My contribution to the Museum of Beadwork's Beaded Square Project

 You a Beader, Dear Reader? Then you surely know about the beaded square project. What a fabulous idea to showcase our collective talent.  Here is a link to the website of this noble project.

I have been following the updates with my fellow beaders' submissions for the last so many months and I really wanted to participate. To be part of such a magnificent joined effort to showcase our thoughts, hopes, dreams and fears beaded and displayed together.

You might not think that a 6x6 square is a lot to cover with beads. 

Until you try to cover that 6x6 square with those beads. Lucky me, I had some projects laying around that were class samples not entirely finished.

 A beaded face by The Face of Time.  Back when 2020 still  seemed like a good idea, this design class was headlining my beady-teachy efforts for the year. Then we got tucked away for a year and the class was a minor zoom success, but still very close to my heart. So I have a handful of half finished embellished faces left and I picked the sweetest, daintiest to destroy by marking her up with black permanent marker tattoos and dribbling super glue to make her cry tears of ghoulish awesomeness.

I also had a moth sample from another class that I decided to paste to the unsuspecting face, silencing her in a beautifully disturbing fashion.

Sometimes I look at the things I make and I feel entirely uncomfortably see through. This is one of those times. It does not take a team of well trained shrinks to interpret this one, eh? Well, that's just fine. I am entirely happy with this cacophony.

I am going to refrain from trying to explain what is going on in this piece as far of what it means. It may even mean different things to different people.

But let's look at what things make up the whole besides the before mentioned components. 5 taxidermy eyeballs. Some are more obvious than others. The better to see you with.

Lots of Anna Bronze components.The better to  feel and taste you with, if you please.

Destroyed and cut up antique lace that ought to smell like crushed violets and mud but in fact it does not.

For my backdrop, I used teal leather. I am VERY fond of this metallic substance, particularly when it's combined with bright green. Since I have a large pile of Swarovski pearls in this color and since looking at my Swarovski pearls pisses me off, it seemed like a fine time to use them. I loved the eden green pearls right away when they came out, they are just so vibrant and over the top happy. 

I wanted the teal leather leaves to jut out from the plane of the backdrop like acanthus leaf carvings bursting forth from a column. To gently caress the ghastly apparition's chin.

For the upper portion I wanted a mix of things that are full of life and growth mixed with suspiciously decaying matter. Hence the snail, eyeballs, plants and empty pods. All things in balance.

The  really freeing thing about this whole square making process for me was to not have to worry about how this is all going to fit. How it should be wearable and durable.

The process of creating something that will hang on a wall made it so that I could kick back and not worry about what this is going to look after someone sweats on it. Being prone to worries, the idea of someone having to dust this did cross my mind and caused me anxiety that in fact is revisiting me as I am typing about this, but hey. That is not my circus, and certainly not my simian individuals. 

For the moment I am feeling entirely happy and fulfilled by having manifested this fine nightmare. If it wasn't for the pandemic, it would have never happened. I like having time for such fancies, which makes it so that I seriously doubt that I will ever go back to traveling as much as I used to. Well, we shall cross that bridge when traveling is a thing again. For now, I am going to stick with being happy.