Friday, October 05, 2007

Bead-On-A-Stick
You can tell by looking at Marcy Lamberson’s work that she has a healthy sense of humor! Living in Atlanta, GA. she gets many of her ideas while watching plants and animals native to the area, then with torch in hand, she captures the impish characters inside.




Some are sort of mischievous as if they’ve got a devious plan up their sleeves, and others, almost woefully innocent, seemingly oblivious to what has happened to bring them into existence, as if born fully grown, yet somehow eternally young.


Reinforced by the smiles, laughter (and custom orders) these creatures evoke in others, she has continued to follow the thread, watching to see where it will lead, shaping her as much as she shaped the glass. That raises an interesting question. Does life influence style, or does the artist impact life? Most likely the answer to that falls somewhere in the middle. How much does one’s experience determine what we make, what medium we choose, even the colors and textures we bring into being in that which we create?

Marcy actually started out as a watercolor painter and enjoyed the process of mixing and blending colors in that medium so much that naturally glasswork was a logical next step, both providing her the comfort in familiarity she’d previously known, and the promise of new and exciting challenges ahead, and the satisfaction of being able to render her ideas 3-dimensionally.

Most of her days are spent making more beads and sculptures, and teaching classes out of her home.
There is this place where artists go in which there is no sense of time, where there is no right or wrong, where candy is everlasting, and flowers never die, and a child can live forever.

Perhaps this is what the world is missing now with busy schedules, global warming, war in the middle east, and life in a culture in which people are drowning in expectations they can never measure up to, work fast enough, make enough money, spend enough time with friends and family, consumed with guilt, and anger, and fear for the future. In a society in which people are slaves to their cell phones, and the American worker is as expendable as a McDonald’s hamburger carton, and the President has told us that art is unnecessary in the classroom, crayons are put away in the closet, dismissed as frivolous and irrelevant to the “really serious” work at hand, where the adage “no pain, no gain” rules the day, humor and whimsy are precious commodities. Like an endangered species threatened with extinction these qualities must be nurtured and protected with all we’ve got.

Art is what brings us back to what really matters, to that little slice of heaven we dream about, yet far too often just let slip through our fingers. Here is your chance to get a little bit of what you’ve been missing. Put it in a necklace, or on your desk to remind you of that child within. She isn’t gone, just hard to locate sometimes. To buy your little piece of whimsy, go to http://studiomarcy.etsy.com/
These make great gifts!

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