Instructor: Lia Rothstein
Monday - Tuesday
June 7 - 8
10am - 4pm
2 sessions

Do you have encaustic monotypes hanging around that don’t quite make it on their own but are too interesting for various reasons to throw away? Are you sensitive to traditional art materials made from petroleum products like acrylic paints and matte medium, which are basically plastic? Do you care about climate change, microplastic pollution, and our waterways? If so, join artist and perpetual experimenter, Lia Rothstein, and learn how to use non-toxic, plant-based materials for mounting encaustic monotypes and creating encaustic collages.

 In this workshop, designed for all experience levels, we’ll make some new encaustic monotypes together, and use them, in combination with monotypes and other kinds of drawings you may already have, to create mixed media collages with ecological materials. The effect will be different from fusing monotype layers with wax or using traditional matte medium. The emphasis will be on using alternatives that are safe to use, non-allergenic (for those sensitive to acrylates and other chemicals), better for the planet, and yield exciting archival permanent results.

Lia Rothstein has BA and MFA degrees from Boston University. She was the Climate Change Artist in Residence at the Brattleboro, VT Museum and Art Center for 2023.  Her work is in numerous public and private collections and she has taught extensively. She has exhibited her work with biomaterials, most recently in Tokyo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and her work has been featured in numerous publications, including the first and second editions of the ”Cold Wax Medium: Techniques, Concepts & Conversations” by Rebecca Crowell and Jerry McLaughlin. A new book, “Ideal Matter: Art, Bioplastics, and the Hope for Degradation” by art historian Yorick Berta, featuring Lia’s biomaterial work, has just been published in Germany.