Abbie at Play!: Beadlust: Life, Creativity and Beadwork

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Beadlust: Life, Creativity and Beadwork

I'd like to share here a blog that i stumbled onto recently. Robin Atkins is a bead artist who, in 1985, rediscovered a childhood fascination with beads, and very soon, "developed an incurable case of bead lust." Robin teaches, among other things, improvisational bead embroidery classes, and features her own improvisational beadwork in her blog, "Beadlust."

Stumbling onto her blog was a real revelation for me, because i had never before seen improvisational beadwork. One beautiful example of her honest and heart-ful sharing is her post on this work (see above), which she entitled "Love in Delicate Balance." In the post, she describes the difficult, "character-building" heart-work of love and marriage in times of pain and difficulty.

This post touched me and so many! (more than 33!) others, sparking such an outpouring of appreciation, validation, expressions of support and empathy, leading me to remember again a Carl Rogers phrase that my teacher, Dr. Honey Carandang, repeats to us often: "That which is most personal, is most universal."

Robin and her fellow bead artists contribute to a monthly "Bead Journal Project" (BJP), an online journal where each member contributes a personal beadwork "journal page" each month. The goal of each journal page is "to give an impression about each month, to journal our experiences and record our feelings in a visual way. Another important goal is to stretch our creative and technical limits."

A stroll through some of the journal members' personal pages has left me breathless! Such beauty is life, and life in art!

In another blog post (Bead Journal Project... If At First You Don't Succeed....), Robin displayed how she had turned several of her BJP pieces into "soul cards," of her beadwork, featuring the beadwork on one side, and a painted/stamped paper on the other side, with some personal notes. So wonderfully creative and soul-touching. Here are just two of her pieces:

Just so beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Thank you Robin, for such a beautiful sharing of life in art.

Perhaps one day we can get together our own online Creative Journal Pieces!

Let me know what you think!

1 comment:

RobinDecember 8, 2008 at 12:21 PM
And thank you, Peachy! It is a fabulous feeling when somebody understands my improvisational bead embroidery... both as art and as a visual journal of my life. Your post gives me great satisfaction! Robin A.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

The Inner Self Communicates With Us Through Our Art

"For a person who works improvisationally most of the time, it may surprise you to know that art for me is about visual communication. The odd thing is that the communication is first and foremost from my heart to me. It's my inner, hidden self which speaks through the work of my hands.
The less I try to control the outcome; the less I fuss with "getting it right," the less I'm concerned about making art, the more of my truth is revealed. And when my truth comes out in the open, conveyed in my beadwork, I feel a great sense of wholeness, connection, and satisfaction."

--- Robin Atkins, bead artist

This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original, and has something important to say. Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express. Everybody is original, if she tells the truth, if she speaks from herself. But it must be from her true self and not the self she thinks she should be.

So remember these two things: you are talented and you are original. Be sure of that. I say this because self-trust is one of the very most important things in writing....

-Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write

The Voyage to a Place Inside Oneself

For a voyage to a destination, wherever it may be, is also a voyage inside oneself; even as a cyclone carries along with it the center in which it must ultimately come to rest.

At these moments I think not only of the places I have been to but also of the distances I have traveled within myself without a friend or ship; and of the long way yet to go before I come home within myself and within the journey.

And always when the curtains are lifted, the night is without, peering in steadily and constantly, with the light of the stars far beyond.

- Laurens van der Post, Venture to the Interior

Brother of the Sun and of Time

Let me hold your story
and fill my hands
with new sensations
that I've never seen before
which have never existed
which I couldn't have understood
without your song.
They bear your name
and trace out a road.
Let me take with me
a piece of our time together
and savour the warmth
a friend leaves behind.

Brother of the sun and of time
who cares what colour the wind is?
We are joined by the taste of a
dream.
Of being hand in hand
holding
a small piece,
a bit of a world
where you are allowed
to walk at your own pace,
to feel what you feel
and, although different,
to sing your own song

Let me take your conscience
and leave taking with me
the certainty
that although we are different
we're alike
That the heart beats
to the same beat
but your form
creates a new rhythm
Let me learn your music
and enrich my world
with the look of your eyes
and to find in your soul
a new home.

Brother of the sun and of time
who cares what colour the wind is?
We are joined by the taste of a
dream.

--- song by Margarita Boom
(see related post, A Beautiful Song of Friendship)