Today was make-a-batch-of-encaustic-medium day. It is the most toxic part of the process, with resin dust wafting through the air (or sucked out the window with proper ventilation) and wax heated to a temperature a little too close to its flash point. For me, this is the “chore” section of working with encaustic, though I derive a strange satisfaction from seeing the finished bricks lined up and waiting to create something new.

I begin with resin crystals. They come in all sizes and of various clarity. All are sure to have bark and debris in them, but so far I have not discovered any bugs. Surely some small critters get trapped in there occasionally.

To aid in the speed of melting, the resin crystals are crushed in a mortar and pestle to a powder. The powder is then melted with a portion of the wax. This is done because the melting point of the resin is much higher than the melting point of wax.

Once the small portion of wax and resin are thoroughly mixed, the remainder of the wax is melted in at a safer, lower temperature. Nobody likes wax vapor becoming an ignitable mixture in the air. After the wax has melted into the resin mixture, the fluid is poured through cheesecloth to filter out the imperfections trapped in the resin, then into molds to cool.It takes a good couple of hours for the wax to cool completely. When it does, it is popped out of its molds and stored away until the day it is remelted, mixed with pigment, and transformed from wax lump to composition.

Tonight we visited the Den of Smoke - stinging eyes and putrid hair. Conversation included death and racism. Are we really such a different generation than our grandparents? Being there reminds me of my screen series, though. Each of us looks through a haze of our own creation, our own bigotries, our own enthusiasm and despair - in this case even a literal haze of cigarette smoke that declining health and science cannot quelch. This is a darker side to the series than I have yet explored, but perhaps I should explore this generational gap. Will we become like our grandparents and obsess over our age and the changing world? Will our smoke become thicker the longer we live and eventually obliterate the scenery around us, closing off our intent to remain open-minded and optimistic?