Wow! Is that a Larry Scott bead?!

No, not by any means (see the "real" one below), but I did think about Larry Scott a lot while I was making this bead.

The way this bead looks now is nothing like how it started in my head, or even the way it looked 15 minutes before finishing. At first, it had nice raised dots of Double Helix Nyx glass - a wonderful, shimmery color. Lovely - just the way I wanted it to look. Then, I decided to tart up the ends...add a little interest, ya know? Spent too much time there, and tink! A little noise that I feel more than hear - a tiny crack! Oh no! I thought it would be easy to repair, but a cracked bead with dots is never easy to repair - the dots get all out of whack, and it's almost impossible to heat the bead enough to heal the crack without melting all the dots flat. So, I melted them all in...added some more stuff...etc etc.

So, what's the connection to Larry Scott? When I took a class with him a couple of years ago, he referenced a book that mentioned that the artist's enterprise is at risk until the final moment. There are no machines to do it for you, nothing that's been calibrated to the nth degree of tolerance. To state it simply, an artist is free to fuck it up to the very last minute of work, with the very last detail. This is very true in glass - everything is perfect, but you misplace that LAST DOT. And the entire piece is ruined, or at least not your original artistic vision. On a happier note, the longer I worked on "fixing" this one, the more and more it reminded me of a Larry Scott window bead! LOL

But, my lost artist vision is your gain. This is still a very nice bead - the base glass (which now just barely peeks out) is silver rattan that has reduced to a very nice light brownish color. The tarted ends and stripes are ivory. And, the dots still glow a bit. They're a very dark sapphire blue. I used raku, which shifts to various colors, for the dots that did make it to the raised state. And, the whole bead has a lot of reaction stuff going on - just the way silver laden glasses act. So -------- the first one to email me and tell me what a fabulous almost Larry Scott bead this is gets it! No strings attached....really. I'll even pay postage (yes, even to you Aussie's!) Lemme hear from y'all.