Unmasking Art Show Virtual Tour

"My Rock with Christ" by Noelle Hackenmueller
Encaustic On Wood 17.5" x 15" x 34"

Artist Statement

My name is Noelle Hackenmueller, I am 17 years old, and I am a junior at Apollo Highschool. The wonderful, woodworking Shane was my mentor. I made my piece by selecting 7 different types of wood, and then band sawing them into the shape of different sized rocks. After I sanded and cut all the wood pieces, I used encaustic (which is basically painting with hot wax instead of paint) to paint each rock. I used the colors of the rainbow (more details below), and each rock is a monochromatic encaustic (aka, I only used a mix of the base color, black, and white to paint each piece), and voila - you got my art piece.

Warning: long explanation ahead. Alright, so if you look below my piece, there should be various different rock stacks on a podium. What these are, are when I’m doing something fun or interesting that is really memorable, and I have access to rocks, I find rainbow rocks. Basically, I find a big purple rock, a slightly smaller blue rock, a slightly smaller green rock, etc. Once I get home from said activity, I glue them into a rock cairn, and then I title and date the rock. That’s basically what my big piece is, except it’s an ongoing activity. If you look at the yellow rock, it has the title “My Walk With Christ”, and then the date 11/30/03-. That is the day I got baptised. Essentially, each monochromatically encausticked rock is a part of my life God helped me get through. They are in no specific order, other than the fact they are in rainbow order, just like my rock cairns. The reason there is a hyphen behind the date is because my walk with Christ isn’t over. I chose to use encaustic because I’ve been wanting to paint with wax for a long long time, and I wanted to challenge myself by painting in a unique way. I used different types of wood to add more variety and depth to my piece.

One thing I really benefited from during the mentoring process was the support while working on my piece. With encaustic, it dries very quickly and doesn’t work/blend very well at all, and it got frustrating at some points. Mentors and fellow artists would always walk past and give an encouraging remark about my piece, which would always help me get back on track. I would like to thank Shane, because he dealt with all of my confused questions, taught me some new skills (like how to use encaustic and drill holes and use screws), and never got annoyed when I said “I’m fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine” 5 billion times. I would also like to thank YFC for letting PV happen in this crazy time, as well as make sure we were all comfortable and safe. I would also like to thank Jesus for being Jesus, because without him, my piece would not exist.

What is Encaustic?

Encaustic is essentially “painting” with wax. To make this piece, I had metal dishes containing colored wax placed on a hot griddle in order to melt it. The wax is solid at room temp, so you need to have the wax completely melted before you start “painting”.

After the wax in the containers are melted, you must use a heat gun to heat up whatever material you will be “painting” on, so that the wax will attach to it. In my case, I needed to blast each piece of wood with the heat gun before I could “paint” the wax on. After each layer of wax is “painted” on, (you need many layers of wax to create a piece) you have to use a heat gun to melt the layers together in order for the wax to adhere to each other. You cannot blend with encaustic without the use of a heat gun. The heat gun melts the wax and makes the colors mix, creating a swirl effect. The wax solidifies almost instantly when it touches the wood, so you need to work quickly and constantly re dip your brush in the wax.

You have to clean your brush between every color to prevent color contamination, so there is a specific wax you need to use to clean your brush. Also- everything you use is very hot. If you don’t burn yourself at least once while using encaustic, you’re not working hard enough :)

Oral Statement