Family Weekend Workshops: Encaustic Expressions

Create a painting inspired by Broad collection artist Jasper Johns! Johns often used encaustic painting, which involves colored wax, to take popular symbols, like the American flag, and reimagine them, shifting what those symbols mean. Make your own encaustic painting by using decorating wax, wax sticks, and recycled magazines to shape a work on canvas. Experiment with mixing colors, making shapes, and layering your wax to create different effects on your artwork. 

Get inspiration from pre-printed images of popular symbols to give them new meaning. Think about what gives signs and shapes their meaning, and the emotions they evoke. Create new meaning to images by adding color, movement, and depth! And don’t forget to visit Jasper Johns’s paintings, located on the third floor of the museum. 

Born in Georgia and based in Connecticut, Jasper Johns changed New York painting. He had a big effect on contemporary art, making images into objects to have us think about what these images represent. His famous target and flags works live as something between a symbol and a thing in the world, and he often repeats and collects motifs, ready to use them at any time in different ways. 

Family Weekend Workshops take place outdoors on the East West Bank Plaza at The Broad and offer free activities and workshops to engage with the art on view in the museum. Workshops give families the opportunity to make their own artworks to take home, inspired by the Broad collection. Family Weekend Workshops are free with advance ticket reservations. Walk-ups without reserved tickets may be accommodated, pending capacity. 

This iteration of The Broad’s Family Weekend Workshops is presented as part of Grand Avenue Arts: All Access. See the full schedule of activities and destinations to explore on Grand Avenue on Saturday at grandavearts.org.

Image and artwork credit: Jasper Johns, Flag, 1967, encaustic and collage on canvas (three panels) and Untitled, 1975, oil and encaustic on canvas (four panels), © 2021 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY. Family photo by Salvador Ceja Garcia.