"Celestial splendor bridging ancient tradition and modern science."

October 11, 2019 12:33 PM

Since 2009, artist Margaret Nazon has been producing intricate, twinkling studies of planets, galaxies and nebulae as beaded artwork.

From the artist in an interview with the Glenbow art museum:

I consider my art to be “abstract.” Aboriginal people have used animal skins, bones, seeds, quills and rocks for decoration, and I figured it would fit in my artwork. I was given buttons made of caribou bones as a gift and I decided I should try to incorporate a solid piece of bone into one of my galaxy pictures. Viewers loved that. I spent last December in Salt Spring Island B.C. One of my friends asked if I was going to incorporate B.C. rocks or shells in my work and I thought that was a great idea. I started receiving rocks and shells as inspiration. Just recently a Gwich’in friend gave me willow seeds to use. The Gwich’in people used to use willow seeds to decorate their clothing.

Some of her work (direct image links, more available at her website linked above):
Milky Way Starry Night
Bright Lights, Green City Nebula
The Mask Galaxy
Saturn

"Against the black velvet of pure spacetime, Nazon’s intricate beadwork reaches across abstraction, across incomprehensible expanses, to make galaxies, nebulae, and constellations tangible; to render the wilderness of an impartial universe domesticated and personable. Galaxies millions of lightyears away, hundreds of lightyears wide, become intimate emissaries of spacetime on her 25×25-inch beaded canvases."
-Brain Pickings

posted by youarenothere (3 comments total)

The use of black beads as negative space in that Saturn piece - really really beautiful!
posted by DSime at 12:48 PM on October 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

I could lust to have the Mask Galaxy on my wall.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:09 PM on October 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Such beautiful transcendent work. I was just reading the article about her on Brain Pickings and came here to see this. Thanks for posting.
Also she lives *just* up the road from me!
posted by cabin fever at 10:09 AM on October 13, 2019 [1 favorite]