Wax found that her increased technical confidence expanded the scale and complexity of her imagery. Influenced in part by the work of
Philip Pearlstein, she produced more refined and intricate treatments of light and shadow, more sophisticated explorations of the ways that light and shadow create the illusions of volume and depth, and more complex layering of pictorial elements. In the years that followed, she received over thirty-five prizes in national and international exhibitions. In 1994 she received the Louise Nevelson Award for Excellence in Printmaking from the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. That allowed Wax to work with pastels and oil paints for the first time, which in turn affected her engravings even as she determined to work in several mediums. Impatient with the time-consuming requirements of mezzotint's grounding process, Wax developed ways to prepare mezzotint grounds more efficiently and in 1996 designed a system for attaching adjustable weights to the rocker, the mezzotint engraver's most important tool. This invention, the first improvement to rocker design in over three hundred years, is now manufactured by the toolmakers Edward C. Lyons. Wax curated exhibitions at Heuser Art Center Gallery, Bradley University, in 1994 with John Heintsman and the
New Orleans Museum of Art in 1996 with Earl Retif. At the
Rhode Island School of Design, Wax taught several semesters of Intaglio for Printmaking Majors, and a class in Direct, Non-Toxic Intaglio Printmaking. She has also taught intaglio and woodcut courses for several years at the
State University of New York at New Paltz and, in winter 2002 term, a course on Print Connoisseurship in
New York University's School of Continuing Education. In 2002, Wax moved to
Peekskill, New York, to take advantage of the city's downtown revitalization program that gave artists the chance to purchase live/work spaces, known as "The Art Lofts," with minimal down payments. An Artist's Fellowship Grant in 2003 from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Concordia Career Advancement Award the following year enabled Wax to acquire and refurbish a secondhand etching press that was large enough and powerful enough to accommodate her bigger plates. This equipment allowed Wax to free herself of dependence on contract printers and to create large-scale color mezzotint engravings using multiple plates and incorporating a host of related techniques such as
stipple,
drypoint, and
burin engraving. In 2006, the
Herakleidon Art Museum in
Athens, Greece, presented a solo show of her work. Titled "Shadowplay," it included every edition Wax had published, including her early lithographs along with many state proofs, color separation proofs, plates, preparatory sketches, and related drawings and pastels. The
Herakleidon also published
Carol Wax, Catalogue Raisonné/Prints, 1975–2005 in 2006 to document her first thirty years as a printmaker. One reviewer noted that "The reader will readily be captivated by Wax's onomatomania and obsession with man-powered mechanical objects that click, clatter or ring like her signature typewriters and sewing machines." The Herakleidon mounted another exhibition of her work, "Dance of Shadows," in 2011. Since January 2007, Wax has taught printmaking as an adjunct professor at New Jersey's
Montclair State University. She also presents mezzotint workshops and lectures on her own work and on the history of mezzotint at arts organizations, universities, and museums. She has held visiting artist positions on numerous occasions and has presented dozens of mezzotint demonstrations and workshops, as well as slide lectures at universities, colleges, arts organizations, and museums throughout the United States. In 2009, she received an Individual Support Grant from the
Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation. In 2011, she served as Head Juror for awarding prizes at the First International Mezzotint Festival,
Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts,
Yekaterinburg, Russia. Wax's prints are held by many museum collections, including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
National Museum of American Art, the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, the
Brooklyn Museum, and the
Boston and
New York Public Libraries. She has described her work: My images of commonplace objects reflect my personal experience of the ordinary as extraordinary. Most people rarely think about the "stuff" in our lives but, to me, even the most ordinary items seem magical. I often depict old instruments, mechanical devices, and fabric because their repetitive patterns create rhythms of light, shadow, and forms that can be manipulated to convey my phantasmagorical perceptions. The ability to achieve dramatic lighting effects through the mezzotint engraving process makes it the ideal medium for rendering my imagery. Although my style may be categorized as representational in the
nature morte tradition, to me, still-life does not mean dead weight. By portraying my subjects transcending their status as lifeless objects I strive to depict the anima in the inanimate. == Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University ==