Dulcey Heller

The last piece of jewelry I made for myself was olive too. I DO work with other colors, these are just the colors I am using right now. I bought these cubic zirconia beads and pearls from Baubles and Beads, a splurge for me. I’d like to knot them. The strand of cz’s is probably 8″ long, the pearls 20″? I’m thinking the cz’s, pearls, maybe some gold-plated seed beads. I’m not sure. I need to buy a nice clasp, maybe some of those knot cover things for by the clasp. I don’t knot much….

Katherine and I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts this past weekend to see Art in Bloom. This is when florists from around the metro area create hundreds (?) of floral arrangements based on an item in the permanent collection. It’s a wonderful museum, with a very broad collection. I probably visit at least 4 times/year — I’m very grateful to have this free museum nearby where I can periodically just go, browse, and enjoy.

Art in Bloom is held annually for one weekend, Thursday through Sunday. The place is packed, there’s special events, and parking can be challenging. Below are some pictures that I took of the event. No captions; if I took the time to take notes at the museum and then caption, I might not ever blog about it, so enjoy!

I ducked in to look at some beadwork. A tribe native to Minnesota is the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe). Here’s some pieces owned by the museum.

And as I was leaving, they were inflating a duck in the park in front of the old, main entrance. Don’t ask me why!

I was wandering in San Francisco, and happened upon the Liuli Gallery (mellow music will play when clicking). It’s a company started by Loretta Hui-Shan Yang (multi-award winning actress from Taiwan), who in 1987, entered the art glass world. It’s pate de verre, which dates back to the Third Century B.C. in China.

I have a gorgeous glossy brochure that my ‘tour guide’ from the gallery gave me. I spent maybe 30 minutes in this gallery, and he loved showing me the pieces from small to very large, telling me about the symbolism, construction, etc. I had a great time.

The art had Chinese and/or Buddhist imagery, many seasonal or monthly. There were turtles and fish and pigs. There were Buddhist hands, lotus leaves and flowers, and Buddhas. There was tableware, jewelry, and sculptures — small and large. Pieces were polished, waxy-looking, or shiny. There were faces or figures of frosted glass imbedded in shiny glass of the same color. There was a lot to see.

The gallery was a whole atmosphere, with music, lights, and glass. If you’re in California (San Gabriel or San Francisco), New York (Flushing), or locations in Singapore, Malaysia, Mainland China, or Hong Kong, see if you can fit in a visit. And if you can make it to the Liuli China Museum in Shanghai? It’s a nightclub at night. Can you imagine?

Image of the Liuli Museum, courtesy of www.smartshanghai.com

Okay, I’ve stalled long enough, and want to go on to the next part of this project, the next loomed pieces. I am a bit worried about only tying off slippery nylon threads without them slipping, and then sewing the piece to a background, so I thought I’d do a footer and header and turn it twice underneath, as I’ve seen recommended in several places. Sew it to itself is what I’m envisioning. I think I’ll still mount them as Laura Willits does, but these warps would be more stable. And, I can always take the header and footer out if I change my mind, right?

So, I’ve started on the footer for this loomed piece. Here’s the problem: I can’t use the heddles, so I’m weaving over-under-over-under with a needle. I’m using the thread I used for the warp, and I’ve only got a millimeter or two more than half an inch between the beginning of the weaving, and the bottom bar of the loom. I can’t rotate it up to give myself more room, because the warping bar is right there at the bottom too, on the back side of the loom. This is good in that it gives me more warp for weaving the next pieces, but bad in giving me a little extra room to work.

So I’m weaving over-under, etc, back and forth. I’m doing it flat (rather than standing on its feet), balanced on the table and my legs with two lights shining directly on it so I can SEE the over-under. To make it easier to go from left to right, I’m flipping the loom upside down every other row so I can always use my right hand.

Tonight, in multiple hours (3?), this is how far I’ve gotten. Twenty-four rows and 1/4″. To get the 1/2″ I’m aiming for, to be able to fold it underneath twice, I will have to weave essentially the same number of rows that the entire beaded piece is — and that’s only one side. I have the header yet to do too.

And since I can be a fool for details, I think I’m going to weave the header the same way as the footer, even though the heddles are on that end. Because this weft-faced fabric on the footer wouldn’t match the header, because the warp would show if I used the heddles. Even though it’s folded underneath. Looking at what I just wrote, that looks a tad nuts. I think I’ll at least try a few rows of using the heddles for the header. Sigh.

I’m getting closer to figuring out what I want to do with the rest of the warp. I’m pretty sure I want to do a version of the Hoffman painting I already did — narrower and taller (so I’ll add to the top). I’m going to have to mess even more with his painting, as I’m almost out of the red, and have so few of the dark green transparent beads that I could actually count them, if I wanted to.

I like how the greens group together, I want to leave them as they are. The contrast of the light value of the yellow and the dark value of the darkest green I want to leave as well. So, I think I’m going to transpose the blue and red, giving this a blue background with some small patches of red. I have another dark transparent French green, but it’s a bluer green — which may actually be better, with the increased amount of blue in the painting.

I think I’m going to remove the painting from behind the current painting, continue it to increase the height by about 3/4″, and then cut it to the width I want. I’ll just have to remember to transpose the red and the blue.

For the rest of the width of the warp, I’m going to make the bracelet I want as well.

I fell in love with the cover of Aleutian Sparrow, a book by Newbery-winning author, Karen Hesse. The book is historical fiction, based on the invasion of the Aleutian Islands by the Japanese navy in 1942. The cover is a wonderful woodcut by Evon Zerbetz, an Alaskan artist.

I will use beads inspired by the colors in the woodcut.

In my feed reader not too long ago, I admired a bracelet by Kashaya. I like how it’s somewhat abstract, interesting both when you see the entire length, or just the curve on the top of your wrist. She generously provides the peyote pattern here.

In Photoshop Elements, I replaced colors to get something close to the colors I want, to make it easier to follow her pattern.

The center of the flower will be the transparent aqua. The opaque aqua will be the ring just inside the center of the flower and the outer petals. The inner petals will be the medium green, and the background the lightest green.

I will resize the image so that it is the length that fits my wrist — which is almost exactly the height of the second version of Hoffman’s painting, and the width is narrow enough to fit next to the painting. Then I’ll tape the bracelet and the painting images to a piece of paper, again situated so that I can loom right over the paper, doing paint-by-numbers with two separate pieces simultaneously.

That’s my idea today, anyway.