Creativity Gone Wild!

WARNING! CREATIVITY UNLEASHED!!

OK, I admit it! This is unusual. It's what might be called an "artsy" piece.

This is a "beader's beaded piece." It is making a statement about how I feel about the latest trend in bead competition pieces. It seems that many of the seed bead necklaces and collars are all about how much beadwork can be done on a design, with the focus on not just quality, but quantity of beads. I feel that this causes seed beaded jewelry to get a bad "rap". They are often considered as something to look at but too gaudy and strange to wear. If you pay attention to many of the bead competition pieces you'll see what I mean.

Now look at this stone! It looks like a piece of wood encasing a mass of turquoise. And the turquoise is desperately trying to escape with the energy and awe of a lightning bolt! You get the feeling that if you blink, the wood will combust and you'll be left with shards of turquoise flying all over the room!

Perhaps this necklace was once an overly-seed-beaded piece, destined to be an entry to a bead competition. And then a lightning bolt of turquoise zapped out of this stone and shattered all the other seed beads that tried to upstage it! And what is left? A more tasteful bezel. The gemstone vengefully showing who's boss!

Or perhaps this is a trick of the eye? Perhaps it is in fact not a piece of wood, but a stone referred to as Ribbon Turquoise mined from the Royston Mine in Nevada. And perhaps this stone doesn't encase the turquoise--maybe the turquoise laces through the stone, naturally forming this way.

Brown jasper (a stone, not wood!) comprises one strand of the necklace. The other is--you guessed it--genuine turuqoise!

So: Is this just a mined stone cut by a lapidary artist to maximize dramatic effect? Or is it a tuquoise lightning bolt striking out and annihilating excessive seed beadwork, proclaiming that the stone that God made is the Concert-master, and that seed beadwork should play second-fiddle?

You be the judge.

But do I detect a tiny bit of turquoise lodged beneath the central design, perhaps a remnant of some type of explosion?

******

This is my art, my piece. Most of the other jewelry on my blog is for sale, this piece being an exception. I doubt that an identical cabochon exists, and I'm selfishly hoarding it for myself. But I thought you'd enjoy seeing my gutsier side. ;)