Ornament is the leading magazine celebrating wearable art. Explore jewelry, fashion, beads; contemporary, ancient and ethnographic.
Issue link: http://ornamentmagazine.epubxp.com/i/77981
64 ORNAMENT 35.5.2012 bead arts ike many jewelers, Sue Rutherford's interest in arts is heavily rooted in her childhood. When she was still just a teenager, Rutherford was already teaching at a small local craft and gift shop in her hometown, after taking years of craft classes there. At age fifteen, she joined her sister for a macramé class at an evening adult education program, and immediately fell in love. Rutherford L Sue Jill A. DeDominicis The owner of the shop agreed to let Rutherford teach macramé if she found it was worthwhile, and Rutherford certainly did. "I took to it like some people take to sewing or knitting," she remembers. She made purses, belts and necklaces, wall hangings and the infamous macramé plant holders. Her passion for the technique, and arts in general, tied in nicely with the times. It was the height of the counter-culture movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. While Rutherford was a bit too young to fully embrace the movement, she was enthralled by it, observing her older sister and friends get swept up in the music, art and clothes. Rutherford interpreted it in her own way—using fluorescent poster paints to create her own versions of the psychedelic concert posters covering the walls in her sister's room. She started stringing beads and necklaces she thought would fit well with the longhaired crowds. She embraced the time's focus and appreciation for the arts and self-expression, doing her own painting, drawing, crafts, and altering her own clothes. WINTERGREEN necklace of waxed linen, chrysoprase, dyed pearl, green turquoise, dyed jasper, gold vermeil, gold-plate copper, gold-plate brass, lapis pendant, Swarovski crystal, cloisonné, aventurine; predominantly double half-hitch knots and wrapping, some square knots; fringe is sewn with silamide thread, 43.2 centimeters, 2012. Photographs by Robert K. Liu./Ornament. As she graduated high school and went off to college, she continued these pursuits, and soon turned to elaborate embroidery on lace for pillows, wall hangings, embellished jackets, and vests. Under pressure from family to follow a more traditional path, Rutherford was unable to quiet the artist within. After transferring from a two- to a four-year college she switched her major from business to art. She explored painting and returned to jewelrymaking, using both bead components and macramé techniques, elements that are integral to her work today. Working primarily in necklace form, Rutherford combines her talents for composition, color and her passion for beads into her macramé and embroidered jewelry. Increased demand for her work at venues like the Pasadena Bead and Design Show and galleries led her to return even more to her macramé roots. "As much as I love to incorporate bead embroidery into my work, I scaled back the frequency of embroidery and actual pinweaving to accommodate getting the pieces done faster."