Sunday, June 7, 2009

With time to spare - Glass Bead Innovations

A question has been echoing through my mind for the past few weeks. What makes people decide to create glass beads? Is it the money or the art? We all have a choice how we proceed through our life and into the future. If money is the reason you have chosen to follow this muse, then I really feel for you now, as the economy is making it difficult to pursue your chosen path. If, on the other hand, you make glass beads in order to express your artistic creativity, then the economy doesn't make much difference. In fact, I find that it takes the temptation away to simply work on beads I know will sell, and allows me the opportunity to explore the medium more fully than I have in years.


For the past couple of months, giving my imagination free rein, I have been moving on a different path than I have traveled for the past 20 years of glass beadmaking. I wanted to create something different, express myself in a different way. I was inspired by a book authored by Barbara Becker Simon on making PMC beads, looking at the different ways she created beads using that medium, I started forming ideas on how to make a different kind of bead in glass. My first adventure led to the first necklace pictured.







I then proceeded changing some of the components around and
ended up with this second pictured white necklace and
incorporated the first leaf-shaped beads and added another leaf shape.








From the white necklace, I took the one single-leaf component
and created a third necklace that was inspired by the immunity
necklace on Survivor - a statement piece if I ever saw one.








And finally, at this point anyway, I created a fourth necklace
using the simple leaf shape once again, but in a different way.
Although this necklace is not photgraphed very well, all the beads
are very metallic and the whole thing sparkles.
Each of these necklaces have used the one simple
shape, but in different ways.
So, I guess what I really wanted to point
out is that we have to take our opportunities
where we find them and use our creative
spirit to look beyond where we have been and
where we are now. We need to look more to the future. What we create now may start us on a more exciting pathway than we have been on before.
Pam

2 comments:

  1. Thank you, Pam. It can be so difficult to balance the need to create and the need to sell. Freeing the one from the other can produce some amazing results. I love your work and love seeing the progression of the pieces featured.

    A very thoughtful and thought-provoking read.

    ReplyDelete