Thank you for reading ~
I have been a collector all of my life. And playing with seed beads and found objects has given me great pleasure. My connection to the world around me.
I now live in the Washington Peninsula. I lived in Santa Fe for over 26 years. Being one of the lead designers at Peyote Bird Designs for 10 years (our jewelry made famous in Sundance Catalog) that was my dream job, and gave me access to unlimited materials along with experience in the wholesale jewelry business, before starting to sell my own jewelry & vintage items online in 2004.
I found beads in 1968, as a teen.
As the originator of the Indespiral design, and other peyote tubular and flat
weaves involving increasing and decreasing, my innovations with flat circular & tubular 'peyote' stitch started in the late 1980's & early 1990's, as I was sculpting & creating trees & 3-D shapes made of beads & found objects. I was inspired by Joyce J. Scott in the 1990's, to push the envelope, and have been creating sculptural, organic & tubular shapes since then. I don't think of bead stitching as math or geometry (although obviously, beads can represent math & math can be represented with beads, as many others have proven), as I think this puts a limit on my imagination.
Inspiration comes from many artists:
Georgia O'Keeffe - determination & color
Henry Moore - strength & shapes
Gaudi - intuitive thinking & interpreting natural forms
Ernst Haeckel - symmetry & asymmetry in nature
Hans Hofmann - push & pull - expressive color relationships
Alice Neel - expressive freedom
Wayne Thiebaud - color & repetition
Edvard Munch & Van Gogh - color & emotion
Joyce J. Scott - expressive freedom to push the envelope
Mary Finley Fry Thomas, my grandmother - 20th C woman artist/painter and I am very much influenced by her
In my process to create forms that I see in my mind's eye, I use threads & beads to push & pull, shape & color, balance & contrast, fill & realize space, much like the movement of the wind & water. It is intuitive, circular, directional, repetitive, sometimes slow & natural, becoming my medium of meditation & focus.
Awards, Exhibitions and Publication:
2008-09 - Beadwork VI - "The Beaded Book" sponsored by Beadwork Magazine - touring finalist with "Visions of Gandalf the Grey" for sale in my shop here.
Oct. 2005 - "INNOVATIVE SPIRAL" - page 106 - Bead & Button
AND
"GREAT SHAPES" (circular flat peyote) - page 62 - Bead & Button
1996-97 - The Beaded Object - at the Southern Highland Craft Guild, Asheville, NC
"Noble Thoughts, Mighty Beads", "Still Sea Conspires", "Crucifix"
1996 - Ubiquitous Bead II - Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA
"Untitled" lidded cylinder
1995 - Contemporary Beads & Beadwork, Innovative Directions - Loveland Gallery, Loveland, CO - "Power Of Myth", "Noble Thoughts, Mighty Beads"
1990 - Self-Published book on Flat, Circular Peyote stitch
"Universal Bead Weaving" - 1st booklet written on flat, circular peyote stitch, with patterns and diagrams, uniquely described and written as in knitting formats, no longer available.
1979 - Gemological Institute of America (GIA), Second Place Award, International Schuetz Design Contest
1977 - Hilleson's Award for Arts & Crafts, California Lutheran University