Me and My Blowtorch

So, there I was melting crayons onto painted canvas with my blowtorch, when . . . okay, I don't even want to finish that sentence, there's plenty of information in it already. This week I've made jewelry at one of my weekly art workshops with my teen friends at the Ground Zero Teen Center, gathered vintage detritus at antique shops and garage sales for a couple of assemblages I'm working on, and I even sorted materials for a new fabric project. But the coolest material I've worked with lately has to be molten, brilliantly colored wax. The method of melting it is pretty exciting, too.

A few months ago I tried melting crayons on a hot plate in little metal cups and then painting, dripping or pouring them onto canvas, but I couldn't get the effects I wanted and it was messy and slow. I'd been fantasizing about getting a blow torch and attacking crayons with it for years, but I thought it would be too expensive or messy or dangerous. Then I realized I could work around all of those limitations, and I knew I'd never rest satisfied till I'd seen just how a crayon held in a pair of kitchen tongs reacted when hit with mind-blowingly hot, focused heat. Wow, is it fun.

Of course, it spatters, splatters and smells. The crayon vapors are noxious and rather awful when inhaled indoors. And there's the matter of spraying firey butane into the air as well. But oh, it's fantastic to drip, splatter, add materials to the molten surface, heat it all again, swirl the colors gently together and mix in odd textures and things that shimmer, then see what emerges.

My first two pieces remind me of dragon skin (though I'll admit I've not met many dragons in person), and I'm thinking these materials and techniques could lend themselves to a whole series of pieces inspired by fantasy creatures. I'll post my first two pieces in my assemblages gallery tonight; to get there, go to the Assemblages page at my website, lauragrey.com, then scroll down and click on the photo to enter into my waxen underworld.