Under the direction of Kristy Darnell Battani, a copyright lawyer and member of Austin Wax, Texas Wax officially became an entity. Within the year, Texas Wax obtained its non-profit status. The four founders of the different groups within Texas Wax became part of the executive committee and began to meet quarterly rotating between the four regions of the state. Non-profit status allowed us to receive private and public donations, protected us as members from personal liability and set up a corporate structure to allow for the greater running of the organization. As a professional artist’s organization with a growing membership we were now able to organize larger exhibits, offer workshops and presentations, set up a website and begin to think of statewide and regional retreats and conferences.
Going National…
The expansion of Texas Wax mirrored the expansion of the International Encaustic Artists (IEA). What had once been a small regional California association was now becoming a strong professional arts association with a governmental structure in place to address the many issues associated with an international membership. With a similar mission of raising awareness and interest in the art of encaustic painting through exhibitions, publications, and educational experiences, the Texas Wax board began to explore the possibility of some affiliation with IEA.
When IEA introduced its chapter program in 2011, Texas Wax could visualize itself as either a Texas-wide chapter or separate more local chapters of this larger organization. Feeling that we were duplicating efforts with a state structure when a national structure was available, the Texas Wax Board began negotiations with IEA to become a chapter. The executive
and took on duties to smooth the transition between the two groups and to provide volunteer service to help with the huge influx of additional members.
Since Texas Wax/SA was already in the preliminary planning stages for hosting a regional conference in San Antonio in 2012, the now IEA Texas Wax/SA chapter took on the responsibility of organizing the annual IEA retreat. This move of the event outside of California and the Northwest was in sync with an increasingly greater national and international IEA presence and signaled a major change in the organization. To reflect its changing identity, the IEA board adopted a traditional conference structure for its annual gathering and renamed it IEA encaustiCon®. With the conference coming to Texas and bringing with it fellow artists from Canada, Mexico and all parts of the US, Texas Wax came full circle in its transformation.
A Post Script….
As I said at the opening of the article, three pillars of a strong organization are good leadership, a strong sense of volunteerism and a built in path to growing the organization. As I look back on the history of Texas Wax, I am struck by how important a role R&F has played in the growing our Texas encaustic community. Unlike other professional arts organizations whose members study such disciplines as watercolor or sculpture then join corresponding professional organizations, most of us who now work in wax were not exposed to the medium in our BFA or MFA programs. We have had to rely on the pioneers among us who stumbled “into” encaustic and then seek knowledge from books or from paint makers. Early on, Richard Frumess of R&F Paint realized that an educational component was integral to the business. In talking to the artists for this article who were foundational in forming Texas Wax, I discovered that most, if not all, of our pioneers were R&F trained…and they, in turn, trained others in our universities and colleges, in our art centers and in private workshops around the state. I believe that one of the primary reasons that Texas Wax—in all of its incarnations—grew so rapidly was the fact that so many of our members had a strong foundation in the medium. Special thanks to R&F Paints and to some of our early mentors….