BeadwoRx

I started playing with beads at about the same time I worked with crayons. The common thread linking them is color and texture, and working with either medium still involves focus and design. 

Making beads has always been a hobby, a way to relax with something 3D: beads and thread that I could hold in my hands as opposed to skimming over the surface of a canvas with brushes and pencils, or hovering over illustration board with the airbrush, never touching the image in progress.

I had always made jewelry for my Mom, my sister, some friends, and myself. My mom in particular, preferred my jewelry to any gift I might give her, so I always made certain to make some for her birthday and Christmas. Sometimes those dates were the only reason I had to justify playing with beads during a long busy spell of illustration work.

The year she died left me with no one anticipating my efforts. At Christmas, I finally had the excuse of making my sister’s gift, and as I got out my beads I realized how much I missed it, and how much I missed her.

Someone once told me that beadwork is grief work: focus on one thought at a time, just as you place one bead at a time. The solitude and introspection is worthy of any meditation, with the comfort of following a reliable pattern. As the design is set, your hands can simply follow the process while your mind is free to follow wherever your thoughts might lead. 

That Christmas an avalanche of beadwork pored out of me. The work shifted and changed, it seemed to open up and become more of an avenue of expression. It was no longer tied to my mom; it was mine, her Christmas gift to me.

I now have an Etsy shop. http://www.etsy.com/shop/ZooLN


Thank you Mom.

Yippeeeeee!!!!!

What else can I say?

The Fire Mountain Gems and Beads contests are swamped with entries from all over the planet. I am pleased to have made the cut!!!!

My necklace design "Nice Catch" was selected as a Finalist in the 2011 Pearls Contest. I hope you like it, too!

"Nice Catch"

Out of the blue . . . and into the black.

Not long ago, a client asked me if I could create a necklace for her in Black and Silver. Hummm, I thought, why hadn’t I explored that combination before?

Interesting idea . . .

Jewelry requires, even demands, a limited palette: not just of color, but texture, form, size, and shape as well. Every creation is imbued with its own logic, a composition running like music through it’s patterning and colors.

I am a painter first, and accustomed to having the full range of color at my disposal. I tend to swing from complexity to simplicity and back again simply because I can. I hate being restricted, unlike my artist husband, who has constrained his palette to nearly an absence of color. (How does he stand it?)

I guess I’m still enough of an Illustrator (as opposed to Artist, with a capital “A”) that I don’t mind requests or suggestions. I can always say “no, thanks” or “no way” or “ick”, and I can even whip out my capital “A” artist license if needed. (It’s still recognized in some circles.)

But requests like these show me paths I might not have seen, let alone taken, yielding ideas I wouldn’t have come across otherwise.

Some artists react to suggestions as if they were confrontations. But I prefer to see them as challenges, opportunities to consider a different direction or calling for a new approach.

Collisions of thought, images, concepts, color, and design are the sweet spot of invention. The last thing I want is to be closed to a new idea, whether it emerges quietly from within or tackles me from the outside. (Like when a customer walks in and asks me if I could create a necklace for her in Black and Silver.)

So . . . in the final analysis, why not?

And, while I’m at it, why not do two designs--or three? (Like I said, I hate limits,) and choice is always the ultimate luxury. Who knows? Maybe she’ll buy more than one.

Fortunately, she didn’t; because by the end of the day, someone else did. Sometimes it pays (literally) to try new things. . .