Thursday, August 23, 2012

The Eye Necklace


The Eye Necklace

One of the fun parts of making bead embroidered pieces for me is finding the focal image. Searching books ,magazines and websites for focal images has led me to discover some amazing contemporary artists. Artists whose work I would probably never have found had it not been for my bead embroidery obsession!!
One such artist is Naoto Hattori. A Japanese artist who I believe is now based in New York. Sometimes reading about all these amazing artists and finding out that they are based in New York or have exhibitions going on in New York makes me really want to drive down to the city more often. I just wish I were a bigger fan of the city. I really don’t understand why I cannot form the same emotional connection with NYC as I have with London!
The Eye Necklace

Most of Naoto Hattori’s work reminds me of Dali’s work. Maybe it’s because of the juxtaposition of elements; with larger pieces surrounded by random smaller objects or the dreamlike quality of work. Whatever it is the work is very captivating and interesting and also a little bit chilling.
The focal image I chose for this piece is called very appropriately “Inner eye”. To me it looks like an eye coming through the desert or very dehydrated greenish skin.
My first instinct was to make it into a brooch but then I thought well, it’s an inner eye and wouldn’t it be more appropriate if it actually lay on the skin. And since a headpiece for me would have been totally unwearable I went with the next best thing: a necklace!
The Eye Necklace

The way the necklace sits on the body makes it look like one has an eye growing out the middle of one’s chest and I like that. And there was a funny incidence where me and a friend were sat in a Pedicab up in NYC and the driver kept turning around to look at me and he finally broke down and said “it is so freaky ,that eye on your chest , its staring at me!” I couldn’t help myself I burst out laughing! Now I suspect that our driver was a little bit high which he denied but he was very amusing! And the way he described the necklace was perfect! To me the fact that he thought the piece was creepy was a compliment! :D
The Eye Necklace

The Eye Necklace

I did something different with this piece. I have been wanting to use bugle beads in the actual bead embroidered part of the work but the gap that is created by using bugle beads is something that I do not like and initially I wanted to use just bugle all around the eye after the bezel work was done, to kind of make it seem like rays of sun, to make its look like the “inner eye” was shinning through or something cheesy like that. But I just could not get over the gaps. so next best thing was to use it sporadically in the piece and fill up the spaces with seed beads so there would be no gaps. After the beadwork was done I added these unusual sequins that I have had for years which I really wanted to use in a piece and I thought well why not this piece!
The Eye Necklace

The Eye Necklace

For the chain I used a mixture of the seed beads I had used in the bead embroidery part as well as the gold bugle beads. The good thing about using bugle beads and other bigger beads is that they add length to the chain without having to use too many of the beads. Making a whole chain from just seed beads uses up a lot of beads and in the end is not as interesting as using a mixture of bead and it is also not that economical!
The Eye Necklace


LIST OF MATERIALS USED:



Posted by Mana © BeadFeast. All Rights Reserved
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)