Wendy Ellsworth

I also feel that my bead work is part of my spiritual journey, spiritual life. Much of what I do involves going around in a circular pattern and anytime you work in a circular design or circular pattern, you are really creating a mandala. And in the process the creating a mandala, one is centering oneself.  So I know that this work that I have done in beads is part of my way of finding my own center and connecting it to the center of creation, whatever term you give to the word God or the Creator or the Higher Power that created us all. Thus, my beadwork takes on a very spiritual connotation, and it’s one that brings me great joy.

I work in solitude in a studio that’s in a forest, and I’m surrounded by trees.  I’m surrounded by a natural environment with very few sounds. I don’t have a telephone in my studio; I don’t have television in my studio. I have wind chimes that sing and give me the music of the wind, and I’m surrounded by my beads as well, so that’s the kind of environment that I work in, and from that calm place, spiritual place, I am able to work and create pieces that are really about beauty and about bringing beauty through my hands into reality, I guess is the word I’m looking for, from these tiny little bits of glass, from these tiny, little pieces, I’m picking them up and joining them to one another in a weaving technique with needle and thread, and it’s all about beauty for me.

Some of my work is very emotional. There was a period of time when I was in what I call the dark night of the soul. That work was very emotional and a reflection of the pain and agony that I was personally going through. The work since then has been more about beauty and the joy of looking at the underwater coral reefs, so I am re-creating coral reef forms with my beads.

I am creating in my jewelry also that sense of freeform work.  I don’t work with a pattern. My work is not thought out ahead of time. I really work free form and allow myself to be a channel, just open up and let the work come through. Thus it really is my way of allowing the Creative Force to move through me and into a form that I do not know ahead of time what it is going to look like. I allow it to take its own shape.

I am delighted to be part of this project. Perhaps some day I can come and see this beautiful park where this will be planted.

Wendy Ellsworth.  Seed Bead Artist.  Quakertown, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.  B.A., University of Colorado.  Ms. Ellsworth’s work is in the collection of the American Craft Museum, N.Y., and many private collections.  Selected exhibitions include Art of the State of Pennsylvania, SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York, and Fiberart International.  She has been resident teaching artist both in the United States and Australia. 

http://www.ellsworthstudios.com

I am Wendy Ellsworth. I live in Pennsylvania, United States of America, and I am a seed bead artist. That means that I work with very small glass seed beads.  I use different stitches from around the world to make either sculptural forms or jewelry. It’s a career that has lasted for thirty-three years. 

I began while I was living in the mountains of Colorado. Beads captured my attention and held my attention and my passion all these years, and I feel that it is a fabulous opportunity to paint with a medium that normally doesn’t get painted with. One can paint with beads because of the small size and the colors that are available, and one can also use them for their textural content as well. I use beads as tiny molecules of light, and as I work, I feel that I am catching the light and I use that phrase often in my work, because light in and of itself is not visible until it falls on an object. Beads are such a beautiful way of catching the light and showing light and color to the world.