Hi again, busy bees!

I am here again to report back to you some helpful tips I picked up at the Third Annual Encaustic Painting Conference this June. Our first post was on keeping work archival by only introducing color-fast materials in the work. In this post, I will be sharing some information we received on safely packing and shipping encaustic works.

The first full day of the conference opened with a panel on conservation, Conservators in Conversation. The panel featured Pamela Hatchfield, Mimi Leveque, Kate Smith, and Carolyn Tomkiewicz. After an enlightening talk on the preserving of ancient wax works, they opened the floor for Q&A, which focused primarily on how to conserve our own work, particularly when shipping. We were told that if at all possible, nothing should ever touch the surface of any painting. This can be difficult for your every day artist (especially when shipping on a budget), so here I present some of the practical packing tips that came out of this conversation:

• Do not pack paintings with glassine; it turns to sandpaper with humidity, which is obviously bad for wax surfaces!
• Cardboard (acid-free), polyethylene, and polypropylene are safe packing materials.
• Corrugated plastic sheets (coroplast, for example) is also a good packaging material.
• Create a slip layer between your work and the packing materials using plastic shopping bags. When the pieces shift, the two layers of plastic bag move against each other instead of your piece against say, cardboard.

For more information on conservation, check out the American Institute for Conversation of Historic and Artist Works.

What packing and shipping tricks have you found work for you?