It all started years ago, at a local surplus store. They had a wide variety of things for sale, and it was always a mix of the practical, the interesting and the completely insane. I loved going in and seeing what I could stumble on for art projects, and you never really knew what would be available. And one day…they had eyes. Not just a few, but huge bins full of shiny glass taxidermy eyes of all colors, shapes and sizes! Some taxidermy business had decided to dump off it’s whole collection of them, and artists like me scooped them up by the handfuls and carted away as much as we could carry. I used them in polymer clay dolls, in pendants, in strange jars with eyes in the lids, on rocks that I mailed off to friends for no reason at all. I gave some to friends to play with. They were a bonanza, a complete wonderland of possibility…
it took years for me to whittle that pile of glass eyes down. But I finally did, And I was down to just a tiny handful, augmented by a few pretty glass and acrylic human-style eyes given to me by a friend, as a thank you for the handful of glass animal eyes I gave her. And as I was poking around in my embroidery stash, I found my small bag of leftover eyes, and thought to myself, “Hey, wouldnt’ this be really pretty surrounded by needlework? ” So I started to play around with the concept, with felt and leftover bits of old leather and beads and floss. And it turned out…pretty damn great!
So I needed to make more! And that meant I had to dig around online, since those magical bins at the surplus store were long gone, now filled with wooden beads or auto parts or Baby Yoda heads. So I dug. And like most things on Teh Interwebs, the quality and pricing were all over the map. I learned I could get handfuls of cheap eyes, or a pair of antique German porcelain eyes for eyewatering amounts of cash. With some assiduous hunting, I found some lovely dolls eyes in various sizes, just right for my projects. I also had to refresh my memory on things like peyote beading, and assesed my embarrassingly large stash of beads. And I started to stitch…
I called them Guardian Eyes, since I felt like I wanted them to be (mostly) benevolent watchers over a space, with possibly a good side-eye to energies and presences that were unwanted. You know how a stern look from a parent or older loved one could make you stop in your tracks? That’s pretty much the idea…only magical, with an extra dose of love and sparkling thread and beautiful beadwork…
And it’s been such a gratifying thing, to see how much people seem to appreciate what I’m trying for and eagerly giving them homes, where they can look out over their new domains and keep a gentle watch. I plan to keep them coming, along with all the other interesting things I like making. And now that the Pandemic is starting to slow a little, maybe sometime soon I can go back to that surplus store and see what else those magical bins are holding, now that all those wonderful eyes have gone…