Karen is a physician and bead artist working and living in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. She has been crafting since childhood and still enjoys sewing and knitting. In 2004 she discovered the joy of off-loom bead weaving using a needle, thread and tiny glass beads. This craft has allowed her to express her love of colour and texture, as well as creating wearable geometric art.
As a core member of the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork research team, Karen has participated in discovery sessions with the team and also did the technical illustrations for the books the team has published.
Her interest in fashion is long-standing, and her work is inspired by the patterns of nature, and the delight of colour.
Looks
Photograph by Kate McKinnon
About the look
Iris necklace
Glass Japanese cylinder beads
2019
Inspired by iris flowers, this necklace is made in peyote stitch. This is an off-loom weaving technique using a needle and Miyuki thread (a braided nylon poly-filament thread). Delica beads are precision cut Japanese seed beads making them the ideal choice for making wearable geometric art.
The necklace was stitched as a long ribbon strip with hyperbolic increases and resembled a glass slinky. Prior to geometric capture the segments of the beaded ribbon was arranged in groupings of diamonds at the top and hexagons at the bottom to allow the necklace to curve around the neck.
Graduated Geometric Necklace
Glass Japanese cylinder beads
in progress
The design of this piece in progress is a peyote stitch necklace with geometric capture of hexagons gradually getting bigger towards the center of the piece and smaller towards the back of the necklace. The peyote ribbon is created on a long Casting Spine.
The technique of the Casting Spine is new to the Contemporary Beadwork team and was innovated by Joy Davidson (one of our team researchers) in 2018. This piece will be available to photograph before the Look Book deadline.
The placement of the increases were coded within the Casting spine.
Photograph by Kate McKinnon
About the look
Poppy Cycle Neckpiece and Bangle
Glass beads and thread
2019
The Poppy Cycle is a piece designed by Karen Beningfield using a Contemporary Geometric Beadwork technique of Geometric Capture.
These pieces are created by adding coloured caps to small geometric HyperLoops (created with a stepped increase cycle) and then attaching the resulting barbell-like sets of flowers created into a turning cycle by hinging the edges of the flower caps together at a twist.
This form can be turned and twisted for a variety of presentations, including one that hides the flower caps entirely.
Sarah Toussaint, an artist on our team who lives in Belgium, is creating the necklace-sized version of the bangle, with huge flower caps.
The inspiration for this piece was a vase of flowers; Karen wanted to capture the way that they moved together as well as their sharp, clear colours.
Cascading Overdress of Flowers and Pollinators
glass beads and thread
in progress
This overdress is proposed to be worn over a simple sheath, and uses one of our Live Lines techniques to create a series of long, curling Casting Spines that will have many hundreds of tiny flowers, bees, butterflies and dragonflies attached to it.
The beauty of this piece is twofold; both the exquisite look of the Spines and tiny elements, and the fact that hundreds of people from all over the world stand ready to create it for the Linz show.
The technique of the Casting Spine is new to our team. We have long been looking for the simplest, cleanest and easiest to use topological edge for casting, but never considered a single line of beads, as there is no such stable form. In peyote stitch, which is how most of our architectural work is created, the smallest possible stable line is three strips of sewn work. This is not a useful line for birthing new work.
The Casting Spine was innovated by Joy Davidson (one of our team researchers) in 2018. By adding one more line of beads stitched to the middle row of the three rows the Casting Spine is created - an energized form with three lines of beads ready to hold new peyote beadwork.
