Carol Wax

Carol Wax (born June 17, 1953) is an American artist, author and teacher whom the New York Times called "a virtuoso printmaker and art historian" for her work in mezzotint and her writings on the history and technique of that medium.

[citation needed] In the summers of 1975 and 1976, she took printmaking courses at the Lake Placid School of Art[3] and then studied from 1976 to 1982 at the Pratt Graphics Center in New York City, where she made lithographs and was introduced to mezzotint engraving.

[citation needed] Beginning in the mid-1980s, Wax responded to the limitations of current technical knowledge of mezzotint engraving and printing by conducting her own research into historical techniques while continuing to work as a printmaker.

[2] She held a residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in 1986[4] and received an Artist's Fellowship Grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1987.

It praised her exploitation of little-known German publications dating from 1771 and 1889 to expand on familiar historical accounts and her investigation of the impact of such technological developments as steel plates on the artist's technique, types of paper and ink, and the characteristics of the resulting images.

In 2002, Wax moved to Peekskill, New York, to take advantage of the city's downtown revitalization program that gave artists the chance to purchase live/work spaces, known as "The Art Lofts," with minimal down payments.

[1][10] An Artist's Fellowship Grant in 2003 from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Concordia Career Advancement Award the following year enabled Wax to acquire and refurbish a secondhand etching press that was large enough and powerful enough to accommodate her bigger plates.

One reviewer noted that "The reader will readily be captivated by Wax's onomatomania and obsession with man-powered mechanical objects that click, clatter or ring like her signature typewriters and sewing machines.

She has held visiting artist positions on numerous occasions and has presented dozens of mezzotint demonstrations and workshops, as well as slide lectures at universities, colleges, arts organizations, and museums throughout the United States.

I often depict old instruments, mechanical devices, and fabric because their repetitive patterns create rhythms of light, shadow, and forms that can be manipulated to convey my phantasmagorical perceptions.

To learn about the techniques of great painters, you might try studying engravings or etchings, but these stylized linear replications could only depict form and design and impart nothing on the handling of paint, brush strokes, surface texture, and little on chiaroscuro and other lighting treatments.

Now imagine it is Amsterdam, 1642—the year Rembrandt painted The Night Watch—and a graphic technique is introduced which can reproduce every textural nuance and smooth tonal gradations ranging from blackest black to stark white.

Finally portraits could be printed with supple skin tones instead of mask-like cross hatchings, with light that shimmered over satins and steely armor, melted over voluptuous velvets and dove into deep, dark shadows.

The medium's unique capacity for rendering true shades of grey earned the name mezzotint from the Italian mezzo (for half) tinta (tone).

The prints on view are: Cirque du Sew Lace, Falling Water, Machina, Missing Link, Refractions, Remington Return, Singer II, Telefon, The Hollywood, Time Lines,