The Glass Bead Art of Nina Eagle

“I’m the kind of person who likes to feel inspired.” –Nina Eagle

If you can tolerate politics, there are many benefits to living in a mega-metropolis like Washington D.C. There’s theater, jazz clubs, and the Smithsonian, and, if you have the cash, plenty of good restaurants. But glass bead artist Nina Eagle found the city lacking in two essentials. First, despite a glut of art museums, D.C. was missing a supportive artistic community; worse still, the D.C. fire code frowned on torches, kilns, and other necessary implements for bead making.

When Eagle moved to Appomattox in October 2005, however, she saw a chance to delve more deeply into her chosen art form. I met Eagle recently over a cup of coffee at Baine’s, and she told me about her decision to leave the big city behind.

“I’ve always been a very artsy person,” Eagle said, “but there’s no place to really do that in Washington. [It's] not an artsy town, it’s a political town. So I thought, ‘Let me explore my artistic side.’”

The 300-miles journey south to Appomattox, however, would be several years in the making. The proper start occurred in the late-1990s when Eagle decided to sign up for one of Kate Fowle’s bead making classes. Here, she discovered her artistic calling.

“She [Fowle] had a two day class in Potomac, where she lived at the time…,” Eagle told me, “and I took this course and I was hooked. It’s melting glass with a torch and trying to make … a bead out of it.”

As the glass rods melt, the bead artist spins a mandrel, shaping the bead and blending its colors.

But Eagle faced an obstacle on the way to learning the art of bead making.

“I was still living in D.C. [and] I didn’t have a place for a torch in that apartment,” Eagle said.

But Eagle was not deterred. She attended week-long workshops each year at Touchstone in Pennsylvania to learn the art of bead making. But it was only after she moved to Appomattox that she was able to take her art to the next level.

“I finally was able to do a set up here,” Eagle told me. “I have a torch, a kiln, an oxygen concentrator—the whole thing. So in the last couple of years, I have been able to perfect what I was only doing once a year for many years…”

Glass beads come in a variety of shapes and designs, an infinite array of colors and color combinations, and can be used for an endless assortment of personal and household decorations including earrings, necklaces, lamp chain pulls, key chains, bookmarks, and guitar picks.

“Some people actually do small sculptural work,” Eagle said.

Creating beads is an intricate process requiring dexterity, imagination, and lots of patience and practice. Still, many consider bead making—like pottery or quilting—a skilled craft and not an art form. Eagle, however, believes that it depends on the person working with the materials.

“I think there are beads that are probably more to the craft side,” Eagle told me, “but the stuff that I’ve seen of the really good bead makers—I, personally, think they’re little works of art.”

Confusing the quality issue even more, one can buy “production” beads at craft stores and county fair booths. And while these might work well for a number of applications (such as children making necklaces for fun), little blood, sweat, or tears have gone into creating them.

“It’s not just practice—there is color and creativity that come into it,” said Eagle (pictured at right at Baine’s). “You can do amazing things with beads. … I’m hoping, and I don’t even think I’m there, hoping that whatever path I’m on in the glassmaking world, it will go wherever it goes and end up something superb…

There is also the perception that many “crafting” skills like quilting are taken less seriously because their chief practitioners are women.

“When men cook it’s an art, they’re great chefs,” Eagle told me. “When women cook, they’re feeding families.”

When not busy making beads in her workshop, Eagle operates Axis Music in Farmville with her husband Damon. She displays her bead art at the store, though admits that beads and guitars don’t always mix well.

“Most people who come into our store are guys looking for guitars,” Eagle said. “They’re not really into jewelry.”

As with any art form, Eagle has struggled to perfect her style and technique. There are expenses, long hours in her workshop, and, if she isn’t careful, the chance of burning her hand with the torch. But Eagle offers the best reason of all for persevering.

“I enjoy it so much,” Eagle said. “I love doing it, I love looking at the end results—even when they’re not what I quite wanted, I always learn something…”

For those men and women who appreciate carefully made, colorful beadwork, Eagle’s work will be on display at the Evergreen Festival on Saturday, August 30th