St. Lawrence County Arts Council

Taylor by Sue Thomas Free Motion Quilting

Cows! by Linda Nowak

Suzy McBroom and Hanna Stevens at the front Desk

Buddha Figures by Becky Harblin

Reconstructed Lamp Shade by Sue Thomas

I went this week to the St. Lawrence Arts Council to deliver new work for their shop. I had a wonderful time sharing enthusiasm and exchanging ideas with board member Sue Thomas, seeing new work by my former student, John Beamer (he certainly learns fast and well, of course) and viewing the new show in the gallery, called Fiber Arts Showcase. Most of the pictures here are from that show.

There is still time to shop at the St. Lawrence County Arts Council Gallery and Shop. They have some extended hours to accommodate shoppers who work and have been hampered by our wicked cold and snowy weather. They will be open every day now from Thursday, Dec. 17 through Thursday Dec. 24th. Late hours on Tuesday Dec. 22 ( 10-8PM). Other days open 10-6PM and Saturday and Sunday 10-4PM. They will be closing at 4PM on Christmas Eve. and back open again Dec. 26.

Hope you find your way over there so you can shop Handmade this season.

Indigo Found and Collaboration Complete

Once I found Indigo, as I said yesterday, I was good to go.

Here are the pictures of the beads that Cindy Gimbrone and I collaborated on for the ArtBeadScene December Challenge prize. Cindy has written a wonderful post about our inspiration for these beads. She calls it Untitled, Mary and Me .You can read it here.

And please enter the challenge so you can get a chance to win these beauties. Click this link and you will get all of the how to's.

Looking for Indigo Part 2

When Cindy Gimbrone and I began our collaboration on beads for part of the ArtBeadScene December Monthly challenge prize, we first picked the colors we would work with. She in glass and I in ceramics.

After picking a color palette, I made a number of samples with round beads to get the colors we were looking for. Cindy wrote about this part of the collaboration in one of her Studio Saturdays for ArtBeadScene. I had no problem with the bright lime green and the deep purple. When I made a sample bead using these colors and my conceptualized idea of how I would combine colors and the white/ivory linear feel of the painting, I was pretty disappointed in how it turned out. See pic above.

After a few days and considerable agonizing, I realized what was wrong, I needed a non glaze background color to work from. And that is when I began thinking about how to make Indigo. I hadn't been able to find a commercial glaze in indigo that was really indigo. So I tried mixing some stains together. I ended up using black and cobalt. First the black and then the cobalt added on top of it.

Once that happened I was on my way and the beads below are what resulted.

I have just listed some of these beads on my Etsy shop.

Looking for Indigo

Lee Krasner's painting Untitled and beads I made



When Cindy Gimbrone first asked me to collaborate on a set of beads for the December ArtBeadScene monthly challenge I was very excited to have the chance to work with the colors of Lee Krasner's painting and Cindy's great glass beads. During the process of making these beads, I found that I had to do a lot of looking and trying out to get close to what I was imagining would be a good match. What I like most about the painting, in addition to my personal connection to the the artist's environs, is the use of colors and white. I did not want to a literal graphic interpretation, so I chose to use a botanical theme and made beads imprinted on both sides with organic impressions. I thought at first that I could use the ivory/white in and on the impressions and then add color around them.





The beads below were my first try at turning my idea into beads. Nice colors but not exactly what I wanted.

I will continue on tomorrow about how I my beads developed.

Hardware Challenge

This is my entry into the Inspired by Hardware challenge currently on the wonderful blog of Erin Prais-Hintz. If you are interested in entering you have until Dec. 6 at Midnight. You could also check out her lovely necklace in the new BeadStar Magazine out on news stands Dec. 8. She has a great necklace in there.

My bracelet is a right angle weave bracelet with stainless steel hex nut dangles and focals. I had such fun making this. The hex nuts shine and glisten and make if feel kinda classy when I wear it.

Thank you For Your Vote

I am so happy to at last be able to thank all who voted for me in the BeadStar 2009 Contest. Yesterday the news release went out announcing the winners and now our promise of silence about all this can be broken and we can blog and brag away.

I won Honorable Mention in the Stones category. You can see all of the great winning entries in the Bead Star Magazine which goes on sale at news stands on Dec. 8.