MANDINGO

This morning I posted a picture on Geometric Dimensional Beadweaving with Seedbeads, a group moderated by Teresa Keygirl, whose work I have been following for a while now.

man-dingle bird ascendant

   I want discuss the origins of this particular bit of of beadweaving. Lately I have been making what I am calling bead tapestries, although I am not sure that is the right name for them. They aren't quite three dimensional but neither are they one dimensional. I build them with a potpourri of pieces that I arrange around an idea, This one in the picture is the first one I have put together. It was made for a friend with a strong interest in psychedelia and the use of psychotropic plants among  Aztec and Mayan peoples.This piece has so many things going on with it. I bought the beads originally as a set of Miyuki luminous neon beads sold by a Chippewa woman on Facebook; and for a long time I did not know what to make with them. All the bits and pieces were made for another bead tapestry but somehow they didn't fit in so I took them out and while looking at them,  I realized I have ended up with what looks like a thunderbird dreamcatcher, the bird ascendent. It could also be seen as the Airlines who today refused to carry Trump's separated immigrant children, one of the things that might have forced him to change his policy. Although, being Trump, he has only changed it for the worse.

     Here are some thoughts I've had about my beading  I'm not the fastest beader and I'm bad at anticipating patterns. All I am is ambitious. I have more ideas for the tapestries. I would like to go more three dimensional in my work. Some of the older UFO's cry out to be finished. And lately I've been having the urge to blog about what I've been doing. Not because I expect people to read my blog, they seldom do. But just because I have the urge to express myself and I want to blog about bead weaving because that is my passion.

harnessing my literalness, or, what is my art

AS always, this is the way I question myself; do I have any art in me. Recently I ran across a whole new way of doing things, the maker movement. I went to visit a friend and found her in a makerspace; Artistic Amnesty, over in Somerville. Now what was interesting to me was that  there was much  that was useful to me. I ended up signing up for a class and I have high hopes because for some reason, I am in a creative mode.
Unfortunately, being creative scares the hell out of me because I get manic around art. Today, this morning I was in full mania for a while. The reason I am so scared was that my last real episode of mania ended up with me trying to kill myself. While I enjoy the creative part of the mania, the intensity worries me.
I repeat myself:
 I worked myself up into a manic episode around making my charms. My fingers were dancing on the keyboard, I was typing so fast. I have an observation I want to make but suddenly the real observation is that  ART makes me manic. And I don’t mean it in a completely good way, yes I am creating at a rate I normally do not function at, but I am functioning in a not good way. I start to scare myself.
As I make my charms, I think about how literally I have portrayed the Beads. I have actually incorporated tiny Beads Of courage necklaces in my charms. as I make each little charm, I make up a story for the child my charm represents; blue beads for the doctors visits, red beads at each corner. I decide the yellows will symbolize chemotherapy and the green ones nausea. But why am I always so literal. In this case I was able to harness my literalness and turn it symbolic. Maybe thats it. Thats how I can harness my literalness.
At least I have finally found my art. I went looking it everywhere I was and didn't find it until i was almost too old to appreciate it. Perhaps mania is my way of making up for lost ti