Whole Lot of Beading Going on

If you're in the neighborhood, drop by the Northwest Bead Society's annual Bead Bazaar at the Lynnwood Convention Center running today and tomorrow.  For the price of a $5 ticket for the weekend, you have access to a whole room full of the best sorts of vendors and enough free demonstrations to fill anyone's brain capacity. 

Here's the list of formal demonstrations (pulled from their website & links added):

Dragon Egg by Dana Cassara

10:30-11:15 Riveting Madness - Dana Cassara
Flush, ball and the one hit wonder. Riveting is fun, easy and a great way to incorporate hand-made elements into your bead work. Dana Cassara, owner of Danaca Design Studio, will show you three simple ways to rivet sheet metal and will suggest a variety of options for incorporating found objects into rivet projects. Pretty much, if you can put a hole in it you can rivet it!

11:30-12:15 Whirling Dervishes - Transforming flat peyote stitch - Teresa Sullivan
Transform flat peyote stitch into curved, lush dangles that evoke Egyptian papyrus fronds, martini glasses, and even fireworks!  Kits for lush lariats with beautiful dangly beads are available.

12:30-1:15 Wire Cloth and JewelryMaking, a Fiber Artist's Perspective - Marilyn Moore
Marilyn has a fiber art background and uses her textile techniques to produce interesting and unusual jewelry. See some of the tricks that she has come up with to make some truly unique items.

1:30-2:15 Understanding Lampwork Beads - Kendra Bruno 
International Society of Glass Beadmakers Executive Director & Fire and Rain Member
Small enough to hold in the palm of your hand, beads have been a form of adornment for 40,000 years. For close to 4,000 of those years, they have been made in glass! From conception to craftsmanship, this ancient art form is mesmerizing, but how do you know what to look for when purchasing these small wonders? Understand the creative process and gain the insight needed to shop with confidence in distinguishing artist-made glass beads from others.

Random Right Angle Weave

2:30-3:15 Random Right Angle Weave - KarenWilliams (yours truly)
Random right angle weave creates an open lacework or netting with the organic feel of the natural world rather than man-made symmetry or precision. No two pieces are ever the same, nor are they supposed to be.

I've put together a little postcard instruction sheet on random right angle weave - I've included the front image here.  (Now if I could only get my printer to work correctly!)

Time of My Life pendant by Melissa Cable

3:30-4:15 Faux Bone - Melissa Cable
Learn to work with this exciting, man-made product that simulates the look and feel of ivory. Melissa Cable is the author of "Spotlight on Wire" and teaches at shop and shows nationally. You can also find her locally at Fusion Beads.

Sunday, October 9th

11:30-12:15 Bead Embroidery - Carol Perrenoud, Beadcats
Bead Embroidery seems quite easy and straight forward, but there are lots of tips and tricks that will make it more enjoyable. Carol
will show stitches and discuss beadwork on wearables and and non-wearables.

12:30-1:15 Making needle felt beads and wearable art - Cynthia Toops
Making needle felt beads and wearable art. - Needle felting is an immediate, simple way to transform plain wool roving into any form you can imagine. Cynthia has been making felt jewelry for more than 7 years and is a featured artist in Lark Books new publication 500 Felt Objects."

1:30-2:15 Poor Mans Rolling Mill - Melissa Cable
Learn the basics of working with this innovative material that is as flexible as wire, as functional as metal and has the ability to showcase color like beads. A book signing will follow demo and copies will be available for purchase.

2:30-3:15 Not Round Beads - Lynne Hull
Lynn Hull an accomplished metalsmith, and the metalsmithing and jewelry instructor at North Seattle Community Collage, will demonstrate how to make beads using the hydraulic press.


And if that's not enough, the Seedbeaders will be hosting informal demos and tips & techniques throughout the weekend.

But I won't be there tomorrow, because I'll be teaching my Freeform Peyote Ruffles at Fusion Beads. Not the best planning on my part - but it definitely insures my weekend will be bead-filled!

Coral Dancer, freeform peyote ruffles

Backdoor to Jewelry

Wire Twined Baskets by Marilyn Moore

 Thursday night I attended the NW Bead Society's general meeting for the first time, excited to hear
 Marilyn Moore speak.  I've admired her work in galleries for some time.

Based upon the size of their Seedbeaders group, I expected the general meeting to be positively huge.  In fact, it was smaller than the Sunday meetings.  Still a good crowd, I'd say forty-ish people in attendance, but I'd put the Seedbeaders at half that again.

Met several new people - thank you to those who took time to speak to the newbie in the crowd.  You know who you were.

And then it was time for Marilyn's presentation.   A wonderful overview of her artistic career, spanning several decades, her slideshow was filled with lively stories and humor.  The title for this post is from her introduction.  As Marilyn put it, she "came to jewelry through the backdoor of basketry".

I always find it interesting to learn other artists' stories, so I'll share some of hers here:

Although her very first basket was twinned from natural materials she quote "discovered she didn't like being wet".   That said, she turned her attention to pine needle baskets, (while the pine needles are usually worked with damp, they're small enough you stay quite dry) and worked in that media for over ten years.  During that time, Marilyn experimented with shapes; creating some lovely, organic forms as well as more traditional 'baskets'.

Somewhere along the way, she discovered Teneriffe embroidery, which heavily influenced the decoration of her pine needle baskets and her early jewelry.  Its influence can still be seen in some of her work today.

As her stitching covered more and more of her forms, coming to completely obscure the pine needle cores, she moved from pine needles to coiled baskets using polished hemp as the core.  And she began experimenting with the color grading that is one of the outstanding signatures of her current work. 

When her daughter graduated from high school, both of them decided to enroll in college.  This made me smile, as my Mom and I did something similar.  (My mom majored in art history while I majored in Russian because I thought it more 'practical' than majoring in art, but that's a story for another day).

Not quite sure when she began working with the wire wrapped baskets that I equate with her work. I'm pretty sure I saw her work in a basketry show at the Fountainhead Gallery not long after we moved to Seattle, back around 2001-2002.

Besides her slide presentation, Marilyn brought a wonderful trunk show for us to admire.  Her current work reminds me of firebirds, oilslicks and living gems waiting in secret caverns.  Their saturated jewel tones radiate heat and vibrancy, even on the cooler side of the color spectrum.  While I admire her larger, sculptural works (definitely check out her gallery), I am particularly drawn to her miniature baskets, sized perfectly to fit in the palm of your hand.  The photo at the start of this post is one I took of a collection of these and doesn't do their colors justice.

To see more of Marilyn's work and a picture of the artist herself, check out her page on the NW Basketweavers site.

Guess I didn't talk much about her jewelry.  Oh well.  I love her baskets!