“A SMALL PIECE OF GLASS”

BEAD:

“A small piece of glass, stone, or similar material that is threaded with others to make a necklace or rosary or sewn on to fabric”

What I love about the meaning of words is their complete impassioned approach to the subject.  This definition of the term, “bead” fails to mention the currency value that beads have held and still do in today’s age.  Also missing from this clinical but excellent definition is the emotional and obsessive factor that only the bead cognoscenti around the world know about.  I am a bead embroiderer in everyday life.  I sell my works on Etsy and in an art gallery here in Victoria.  My entire existence since 2013 has been centred on “a small piece of glass, stone, or similar material ……”  Seven days a week, at some stage of the day, I will be in my beading room, surrounded by those “small pieces of glass”, enjoying the design challenge putting said “small pieces of glass” into meaningful combinations that will excite my colour based conceptualisation of the universe.

 

When not actually making something, my time is spent in conversing with fellow beaders around the world.  Whilst we all wish for peace on earth, I reckon the international beading community has a lot of kudos and possibility in this regard.  The language might not be familiar but the pleasant obsession with “a small piece of glass” is.  That “small piece of glass” is the glue that binds fellow colour tragics around the world.  I have come to the conclusion that all the politicians in the world should take up beading as a way of connecting with people around the world in a much more meaningful manner than the present method of confrontational and depersonalised conferences.

I also think that all politicians should be made to visit art galleries and other such “colour focussed” places so they gradually become accustomed to what has really bound this world together for millenia – colour, form and texture.

Beaders of the world unite!