encaustic

Where has the time gone? I can't believe I haven't posted since July. Well, good news is there is a lot to catch up with!

I'll start back where I left off.

In August, my mom was asked by the Breast Imaging Center at Memorial Hospital to create a body of work for their newly renovated building. They gave her a very short timeline so she enlisted me to help her create some pieces. She painted a lot of oil paintings and I made some encaustic pieces. This was my first time working with wax, but I quickly caught on. I really enjoyed this medium, and it was pretty great to spend so much time with my mom.

We decided to use original thank you cards that the employees have received from grateful patients over the years. We made photocopies of the cards and put them against pictures of one of my grandmother's quilts. The choice of using our quilt in the pieces was because breast cancer has been a big part of our family. My grandmother survived it, but my aunt did not. The quilt in this group of 9 was made by my grandmother of my mom's and aunt's clothes.

These are the final pieces as we were arranging them to hang on the wall. We are so happy with how they turned out. 

I also made 2 larger pieces with some of my grandmother's fabric. On this one above, the fabric was actually old sheets that my mom used when she was a child. And the words are are from The Beatles song. My mom and my aunt loved this song. They sang it a lot while she was sick. It still has so much meaning for my mom.

This next piece is actually the mock up I made on photoshop. I don't have a picture of the finished piece, yet, but this is very close to what it looks like. Again, the background are my mom's old sheets from when she was little. We wanted all of the pieces to be encouraging and uplifting a stressful time.

This last piece was made for the nurses station. It pretty much says it all.

I hope to get over to the center and take better photos of our work! It really was a fun time for both my mom and I, and it was for a group that means so much to our family.