Artist bends several pursuits into one original vision
Photo by Clay Nations Photography
Some people’s lives seem to unfold like a book, as can be said of Asheville educator, photographer, encaustic artist, and bookbinder extraordinaire Erin Keane.
“I was always interested in art,” she says, “and learned photography in high school, working with film speed and aperture and developing and printing in a darkroom. But I didn’t realize I could have a career as an artist. Growing up in the Cincinnati suburbs, I never knew a single artist.”
So Keane went to Miami University in Ohio and earned a Masters Degree in Art Education. Then she moved to Asheville in 1999 to accept a job at Brevard Middle School, where she taught for 12 years. She enjoyed her career as a public-school educator, and is still devoted to teaching. But she recalls, “I was so busy and was getting further away from my own art practice, and this area is a Mecca for art and craft classes — so in 2008, I started taking some.”
That’s how she met Annie Fain Liden-Barralon, a resident artist at John C. Campbell Folk School teaching bookbinding. “[Annie] has worked at John C. Campbell for many years and makes a living as a full-time artist in bookbinding and watercolor painting, as well as dancing and playing music in a band. I invited her to my school to talk to my students, and saw how she was piecing together her artist’s life while taking avenues into art instruction.
“For the first time, I realized maybe I could be a full-time artist. I work hard to make ends meet, have a teaching background and the artist side, and I have a good brain for business.”
The same year, Keane met mixed-media artist Ginger Huebner at a professional-development event hosted by Asheville Art Museum. “They had a class for art teachers, about doing encaustic art with soft pastel and collage. I had never even heard the word ‘encaustic’ and didn’t know beeswax could be used as an art material. But I was immediately drawn to its soft appearance and luminosity, and the fact that it could be used with a lot of mediums I was already familiar with, like photography and painting.” Keane started learning encaustic from Fleta Monaghan, the founding director of 310ART in the River Arts District (which reopened inside Re.Imagine Gallery and Studios in Fairview after being destroyed by the storm Helene).
“In the beginning, I was all over the place and very experimental, but then homed in on using photography with clear encaustic medium to develop my own style and direction.”
In her photography, Keane explores what she calls the elasticity of light, using a technique known as intentional camera movement. “I am physically moving the camera up and down and side to side to make the light and colors blur in different ways,” she explains. “It’s very experimental, and sometimes I’ll take 100 pictures without getting even one that captures my attention.”
But when one does, it becomes the basis of the photographic brushstrokes of her paintings. Keane’s signature methods are so attractive that Enkaustikos, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of pigment sticks, collaborated with her to brand a five-piece palette. The “Keane’s Greens Hot Sticks Set” was inspired by the colors in her “Forest Bathing” painting that visually captures the fluidity of walking through wooded trails.
In 2011, Keane took leave from her public-school job and embarked on a new career as a full-time artist. Soon she was exhibiting her encaustic artwork and teaching art classes and bookbinding workshops in the River Arts District. While experimenting with bookbinding and stitching she was also doing encaustics on small wooden panels in groupings that complemented one another. Suddenly it occurred to her, “Why not make books and journals and let these thin panels be the covers?”
Since then, Keane — a member of the prestigious Southern Highland Craft Guild since 2014 — has exhibited widely and taught encaustics and bookbinding regionally and nationally, including at Penland School of Craft, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, John C. Campbell Folk School, and at Lucy Clark Gallery and Studio in Brevard. She’s also accepted invitations to conduct workshops via Encausticas and R&F Handmade Paints, the other leading manufacturer of pigment sticks. Meanwhile, she offers private lessons in her own studio.
After her revelation — to turn her encaustic panels into book covers — Keane stitched her skills together into one format, inspiring the next chapter of her artistic life.
“I got goosebumps, and knew that was the direction I wanted to head.”
Erin Keane, Asheville, erinkeane.com, represented by Lucy Clark Gallery and Studio (51 West Main St., Brevard) and Penland Gallery of Contemporary Craft at Penland School of Craft (3135 Conley Ridge Road, Bakersville). Keane also has work at The Bascom Center for the Visual Arts in Highlands and at Allanstand Interiors Gallery in the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway. She’ll teach a class called “Coptic Bound Journals” at Lucy Clark Gallery in Brevard on Saturday, July 11 (see lucyclarkgallery.com) and “Visual Journal Voyage” at ArtPlay in Asheville Saturday, Sept. 12 and Sunday, Sept. 13 (see artplay-studio.com).