Melanie Chouinard
Meet the Designer-Artist
Where do you live?
In a little old mill town called Wilton in New Hampshire, USA.
What inspires you as a designer-artist?
Fantasy and nature! Forests and wetlands are settings that inspire me. It is no wonder that faery tales and fables have been staged in these settings for generations. In trying to recreate the enchantment of the sunlight filtering through the trees, the mischievous laughter of a hidden stream or the impossible flight of a bumblebee, it only seems natural to me to use my art to tell of the magic of nature through the realm of fantasy. As I bead or sculpt, I am guided by the feel of the sculpture. Bringing the magical, the fantastical, to life is the driving force behind my work. My hope is that my work will sparkle in the imaginations of others to keep magic and nature alive in their everyday lives.
What medium do you work with mostly?
I'm a sculptor by profession and my medium is primarily polymer clay and papier mache. I bead as a hobby in order to wind down and relax.
Why did you become enchanted with this style of jewelry-making?
When I first opened my sculpting studio, it was in an old 1860's mill building divided into shops and studios. I was situated directly across the hall from an amazing bead shop with a very encouraging and supportive owner. If all the colorful, shining beads weren't enough to wear me down into trying beading (I resisted as I did not need another hobby!) then the knowledgeable shopkeeper, hilarious instructors and enthusiastic regular customers won me over. I took a few classes on basic stitches, but it wasn't until I took a class on how to peyote stitch a cabochon bezel that I fell in love with beading and started to run with it. I started designing and developing more and more complicated designs and techniques in order to bring my skill of sculpting to a bead weaving medium.
Where and how do you sell your jewelry?
My designs are typically large, sculptural, one-of-a-kind pieces that I make up as I go along, so I do not have patterns for them. I do teach bead techniques in my studio in Wilton, NH. I recently opened an etsy shop to sell my finished pieces and any rare patterns I might happen to develop. https://www.etsy.com/shop/FabledBead.
My work can also be viewed at TheSilverBranch.com
What is the name of the piece you submitted with your success story?
What inspired this design?
I adore fantastical creatures - especially dragons! The shimmer and shine of beads reminds me of a dragons' hoard, so it seemed natural to turn those treasures into lovely dragons.
I'm a polymer clay sculptor by trade, so I enjoyed using my sculpting background to freeform "sculpt" the dragon heads out of beads.
How did it come together?
I'm always looking to do something I haven't seen before in a fantasy or nature theme. I'm always trying to push my comfort zone. I dreamed up this idea for shoulder dragons that might look amazing on the shoulders of some queen in a fantasy novel. That was the easy part. Figuring out how to make it was trickier. This was one of the rare pieces I had to sketch out and test strong armature techniques for, as the netting wings are particularly heavy for normal wires to uphold and keep shape with. The armature of the dragons were planned ahead of time. The rest was made up as I went along. The first dragon's head was purely developed by playing with stitches and textures. The second dragon's head was much harder to create because I needed to remember what I did with the first! The tails are an homage to my true love in beading techniques - bead embroidery. The scales of the dragons took me over a year to create, a few hours every few nights. This was definitely the longest time I ever worked on a project!