Margaret Berry
Margaret Berry in her studio
Happy Accidents…
Beeswax has a mind of its own, and encaustic artists often talk about happy accidents in their work. It
turns out I came to the world of encaustic via a life-threatening car accident and a simultaneous accidental
encounter with Joanne Mattera’s newly published 2001 book.
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These events triggered a desire to return to studio art after years as director of an arts organization. It
also meant a return to wax as my medium. A decade earlier, I had been a successful batik artist so I was
delighted to find in encaustic a more complex way to use beeswax and my Javanese tools. I became a
re-emerging artist.
As poet Antonio Machado said, “I dreamt---marvelous error!--- that I had a beehive here inside my heart.
And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.”
Since that bittersweet turn in the road, I have explored the breadth and depth of encaustic expression,
taught all levels of workshops, served on the Board of International Encaustic Artists and been fortunate
to exhibit with the most talented of our colleagues in this medium. Here in the Midwest, I have been
able to blaze the wax trail as an artist-in-residence for the Nebraska Arts Council and to be the first to
show contemporary encaustic at the Sheldon Museum of Art in 2007. It has been exciting to watch the
encaustic movement catch fire and to be able to fan the flames in this part of the country.
Fall
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