Durham Arts

The Work

Most of my beads are focal beads.  In many I use silver foil or bits of copper.  I like beads with "stuff" in them.  I have made fish for "virtual aquariums" and more recently glass butterflies.  On balance I use more transparent colors than opaque ones.  The butterflies are now worked into mobile structures of wire that I call butterfly clouds.

Who is Gail Durham?

 I have been making lampwork beads since about 2000.  I now have a studio built into a corner of our garage, giving me the ideal "commuting" time.

Until retirement I was a French and Spanish teacher and the college counselor at a private school here in Portland, Oregon  My involvement in the arts goes back decades.  Clearly, I am a dilettante, having worked in clay, bronze, letterpress, weaving, paper making, bookbinding, enamel, felt, woodblock printing, wood engraving, drawing, oil and acrylics.  Before I learned to make glass beads, I made paper beads, ceramic beads, silver beads and even a few bronze beads.

When I first saw glass beads being made at Beadazzled, a favorite bead store in Washington DC, I was hooked.  My first two bead making classes I took at Bullseye Glass in Portland, a great place to begin.  Then I traveled cross country to a weeklong intensive beadmaking class through Elderhostel at Snow Farm in western Massachusetts.

My teacher, Sally Prasch, prepared me well to set up my own studio once home.  At first I rented an 8 foot by 8 foot studio in a building designed for small studios and ordered all my equipment including a Nortel Minor Burner, a kiln and all the necessary connectors as well as glass rods and tools from Frantz Glass in Shelton, Wahington.  When I had questions during set-up, Mike Frantz talked me through the process on the phone.  Now I use a an oxygen concentrqter instead of a tank and a Skutt bead kiln that I like very much.

The classes I have taken have been essential to the honing of skills.  I am indebted to many excellent teachers: Sally Prasch, Sharon Peters, Janice Peacock, Larry Scott, Andrea Guarino- Slemmons, Michael Barley, Barbara Becker Simon, Peggy Rose, Jim Smircich and a few lessons from Emily Lake and her late husband Alec Lake from New Zealand.

On any given day I look for inspiration from nature, bead books and from fellow beadmakers on the Internet.  Making beads is for me play, focus, creative delight.  I often do beadmaking demos in my studio for one or two people and have done some teaching as well.

Bead ideas wake me up in the night.  I expect to continue to make bead until my eyes fail or my hands shake.