So one of the things expected of modern western type artists is to have a ‘unique voice’ or a ‘immediately identifiable style’. With pretty much all my beads, I can point to someone else who basically does the same thing, be the beads be abstracts, shards, hollows or florals. —I have been making these beads, combining all these techniques, for at least a year now,^[1] and have produced an amazingly large number of really ugly beads. I wondered, sometimes, why I kept at it, since I know how to make a number of beads that have quite a decent chance of being aesthetically pleasing.

So it was nice to finally see this series come together this spring (most notably with a pair of beads made specifically to match some clothes) and, as I mentioned in that post as well, feels original, if only because most folks can't be bothered to pile on so many techniques in one little bead!

I've also been enjoying the shards—some of them are made from that very expensive high-silver bearing content (hence the amber-purple look to them—the shards that is) or by layering one opaque (say mint green) over turquoise blue—then when the shards ‘thicken up’ at the edges they shift from one color to the other, which is a fun effect.

Fran also bought some Double Helix frit for me to play with, and though I'm still no great shakes at getting it to strike/reduce/change color, every once in awhile it does something fun:)

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Sylvus Tarn