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Nature Category
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Dragon-fish Fetish Necklace
Artist: Kate Reeve (Waitsburg, WA)
Additional Top Pick, Nature
"I recently inherited a large quantity of beads from a friend who'd become too disabled to use them. An exquisite fish-skull segment (Tigerfish? Sheepshead?) was gifted me by another friend and art representative who had beachcombed them off the coast of Mexico just before she herself fell ill. And then, suddenly, I lost the unassisted use of my legs and had to get a wheelchair. Now, I had to think, we need some powerful good mojo here, turn this around, get rollin' and goin'!, and right on cue, Dragon Fish, as I've come to think of him, spoke to me from my studio ...
"First came the mounting strip - a little banner with a "dragon-eye" pattern woven of Toho beads," explains Kate. "Then, some peyote stichwork allowed me to build form-fitting girdles around the mandible's projections that I'd used to anchor the banner. ... Ladderstitch "reins" with bone beads and Tohos let me segue into the balance of the work with like style and gave the added weight. Beaded loops on the reins' ends would be "strung" with the rest."
After creating the entire lanyard using difficult and tedious three-needle stringing, Kate decided that the look, while somewhat providing the desired primitive and fanciful "Nanapush" (Len Lenapi for "fairies") style, was not what she wanted. So, she took the entire lanyard apart, and recreated it with a "chain" of beadwork that spirals around the lanyard. "Once I'd restrung [the lanyard], incorporating the "chain," I felt the elements were tied together in the same interwoven technique, the whole structure more mercurial. To finish, I now only needed to make a replacement tooth for my skull fragment which was missing an incisor. Sculpey would be just right, and I got the last minute thought to paint it to match one of the Toho colors - not a flashing gold tooth, but a metallic purple one!" — Kate Reeve
Review the 2006 contest details to see what this contestant was up against, and to start your plans for the 2007 contest!
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