My name is Svetlana Rohloff; I was born in Siberia, since 1991 I have lived in Germany, now - in the city of Augsburg. The desire for doing and creating something, stitching, gluing, cutting, etc. has been haunting me since my childhood. As far as I remember, I was fond of any handcrafting and it worked from first time. I was sewing, embroidering, weaving macrame, beading...
I was laughing that this ability is inherited and was just innate because my dad was a man with the "golden hands." He can do everything. I was lucky because I got the genes that are responsible for this "can do everything!" Courses of knitting, making soft toys, dancing, playing chess... It is all about me.
I didn't make success in singing. I don't sing at all. But drawing fascinated me and my love to that art doesn't leave me. After my high school classes I ran to the art school, buying a pack of plum jelly and cookies "Croquet" on the way. Nothing seemed to taste better! I think I had a happy childhood. I was lucky! I remember the Russian Siberian nature, lawns covered with wild strawberry, birch forests, snow drifts above the head in winter, the sky full of stars...
We always looked for the Big Dipper. We had the extreme heat in the summer and such cold in winter, so that seemed the air crackled. Once I read that the temperature in the city of Omsk where I lived could be - 40 C° in winter and + 40 C° in summer and there are only five such places in the world. I will not argue and believe in the word. I was lucky! Soviet pioneer camps, playing in Cossacks, labyrinths in the snowdrifts, birch sap and my mother's feather shawl... And the felt boots!!! Black and huge, they have always been wide for my skinny legs - that was my biggest insult in childhood.
It was easy to choose where to go after high school. The arts faculty of the Omsk Pedagogical Institute seemed to be created for me: drawing, painting, decorative arts and crafts. My soul rejoiced! I was lucky again! Five years have flown as one instant. Then my family moved to Germany and it turned everything upside down. Art has been forgotten for ten years. I became a good registered nurse. Then I got married. I would say one thing: when a child is born, an invisible and subtle sense of happiness falls on all those involved. I got "a piece" of happiness, too. Again luck!
People don't become artists, people can be born as artists. Even if you want to suppress this strange feeling of unrestrained pursuit for creativity, it will find a loophole, will break out, will haunt you at night, will pull you into the jungles of beauty and will make a nice catch up. Graphics, silk painting and creating jewelry from beads fell on my head and it was not clear from which side.
OK, graphics can be explained by my studies at the institute and by my graduate work: I always thought that drawing using pen and ink was something like a meditation. Let's try... Stroke by stroke... I'm done! I haven't forgotten how to do that, I can do! Batik comes from my desire to paint - after I realized that I couldn't become a painter. Everything is so easy. Paint flows, run behind her, add some more, sprinkle, flip and place. I have not forgotten how to, I still can!
But why beads? The first introduction took place when I was 13 years old. I came across a simple necklace pattern from the "Peasant Woman" magazine. I've repeated it about twenty times beading that piece of jewelry for all of my mother's friends - for a chocolate bar. By the way, the pattern wasn't thrown out, I kept it for my memory! Beading has captured my mind since 2011. Once I stumbled upon the works of an American artist Tina Koyama in the Internet. Her free-form works were the first ones I saw. I understood: this is mine, I want to do that, and I'll give it a try! Shortly after, I designed my first bracelet in this technique. I'm lazy, I don't like counting, and free-form is for me!
Since then I design my jewelry on the fly after picking up the colors of the material. I say that beadwork itself dictates my progress. I'm beading like drawing. I like to use the beads of different shapes and sizes and different materials: leather, bone, fur, silver, glass, wood, metals, and semi-precious stones. I consider it a real challenge to pick them up and put them together in a one-of-a-kind piece. I love looking for some place to another bead or button.
My beadworks consist of many small parts combined into a single piece, you can examine it and enjoy, and constantly find something new. My jewelry somehow themselves began to be 3-D and I wouldn't like to move away from that. Petal by petal, and a rose or another flower is born. I don't have patterns, but some of them are already in development. Well I'm lazy, I don't want to count the number of beads. I've several times sat to draw the patterns of the rose by many requests, but every time I was fascinated with something different and forgotten about everything.
Once one of my friends said that my 3-D jewelry pieces are properly "architecturally constructed". I don't have an architectural education so I call the ability to create such intuition. I have often been asked why I have so much patience. That's not true, I don't have the patience - but only for a symmetrical jewelry. All my works are asymmetrical. What motivates me? Only the desire to create something new, to finish a beadwork as quickly as possible and then start a new one. Beading is my meditation now.
I'm very pleased to see how beadwork develops and expands its borders. Thanks to the Internet, now all people have the opportunity to see the work of artists from around the world, to wonder, to get happy, to enjoy and to be charged with new energy. Currently, using the terminology of my second profession, I'm addicted to beads and I give birth one piece of jewelry after another!
My gallery on MyLovelyBeads.com
About author:
| Svetlana Rohloff, Augsburg, Germany | |
| Email: | rohloffswetlana@gmail.com |
| Online Shop: | www.perlenrose.ecwid.com |
| Facebook: | facebook.com/swetlanarohloff |
