Kai World Beads
Kai World Beads are a family of beads that are sort of creating themselves. I knew at some point that the creative muse would take over the creative process and something interesting was bound to develop. It is sort of like writing a book when the characters emerge and then start to take over the story and the books goes in unexpected directions.
From the very start of my attempts at winding on hot molten glass onto the mandrel I’ve been fascinated with swirls — or spirals. Whenever I decide to just let my unconscious have a go at designing a bead — the swirl/spiral is the result. There are swirls connected to a bead, swirls within a bead and swirls/spirals going around a mandrel.
At the moment I’m working with Boro (COE 33) because the soft glass (COE 104) is not happy with the cold studio. And with Boro the larger, longer Kai World beings are emerging. Here is the story that the first beings have told me about their world.
KAI WORLD the story begins
Kai World is somewhere out there, a planet, way beyond our known world. The essence of these glass beings arrived on our world eons ago, they don’t know exactly when they arrived. They are a silica life form, but they weren’t always in this swirl form. Each being is unique and there are several classes of beings or perhaps age groups. Some beings were silica life forms for a long time in their home world. From what I can gather these being were carbon based and then were somehow changed into Silica beings. One of the older alien life forms may hold more of memories of the early history of their world.Their history will emerge when they are ready to share stories of their world with us.
I asked the first beings, who emerged through the fire of the torch, about their world. They said that long ago they lived in the water of their world. They took the silica life form because their world had became too warm for the carbon based life forms. The Carbon based life forms somehow transformed themselves, or transmuted themselves into an existing primitive life form in order to survive the changes of their planet. These silica based life forms could take nutrients from the water. Since I needed a name for their world I chose Kai, which means salt water in the Hawaiian language.The silica beings like that name because it reminds them of their home.
Insert photos here — current glassy manifestations of the Kai World life forms
The first alien emerged from soft glass a year ago, but this one was voiceless. Some of the glass used in this being had been in close proximity to some Boro glass used to make murrini chips. There was no glass or COE contamination but perhaps there was a vibrational connection of silica to silica molecules. Who knows with these alien life forms?
Then came the clear worm like creature made of transparent Boro. That glass cried out — HEY I need a face! Like — whoops who the heck is in my studio talking to me in the middle of the night?? Either that or I’m going crazy. One never knows since my studio is in the old part of a farm-house in a space that was just recently remodeled with fire-proof walls, table top and floor covering. Sort of over kill for the torch, but safety first, above all. There are ghosts associated with this house, or so I’ve been told.
One line of beads already does have a face. These are the Tiki Dudes. My frogs and fish have faces and eyes, so adding eyes to the swirl eels wasn’t an unusual request, except that the request was coming from the glass. (Or the vibration of the glass sending messages to my brain). Who knows with these Silica Beings?
Photos Tiki Dudes
I’ve worked with faces before, in poly clay. Some of my merging of fiber art with poly clay are a study in face shapes.
photos poly clay — fiber art/ beaded art
So it is natural that faces are emerging from the molten glass. Silver Clay has also yielded faces — the Volcano silver bead has taken on a Pele type form. Pele is the Volcano Goddess. How on earth she managed to get to Montserrat, I’ll never know. Montserrat is an island in the Caribbean with a live Volcano. The human carbon forms on the island haven’t yet figured out how to talk to the Goddess of the Volcano, like islanders in Hawaii talk to their Volcano Goddess.Then there is the Silver Skull bead and the skull murrini swirling in semi hollow beads. Photos are on the home page.
Back to the Kai Bead beings. The latest one has decided to attach itself to a length of copper Viking knit. Ironically the Kai being and the Viking Knit look like they belong together and one was made for the other.
Photo
This Kai Bead was made just after midnight on 1 January 2009. It was my thought that the beads that I make as the New Year begins will be a sort of guide for the coming year. I was working in blues, mostly water, ethereal type colors. Some of the beads look like miniature seascapes.
It is my feeling that as more beings of Kai World evolve from the combination of the Torch and the glass I’ll have a better idea about the world this Silica creatures come from.
(This story evolves with an acknowledgment of the Science Fiction writers who perhaps had their own Kai world beings to give them hints about alternative life forms on hot forbidding planets. Dune world, Star Trek, Star Wars, FarScape, Star Gate, Atlantis, Babylon 5).
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