Building a Sense of Community The Florida Wax Journey Shelley Jean When the editors at Wax Fusion decided to feature a piece on the advantages of forming a local IEA chapter, Florida Wax was the first name that came up. The chapter was founded in 2017 and has been extremely successful. How did that first step happen? Was it inspired by a conference? A conversation with another encaustic artist? I appreciate IEA reaching out to me; I thoroughly enjoy sharing about this amazing group of artists. We were born out of necessity in a sense. I was teaching encaustic workshops at Maitland Art and History Museum, and I kept having the same artists taking the courses over and over. They were addicted as much as I was and wanted to keep growing in their knowledge of encaustic. I had the thought one day, “What if we had a group that we could do all these things with? We could exhibit, share ideas, and help educate the community because SO many people still do not know what encaustic is.” I reached out to Janet Hickok, who was the Chapter coordinator for IEA at the time, and she sent me the information on what was needed to start a chapter. We needed a Vice President, so I asked AnneMarie Bercik, and together we gured out our mission statement. The rest is history Daughter of the Sun Anne-Marie Bercik Encaustic photography 18 x 12 in
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