"Ascend" Collage

Athena Petra Tasiopoulos is a mixed media encaustic and collage artist. Originally from Pennsylvania, she currently resides in central Vermont and is represented by Soapbox Arts gallery in Burlington, VT. Her work is collected internationally and has been featured in publications such as ELLE Magazine (USA and Japan), Frankie Magazine (Australia), Collage by Women: 50 Essential Contemporary Artists by Rebeka Elizegi (published by Promopress, Spain).

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ABOUT / Portraiture & Figurative Works:

Athena describes herself as a collector of second hand images – primarily ‘cabinet card’ portrait photography from the late 19th - early 20th C.

"My imagination is continuously lured by the mystery of found photographs – 'instant relatives' discarded and forgotten in antique stores. It is as if these souls exist in an interesting sort of limbo – simultaneously trapped yet saved within the photograph. I find myself feeling compassion for them. By re-inventing the portrait, I aim to disjoint my subjects from an antiquated identity, allowing them to transcend the constraints of time and place."

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ABOUT / Abstract Encaustic Collages:

"I’m interested in our mental and emotional blueprints. The push and pull of interconnectedness. The delicate nature of equilibrium.

I often work with recycled and found vintage papers encased beneath a layer of encaustic (beeswax). I gravitate toward soft, muted colors — warmed and stained by time. Repetitive patterns and primitive marks carved and scraped into the surface of the wax speak to the imperfections of the human hand and the vulnerability of materiality.

I see my practice as a meditation on transience, transformation, and the beauty of imperfection. An embrace of what is — as it is."