Eclectic artist creates eclectic body of wearable and decorative art

Artist Patricia Hart uses anything which comes to hand to create beautiful and useful art for more than just hanging on a wall. Her wearable and usable art celebrates natural elements from stone and clay to leather and metal.

Carved horn beads shaped as red beans adorn small purses made of leather. Labeled “Lucky Bean Bags,” the small purses honor the memory of a deceased New Orleans character, the Lucky Bean Lady who urged passersby to purchase her red beans as lucky beans She was also sometimes known as the Lucky Bead Lady as she sold individual beads cut from strands of Mardi Gras beads. Hart remembers encounters with the lady and named the bags to keep her memory alive. The attached tags tell the Bean Lady’s story.

Hart creates jewelry using many objects, including the carved horn beads and copper tubing, as well as a variety of stones. Her teabag holders and miniature vases are pottery projects. The elegant pysanky eggs which she creates involve wax and colors on hand-blown eggshells in a process similar to creating batik on cloth.

“I get inspiration from all kinds of things. Sometimes I see the material and that inspires me. Sometimes I’m sitting playing with my sketchbook and then I figure out ‘Now how can I make this? What can I make this out of?’ Because not every material does everything.”

Although retired for about two years, she’s still working—this time “to find my own creative voice” as she studies various disciplines. For example, she recently studied enameling, cloisonné and several other techniques at the William Holland School for Lapidary Arts in Young Harris, GA. She also teaches art workshops.

Her philosophy of giving back out of her knowledge and experience has served her well. After seventeen years of teaching gifted art students at the high school level, she now finds some of them coming back to share new things they have learned with their former teacher.

Hart’s works are available under her label HartWorks at Artists’ Galleries de Juneau in Olde Towne Slidell, LA.

Originally appeared 05/06/2016 at http://www.examiner.com/article/eclectic-artist-creates-eclectic-body-of-wearable-and-decorative-art