The Hurricane Prayer Beads.....

In light of what has happened in the Gulf coast, I almost hesitated to put these on my home page, but art is often what happens in response to life events.  I started this series of works in response to what happened here in FL last year. We are lucky enough to be 60 miles or so inland, but amazingly enough we were impacted by 3 of the 4 storms that hit Florida in 2004. 2005 central FL. was much luckier. But here comes 2006...

The hurricane prayer bead series came about because one spends tons of time praying (literally or figuratively) that a tree doesn’t fall on the house, for safety, etc. Often electricity is out...hurricanes don’t pass quickly (passing within 1/2 hrs is a fast hurricane, believe that or not....)  4-6 hours or longer of sustained winds is not unusual...& all the storms hit at night...and w/no electricity, and trees falling, worry beads would have been practical!!

The idea behind the “Safekeeping Box” is to write down important numbers, such as bank accounts, phone numbers, insurance policy numbers, in case the wearer is separated from the actual papers... the blowing palms is typical viewing in a hurricane & there are multiple hurricane symbols on the box, as well as an eye on top of the box.

Click here for box closeup

With the prayer beads, I kept more in the context of the physical characteristics associated with a storm. The clouds (complete with lightning) are made of fused glass. I made the little hurricane symbols of Precious Metal Clay & cubic zirconia. The major piece at the bottom--the pendant, if you will, is a fused glass frit (crushed glass) painting of each satellite image of that particular named hurricane.

I included pearls with all of the pieces for the obvious reasons, they too, like the hurricanes, are from the oceans.  These pieces were shown at the Florida Natural History Museum in Gainesville FL in the show “Natural Curiosity”, June 2005/Sept. 2005.  

Larger Jeanne

Closer yet..pendant part

More here...larger view Charley

Contact Lori for comments, questions, etc. at her e-mail address:   www.dichrodog@dichrodog.com