We’re moving into the white-hot, flat-blue-sky phase of Arizona summer. There may be storms later in June or July, but for now they are a memory, a daydream, or a nightmare (our storms can be all three at once.)
Anyone who has ever been through a desert thunderstorm knows the electric feel of the air, the whiff of petrichor and dust blowing out from the storm front, the purple and slate-blue contorted clouds building ever higher and higher into dazzling white summits. Lightning flickers. Thunder grumbles in the distance, stalking closer. Every living thing waits to be revived or drowned.
Here’s one of our storms from this winter. Yes, that knot of clouds was trying to become a funnel a few minutes earlier.
To go along with these beaded sections, I just finished the landscape beaded cuffs for my upcoming ‘Rain Season’ art sandals.
There will be a full blog post about these shoes after I complete and enter them into an art show later this year.
Materials: heavy felt, handpainted desert landscapes, various sizes of glass seed beads (approximately 1800 beads per panel), leather, steel, and polyester thread. These panels will be mounted to leather and beadwork ankle cuffs attaching them to these sandals (which I finished beading a month or so ago):
They’re probably about 3/4 finished: expect beaded fringe, chunky cane-glass beads like crystal, possibly bells, and intricately braided ties.