Beads, glorious beads — bold, elegant, luminous
By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic
A "bead frenzy" would be the best way to describe this exhibit. Working collaboratively over the past five years, a group of bead artists have swapped and bought each other's beads like wampum. The benefits of this bead-bonding are validated by the exciting enhancements their original and acquired beads give to the necklaces and bracelets displayed.
Through Sept. 26 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday through Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday Gallery at Ward Centre 597-8034
Glass bead artists Alethia Donathan, Joel Park (also featured in The Taste of Clay exhibit reviewed below), Charlene Tashima and Ann Teruya create a range of styles from elegant and luminous to comic and whimsical. Alicia Kawano Oh designs clay beads (as does Tashima) and Mary Kamiya makes beaded beads (beads wrapped around a plain bead foundation) for her creations. Barbara Edelstein includes beads in her needle-woven necklaces, and Patricia Greene incorporates all as the designated "assembler extraordinaire."
Beads and Beyond
The pieces are not identified by artist, but strewn about the cases and on pedestals in all their primitive, sparkly, capricious, woven, brightly-colored and earthy one-of-a-kind glory.
If beads are your passion (and with five bead shops in Honolulu, they must be for many), visit the gallery to view the work of some of the state's best beaders.
Also at the gallery are collages by Jeanne Robertson and watercolors by guest artist Peggy Chun.
Robertson, who has been involved with this cooperative gallery for 15 years, is its most senior member. Her collages made of paper, tissue, rice paper, fabric and paints are landscape-like and lively. Typically a watercolorist, she says, "I am having a lot of fun with collage. It's like being in kindergarten."
Chun's work is bold, bright and fanciful — as usual.
