The Delaware Division of the Arts’ Mezzanine Gallery presents 2023 Established Fellow Ron Meick’s exhibition, “Encaustic Constructions,” on view between November 3-24, 2023. Guests are invited to attend a Meet-the-Artist Reception on Friday, November 3 from 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Meick’s latest series of artworks, abstract wooden sculptures called “constructions,” are painted with encaustic (wax) pigments. The work is informed by both Russian constructivist art of the 1920s and the natural world. “I was a beekeeper for over ten years, which is how I got interested in encaustic sculpture/painting,” finding that the accumulation of wax provided him with “an enticing material.”
Meick creates wooden constructions that range in size from miniscule (8 inches) to monumental, some as tall as 6 feet. After they’re built, he paints them with a veneer of hot encaustic paint composed of beeswax, damar resin and infused with pigments. This wax application softens the hard-edge structures and presents color references to connection points, elements in the composition, ending points, weighting of mass, balance, and reflection of color. The counterpoint of color and space increase the layers of meaning and emotional content.
His recent work is strongly guided by contemporary current events or relevant political issues. The war in Ukraine, a country “being dismantled by destruction,” is the visual basis for this latest sculptural series. Meick finds his biggest challenge to be “making objects that are relevant in concept, visual, and emotional terms.” As well, he finds challenges in “the physical effort of making objects.”
Originally born in Sidney, Nebraska, Ron Meick received his BFA in sculpture from Rhode Island School of Design. Ron Meick is currently an artist with the Washington Printmakers Gallery, Washington, DC, and in October 2023 he had a solo show featuring large scale prints. He has also shown his work throughout the U.S. and is in many private collections along with The Library of Congress. He currently resides and works in Arden, Delaware.
The Mezzanine Gallery, open weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., is located on the second floor of the Carvel State Office Building, 820 N. French Street, Wilmington.