Side Street Studio Blog | The best art that B.C. can offer

Tina Holden wrote.”I just love creating with my hands, watching many tiny pieces or parts transform themselves into a solid object, whether jewelry or functional art. ”

“Rarely is a piece planned ahead, and usually I am surprised how differently something turns out from what I had imagined, but in a good way. I do keep plenty of journals on hand in which I will sketch ideas, inspirations, past projects, or future must try’s.”

“If I find that a piece needs a special little something such as a clasp, pendant or bead that isn’t on hand, I put the work aside until I either create one that fits or find one that suits it. I don’t like putting things aside as I tend to fuss over a piece until it is done.”
“The rainy days of long winter months here on the West Coast allow for more elaborate pieces or to play with previous inspirations and to try new ideas.
This includes my bead embroidered pieces which  are more time-consuming as small beads are stitched on one by one onto a leather-like material known as Ultrasuede. This requires a great deal of focus and attention.

Bead embroidered collar necklaces take weeks to finish, but smaller pendants I can finish during the course of a day or two. My most popular are the ones that include Abalone, Jade and Tigers eye.”

“For these pendants I will create beaded ropes that are either bead crocheted or done in a beading technique known as herringbone or ndebele, an African name from where the technique originated”.

“Then there are the fun little dragonflies that I bead. We get many dragonflies here in the summer, including red, green, turquoise blue and last summer some strange ones we had never encountered before. I stitch glass petals together with tiny beads, mount them with heads of cats eye glass onto wire bodies.

Cat’s eye glass is also known as fibre optic as it is made with fibre optic telecommunications cable and molten together with glass. Both the earrings and pendant necklaces come with a legend. All my necklaces on cording have an adjustable length and a signature little hematite bead as a dangle”.

I enjoy the multi-media aspect of my craft because of the variety of materials I’ve taught myself to use. I’m focusing more on wire and polymer clay during Spring and Summer. Wire gives a rest from the tangles of long bead work threads and the malleable but firm clay-like consistency of polymer clay allows me to exercise my mind in different ways. Polymer Clay allows me to alter it to mimic other materials such as imitative stones, faux raku, mokume gane, ceramics, glass, lamp-work which allows for more one of a kind signature pieces.

The Polymer Clay objects that I create are bangles, cuffs, and beads for earrings and necklace. My favorite bead creations resemble sea urchins, starfish, sand dollars and flowers. I incorporate my beads into both jewelry and functional objects, my favorite being boxes. I’m very much inspired by my surroundings on the West Coast.

 You can see more of Tina’s superb work at Side Street Studio.

Pure West Coast Creativity by Tina Holden, Tofino, British Columbia.