Bamboozled Bangle

I love to get inspired by other artists, painting in particular is something I don't do very well myself and I really appreciate the work going into it.  This piece was specifically inspired by a watercolor painting that I saw hanging in the Lansing Art Gallery's upstairs main gallery themed "4 Seasons."  The piece is called "Bamboo I" and "Bamboo II" by Angelis Jackowski.

When I saw her paintings in this show I was absolutely taken.  The rich dark colors of the watercolor are amazing as well as her composition.  The first one I noticed was of waterlilies, but when I looked at the opposite wall I thought "that's how you do bamboo!"

I had attempted to create a bamboo bangle of a single bamboo branch a while back and felt that I failed miserably and that it was a bad design altogether.  So I figured that the inspiration of bamboo was dead in the water for me.  This painting though began to haunt me and I got inspired.  I looked up the Lansing Art Gallery website and to my luck the painting was right there on the front page!  I printed it, got out my bead graph paper and colored pencils and got to work.  Just the drawing of the pattern probably took me 4 or more hours, I wanted it to honor the inspiration.

As I began rifling through my beads, I realized that part of the reason I was so struck by this piece was it's in my colors.  I pulled 57 tubes of beads (all different colors) that could go with the theme for this piece I was creating.  57 bead colors gets overwhelming so I broke it down to 13 or 14 colors.

The bangle doesn't look exactly like the painting (as it shouldn't, it's beads), and I wasn't sure that it looked quite like bamboo as I made it, but I have worn it the past 2 days and a few people have said it looks like bamboo.  This will be one of the application pieces to Ann Arbor Art Fair. 

This piece measures approximatley 3 inches wide and is slightly larger circumference than my usual bangles.

Angelis Jackowski's work will be up for the 4 Seasons show upstairs in the Lansing Art Gallery until the 23rd of December, so stop in and go see it!  (And get in some of your holiday shopping with local artwork!)