Door County Pulse, May 2025
Idea Gallery Features New Hot Wax Artist
By Door County Pulse, Peninsula Pulse — May 15th, 2025
“Water’s Edge (Summer)” by Jane Michalski. Submitted.
Idea Gallery, a contemporary art gallery located at 6551 Cty T in West Jacksonport, invites the public to see the featured abstract works of hot wax encaustic artist Jane Michalski of Chicago.
Michalski explores the versatile medium of encaustics using personal photographs as sources for abstraction. A working artist and longtime Chicago resident, she often returns to her native state of Wisconsin.
Her creative energy is fueled by Lake Michigan and her love for the natural world. Michalski has exhibited in the Chicago area and regional and national exhibitions. Her education includes a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Master of Arts (MA) degree from the University of Illinois.
“I have a fascination with structure; the visible structure in the world around us and the structure created within a painting,” Michalski said of her work. “I see beauty in the balance between horizontal and vertical lines, the contrasts of light and dark, complementary colors and the opposition of hard and soft edges.”
Many of the works on display incorporate images of rock formations from the artist’s exploration of Door County’s Cave Point and the surrounding forests. Some of her pieces are as large as 36 by 48 inches, which is rare for the medium.
“When I first saw her work, I was immediately drawn to the resemblance of how her works convey the beautiful essence of the Door County escarpment,” Idea Gallery Curator Dan Cross said. “The unique process of how she embeds images into the hot wax encaustic using archival inkjet photos as well as silk-screened images gives her works an unusual spatial depth that evokes a sense of mystery in place and time.”
Water’s Edge (Summer) encaustic on panel with archival inkjet print and silk screen
Press
“Leaders in Abstraction: Self, Story, Place, and Time”
See the exhibition here:
https://thearthouse.us/exhibitions/leaders-in-abstraction-volume-i-2021-04-28
Tectonic Shift II
encaustic on panel, silk screen
38” x 28”
Bedrock Abstraction III
encaustic on paper, inkjet print
11” x 17”
A Timeless Art Waxes and Wanes, A
Review of “Encaustic 2017” at the
Bridgeport Art Center
August 28, 2017 By Chris Miller
RECOMMENDED
“Transparent layers of wax are scraped, smoothed and incised as I build texture and nuance of color. This process reflects time and memory within
each piece.” So writes Jane Michalski, who began working with encaustic ten years ago, thirty years after she got her BFA. Her take seems to sum up the
advantages of the medium, and in several ways, she is typical of the artists in this exhibit. Twelve of fifteen are women, and most are Euro-American with a
median age fifty-five who took up encaustic later in life. Michalski applies wax over altered photographic images of deserted beaches.
Awesome natural forces are at play, but they seem to belong to an uninhabitable planet. Grim determination would be required to live there.
The world that Jeffrey Hirst depicts is also currently uninhabited–though clearly mankind has left its mark before leaving. The flat, gray-blue spaces
feel post-industrial yet inviting and even cheerful as one approaches the bleeding red edges. Most cheerful of all are the panels designed by Kathleen
Waterloo. The evenly spaced rows of colorful rectangles recall the tightly packed, well-maintained, and occasionally eccentric townhomes of an old
Chicago neighborhood. Waterloo uses the translucency of wax to suggest the vibrant excitement of contemporary urban life rather than the lingering
memories of the past. Shelley Gilchrist applies that same translucency to thick stripes of solid primary colors on shaped panels. The upbeat results echo pop art of fifty
years ago. The pieces are as lively, fun and aggressively superficial as a colorful beach towel. By contrast, Cat Crotchett borrows the wax-drip
techniques and intense floral designs from Indonesian batik. One pattern on top of another on top of another suggests endless depth. Michele Thrane
offers a similar lively complexity by combining mono-printed wax with graphite, ink and acrylic. Many other pieces in this show have less to offer. Perhaps the artists have
been primarily concerned with mastering technique. Some seem to have focused on delivering a timely joke or clever message. Other pieces feel more
like a perfumed scent than a visual experience, or the artist has distributed marks or shapes evenly across the panel as if they were objects in a retailer’s
catalog. The word “excavation” is included in one title, bringing to mind a famous painting in the Art Institute. But the rawness of Kooning’s heroic
struggle is not present here. A few pieces include images of the human figure, but absent any joy, anger, comedy or tragedy, they seem awkward and
muddled, perhaps intentionally so. Overall, this wide assortment of attitudes and techniques is worth seeing. Decades of life experience, as well as volumes of wax, have seeped into
these surfaces, but only a few of these artists have connected to something greater than herself. (Chris Miller)
“Encaustic 2017” shows through September 9 at the Bridgeport Art Center,
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