Ava Roth is a Toronto-based encaustic painter, embroiderer and mixed-media artist. She has been a maker her entire life, but has spent the past decade working almost exclusively with beeswax. She is fundamentally guided and inspired by organic and local materials, such as Canadian beeswax, foraged wood, birch bark, foliage and horsehair.

Currently, she is working on an inter-species collaboration with local honey bees. This work begins in her studio with the creation of encaustic collages which are suspended in embroidery hoops. The hoops are then fixed to custom-made Langstroth hive frames, and placed inside honeybee hives where thousands of bees embed the work in comb. This project, like all her work, explores the boundaries of where humans collide with the natural environment, and imagines a more beautiful outcome of our encounter.

Simultaneously, she has developed a collection of Encaustic Sewn Paintings, Encaustic Embroideries, and Encaustic Works on Paper — many of which are featured here at Warm Springs Gallery. Combining techniques from both fine art and crafts, these collections also use natural materials and processes to explore the intersection between human beings and the natural world.