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January 2004 Post--
''The 'Wax Room' is now dismantled, and heading down to Wolverhampton City Art Gallery in a 17 ton truck on Wednesday 28th. Jan 2004After 4 days of intensive labour, 3 of us, with much help from Caroline Smallwood and the staff at the Gallery, managed to re-erect the 'Room'.Since then the 'Wax Room' has met with wide-spread approval from the staff, public and critics alike.
Report from The Birmingham Post' Monday 10th. Feb. 2004''
However Terry Grimley wrote......''it is well worth a visit just to see its star exhibit, The Wax Room by another artist from Scotland, Ken Parsons. This is indeed a room, lined on its walls and ceiling with translucent decorated panels made of a synthesis of wax and resin. Illuminated from the outside, these stained-glass-like panels are sumptuously and unashamedly beautiful, their decoration of riotous, stylised vegetation calling to mind the circa-1900 work of Klimt and Tiffany.....................If I were an architect, I would be thinking hard about how Parsons' stunning work could be incorporated into a permanent environment''
A moment of reflection for Katie Walton in the Wax Room by Ken Parsons, part of the Forest exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery
''Show which separates the wood from the trees''
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The 'Wax Room'
This is a contained area measuring 4 metres by 8 metres by 3 metres high. All surfaces are faced with wax and resin laminate panels with lighting from behind. This is the background for three separate 20 minute shows in sound and vision, which had their first showing at the Edinburgh Fringe, at the Wax Room venue 72, Middle Meadow Walk, Meadows, Edinburgh. 4th Auigust-31st August 2002.
Construction of the 'Room' started in January 2002 and only finished on the morning of 4th August 2002 after a team of 6 of us had worked a solid 24 hour shift through the night. The generator then packed up and on our first day we had to turn away 60 people! After that the only way was up.
Below are the reactions from visitors and media to the 'Wax Room'.........
The framework for the panels is well over a 1000ft of 69x19mm timber. Onto this are attached 125 fluorescent tubes and par38 floods requiring almost 7kw of power.
Volcanoes and Lava - Sea Wall
The entire artwork took well over 3000 man hours to create. It involved the laying down of 106 sq metres of wax only 3mm thick, composed of millions of individual fragments of dipped, poured and cut wax. A panel of sky measuring only a quarter of a sq. metre is made up of over 8500 individual wax pieces.
4 star review from 3-weeks online
The exhibition at Wolverhampton Art Gallery is entitled 'Forest'. The 'Wax Room' featuring the Carboniferous Forest wall is the middle room of three. 'Forest' will be showing from the 7th. February to 17th April 2004
The whole show has received funding from the Arts Council England which will enable it to tour in 2005 - see top of page
For this tour we have almost completed work on a 15ft. diameter geodesic Dome which will reprise the Carboniferous Forest theme.
The 'Snow Wall' as featured in 'ArtRevue' magazine 2003
Over a 100 lighting switches and dim
operations are required for a 25 minute show such as 'Back to the Garden'. we originally had a team of six of us working in shifts to manually operate the lighting. We have been able to computerise this whole operation now using dmx sound linking to light software operating 12 dimmer and 8 switching channels.
