Elise Freda, who I've mentioned in a previous interview with Moses Hoskins presents two decidedly vertical mixed media works that extol certain aspects of eastern sensibility and sensitivity toward nature and chance while at the same time commanding a great level of balance. 

"The Grid" includes an impressive diversity of creative responses to this theme, ranging from accomplished abstractions by Elise Freda...

"Nature, Language, Symbol: the Poetics of Drawing," is a meditation on line being put through its paces. Elise Freda's geometric paintings feature bright red encaustic..."

"Among noteworthy examples is Elise Freda's 'X & M,' a collage of word and letter fragments trapped in translucent wax. Like the enigmatic text that results from peeling layers of old posters, the pieces combine to make a new and intriguing meaning."

Elise Freda, who worked with oil paint for years, turned to encaustics when she learned she had more freedom to create. "In the process of my oil painting, I would layer and layer and scrape and scrape," said Freda, who has found the process an ideal collage medium. "Once I discovered hot wax, it was like opening a huge door. It made it faster and more pleasurable and actually heightened the things I was trying to do with oil."

There have been several good shows recently in the small college town of Saratoga Springs, and this two-person affair persuaded with its emotional clarity and visual coherence. Freda's rectilinear encaustic paintings and LaVerdiere's archetypal sculptural geometries deal with surfaces that imply space as much as they create it. There is a literal illusionism in the encaustics made of layered, messy, translucent squares

that align and overlap with the squishy, faux depths unique to the medium.

Randall Hoel, Director of Exhibitions at the Sharon Arts Center, has chosen five artists from around the country to represent the encaustic medium in an exhibit entitled "Pigment and Wax: The Art of Encaustic Painting." .....The exhibit combines paintings by newer artists, whose careers are just starting to take off, with the work of artists like Freda, who have been featured in several solo and group shows over many years. "The reasons I am passionate about encaustic," Freda said, "are because wax hardens in a matter of minutes. Once it has cooled, I can put down another layer of wax, then another. It's a very fast medium. I have to work very fast. I like not knowing exactly what's going to happen. I thrive on that, but it could be a drawback to someone who relishes control." Freda said, "Encaustic is tremendously versatile. It can be dense and opaque, or it can be sheer and transparent. The color can be intense or delicate, and everything in between. Encaustic is sensuous, beautiful, and durable."

All the picking and choosing among the exhibit's 52 works that were taken from 272 entries this time was done by Susan Rosenberg, the Philadelphia Museum of Art's assistant curator of modern and contemporary art, which also might seem to give the show a special cachet.....Reflecting that diversity are the artists she has singled out for awards, Elise Freda among them. The artists here do quite often possess expressive freedom. This is why Rosenberg chose them, and why this is an art show you must see and savor.

"In these pieces, a dialogue between each layer, each shape used is formed where you can really see the layers and you can still see the progression of the thought process by the artists," said Donise English, director of Steel Plant Studios Art Gallery at Marist College. Freda's abstract, angular and structural pieces reveal the encaustic technique of fusing beeswax, both plain and with pigment, on wood. Because beeswax leaves a translucent film, each layer is visible. "I like to put a lot down to cover images up and then scrape parts away," said Freda. "What you can see and can't see adds a little mystery."

Elise Freda's nine encaustic with collage pieces take a somewhat different tack. Beginning with images that are quite direct, Freda layers on the perspective with pigmented wax fused to the surface of the painting. The feeling of the pieces like that of memory, is one that is distorted, highlighted and refracted. The original image becomes as many things as the viewer can find in it. "There's a certain mystery in being able to see down into the depths." she says. "Mine are images that reveal and conceal themselves at the same time." The original primal images of Freda's works, somewhat spare, speak to a place of gut response, rather than intellectual scrutiny.