Prolific Polymer in Print

In our little community, we have just a few people who consistently write and publish about our medium. One of our earliest teachers through print and one of the most prolific is Barbara McGuire. She has authored or co-authored half a dozen polymer specific books and has written numerous articles along with her many other contributions to product development, teaching and archiving. Most recently she has been expanding into wonderfully detailed videos which you can get for free on her YouTube channel.

Barbara lives outside Asheville, South Carolina in a rural area where, until recently, she kept a bee colony. Unfortunately, her bees were wiped out and she is in the process of putting money together to build the colony again. That is the inspiration behind her series of bee beads, a collaboration between Barbara and with Thomas Michael Poole who made the bee wings and Klimt patterns seen in the series. Created from layers of canes, the bees on these beads look they just landed there and yet still meld into the complex flow of the colorful backgrounds.

If you want to help Barbara get back to her beekeeping as well as own a piece by one of our great pioneers, you can purchase her bee beads and necklaces in her Etsy shop. Barbara is even offering our blog readers a 30% discount off items in her Etsy store–just use the code SAVETHEBEES. You can also take a look at more of these wonderful beads and other work by Barabara on her Flicker pages.  And do take a look at her many wonderful products and books she has for sale on her website as well as checking out her class schedule for upcoming opportunities to learn from this master artist.

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