Forces of Natures

"So, How does your garden grow?" Tracy Stanley
Here in not particular order I will begin to show you our work of 2 years from Jan 03 to Dec 04. This was our collaborative Beaded art project. It began with a dream from Cindy Bowers. and off we flew into the great unknown. The Following Artists beaded,painted,sewed,wired, cut glass,fired in kilns,and created their fannies off for this delightful, insane, joyful, sorrowful, exciting project.
Roll Call please Sandy Avenell, Cindy Bowers, Janice Berebile, Kathy Dannerbeck,
Peg Gyldenege, Sandra Jaech, Joey Meyer Tracy Stanley Nancy Strahle
Each artist was asked to bring a stool to the next gathering and begin a theme of sorts to launch our project. It became know as the stool project and a plethora of jokes and smirks and giggles soon followed by the rest of the world. Husbands especially found the title fodder for many ongoing puns and grade school humor.
As the pictures go up I will add the artists titles and show several photos more as time permits.
Our rules were few and as Sandra often remarked getting us to some kind of order was like herding cats.
Stools were to remain secret you did not see your stool till the end of the project, all arrived at each meeting covered up in a box or garbage bags turned upside down or in a box.
You could use any art technique we chose. We all had a journal which traveled with the stool and each artist wrote a bit about their experience and creative ideas as well as photos. We kept each stool for 2 months to live with it and get a sense of where it was going. For my experience I found that in preplanned idea, it never worked out.
I found by living with the stool putting in place where I could observe it daily it always told me what it wanted and where to place it. Although I must admit sometimes it do not speak until down to the wire for time. I burned the midnight hour to get some projects finished on time.
Another rule was no talking about the project except with an artist who had already worked on the stool. For me that was agony but I found it built up an greater creative force for the project.
More later