Ancient Whispers

I did finally get some time to come up with another piece for the ART BEAD Scene's July Challenge. My first try was for a bracelet, it was ok, but I wasn't inspired by the rough piece to continue with it. It will enter my Bamboo UFO Bowl. (That's for Unfinished Objects), and I'm sure I'll come up with something to do with it. But I did make something and rather like it. I guess I am partial to ivory or beige and turquoise and that is what I gravitated to in this piece.

I've had the stone 'bezel' for about four years, bought it at a local bead shop when I discovered it soon after moving here. I loved the irregular striations on it and since I have always loved stone for their beauty alone it didn't bother me that every time I came across this I hadn't made something out of it. I just liked having it. But when searching around through all my beads, UFO's previously made items and the box of 'do something with this! " I came across it again and got to thinking. I didn't even make a sketch with this one, just went to it. I was able to incorporate some beads I'd made about three years ago, some faux turquoise, ivory fossil beads and some ancient Hebrew pictorial beads. I loved how these came out but never knew what to do with them.

My focal Art Bead is made from a mixture of various colors of clay and sand, to emulate the texture in the caves. The pictorial letters are the head of an Ox, reminiscent of the cows and steer through out the caves at Lascaux. The second symbol is a Cattle prod or Ox goad, looks like a Shepherds crook. The Ox stands for the Leader and the goad symbolizes authority. These two put together symbolize G-d in his primitive role, as the leader who guides his people because he is the authority over them. Transliterated this word from Hebrew is 'El'.

I gathered these all together and grabbed some turquoise chips I had recently added to my bead boxes by cutting up an old necklace. It needed a bit more because of the dark brown, almost black vein in the stone bezel. So instead of using any black beads I had I decided to make some faux lava beads. So except for the turquoise chips and the stone bezel I made all these other stone with polymer clay. Not even sure if I want to list this in my AlmostARTifacts shop, I really like this alot and may keep it for myself, but yet I don't go out that much so if someone is really inspired and attracted to it, I would be happy to depart with it, I love it when my pieces find the perfect home! :)

So I just finished this about an hour ago, quick too some pictures and uploaded it to the ABS photo stream at Flickr. Check out all the great entries, this sure was an inspiring piece, seems the ancient art inspires as much if not more than the more modern and professional ones. Wonder if that is because we can all relate to it more?

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