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more arrows tomorrow!
Laura Leonard - Baba Yaga
Category: Sculpture.
The piece was made using peyote stitch, right-angle weave, brick stitch, and bead embroidery over a fabric wrapped in armature.
I started beading in 1991 with several classes from Diane Fitzgerald. I was immediately hooked. In 1992, after a class with Joyce Scott, I learned tubular peyote. Sculptural beadwork became my passion from then on. My first pieces were hollow tubular peyote. After some structural problems, I started using fabric-wrapped wire armatures inside the beadwork. This allowed me work bigger and somewhat faster. My pieces usually take 4 - 12 months to complete.
Baba Yaga was an easy choice for the Delica Challenge. I was fascinated by the house that dances on chicken feet. This piece evolved as I read more and more Baba Yaga stories. Even with the deadline looming in the near future, I continued to add details from the stories.
In making Baba Yaga, I learned several new things. The house under-structure was formed from window screen instead of my usual electrical wire. For the first time I learned a new stitch, brick stitch, from a book—Carol Wilcox Well's Creative Bead Weaving. This was my first attempt at using Delicas. I grew to adore them, especially their colors. I only wish they came in smaller sizes. I like to mix 10s, 11s, and 14s for texture.
I dedicated this piece to the witch in all of us after becoming stressed and irritable trying to meet the deadline and create a piece with all the necessary details. Yes, in the end it was all worth it!
Baba Yaga
Deep in a Russian forest there lived a terrible witch named Baba Yaga. She lived in a house that danced on chicken legs and was decorated with skulls whose eyes burned fiery red. Baba Yaga dined on lost children. She had a wart on her nose from her dealings with toads and frogs.
In this piece Baba Yaga captured a young girl, Vasalisa, who was in search of light. The witch threw her in the cauldron for dinner and is riding deeper into the forest atop her mobile home. Baba Yaga's black cat had made friends with Vasalisa and promised to help her escape. He gave her a skull for light, a blue towel that will turn into a river when Baba Yaga nears, and a comb that will turn into a thick forest, too dense for even Baba Yaga to pass.
In the end, Vasalisa returns home to restore light and hope to her village. All is well.
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PS from Barry Kahn. I just have to add that the arrival of a Baba Yaga entry was one of the high points of my life. One of my parental jobs has been creator of bedtime stories, and for at least three years I made up stories about Baba Yaga for my son, Owen. These were not the traditional Baba Yaga stories but modernized versions in which she often visited our house, neighborhood, or Owen's school seeking to munch little children. Owen always defeated her, usually with a squirt gun filled with a mixture of baking soda and vinegar which dissolved her into a foul puddle. (She always returned the next day, however, as the chicken leg house kept a freezer full of replacements ready to go). So after all these night-time escapades, it was a real thrill to have a beaded Baba Yaga visit us. Thanks Laura!