This Wednesday, I’ll be doing a 3-hour outdoor encaustic demo at the Outsiders Art gallery for their Student U fundraising event.

I’ll also be teaching encaustic painting techniques to anyone who’s interested in either learning a really, really old art medium or hot wax (so long as the interested persons aren’t too drunk, too young or unaware that hot surfaces and fire both burn).

The informal class underneath the big pin oak tree is FREE. I’m supplying my own paints and masonite for your enjoyment and bewilderment, and you get to keep your painting forever.

I’m broke as broke can be, but it’s worth giving people lessons and materials, because watching curious noobs go at the hot wax is entertaining and gorgeous. 

I’ll also have ten curated encaustic paintings for sale in the gallery. These paintings are very affordable, and they’re also weird, mostly because encaustic painting is endlessly weird. You should see what it did today. It was crazy.

- - -

I think the reasons why my encaustic paintings are included in a gallery that specializes in the typically “untrained” genre of Outsider art is because of how I paint with hot wax, what I paint, and the strange pigments I use when I make encaustic paint. 

Although I took an encaustic painting course at a craft school in the middle of the Appalachia mountains a couple years back, no one told me that trying to control melted wax, which is pretty much impossible, was a good idea.

I’m OCD, and I figured the hot wax would do what I wanted it to do. It didn’t.

At first, the burning-hot wax went all over the place; mostly on my hands and my glasses and clothing and hair and the floor and one toilet seat because I also splattered my butt with hot wax (though not on purpose, that time).

But I’m also stubborn, and the wax eventually became easier to kind of control. It will never submit, and I’ll probably never stop trying to control it. In many ways, encaustic painting behaves the same way as crazy love. 

- - -

On that note, the Outsiders Art fundraiser is for a good cause. I generally avoid good causes unless they actually make sense and improvements in life. 

Student U is a non-profit, non-traditional school that makes no sense at all in theory - getting a bunch of academics, amateurs and other natural-born teachers together in order to fill in the gaps that Durham’s public schools haven’t been able to fill.

That sounds impossible, but Student U is stubborn too, and it does make actual sense in practice. They’ve made seriously impressive improvements in the lives of the kids and teenagers of Durham’s public schools over the last five years. I’m betting the teachers experience similar improvements in their professional and personal lives.

- - -

Durham public schools have a bad reputation; sometimes deserved, sometimes unfair. Durham is a bizarre, beautiful and sometimes broken Southern city that has a lot of money, a lot of poverty, and a lot of different folks with kids.

Some kids go to private schools, some go to art schools. Some go to science and math schools and some go to home schools. But most of the kids in Durham go to public schools. Especially now.

I’m always hesitant to criticize public schools because I’m the daughter of a public school teacher, I attended public schools, and teaching - anyone, anything - is a rewarding and difficult endeavor. 

Sometimes people become public school teachers because they like the freedom of summer as much as their students. Some people are natural-born teachers. Sometimes people become public school teachers because other income options are limited. Sometimes people switch careers. 

And sometimes, like in May of 2001, our country’s government comes up with an idea that sounds great in theory. But theory doesn’t always translate well into practice, even with compassionate intentions. Sometimes, good theories that become nationally mandated rules end up with complicated and terrifying results. 

- - -

Sometimes we forget that our country is made up of many states, cities and counties with different kinds of socioeconomic systems. Sometimes it’s just easier to apply the same rules to everyone everywhere, because it takes more time, thought, money and work to remember that some places have a lot of money, and many places have no money at all. 

Sometimes, we forget that art, music, history and language are vital and life-changing disciplines for many children and teenagers who need to become awesome grown-ups. We need them to do that, and they need us to help them do that.

- - -

Because I’m an artist, I have to believe that non-profits like Student U serve to remind us all that having the chance to learn many things, rather than fewer things, makes people smarter, more interesting, more successful, and awesome at whatever they do. 

If those aren’t enough reasons to just come and check out to this good cause, then a lot of really important things got left behind, stuck in May of 2001. 

For more information, please visit the event’s Facebook page. 

- - -

And for the people who just dig the weirdness of Durham, there will be good food, good beer, wine, live music, live painting, and a lot of really weird, awesome, inspiring art made by crazy people like me, because no one told us not to, because we’re impossible to control.