Even when I was little, I was fascinated by owls. The house that I grew up in had an old red barn. One of my earliest memories is of me running in the backyard, racing to the barn and flinging the doors open. Out swooped an owl, right above my head. I remember being captivated instantly and completely by this majestic creature! My owl collection started not long after that. One of my great aunts gave me a tiny porcelain snowy owl figurine. I used to carry it in my pocket everywhere I went. The poor thing! The feet and a wingtip broke off. The feet were lost to time, but with the help of my mother, I haphazardly glued the tip back on. My mom still has it! She keeps it in a box with other childhood treasures.
That little banged up owl figurine was just the start of my collection! I have several hundred now, each different and unique. My love of owls merged with love of art beads, resulting in several owl jewelry components! I thought about doing one epic post with all my owl art beads, but I thought that it'd be a little overwhelming. So I am going to spread out the owl love and do a few different posts featuring them.
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| Anne Choi |
Anne Choi makes some of my favorite art beads! She starts off by reverse carving molds, pressing wax sheet in them, casting them (primarily in sterling silver), forming them, and then soldering them together. That's a pretty simplistic rundown of a labor-intensive exactly method for creating little works of art!
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| Diane Hawkey |
Working in clay stretches back millennia. Luckily for us, the tradition continues and marches forward. One of my favorite ceramic artists is
Diane Hawkey. All of her pieces convey her unique style.
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| Cynthia Thornton |
This piece was created by my family at
Green Girl Studios in Asheville, NC. It is one of their special pieces that isn't apart of their regular line. It's cast in shibuichi, a copper and silver alloy, and set with tiny rose-cut sapphire eyes. Sometimes they'll list special pieces like this in their
Etsy shop or they'll make them for shows.
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| Gaea Cannaday |
Gaea Cannaday is another fabulous artist who works primarily in ceramic clay. This particular sleeping owl head bead was embellished afterwards with Gliders' Paste.
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| Joan Miller |
One of the coolest things to me is how different artists can use the same medium, but use different techniques to produce distinctively unique work. For instance,
Joan Miller works in ceramic porcelain clay, but the way she works is a little bit different than others. She builds up layers of colored slip clay to produce her signature style.
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| Kylie Parry |
So very graphic, this ceramic pendant was made by
Kylie Parry. She used a decal method to transfer the illustration the owl onto her pendant. I love the nutty, red brown of the illustration.
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| Laurel Moon |
Normally when you think of making metal components, pictures of standing in front of a huge fire with spinning centrifuges may pop into your head. But this one was create differently! Using acid,
Laurel Moon creates these striking etched copper pendants.
These are just a few of my owl-themed art beads. I hope you enjoyed this look into my private collection!
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