I’ve often noticed how different natural forms resemble each other. This makes it easy to incorporate natural materials into jewelry that is inspired by nature. Moonstone and crystals look like ice, jasper chips resemble rock cliffs. I approach a stash of beads in the same way I would a palette of oil paint. Rather than using them straight from the container I mix beads in difference colors. And I put them together with different textures just as I would use varied brush strokes on canvas.
Full Moon RIsing
One of my favorite things about this area is the changing of the seasons—and changes even within each day. The weather always brings something new when I walk out of the house in the morning. This beadwork necklace is inspired by a clear January afternoon, when a thaw had set in and the water dripped like liquid crystals from the roofs and from the tree limbs and along stone walls.
This necklace is made up of different colors of glass seed beads, Swarovski crystals, Jasper beads and chips, moonstone chips, mother of pearl, shell, and sterling silver plated beads. The clasp is sterling silver plated.
January Thaw, Beadwork
"Partly Cloudy"
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Merry Ryding
(Also visit Merry's Website: www.mrydingartworks.com)
Philosophy: I believe that art requires some evidence of change-- a new perspective, a new technique or medium--these things can initiate change, and a transformation of style. I think that the creative process is actually a way of life, not just a way to make art. The process takes us from inspiration to action. You have to find a home for all of those ideas bouncing around in your head—art is concrete evidence of a particular inspiration. The stuff that stirs your imagination urges you to create. These ideas are changed, by working with hands & eyes, into a particular image—ideas are given a home in paint, paper and ink.
Style: Ecclectic,mixed up andscattered: I don't like to be put into one category. I like to incorporate many different styles and mediums. If an artist’s style is to be fresh I think it is important to include transformative tools.
Techniques: Collage/mixed media, egg tempera, wood cut prints, bead work
Background: I was born in Alaska, on the northwestern coast at the edge of the Bering Sea. I spent my early years there. Since then I have lived in Connecticut. Illinois, Washington state, Alaska for a few more years, and then to Pennsylvania, where I have been in one place for a very long time.
Sometimes the craziness of everyday life feels like I’ve been torn up into little pieces and the bits have been tossed to the wind—scattered. Making collage and mixed media work is a way to bring all of those bits and pieces together and make some sense of the chaos.
Blue Ridge Parkway, Mixed Media
For instance, in a landscape I see overlapping layers of colors, shapes and patterns.. Each hill, shoreline and forest edge is another layer. Since I am interpreting everyday landscapes, why not incoporate bits of everyday things, found close to home, that add meaning to the landscape? So in my collages you will find bits of handmade paper made from shredded legal documents, bills, and junk mail, and dryer lint, as well as tea bags, labels, rubbings of fossils and other textures, gravestone rubbings, origami paper, hair, seeds, milkweed silks, Christmas tinsel…the list could be endless. Landscapes that are made of all of these scattered fragments and putting them together into a form that can be recognized is piecing together some kind of order out of the chaos.
Isn’t that what we are all trying to do?
Rolling into the Badlands, Mixed Media
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Under Covers, Mixed Media
RimRock View, Mixed Media
Storm Rolling in at Dusk, Mixed Media
Full Moon Over East Branch, Mixed Media
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