Beadmaking | Beginners to Intermediate

Julie Anne Denton

During the first week, beginners will learn all the basics: how to make a round bead with perfect puckers and decorate it with wraps, dots, zig zags, plunge and twisted dots, gravity twists and much more. They will make stringers, twisted cane and filligrana variations. (Striped cane) They will learn how to fume onto their beads using pure silver. They will make square beads, column beads, organic beads, tapered beads and hollow beads, all of which will be made in soft glass. In borosillicate we will encapsulate mushrooms in glass, make vertabrate beads and impolsion pendants. In the second week we will learn how to make very long beads with perfectly symmetrical dots, we will fume beads and sandblast a design into them which we will later flame polish, we'll use cold shop processes to cut windows and facets into our beads and if there's time we'll make murini faces to include in our beads. For flamework we will concentrate on stretching the boundaries of sculpture with borosillicate using components These pieces will be experimental, and you may not be able to take these pieces home so please come with an open mind and let your imagination run wild.

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Julie Anne Denton

Julie Anne Denton was born in the Isle of Man. She began her art education at Isle of Man College for further study, before venturing across the water to Wolverhampton University to study glass and philosophy at a degree level. Four years later, she achieved a 2:1 degree with honours. Whilst completing her course, she taravelled to Seattle to study lampworking under the tutelage of glass maestro Emilio Santini for a period of time at Pilchuck Glass School. After finishing her degree and showing her work in several exhibitions, she travelled to USA once again, but this time to Virginia to learn, work and teach with Emilio Santini. Since leaving the States in the summer of 2001, she has continued to exhibit and teach in Britain, Eire and the USA. Before taking up a year long residency at the Courtyard Gallery, Isle of Man, she was chosen to attend masterclass taught by sandcasting maestro Bertil Valien. During the residency, she travelled to America to learn the figure in soft glass by Luccio Bubacco and since finishing her residency with a successful solo show under her belt, she now works for herself at the Grenaby Artists Studios, which has been awarded to her for the second year running by the Arts Council, on the Isle of Man whilst teaching and demonstrating in the UK, Europe and the USA for four months of the year. Her work is sold at Tate Britain and Liberty's, London. http://www.glassodyssey.co.uk/