Back to Nature

I’m please to be able to introduce ‘Back to Nature’, my entry in the ‘Previous Winner’s class of the Beadworkers Guild Annual Challenge 2020/21, and very happy to say that once again, I won.

The theme this year was ‘Save the Planet – Bead it Don’t Bin It’ and this was my Artist’s statement (which we send with our entries and is the only context we can supply to the judges):

‘Inspired by the layers and structure of soil profiles, this box explores the idea of nature taking over again, burying mankind’s waste and rubbish under layers of soil, moss and lichens.  Salvaged circuit boards surrounded by the digital bytes of beadwoven delicas, are slowly being covered by layers of soil –  beads, threads, pearls, reclaimed watch parts and recycled sequins. On the surface, embroidered and beaded mosses are cut through by Kintsugi repairs of bent and damaged scraps of leftover goldwork wires.  Bursting down into the soil below,  the gold brings new life and destroys what we’ve left behind. ‘ 

That’s the ‘public’ face of the piece, in reality it’s simply a really lovely embroidered fully hand made box, made by me over several months using only items from my stash, waste from my shop and household computer and packaging waste, and just about every technique I knew, could learn or could make up. I’ll try and get a blog post together in the next couple of days to tell you a little more here about how it came about.