PRIMAVERA

Another punishing session in my beading room.  Twelve days of very isolating long hours after a lot of design work preparations.  A new spring portfolio of insectivorous brooches are the culmination of great effort.

 

Design work is never easy, despite the end results looking effortless.  Artists around the world will understand what goes into creating a work is never evident when the finished piece is completed.

We visited an art gallery that accepts my work yesterday.  I brought along the entire results of 13 days of very long hours with the needle and thread.  The pieces were laid out on a tray.  My entire collection was gladly accepted by the gallery.  The lovely owner just picked up each piece and placed them onto her tray.  I fully expected some left over designs but this was not to be.  The only way I can now enjoy the results of my latest bout of creativity is through these photographs.

 

I particularly enjoyed the challenge of designing and creating beetles.  I also enjoyed doing some basic metalwork out in the garage to create legs and antennae for my little bead embroidery friends.  I find something immensely satisfying in working with metal these days.  The systematic tap, tap, tap of my jewelers’s hammer onto metal translates into little fittings that are suited to my beetles.  Each tap of the maleable metal which I then work harden, brings to life the beetle.  In reality, I should not say “my beetles” because this first collection is now for sale in a wonderful gallery, Town and Country Gallery in Yarragon, in the heart of lovely Gippsland in the state of Victoria where we live these days.  I am fortunate that I now have my own bead embroidery page within this gallery so it really does feel like “coming home” back to our home state.  My creations now have a life of their own within the gallery. http://townandcountrygallery.com.au/jane-bari/

 

I love the beauty within this gallery. Lots of gorgeous colour, form and texture to appreciate.  I also appreciate the hours that artists generally spend in creating their discourses.  Hours that are never, ever fully appreciated by the casual observer who does not create any art in their lives.  Each piece I created is a static finished design.  Each piece contains its own discourse of frustration, working and ripping out and reworking in order to achieve that level of finish and more importantly, that level of satisfaction that I feel when I instinctively “know” that the piece’s discourse has been completed.

This insectivorous collection is the result of the usual 4 am working day starts.  I feel exhausted and yesterday expressed to one of the gallery owners that if I ever see another bead, I will surely vomit.  Well, that remark was yesterday because this morning, I am once again in my beading room, slowly tidying up the post-creative beading detritus that litters my burgeoning work bench.  I always need to clean everything up in order to utilise this salutary activity to start thinking about my next design collection.

I have come to the conclusion that we are all of us trapped into ritualistic behaviours in our lives.  Behaviours which set the tone, pattern and visualisations of our imaginations and our day to day existence.  Behaviours which form the core of our identity.

The bead has become my discourse.  The bead communicates to the wider world.