Story and photos by Irene Sperber

Cold Wax workshop instructor Audrey Phillips

Our state is so diverse that parts can be recognizable only as a very distant relative. However, art does flourish where Art Basel fears to tread.

I took out a small loan (only marginally kidding) to pay for gas to drive to a Cold Wax * workshop in New Smyrna Beach, just south of Daytona. I knew my instructor, Audrey Phillips, was an accomplished artist living in Central Florida but knew nothing of the art community in the area.

On the northern tip of New Smyrna Beach, I was surprised to uncover the Atlantic Center for the Arts with an impressive array of master artists in residence, some of the world’s most distinguished artists in composing, visual, literary and performing arts. In the late 1970s, painter, sculptor and environmentalist Doris Leeper galvanized friends, community and the Rockefeller Foundation to open the ACA, providing a place for artists to live and work in a tranquil environment during three-week residencies with master artists.

Examples of students cold wax work

The Cold Wax workshop I attended was held at a different and more localized venue: The Artists Workshop in old downtown on Canal Street, New Smyrna Beach’s main drag. The 50 year-old nonprofit organization is staffed and operated by volunteers dedicated to the art of community and personal growth. Being thrown into this group mélange was a lovely experience of exuberance and camaraderie. I found the environmental slowdown conducive to new thoughts and ideas, and it was a hoot to visit the odd old spiritual area of Cassadaga 40 minutes due west.

Smyrna Dunes Park

Exploration of Old Florida can be a mind-altering experience to those of us who were raised in a more northern clime. Beautiful and secluded Smyrna Dunes Park at the northern end of New Smyrna Beach is a completely different animal than South Beach. Florida has always been a hide-away for the creative soul: Rauschenberg worked quietly in Captiva, and Nam Jun Paik was in South Beach long before it was hip and groovy. Allow yourself to take a mind-soothing sojourn without expensive and involved planning by searching out your near distant surroundings.

Canal Street in New Smyrna Beach

*Cold Wax Medium is made with beeswax, resin, and mineral spirits mixed with oil pigment for painting. Photo transfers and anything imaginable can be imbedded in the layers of pigmented (or not) wax for a beautiful multi-layered finish. A more unstable and toxic cousin, Encaustic, a hot wax, is used by Jasper Johns in many of his Gray paintings, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as his Flag series.