September Monthly Challenge

Collection of Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, NY 56.42

http://www.mwpai.org/museum/

The inspiration for this month's challenge is from my favorite artist Wassily Kandinsky,

Improvisation No. 23.

Kandinsky was a Russian-born artist, one of the first creators of pure abstraction in modern painting and is regarded as one of the originators of abstract painting, or abstract expressionism. His forms evolved from fluid and organic to geometric and, finally, to pictographic. Kandinsky, an accomplished musician, once said `Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

In 1909 (the year in which he was one of the founders of the Neue Künstlervereinigung) Kandinsky began a series of Improvisations, in 1910 of Compositions, and in 1911 of Impressions; in these he eliminated all representational content to arrive—in about 1910—at pure abstraction. The choice of names, deriving from musical terminology, was significant, for like the Symbolists he was interested in analogies between colours and sounds (a great lover of music, he played the cello and piano and was a friend of Arnold Schoenberg, whose revolutionary atonality he equated with his own experiments). Kandinsky himself described how he came to recognize that colour and line in themselves could be sufficient vehicles for the expression of emotions; he returned to his studio one evening and failed to recognize one of his own paintings that was lying on its side, seeing in it a picture ‘of extraordinary beauty glowing with an inner radiance…Now I knew for certain that the subject-matter was detrimental for my paintings.’

Have fun with this color palette of that reminds us of fall, bright red and yellow with the tones of brown. Pull out the expressive art beads, layout some fall colored charms and let's see what you can come up with for this challenge!

Your entry this month can be influenced by the colors, pattern or whatever you choose to focus on for your creation. Just remember to include at least one art bead in your design.

The Prizes:
A winner will be randomly chosen from all the qualifying entries on July 1st.
Our sponsors this month are 2 special sponsors Ornamentea and Creative Impressions In Clay, please visit us tomorrow to see the prizes!

Featured Designer of the Week!
From all the entries during the month, an editor is going to pick their favorite design to be featured every Monday here on the ABS. We want to give our participants more time in the spotlight! Our Featured Designer will be this Monday, so get those entries in soon.

How to enter the Monthly Challenge:
1. Create something using an art bead that fits within our monthly theme. This challenge is open to jewelry-makers, fiber artists, collage artist, etc. The art bead can be created by you or someone else. The challenge is to inspire those who use art beads and to see all the different ways art beads can be incorporated into your handiwork.

***Beads by themselves and beads simply strung on a chain or cord will not be accepted.***

2. Upload your photo to our flickr group. Detailed instructions can be found here and click here for a tutorial for sending your picture to the group. If you can't upload to Flickr, send your entry and information to Heather.

Please add the tag or title SEPABS to your photos. Include a short description, who created the art beads and a link to your blog, if you have one.

Deadline is September 30th. Photos are approved by our moderators, if a photo hasn't followed the guidelines it will not be approved. You may upload 2 photos a day.

What is an Art Bead?
An art bead is a bead, charm, button or finding made by an independent artist. Art beads are the vision and handiwork of an individual artist. You can read more about art beads here.

*** A bead that is handmade is not necessarily an art bead. Hill Tribe Silver, Kazuri ceramic beads or lampwork beads made in factories are examples of handmade beads that are not considered art beads.

p.s. If you have a blog, post your entry and a link to the ABS challenge to spread the beady goodness.