The Alice C. Sabatini Art Gallery takes you on a sensuous journey in its next exhibit, Waxing Poetic, by Topeka Artist Philip Hershberger.

Visitors to the exhibit, which opens July 3 and goes through August 14, will see 18 wax encaustic paintings depicting an abstract reality of a space or an object over time.

"In my paintings, there is some history. They were not conceived and done in a direct sequence, but rather done and revised often over a period of months and sometimes years," Hershberger said.

Seeing is only part of the experience, however. Visitors can also smell the beeswax fragrance in his paintings.

"This is an opportunity to see a real master doing this fairly rare technique," Gallery Director Sherry Best said. "It's a difficult medium. He heats the wax, mixes it with pigment and brushes it on wood panels, creating a depth of layers and color that is unique to this medium."

Art fans can meet Hershberger and experience his art at our First Friday Reception starting at 5:30pm Fri., July 3. Hershberger will give a gallery talk and take questions from participants at 7pm, Wed., July 8. There he hopes for a lot of interaction.

"I want to know how people respond to the paintings. I learn something about what I'm doing by listening to what other people tell me," Hershberger said. "I'm not under the illusion that I know more about it than they do, even if I'm the painter."

The nationally known artist paints scenes featuring plain, everyday objects and observations, but the impact his technique has is anything but plain.

"Even though they have this rich color and surface, you have to spend a little time with each of the paintings," Best said. "I want people to come in, view the exhibit and feel like they've been meditating for a half an hour."

Hershberger is a native of Hesston, Kan., but has lived and worked in Topeka since 1980. His honors include the Kansas Governor's Arts Award, 1999 and Kansas Artist Fellowship, 1998; and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Exhibition, N.Y., 1996, and its Purchase Award, 1987. His work has been shown in Atlanta, New York City, Boston, Memphis, Tenn., Goshen, Ind., the Greater Kansas City Area and Topeka, among other locations.

Photo of Philip Hersberger by Dave Mathias-Photo 1