D  e  s  e  r  t     E  x  p  o  s  u  r  e     May 2005

The Beading Bug

Silver City's Bead Society celebrates three years of turning beads into art and beaders into addicts.

Story and photos by Donna Clayton Lawder

The door opens wide and Cheryl Mallett, a short, solid woman with silver hair, an impish smile and an almost elfin countenance, gives a grand, sweeping-arm gesture, indicating I should enter.

A "phoenix" rises from the bead pile.

"Welcome to Bead Central," she says.

The room, the main part of Mallett's home, is a riotous jumble of colors and shapes. A steer's skull sits on a small side table, next to the terrarium of potted plants that serve as trees for tiny Chinese ceramic figures. Her small stuffed chair and foot hassock sit in front of a bookcase crammed with books and magazines, all bathed in light from the picture window. A couple of display tables jut into the room from opposite walls, and I examine the one holding handmade necklaces, earrings, sparkling miniature critters and what look like lacy collars, all made from tiny beads.

This is, unofficially and yet for all practical purposes, the home of the Silver City Bead Society, a group of self-proclaimed "crazy ladies" who get together to gab, laugh, share snacks and create glittering beaded objects of extraordinary beauty. For some it is only recreation, for others a source of income as well. For all, it is a passion.

Master Beader and Resource Extraordinaire, Mallett is a founding member of the Society, formed three years ago.

"I was teaching these six-week classes," she explains. "I'd been through a couple of cycles of them, and people didn't want me to stop teaching, so I said 'OK, we'll start a bead society.'

The fall Big Ditch Art Fair three years ago was the group's big "coming out," Mallett says, when the core group of "crazy beading friends" put their wares together and displayed their work. "But our start as a Bead Society began with the Blues Fest," three years ago this month. "I had just finished The Passion of the Beads (a photo-like bead painting of Jesus) and it was on display (at the former Gifted Hands Gallery in Silver City). Then, as a society, we pulled together and got a booth at the Blues Fest. That made us official. Well, an official bunch of crazy ladies," she adds with a laugh.

The Bead Society has a core of eight members who religiously attend the society's official monthly meetings, coordinate group orders of beads and beading supplies, and keep communications between the members vibrant. There are also about 14 "active" members, whom Mallett describes as those who show up at some of the monthly meetings, join in group shows and share their wares and techniques with the other members. Then there's another ring of more occasional participants, the "inactives," who have the requisite love of beads and occasionally hook up with the group, but don't really come to meetings. Beading wannabes?, I wonder. Maybe just not quite "crazy" enough.

Official meetings are once a month, generally the second Sunday, and are currently held at Alotta Gelato in downtown Silver City. This enables Starr Belski, bead lover and co-owner of the Italian ice cream shop, to attend meetings if the counter is quiet, or to at least look in on the other beaders' projects in-between customer rushes.

In addition to the regular meetings, the group gets together for informal Beading Circles, "as the spirit moves." These are gatherings that take place in willing members' houses and often include a brunch or snacks and "a lot of hilarity," according to Mallett. The word is put out for a circle, she says, whenever someone needs company (beading can get lonely!) or help on a project.

Membership in the Bead Society is free and open to the public. A "love of beading is required," Mallett says, as is a willingness to learn new things.

Dagny Sellorin, a former Silver City resident and bead artist fondly remembered by the society, now making her home in the Bahamas, was also among the initial members, with hardcore beader and freelance writer Bonnie Davis following soon after. Davis is also at "Bead Central" this morning, drinking coffee and sharing notes on the Peyote stitch with Mallett. From the zing in the air, it seems the coffee started flowing long before my arrival.

"I started beading as a kid," Davis says, "and then got back into it about three and a half years ago. A friend wanted me to make a strap for his mandolin. I've been doing commission work, things for sale at the shows and my own stuff, ever since."

Closely associated with the Silver City music scene, Davis has specialized in beaded guitar straps. She shows me several shots of her custom wares, done on commission as special orders for individuals, including one with a pink flamingo.

"They also serve as a purse strap," she says, displaying her own sparkling bag. Her denim jacket is also enhanced with much beadwork, including a stars and stripes shield that covers an old Dallas Cowboys logo. Down the front is a bold letter "B" for "Bonnie," underscored with intricate beaded roses, and a silver-and-burgundy swath across the shoulders and back.

Beaders, it seems, like to augment garments of all types with beads. Mallett is wearing her familiar customized leather cowboy hat, the design centerpiece of which, an embellished green stone, sits front and center, a mystical mineral eye that seems to guard her third eye chakra.

Mallett gestures toward her hulking work desk, an enormous "groaning board" fitted out with special lamps, covered with tools and little "working trays" filled with beads and tiny implements. The whole affair is lined at the back with bins and bins and BINS of brilliant beads in pullout drawers, stand-alone round plastic bins and little Lucite boxes.

"I've got about 500 colors in here right now," Mallett says, adding, "I'm a bit low."

I am reminded of a sign at the fabric shop, where I've been known to spend hours on end, that reads: "She who dies with the most fabric, WINS!" I remember my sense of relief and camaraderie when I first read that sign. Aha! We ALL do it, I thought, reflecting on my crates of fabric, bought on sale, bought on vacation, bought, well, just because. Collecting beads, and the accoutrements of beading, seems to border on obsession, as well. After all, you never know when you'll need just a few more size-12 matte purple glass beads, right?

"Oh, yeah, we're all a little crazy," Mallett agrees, and tells the tale of her beading beginnings: "I fell in love with beaded purses. I had about $6 in my wallet and I bought a beading book and some beads. Out of that, I made a pair of earrings I sold for $12, so, of course, what did I do? I turned around and bought more beads.

"When I told my Cherokee adopted sister that I had just spent my last dollar on beads, she asked me, 'How do you saute them?' I just laughed and said I needed to lose some weight anyway!"

The stories really begin to flow, as Mallett and Davis recall a lady and her husband who had a small business in Roswell, NM. The woman introduced one small table of beads into the retail mix, and now it is a full-blown bead shop. Mallet says, "They (the owners) realized that they could sell a refrigerator for $150 and then have to deliver the darn thing, or they could sell $150 of beads to someone, and the customer could walk out with it in a bag." She laughs.

There are stories of "the dazzled look of a kid at Christmas" the first time a beader sees a bead supply catalog. Stories of massive communal bead swaps, bazaars, bins and baskets of clearance beads, over which the hardcore beaders have been known to spend hours trying to find a bargain and maybe even match rare Czechoslovakian glass beads to a project they've been working on.

And then there's the story of The Beadaholic, a lady who literally has warehouses full of nothing but beads.

"Now she's a collector!" Mallett exclaims, Davis nodding in solemn, knowing agreement.

As the morning goes on, Mallett proves herself to be a walking, talking encyclopedia of beading arts and history. "Beading suffered great losses with World War II," she says. "France was in ruins; the glass shops were lost. Germany and Czechoslovakia were behind the Iron Curtain. Siworsky Crystal, the oldest glass bead manufacturer, survived by moving to South America."

Getting down to "bead basics," Mallett says that the most commonly used beads are seed beads, simple little donuts of glass in various colors and sizes, such as 11s, 14s, 15s and so on. The larger the number, the smaller the bead.

Dagny Sellorin, now of the Bahamas, is remembered for working in size 18 and 22 beads, which are challengingly small.

"She had patience!" Davis exclaims.

"Oh, and the quality it gave to her work!" Mallett adds. "Dagny, quite simply, painted with beads. There's no other way to say it."

Besides round seed beads, there are specialty animal-shaped beads, flat-sided beads, even ornate cathedral beads that have an architectural quality. Charlotte beads from Czechoslovakia are increasingly rare, thus expensive, and increase the price of a beaded item incorporating them.

Pricing, it turns out, is a real bugaboo. Based mainly on the cost of materials and somewhat on what the market will bear, pricing gives only a nod to the hours of labor that go into a piece. "You have to do it, first and foremost, because of the passion," Mallett says. "Don't go into beading thinking, 'Oh, I'm gonna make money at this!' It just ain't gonna happen!"

She pulls out more magazines to show some impressive projects—vests entirely covered in beads, large sculptural items and bead paintings, elaborate necklaces and bracelets—which command hefty prices in places like Santa Fe. Being in Silver City is another factor in pricing, she explains. She shows me a delicate, glittering beaded collar, made by crocheting beads on threads, following a design pattern she has customized to her desire and eye. It would sell for about $75 here, but could command up to $200 in a gallery in Santa Fe or at the Renaissance Faire.

Mallett turns her attention back to my bead education, pouring a small amount of glistening beads from a tiny shovel onto her velvet-covered work tray. I notice the difference from the seed beads right away. These are the delicas.

"Delica beads are laser precision cut," Mallett says, "and the color from one bead to the next is absolutely consistent." More expensive than the common seed beads, delicas lend themselves to bead paintings. Mallett opens a catalog showing examples of bead creations copying the art of the great masters—the Mona Lisa smiles back at me, this time glittering. On another page, the bead paintings are in a style called Deco. They have a whimsical, cabaret feel to them, with the fun and energy of a Peter Maxx.

In addition to beads, artisans may use some unusual sculptural ingredients, and Mallett has such things—turtle shells, bones, snake skins, coins, precious minerals—scattered around Bead Central. These items, she explains, can be affixed to backings and beaded around or added to a beaded picture. They can also serve as the foundation of a sculptural piece, produced through a technique called free-form beading in which beads are embedded in wax resin, a method used by the Wettchol indians of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico.

"Like it says in the Fire Mountain Gems catalog (one of the beading supply houses), you're limited only by your imagination," Mallett adds.

In addition to the tricky stitches she helps other Bead Society members master, Mallett has something of a "sacred specialty": She is authorized to repair the ceremonial items for southwestern Native Americans. She has a special store of Native American antique beads, and describes her preparation for performing this specialized work:

"It requires special stitches and the proper attitude. I lock down the studio, put a sign on the door that I am not to be disturbed, and let the phone machine pick up. There can be no interruptions, and I don't work on any other projects when I am working on a ceremonial item."

Special resources abound, I find, at Bead Central. In addition to Mallett's exhaustive knowledge plus towers of books and magazines, beading has entered the Information Age. Tucked away in an unassuming entertainment cabinet in her bedroom, Mallett introduces me to Bead Wizard.

This program, which she shares with all members, can take a photo or drawing and, with the input of the piece's specs, calculate how many beads of each size and color will be required to complete the piece.

In goes a black-and-white picture of, say, a cat. A color palette is chosen and the size of bead plugged in. Voila! A full-color image of a calico angora is produced, along with the laundry list of how many black, orange, white and gray beads will be required. Two hundred sixty seven size-12 seed beads? Ah, but what beader would want to limit herself to that?

This simple set-up of computer, scanner and printer also enables members to scan their completed works into memory, so that they might repeat items for future sales, or even take an existing project and alter the pattern, successfully and painlessly. Mallett shows me files containing the specs and images of members' bead creations.

Suddenly the Bead Society seems less to me like a bunch of crazy crafters, and more like a bunch of crafty artists who have found a way to take the headache out of designing their creations and save their energy for their passion, the crafting of glittering art.

"You ought to come to our next meeting and meet some of the others," Mallett suggests. Putting aside the trepidation provoked by that term "the others," I decide to do just that. I mean, how crazy could they be?

And so, on a clear Sunday morning in March, I find myself walking into Alotta Gelato and asking where the "crazy ladies" are meeting. Starr Belski smiles her trademark smile and directs me to a table in the back. She's helping hubby Mitch dish out gelato to a growing line of customers, and probably won't get to see much of the beading going on at today's meeting. Sundays, evidently, are good for the Italian ice cream business.

At the back table, there is no call to order, no Robert's Rules. Dozens of small packets cover the center of the table, and members are poring through, looking for beads they might "need" for their projects.

Jane Alley, who owns the shop A Bead or Two in Silver City, has donated a huge cache of leftover and piecemeal product to the group.

"About once a year," Mallett says, "we all go through our closets, see what we're not using, and share the wealth."

Susan Brians Lynch, an active member of the Bead Society, is discussing with a new member the assorted sizes of beads on the table and their uses. Other attendees' hands are reaching in and out of the bead smorgasbord on the table, and there are murmurs of "These would be great for that!" and "This will help me finally finish that necklace!"

A substantial senior lady in a dramatic tie-dyed T-shirt is handing around a smooth round stone, about three inches in diameter. It's labradite, named for the Labrador Islands where sizable specimens are found.

"Turn it," she encourages a member. "Look at those flashes!" Members ooh and ahh over the sparkles of blue fire that seem to leap from within the stone.

"Got it in Deming," the owner of the Labradite says. The group nods in group knowingness of the kind of treasures found at such gem shows.

A little bit of business enters the mix. Mallett, who has been holding forth with tips on working with the Peyote stitch, evidently another of her specialties, mentions the society's booths at the upcoming Blues Fest.

"It's costing us $95 a booth, and we're getting two," she says. "We still need $110." A member hands Mallett a $20 bill. "Make that $90," she quips. This is how it's done at Bead Society meetings, a laissez-faire mixture of dazzle and dollars.

Another member pulls out a necklace she has been working on.

"Aren't you done with that yet?!" Mallett chastises in mock fashion.

The woman next to me pulls out two pairs of earrings and a magazine. She points to a photo of earrings made in something called the Honeysuckle Fuschia pattern. "See? This is my first pair I made, and they're just like the picture. Then, for this pair, my second, I modified the pattern to make this part more delicate, and this part longer and more dramatic." She pauses for a moment while I take in this information.

"By the way," she asks, "who are you?"

I laugh. I realize the group has just welcomed me into the mix and I haven't even identified myself.

"Oh, I'm a writer," I offer. "And maybe a future Crazy Bead Lady."

Several members laugh in response, with knowing nods.

Participants come and go, all willing to share their stories of how they got bitten by the Beading Bug. "My daughter started beading at 16 months," one woman tells me.

"Ha!" another retorts. "I'm the other end of the spectrum, then, 'cause I started at 61 years!"

Another member comes around the table to chat with me, and says her specialty is embroidering beads onto clothing. She describes a pair of pants she has beaded heavily, avoiding the inner parts of the garment, to avoid "rubbing," and how this augmentation has turned a pair of denims into something she can wear to an evening event and feel stylish and properly dressed up. "It's wonderful to adorn a favorite piece of clothing and make it even more special," she tells me.

I start thinking about a favorite denim shirt in my closet. It's not so "presentable" these days, owing to age and laundry detergent. I begin to fantasize about enhancing it with beads, maybe bringing back some of the garment's life.

"Oh, you can do it," another woman assures me. "If you can sew, you can learn to do this."

Mallett pitches in, offering that I should come to a Beading Circle and the members can get me started. One woman even offers me the use of her needles and free beads so I can try my hand with no financial investment. If this is "crazy," I like it.

"Like I used to tell all my students," Mallett says, "I can tell if a beader is going to make it by three weeks. By then, they should have shown whether they have the passion and the patience. You just have to come to the point of knowing that the beads rule."

And so, a week later, I find myself invited to an impromptu Beading Circle at Susan Lynch's house. I've brought along that denim shirt and a vague idea of what I'd like to do to it. Something simple, maybe a line of beads around the collar. . . .

Lynch sets me up with needle and thread, and we go into her bead room to pick out some purple and green size-11s for me to start out with. We return to the huge table in her dining area, spotlights clamped on in various places, with five other members sitting around with their projects. Though all are intent upon their work, they chat, joke and laugh. Several have brought snacks to share—rice cakes, cheese and salsa, and I smell something sweet, suggesting there are brownies on the premises.

With a few pointers on anchoring my beads with a doubling back stitch, I set to work. Time flies, I find, as I focus on tiny purple seed beads. One participant leaves and another arrives.

The new arrival is a friend of mine. She's surprised to find me here and asks, "How long have you been beading?"

I look at my watch and say, "Oh, about two hours now." The group laughs.

Lynch begins talking about some beading "finds" she recently scored at a Deming gem show. When she mentions having ceramic beads in the shape of iguanas, a particular favorite of mine, I beg to see them. With characteristic generosity, she offers me two, for free, for the corners of my collar. I cannot believe my luck.

Another woman passes her beading supply catalog down the table to me, and offers to let me tack onto her order. I turn the pages, noting the things she has marked as possible purchases. Suddenly I come upon some turquoise beads.

"Look at these!" I exclaim. She laughs and glances around the table.

"She's bitten," another jokes.

Another page. Cathedral beads! Seed pearls! I let out another animated gasp.

"Oh boy," Mallet jokes. "I think we've found another beader!"

Crazy Lady in the making? Can I truly accept that the beads rule? I'll let you know in three weeks.

Donna Clayton Lawder is the manager of Toy Town
in downtown Silver City, as well as a freelance writer and
Crazy Beading Lady in the making.

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