As you know, I work night and day to keep my gallery, Uptown Tribal filled, especially at this time of year. It’s getting crazy and that is divine!

It has been my dream for some time to have a literate, intelligent and hard-working assistant to help me organize my web site, archive all kinds of materials from the past, and generally reduce the boxes of records, slides and photographs into some kind of coherence.

Didn’t realize she was right here in Bisbee, an old friend, and for those of you who have visited Bisbee in the past, the owner of a dynamite coffee house, always open until at least 2.am.. “The Quartermoon”. Oh how we mourn it’s passing.

August also ran the Bisbee Poetry Festival for many years. Yes, I am fortunate indeed.

So we begin this next phase and you are invited to join in any time. What does this mean? If you have any stories, good or bad, you want to share with her, you can put the good ones here and send the bad ones to her private email, cmsgroleau@yahoo.com. There. you are now involved.

Well, we just took this picture… August’s a bit of an owl don’t you think?

Keep an eye out here, we will both be blogging at will from now on.

I apologize for the length of time my web site has been a bit fragile. Onward and Upward. Peace.

I’ts hard to show you how it really was, this is just one little view.. it was wonderful.

Where to start.. Well, I’ve been back for quite a while from another divine adventure in France during July and August last year with glass bead making friends Nadine Piskadlo and Frederic Marey. Just after I arrived in early July, it was time for the exhibition I have dreamed about for ten years or so. It came to be in a beautiful Museum in Berck Sur Mer. It’s really silly for me to be finally telling you about this exhibition now, a few days before it closes, when it opened on July 16th last summer on a beautiful sunny day.
The museum invited any glass bead artists anywhere to submit a piece on Sun Wind and Sea. The chosen beads for this show will stay in a permanent collection there because it is a Maritime Museum and how perfect s that!
The other part of the exhibition consisted of beads I bought and borrowed several years ago with this kind of show in mind. Most of them found their way into the exhibition with the name of the artist clearly displayed. Pretty tough for someone as disorganized as me to keep the names with the beads for so many years. Some of them had already been shown in a museum in the Midlands, England called Broadfield House, but they were in a clear box on the top floor without names clearly attached if I remember correctly.
I have just found the original list of the beads I had carefully over several years collected and carried to England in the beginning…
The list is dated 1998, and I had spent a couple of years before that collecting them and getting them home to England.

So here is that yellowed old fax sent to me by Plowden and Thompson on 26 Jun 1999.

BEAD SOCIETY AGM 1998

Unless indicated otherwise, all beads on loan from the artists. * indicates on loan from the
collection of Kate Drew-Wilkinson.

Strung beads

Left
whole necklace by Kate Drew-Wilkinson
Donated by the artist to Broadfield House Glass Museum, 1997

Centre, starting from top left blue/gold bead, clockwise.
Patricia Frantz
Dudley Gibberson*
Lark Dalton & Corrie Haight, Olive glass x 2
cay dickie*
Donna Milliron*
Janice Peacock
Tom Holland
Della Armstrong, Dancing Rabbit Designs
Lucinda Lesuer Brown
Nancy Pilgrim
Lynne Elliot
Loren Stump*
Kristina Logan*
Mary Kennedy*
Kristen Frantzen Orr
Derek Jones & Sally Hanson
Tom Boylan*
Michael Barley, Hori Designs
Linda Burnette
Patricia Frantz*

Michelle Boeck (centr angel)
Julie Wuest, Leopard Heart Glass

Right: starting from top right, clockwise:
Art Seymour*
Robert Jennik, Pilamaya Glass
Janice Peacock
Rowena
Andrea Guarino*
unknown
James & Neva Wuerfel

Asha* (centre)

So, if any of you see this and either think or remember lending me a bead for a show in Europe when the Best Bead Show was still happening at, er, was it the Red Roof or a Howard Johnsons round about 1997 probably, get in touch and when the beads come home,I can give you back the loaners. I will probably have the whole collection with me at the Bead Expo 2007 in Oakland in April, along with the book,or catalog from the Museum, of the show. Not very clear, but I’m workin’ on it…

By the way, there were lots of others in the expo too, beads that I carried during this new century!

This corner is provided in my gallery for people who want to watch my instructional films but perhaps cannot afford to buy them. There is a little VCR and a bench just out of the frame. The books are available for bead lovers to browse too. I love to see visitors settle in to learn more about beads, especially children. We have to encourage the next generation of bead collectors, don’t we! Wendi Maloy, pictured here too, persuaded me to open the gallery three years ago, and she designed the interior. Wendi worked in a gallery in New Orleans called Beadazzled for five years, so she is a blessing and a delight in my gallery now.

Now that I have learned to blog my pictures, watch out! Thought you might like to see a view of my gallery in Bisbee. Everything in it is made by me including the pictures on the walls, which are pen and inks of the old Sausalito waterfront in the late 1970s. There is a lot of jewelry made with my beads but also pearls, African Trade beads, glass, and a little line called Bisbee Chain. So here is one  view…

Here is the link to Musee de Berck, Normandy, the museum where the bead exhibition that I have been dreaming about for 10 years is finally a reality.

Click HERE to check it out!

The show combines the early work of many of the first contemporary American bead makers, you know, Brian Kirkfleet, Patty Frantz, Loren Stump, Patty Walton, and me, to name a few (!) with the contemporary works of artists both from the USA and from various European countries in the theme of Sea Wind and Sand. There is a book of the exhibition, but you know how that goes, you can really only buy it through the Museum. The curator, Georges Dilly told me he sent a copy to everyone in the book, but since I returned from France, I have not yet had the time to check with the artists. Hope you find it!

Oh and by the way they have two viewing screens running my lampwork DVDs, “Making Beads with Stained Glass Remnants” Parts 1 and 2 all day. When I visited the museum before leaving to come home, there was a large class of school children watching one of the screens. They had turned down the sound because it is in English, but the DVD works fine silently too! Great to be passing on the info like that….

I have dreamed about bringing together the work of American and European lamp work bead makers in a museum in Europe, for over ten years. Sometimes it seemed like an impossible task, given the amount of work involoved in just making a presentation. I collected the beads of the early American artists, starting in about 1995, and sending them over to be kept by friends in England. The collection became more extensive over time, and other bead makers lent me beads when they heard about the show I was trying to put together.
Well, it has happened. Nadine Piskadlo and Frederic Marey, bead makers from Normandy in France, introduced me to Georges Dilly, the curator of the Musee de Berck, a modern and lightfilled museum, now on the National list in France, and he immediately agreed to creating an exhibition within four years. An invitation went out, asking for submissions for beads on the theme of Sea, Wind and Sand. The expo is divided into two parts. The beads lent by me will be returned to me after the end of January and the beads submitted on the theme of Sea, Wind and Sand, will stay on permanent display in the museum, which is in fact a Maritime Museum, so they fit in perfectly. There is already an extensive collection of beads in permanent cases, made by the Meringovians in 400 AD.
A museum set designer from Paris found a way to show the contemporary beads, fixed onto steel rods, (the same ones we use for mandrels, but left at 36 ins ) in such a way that they ca be touched and turned. Some of them are in glass cases, but most are suspended vertically on the rods. Every bead has the name of the lamp worker easily seen.
The exhibition opened on June 13th and I was there, totally thrilled! Georges Dilly took photographs of many of the beads lent by me of the American artists, and all the beads in the sea theme, and produced a book, available from the Museum. Each of the artists represented in the book have been sent a copy. I have to explain that the beads lent by me of the work of American friends were in many different styles, typical of the artist’s work… So the expo is in two parts, those of my collection and then the ones for permanent placement in the museum on the sea theme. I will do my best to add photographs in here as soon as possible.
Having just been back a short time, I am very busy getting my own gallery up to speed for the coming season, so selecting photographs will have to wait. In the meantime, here is the link to the museum. When you reach the site, go to Exhibitions and then to Perles D’Echume . here goes… www.opale-sud.com/sources/popup/musee/expos_collective2006.htm

Nearly time to leave France and fly back to Bisbee. I have been working hard in Fred and Nadine’s glass studio and am bringing back a large collection of new beads. There will be some up on my web site for you to see and I will replenish the gallery. It has been refreshing to be in this seaside town with its changeable weather. Nadine and Fred have just opened a new gallery and I have been doing my best to help by making filler beads for their designs. I was featured in an article last week about my Le Treport beads and since then we have had visitors to the gallery here wanting to buy them, so I am leaving a number of those to be sold here in thanks for all the hospitality food and fun I have received during my stay.
Bisbee will be a bit hot and empty in August, but remember those of you who live near, Bisbee is 15 degrees cooler than Tucson because it is built on a mountain!
Just over another week to go. Then Home Sweet Home!

Yes, I’m still here, having a wonderful time of course, and working in the studio/gallery with Frederic and Nadine. I am making beads for the web store and for Uptown Tribal in Bisbee. Fred and Nadine’s new gallery opens in just over two weeks, so I am helping them by making small “stock” beads, so that they can use them as fillers in their own jewelry. We sneak off to the beach whenever we can because at last the sun is shining and all is warm, even hot!
I went to Paris yesterday with Nadine. She goes to the jewelry district to buy stock for her bead shop, not for her glass gallery and wow, it was amazing to see how busy Paris is, traffic unbearable, but still that lovely Parisian vibe.
By the way, my new DVDs are up in my web shop. It has taken some time to go over from the VHS tapes, and they are still available, but I know lots of you can only use DVDS. The Basic Wirework film is still only on VHS because I did not like the quality of the DVD and will work on that when I return in August.
The bead show at the museum in Berck is so amazing. It will be interesting to see how much attendance it gets. A dream come true for me.

Yes, I’m back in Le Treport, Normandy, staying with Nadine Piskadlo and Fred Marey right by the sea. They have a house on the front, and down the road about 5 minutes walk is Nadine’s bead shop, Entree En Matiere.
Up through the town, through old arches and narrow streets, one comes to a road that ends again in the sea, but is overlooked by incredibly high white cliffs.
In the old days, there was a funicular (yes,I must check the spelling) rail that led from the street below to the top of the cliffs where there was an hotel etc. It was trashed during the war and is being renovated completely, a HUGE engineering job. This is the only one of it’s kind in the world and wonderful to watch being built. At the bottom on the narrow road, there have been built a row of shops nestled almost against the cliffs, and soon Nadine Fred will have a gallery in one of them, so that tourists pretty well fall in the door when they have ridden down the cliff. On the other side of the street is the only store on that side and it is already a working glass gallery, about two years old. So, they have two, soon to be three shops in this seaside resort. You can imagine how hard they work to keep them filled.
This weekend is the opening of the long awaited bead exhibition at the Museum in Berck sur Mer. This is a maritime museum and on the national list. There are beads by many of the first bead makers because I brought over many from my own personal collection and there are of course beads made by those of you who sent them to France or gave them to Nadine or me to deliver. The theme of those was Sea Wind and Sand and they will be kept as a permanent collection for the museum.
Georges Dilly, the curator has put together a lovely book of the exhibition which will be available through my web store when I have copies. Many bead makers will be gratified to find their work there because I was not able to tell all of them that their beads would be in the show and photographed for the book. This is exciting, it is always great to be in a book!
If any of you are in France and anywhere near Normandy, I hope you can find your way to the opening on June 17 and 18.
I will take pictures and post them here when Fred has shown me how to do it! I haven’t quite mastered putting photographs here.