Workshop at Crystal Bridges

JUNE 22 & 23, 2024, 1 PM - 4 PM

Enclosed Nature with Melissa Cowper-Smith

Encaustic is an ancient material made from blending natural beeswax and damar tree resin. In this two-day workshop, all parts of the process will be covered, including mixing encaustic, set-up/clean-up, fusing, layering, scraping, burnishing (polishing), and using encaustic colors. We will focus on low-relief embedment. Adding natural materials such as dried flowers, leaves, seeds, twigs, shells, feathers, hair, and stones.

Tickets are $102 ($85 for members), reserve your spot online or with Guest Services at (479) 657-2335 today.

Cyclical Nature, with Jessica Mongeon

Jessica Mongeon and I shared our work at the Spiva Gallery at Missouri Southern State University. The show titled Cyclical Nature was up for the month of June. We gave a talk about our work that was recorded.

From The Ground at 211 South

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Fire Remedy Solo Show at the University of the Ozarks

My work was exhibited at the University of the Ozarks, Stephens Gallery, in Clarksville Arkansas from January 17th through February 17th. I also led an encaustic workshop for their art majors. Thank you to Tammy Harrington for arranging and hanging the show and workshop!

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Thank You!

Thank you to everyone who attended the Winter Encaustic Workshop at Wildland Gardens this December. What a wonderful time we had!

Encaustic Workshop!

Join me for an encaustic workshop on my farm, Wildland Gardens, this December!

New Work Coming Soon

I continue to be incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to work as a full time artist. This fall I have a new palette of colors and some amazing imagery to use as inspiration. In addition to working in the studio, I will be leading workshops both at my home and at local museums. Be sure to follow me on social media for updates!

Melissa Cowper-Smith & Jeff Horton at Boswell Mourot Fine Art

The opening was wonderful with artists and art enthusiasts in attendance. The show will be up through May 28th. There will be a conversation with the artists on Thursday, May 19th from 6-8pm

Fire-Flowers Series

Excited to share this new series of work with you!

Finished piece. Gouache paint, pigment print, on handmade paper with dried flowers, and encaustic on wood panel.

In process, painting with gouache paint on handmade paper.

New Year, New Work

It’s been almost a year since I stopped teaching college kids and turned to work in the studio and gardens. This spring I have two major projects. I will once again grow thousands of plants for the Spring Plant Sale in Conway, Arkansas. Plants will be sold for pick-up and shipping on our website www.wildlandgardens.org

I’m also preparing a large series of works for an upcoming show at Boswell Mourot Fine Art Gallery. Some of these works have already been sent over to the gallery. If you’re in Little Rock, go check them out. The gallery has moved to the hip SoMa neighborhood.

Hopefully this pandemic lets up soon and I will see more of your beautiful faces in 2022!

Encaustic Workshop at Crystal Bridges

This was my second workshop for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville AR. What a great reason to travel up to this amazing museum! The participants were enthusiastic and wonderful to work with. It was a diverse group with people from many different places. I covered flower pressing and drying, encaustic medium preparation, and compositional options. We were lucky to have amazing leaf and flower specimens pre-prepared by the museums horticulralist Marina McCoy. The event was organized by Danielle Hatch and Moira Anderson.

Windgate Art Launch Workshop

Spent a wonderful two days (June 17th and 18th 2021) leading a papermaking workshop for Arkansas K-12 teachers at ATU. It was so exciting watching creative people explore this adaptable media. We talked about many ways to make paper making workable for kids.

Interview by Betty the Beaver, Mascot for the Consulate General of Canada

What an honour to be interviewed by a giant stuffed beaver mascot! But really it was and this video is so dear and precious.

The Year We Stayed Home

Like many people, this year we stayed home. As a mother of a young kid, this meant hours conducting homeschool, cleaning a messier than usual house, and having little or no time for my own pursuits. (I do have friends that juggled this all and were still productive. How?!) Over the past few months things have started to return to normal. I have studio days again and have begun a new series. It’s hard to explain the new work while it’s in process- but generally I’m working with shaped panels, handmade paper, and encaustic. I’ve been looking at images of light- fire, sunsets, reflections after the rain.

Interview on Arkansas Art Scene Blog

Learn more about my work and see some images in this Q and A on the Arkansas Art Scene Blog. I talk about moving to Arkansas, art, nature, papermaking and teaching.

Here is an excerpt:

AAS: You seem to have a strong connection to the land and the natural environment – and this really comes through in your art.

 MCS: Since childhood I have felt a deep connection to nature. It feels like a biological or ancestral necessity for me. It’s been a challenge to develop an art practice that represents some of my experience with nature. To depict nature never seemed like enough. I remember obsessively drawing and painting the sky. But these representations never actually expressed my feeling of seeing and experiencing a dramatic sky. (I love Turner and other historic landscape paintings like the Hudson River School paintings.) There’s something about the ceaseless movement and change in nature that awes me. I love the cyclical patterns of the seasons. It was a massive moment in my development as an artist when I realized that by making paper by hand from plants I could literally and immediately include nature in my work. I didn’t know any papermakers back when I started. Now that I know many all over the country, my adoption of this medium seems like an obvious step. Now I specifically grow and collect many plants for paper including both bast fiber plants such as mulberry and hibiscus (using the stringy fibers between the bark and the inner core), and seed fibers like cotton, and leaf fibers like hosta, iris, daylily, and many others. As I mentioned, I add other items to my paper too. Large pieces of plants, old summer dresses, antique lace and hair from my horse’s tails. I love how these materials convey a sense of narrative, place, and time.

AAS: Your techniques capture beautifully the real and surreal at the same time – highly recognizable yet disorienting in a way.

 MCS: The visual language of my work includes a mix of abstraction and representation. There are a lot of shifts in point of view. Sometimes my work moves more towards a chaotic abstraction and sometimes it’s easier to read. I’ve found aspects of each of the mediums I use that help create this language. I try to balance the movement of gestural paint and paper with the specificity and stillness of photography. Ultimately, I want to make work that resonates with people in emotional ways they feel are both true and hard to explain. This is also the work that I want to see. I remember tears streaming down my face while in a Munch exhibition or in front of a Rothko painting. I could never figure out why everyone wasn’t crying at these shows. I guess viewers aren't always ready to be open to artwork. In my own work, I seek a feeling that’s really hard to describe in ways that don’t sound cliche´. They are like the feeling of missing your Grandpa, or your old dog. Where you know things change and you are grateful for the present moment, but there’s some loss.

Virtual Workshop hosted by Crystal Bridges

Featured in Documentary Film "Delta 60"

Melissa Cowper-Smith and Yelena Petroukhina at Boswell Mourot Fine Art Gallery

My first show at Boswell Mourot!

Here is some press: Arkansas Democrat Gazette, Art Beat

By Ellis Widner, June 9, 2019

The past and the present, processes organic and digital, manifest in the artworks of Melissa Cowper-Smith.

The multimedia artist works with photography, computers, painting, encaustic and digital printing to create images that are printed on paper she makes from the plants in her garden at her Morrilton-area home.

Initially, Cowper-Smith planted cotton for papermaking, but is also using other plants from her garden. Her thick, richly textured, irregularly bordered papers include mulberry and herbs, particularly medicinal ones as she creates works inspired by her interviews with herbalists and folk healers in Arkansas.

Cowper-Smith also is exploring pigment prints in a larger presentation -- She Let It Happen (It Wasn't Her Fault) is 55 by 42 inches. The interior scene of a living room is unsettling in its orderly center surrounded by seemingly disorderly radiance. What happened here? There is a sense of struggle, perhaps one to remember exactly what did happen.

Relief from Sorrow (star) is a visual, hopeful balm. The lovely Mom's Shirt and Heartache, a pigment print on handmade paper, encaustic and gouache paint, aches with emotion and beauty.

Solo Show @ BAAC Gallery

Natural Treatment opens at Batesville Area Arts Council Gallery

The exhibition will be on display at the BAAC Gallery on Main, 226 E Main St, Batesville Arkansas through April 20, 2019.