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SARA CRISP Congress Street Gallery Please click images above for full view.
I work in encaustic, which is an ancient method of painting using wax and pigment fused with heat. This process allows me to make many thin, translucent layers as well as embed natural objects in the central opening, the box. A sheet of mica, a mineral, covers these objects, petals, bones, butterflies and insects.
These paintings are from the series "Earth and Sky." Across time and in many cultures, the square has symbolized the earth, the circle the sky. These pieces contain circles of mica, butterflies, starfish, and plants. Within each piece, I layer some combination of grids, letters, numbers, geometric patterns, and natural forms.
I also have carved the six pointed "Flower of Life." Six traditionally represents structure and order and five, as in the starfish, life and growth as well as the human body. Implied in both pieces are the themes of transformation and interconnectedness, which are part of being a mother, a partner, and a member of the human family.
In addition to the grid, I am using patterns called tilings, the six-sided figure of the hexagon, decorative patterns from Cosmatesque churches and mandalas. All these reference the unseen, spiritual world as well as the visible, natural one.
Taken together, object and marks, they are my attempt to select and catalog--perhaps deify--some small aspects of the natural world as they intersect with the human made world of language and symbol and the world of the spirit.
My work is inspired by the more ordinary aspects of the natural and human world, and what I sense as my place within it.
Congress Street Gallery
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