Monday, November 19, 2007

October Completed


Well I did something different this month. It is as sparse as last months is full. I did it in the course of a night. We had gone over to a friends new house to help them move some stuff around and hang pictures. Well as it doesn't take four to do that, I sat back and offered input while beading my leaf. I really did not intend to just outline the leaf, but as I sat there looking at the beautiful material and the pretty metallic beads I had, I just started. I finished the outline then added the veins and stopped there for the night. I fully intended to do more the next day, but when I looked at it the next night, I couldn't make myself attach another bead. It just spoke to me with its simplicity, its simple beauty and I decided to honor that. My life feels so cluttered with my job and everything else I do, I really love the simple nature of the single falling leaf. Autumn has always been one of my favorite seasons and the colors in October are so inspiring, it now just seems so fitting. Life is change, death and rebirth, again and again. Fall never feels sad to me, rather it feels like a clearing of space for something new to come, just around the corner.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

September Completed


I finished September up finally last night. I found myself struggling to get this one completed. I had set the goal for myself of trying different colors and stitches and I found it slow going at times. Plus I started the piece with the multi-colored melted glass piece in the middle. That was created by taking a pile of glass seed beads and simply slumping them in the kiln. We were not sure what they would do, but my boyfriend was playing and when it came out, I really liked it. So I decided to use it as a focal piece for this page.

It was a little extra challenging as I usually have a plan in mind when I start and I had none, so I just followed Robin's advice and put on bead down after another. I reached a point about midway through when I had the lower left done and the bead blob in the middle and it was such a contract between the chaos of the melted beads and the nice lines of the bottom left corner that it started me thinking about making order out of chaos. Of course then it lead to me thinking about my life and job and that is pretty much what I do, I attempt to find some order in the chaos that surrounds me and make som sense of it. At work, I work with soils and the earth and I am always tring to take a natural, organic site and make it work for a building or structure....imposing a form of order on the ever changing ground.

So with those thoughts, I started working a structure around the center piece....no real thought in mind, just wanting some nice curved shapes. Just after I was at this point, I joined some fellow beaders for a bead night, hanging out together working on our own projects, enjoying the company and companionship. Well I was working on this piece and a friend of mine, and fellow BJP member, looked at my piece and said what an interesting heart in the middle of the piece. Now up to that time, I had not even decided what was up or down yet, and rotating it around, the heart jumped out at me. I just had to laugh a little at this time, cause as I have previously said, hearts are not my favorite shape, yet here was another, and this one coming from my subconscious. Well I looked at it and just loved it. Amazing how this project has opened my heart in so many ways and to have a heart be the center figure in a piece about order and chaos....the bridge between them I would say, just made me feel so good.

It took me a couple weeks to finish it from that point, but I finally did it last night. I am so very pleased with this piece and I just sat there grinning. I am now really looking forward to starting the next month tonite :)

Trilly