(left) Basswood grove basement, 24″x18″, encaustic & vermiculite, SOLD
(center) Basswood hurricane, 15″x11″, encaustic & vermiculite, $500
(right) Poplar basement,24″x18″ encaustic & vermiculite, $750
My Archway Gallery exhibit for February continues my tree basement series. The upper portions have a smooth sky background with one or more image transfers of my favorite trees for this series. The lower sections are a very textured area with my favorite additive, vermiculite, embedded to give it a golden hue.
I show the creative progression of Basswood grove basement and Basswood hurricane on my JoelAndersonArt Instagram account, together with some mannequin pieces I was creating for a separate show. You can see the progression from raw plywood to finished, framed piece.
It didn’t dawn on me until late in the series that the predominant colors I was using in the basement section were the colors I painted the house I owned in the ’90s.
The original title of Basswood hurricane was ‘Basswood mini-storage’, given that it was a smaller-scale version. But after fusing the white sky the image of a hurricane was pretty pronounced, so I felt a name change was in order rather than over/redoing things.
Finally, researching this I’ve learned that what we in the US call a basswood, it Europe the more predominate term is lime tree, even though it produces no limes. I thought that would be too confusing, sorry, so I stuck with basswood.