From The Collection: Wayne Montecalvo

Wayne Montecalvo, Karen Ballas, 24” x 15”, encaustic on panel, 2000. Permanent collection of R&F Handmade Paints.

Wayne Montecalvo works with image and materials in order to push the confines of art making to reinvent, rather than reproduce an image. His process involves “allowing an idea to emerge organically through curiosity.” Through a manipulation of materials, he distorts and redefines an image, starting with the expected and ending with something mysterious. His approach is painterly; an effort to find a new way to encounter the familiar. R&F is proud to have a piece of Wayne’s work in our permanent collection.

Artist Wayne Montecalvo

Wayne’s awards are many. He was an Awagami Artist-in-Residence at the Awagami Paper Factory in Tokushima, Japan and the recipient of two fellowship awards for residencies at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. He was selected for two residencies at the Frans Masereel Zentrum voor Grafiek in Kasterlee, Belgium and served as a John Michael Kohler Foundation Arts/Industry Artist-in-Residence in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. In addition, Wayne was awarded a Women’s Studio Workshop Artists’ Fellowship. And that’s just to name a few.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? How did you get your start as an artist?

Calling oneself an artist sometimes seems a peculiar thing to me. I never had a moment when I decided to be an artist. I feel, as perhaps a lot of artists might, that it was a gradual development of something that might have already been in place.

As long as I can remember, even when I was young, I liked to make things up, invent things out of my head and draw them on paper. The desire to create something is always there. I’ve always been attracted to drawing, painting, and object making. And later as an adult, I developed a curious interest with musical instruments which I have integrated over the years here and there as part of my art making, especially in regard to video projects or sometimes performance events.

There were times when I thought I would stop “being an artist,” but sooner or later I found there was always something I needed to bring to fruition and would end up making an art piece of some type.

Wayne Montecalvo, First House, 24”x 33”, encaustic, digital images, and Japanese papers on panel, 2021.

What types of media do you like to work in?

I try to incorporate any media that will stretch my approach to art making. In addition to encaustic medium, I often include paint, India ink, dye, powdered graphite, stained surfaces, silkscreen prints, charcoal, as well as other mark making media such as wax crayons, colored pencils and various brands of drawing tools that sometimes contain other types of materials that might (but not always) work with wax.

I also use a lot of thin paper with most of my pieces. All of my digitally produced imagery is printed on very thin Japanese paper.

What are you currently working on in the studio and how has it evolved over the years?

I have been working with portraits for a while. Lately they have gotten much smaller and for the most part they are black and white. I am trying to make the subject unidentifiable using heavy splatter and powered graphite embedded in wax. The interest in using people as a subject matter came out of earlier artworks, short video pieces that involved volunteers willing to become characters and perform in various staged events with cheaply built backdrops and environments.

This led to using still images from those videos to make silkscreen prints, which later branched out into painting in a somewhat traditional approach. I started using encaustic paint along the way for some of these paintings that later spilled over into incorporating digital images with my art making.

Wayne Montecalvo, A Perfect Pear, 19”x 33”, encaustic, digital images, acrylic paint, and Japanese papers on panel, 2021

Do you go in search of your subjects or do they find you?

As far as choosing my subjects, I like to have some familiarity with the people I work with, and I usually ask people I already know. I like for there to be some history with a person, rather than someone I don’t know. Sometimes people like the idea, sometimes not. I think this has developed from previous efforts at making artwork by asking people to become a persona, or to become a character, often pushing the comfort zone and inviting people to temporarily become someone else.

I still question what I am doing, and I like to ponder the idea of using a real person’s identity and changing it somehow, especially in this age of immediate social network interaction. Is there a commitment to someone’s face or persona? Is there a responsibility on my part as an artist, or on their part as a model? Especially when considering that I am going to redefine, distort, or augment an image. But in the end, I like to think of it as a collaboration and that is a good thing.

Wayne Montecalvo, Do The Doo, 5.5”x 6.5”, encaustic, digital images, India ink, powdered graphite on board, 2022

You will be teaching "Layering Photo Based Imagery with Encaustic and Pigment Sticks" twice this year. What does this workshops focus on and what can students expect to leave with?

All of my workshops focus on modifying the subject of a photographic image into something new or unexpected. In my own work, I am constantly augmenting the composition using a host of techniques. I use physical manipulation to reshape digital images into something that is no longer a digital reproduction.

The workshops encourage students to deconstruct and then reconstruct into a new piece using things like tearing, re-arranging, disassembling, distressing, reversing, concealing and any number of additional methods that might include Ink, paint, powdered graphite, and layering images, to name a few.

Please share a bit about your piece in R&F's Permanent Collection.

The piece in the R&F collection is an older piece, which I am grateful to have in their collection. It was made during my early years of experimenting with R&F paints. And as most artists develop and learn what a material might allow, it is quite removed from what I am doing now.

Wayne Montecalvo teaching a workshop.

I was focused on yearbook images at the time, random faces, random people, typical settings. I was obsessed with the yearbook photographic style of capturing something seen as significant in the moment, and it seemed a logical source for subject matter.

But I also thought it was a funny picture and that it would be a good subject to place in a new setting. That idea has always stuck in my head and is still something I include in my work through distorting, overlapping, and altering the meaning of something (usually the theme is people).

What keeps you motivated in the studio? What is your typical studio day like? What's next for you?

Motivation for me is more of an urge that comes and goes, rather than a precise approach to making artwork. But it can also come from anywhere. I don’t like to force creativity, or feel compelled to produce something in the studio, but when I do make artwork it, is usually from a need to see an idea materialize.

A typical studio day might be stretching and exposing a silk screen, printing digital files for myself (and other artists), creating room in the studio to make more work, testing materials to use with encaustic, building a few panels, photographing artwork, that sort of thing.

In addition to teaching at R&F, what’s next for you?

I’ll be in Ireland at Essence of Mulranny from October 12 - 23 (as part of a two class workshop with Laura Moriarty) and in San Miguel, Mexico November 17 - 22.

To see more of Wayne’s work or learn about his international workshops, visit waynemontecalvo.com. To register for workshops at R&F, visit rfpaints.com/workshops.