Zebras

I love the black and white of zebras and decided to see if I could do it. I studied pictures of Zebras only to find the black has shades of gray and the white, shades of gray and tan. Here's what I came up with. The piece is about 6 1/2" x 6 1/2". I had it professionally framed.

Masks

I have always been intrigued with masks. In this piece, I wanted to explore color a bit. I started this piece with an antique frame 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" and the beading itself is 4 1/2 x 7 3/4".

Wild Woman of the Woods

Finally got around to putting in some of my work and would love to have your comments.

The face-bead in this piece reminded me of the NW Coast Canadian First Nation tribes legend, “The Wild Woman of the Woods,” or Dzunuk’wa. According to the legend, she is a dark and hairy ogress with supernatural powers. Her almost blind eyes are large and sunken and she is usually portrayed making her wild call (“Uh, huu, uu, uu”) with her open mouth and thick red puckered lips.

Reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel, it is said that if children foolishly wander into the forest, the Wild Woman will capture them, take them to her remote house in the woods, and eat them. The Wild Woman has long, wild hair and wears a large basket on her back which contains the children that she caught. She is not considered very bright and usually the children are able to outsmart her in escaping.

The native masks that represent Wild Woman of the Woods are dark and ominous -- usually black with thick red lips and strings of black hair hanging down in her face. The face bead strongly resembles the traditional facial features of those masks. I wanted my Wild Woman to be less dark, so I concentrated on the wild hair and the leaves and the greens of the woods. I started with the antique frame and made the piece to fit it.

January Bead Journal

Here is January's piece for the Bead Journal Project. I finished it well within January, but just got the photograph back yesterday. I started the piece with a blue fabric that spoke to me of the January winter days. It was a stretch for me as I usually lean to earth colors for my art.

Southwestern rock art depicting the "ancients" or "ghosts" was my inspiration for the beaded figure. I made several stamps of figures and mixed a metallic silver blue paint to stamp them on the fabric to enhance the ghost feeling. The piece is quilted, and mounted on an 8" x 8" x 1.5" stretched canvas I painted to compliment the piece.

I have been working on pieces for juried show applications. All the shows I want to do are in the late summer and fall; the juries for those shows are all within the next few weeks. I've had individual pieces for the juries professionally photographed, but one of the shows also requires a photograph of the artist's "body of work." I have been struggling to get enough pieces for that photo while still working my "pesky day job," but only three more days of work, and I am officially retired!