Friday, April 30, 2010

Art Bead Scene Sponsor Spotlight

D'Arsie Manzella of Mamacita Beadworks makes buttons and beads from lead-free pewter. All of her beads and buttons are sculpted and cast by hand. Buttons are versatile for so many different items.

Creative Impressions In Clay

The above buttons are from Tari Sasser's Graphic Collection of buttons. Most buttons can be glazed in any color you can imagine. Receiving yarn and fabric from all over the country, Tari matches buttons for her customers. Imagine...buttons.

D'Arsie and Tari both make other items. I like to take the opportunity to show buttons whenever I get a chance.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Studio Saturday-The Big 5-0

Welcome to Studio Saturday! Each week one of our contributors gives you a sneak peek into their studio, creative process or inspirations. We ask a related question of our readers and hope you'll leave comments! As an incentive we offer a free prize each week to bribe you to use that keyboard. The following week we choose a random winner.
This weeks winner is Christine Brandel.
Congratulations! 
You have won a woodland beads from the studio of Jennifer Heynen
Send Jennifer an e-mail with your address and she will get it right out to you.

This week we visit the studio of Tari Sasser at Creative Impressions In Clay
This is my birthday weekend. I turn the big 5-0 on Sunday! Plus I am having a party tonight.
I am excited to entertain again and I have lived to see 50. If I live as long as my Great Grandmother, I've got another 49 years. I'm on my way to the second half of life.

Above is a design that has been hanging around my studio for a couple years. My original intention was to create a ceramic button that looked like resin. This is round 3 or so of testing glazes. I still don't have it right. So will continue testing. Or I may ditch the design all together. I'm not sure I like it anymore.

My question this week is:
What was the best or worst birthday for you?

Leave a comment at Art Bead Scene and you could win the necklace shown above.
I'm off to see the wizard about my birthday!

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Prizes for Art Bead Scene Monthly Challenge

This month we'll have one lucky winner for the Art Bead Scene's Monthly Challenge.
Tari Sasser of Creative Impressions In Clay has donated a pendant (1 7/8" x 1 1/2") with 3 charms dangling from the bottom. Tari's Fun, Funky & Functional buttons are made with a low fire white clay and brightly colored underglazes.

Visit Tari at her website, blog, etsy, twitter and Facebook.

D'Arsie Manzella of Mamacita Beadworks has donated the beautiful Pewter pendants, button and beads for this months challenge. D'Arsie creates her wonderful components out of lead free pewter with much love and care.

 Visit D'Arsie on her website, etsy and Facebook

Get your Art Beads, Art Buttons, Art Charms or Art Pendants out, start creating and enter this months challenge! 
 Submit photos of your wonderful creations using one or more Art Beads.
"Insula Dulcamara" painting by Paul Klee has many different elements that can be used for inspiration, bold black lines, soft hues of brown, green and blue, red dots or leaves.
We can't wait to see where your creativity takes you with the painting for this months challenge!

Monday, April 5, 2010

April Monthly Challenge at Art Bead Scene

Insula Dulcamara by Paul Klee, 1938
31 1/2 x 69 in
Oil on newsprint, mounted on burlap 
Klee Foundation, Bern, Switzerland

About the Painting
"Insula Dulcamara is the largest of Klee’s finished paintings. Its original title was "Insel der Kalypso" [Isle of Calypso]. Delicate colours, reminiscent of blooming plants, contrast with hard black lines; open, dynamic shapes with closed, static ones. As a base, Klee used printed newspaper mounted on burlap; he painted it with oil paints and coloured paste.

The symbols are taken from an elementary vocabulary of form and can be read in different ways. A line running from left to right in the top half of the picture is reminiscent of a serpent, the shape to its right looks like a piece of Arabic calligraphy. In the middle, a sallow face may be seen, which Klee returned to in his painting "Tod und Feuer", 1940, 332 [Death and fire], in the last year of his life.

The original title of the painting refers to the initial image from Greek mythology – Odysseus’s sojourn on the isle of the nymph Calypso. While working on it, Klee broadened the subject to make a more open statement. The title "Insula dulcamara" awakens exotic associations, but at the same time it points out the opposites of sweet (Lat.: dulcis) and bitter (Lat.: amarus). He probably first refers to medicinal plants: "Solanum dulcamara" is the Latin name for the highly poisonous solanaceous herb »bittersweet«, which was used for healing due to its anti-inflammatory and metabolism-boosting properties. It is used to treat rheumatism, and helped ease Klee’s scleroderma. The scarlet fruits and small brown leaves dispersed about the painting are direct references to ripe "Solanum dulcamara"."


About the Artist
"A Swiss-born painter and graphic artist whose personal, often gently humorous works are replete with allusions to dreams, music, and poetry, Paul Klee, b. Dec. 18, 1879, d. June 29, 1940, is difficult to classify.

Primitive art, surrealism, cubism, and children's art all seem blended into his small-scale, delicate paintings, watercolors, and drawings. Klee grew up in a musical family and was himself a violinist. After much hesitation he chose to study art, not music, and he attended the Munich Academy in 1900.
Klee often incorporated letters and numerals into his paintings. These, part of Klee's complex language of symbols and signs, are drawn from the unconscious and used to obtain a poetic amalgam of abstraction and reality. He wrote that "Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible," and he pursued this goal in a wide range of media using an amazingly inventive battery of techniques. Line and color predominate with Klee, but he also produced series of works that explore mosaic and other effects.

Klee taught at the BAUHAUS school after World War I, where his friend Kandinsky was also a faculty member. In Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925), one of his several important essays on art theory, Klee tried to define and analyze the primary visual elements and the ways in which they could be applied. In 1931 he began teaching at Dusseldorf Academy, but he was dismissed by the Nazis, who termed his work "degenerate." In 1933, Klee went to Switzerland. There he came down with the crippling collagen disease scleroderma, which forced him to develop a simpler style and eventually killed him. The late works, characterized by heavy black lines, are often reflections on death and war, but his last painting, Still Life (1940; Felix Klee collection, Bern), is a serene summation of his life's concerns as a creator."

Your entry this month can be influenced by the colors, pattern or whatever you choose to focus on for your creation. Just remember to include at least one art bead in your design.

The Prizes:
Winners will be randomly chosen from all the qualifying entries on May 1st.
Our sponsors this month are sponsors: Creative Impressions In Clay and Mamacita Beadworks  please visit us Monday to see the prizes!


Featured Designer of the Week:
From all the entries during the month, an editor is going to pick their favorite design to be featured every Monday here on the ABS. We want to give our participants more time in the spotlight! Our Featured Designer will be this Monday, so get those entries in soon.

How to enter the Monthly Challenge:
1. Create something using an art bead that fits within our monthly theme. This challenge is open to jewelry-makers, fiber artists, collage artist, etc. The art bead can be created by you or someone else. The challenge is to inspire those who use art beads and to see all the different ways art beads can be incorporated into your handiwork.

***Beads by themselves and beads simply strung on a chain or cord will not be accepted.***


2. Upload your photo to our flickr group. Detailed instructions can be found here and click here for a tutorial for sending your picture to the group.


Please add the tag or title APRILABS to your photos. Include a short description, who created the art beads and a link to your blog, if you have one.
Deadline is April 30th. Photos are approved by our moderators, if a photo hasn't followed the guidelines it will not be approved. You may upload 2 photos a day.


What is an Art Bead?
An art bead is a bead, charm, button or finding made by an independent artist. Art beads are the vision and handiwork of an individual artist. You can read more about art beads here.


***A bead that is handmade is not necessarily an art bead. Hill Tribe Silver, Kazuri ceramic beads or lampwork beads made in factories are examples of handmade beads that are not considered art beads.

Beaded beads, stamped metal pendants or wire-wrapped compoments are not considered art beads for our challenge.***


p.s. If you have a blog, post your entry and a link to the ABS challenge to spread the beady goodness.