Victoria Scholes knows something about transformation.  Trained as a pharmacist, Scholes worked in that industry for several years before deciding to become an Anglican priest.  She describes what happened next, her departure from the church to follow her true calling as an artist, as “a growing realization that I wanted to spend my life doing what I wanted to do, not what I ought to do”, something a friend of Scholes’ calls “hardening of the oughteries”.

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Scholes’ website showcases her installations, mixed media sculptures, drawings and jewelry, including the coldworked glass beads shown here.  The beads wear enamel image transfers – she calls them “tiny theatres of the soul” – each one exploring the dual possibility of captivity and escape.

I am drawn to the smoky mystery of the image on the glass, and to this fragment of thought, culled from the full quote below:  “…transformation; seeking a different perspective; looking for escape from the things that bind us.”

For those struggling with difficult circumstances today, I hope you find a moment of comfort in the spaces between the words…in the images within the glass.

My work is all about transformation; seeking a different perspective; looking for escape from the things that bind us. Have you every tried to open your eyes underwater?  Ever since I was small, I’ve found this an irresistible, magical and often painful pleasure.  Everything is somehow the same, but magically and strangely different.  It is something of this perspective that I seek in my work, exploring the places where the imagination can transform what we think we already know into something new and different. I believe that it is in these spaces that the seeds of change are sown, and new ways of thinking and being are opened up.

link via Vickie Hallmark

Scholes’ beads in the Tempest Glass Bead Exhibition
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