, she said that AI is more like a material than a tool for her.
This event provided an opportunity for art enthusiasts to learn and ask questions about each artist’s inspiration, medium, and future plans.
