Remains
encaustic on panel, 18 x 18 x 2.25 in
$3600
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“I've known for a while that I chose encaustic as a painting medium because it had similar properties to clay. The pigment and beeswax mixture is applied while molten hot and sealed by heat, it can be scraped and carved, there's something primal about it. I want my work to look like it was made by itself, like there was no human ego behind it, with all of its self-doubts and outside influences. It helps me channel my inner Neanderthal, to get into the mind frame of what art could have looked like before art history, the art market, institutions, and critical theory. What would a completely unselfconscious, yet intentionally-made object look like? It’s a conundrum that I’ll never conquer.” - Lynn Basa
Basa started working with clay when she was 12 and continued through to an undergraduate degree in fine art with a concentration in ceramics. She gradually moved on to other materials but when Basa saw the sand hoodoos she knew instantly that it was time to get back into the mud.
Lynn Basa was born in Pittsburgh and raised in Bloomington, Indiana before moving to Seattle to attend grad school. She relocated to Chicago in 2002 for its cultural vitality, opportunities, and community. In 2014 she started Corner, a storefront project space, and in 2017 founded a nonprofit organization called the Milwaukee Avenue Alliance. Her work is included in numerous public, private, and museum collections such as the Museum of Arts and Design (New York), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence), Spencer Museum (Lawrence, Kansas), Tacoma Art Museum, and others. She was included in the seminal exhibit Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical organized by the American Craft Museum before traveling to the Louvre and major museums in Helsinki, Frankfurt, Warsaw, Lausanne, Moscow, Ankara, Prague, Ghent, Goteborg, Berlin, and Barcelona. Her work was also part of the Smithsonian Institute’s landmark Threadworks exhibit, which traveled throughout eastern Africa.
