Connecting Artists: Wayne Montecalvo & Nanette Rae Freeman

Detail from Wayne Montecalvo's mixed-media work.

This week we designed our newsletter to connect artists and to share their work. We reached out to R&F Teaching Artist Wayne Montecalvo and asked him to suggest an artist he recently worked with in a workshop, and whose work shared a similar spirit. Wayne is known for experimental approaches in making his mixed media and photography work. Wayne's suggestion, Nanette Rae Freeman, also utilizes an array of materials, printed imagery, and encaustic to explore her personal narrative.

Wayne Montecalvo, Overloading, digital images, paint, wax, silkscreen, coffee stains, and India ink.

Wayne and Jeff Hirst first introduced and encouraged Nanette to work with encaustic. At the beginning of March, she began attending a virtual artist residency, The Enso Circle. Her goal during the residency was to develop an artistic style using encaustic and photographs to create what the human eye cannot see, what reality conceals, and what evades our view.

Nannette attributes her obsession for working with diverse populations to her childhood spent accompanying her father who owned, operated, and repaired pinball machines, jukeboxes, and vending machines throughout Chicago. After the sudden loss of her husband, some of her making is part of her grieving process. She knows her husband is amused to see her working with experimental objects and photographic material as it echoes their shared longing for the unusual, which they pursued throughout their lives together.

Nanette Rae Freeman, "New Ray's" series, encaustic and mixed-media.

A note from Nanette on using R&F materials:

"I use R&F Encaustic Gesso because it is the easiest, fastest way to prepare highly absorbent encaustic substrates of all kinds. Of course, R&F Encaustic Medium is also essential. I often add it to increase translucency for glazing. On its own, I use it for effortless collage work. R&F products certainly are all I need as a working artist—but then there is their amazing website full of information."

Thank you Nanette and Wayne!