As a child in Turkey, Ani Afshar was attracted to bright hues.
”My art teachers couldn`t get me to draw straight, but they always loved my colors,” says Afshar, an artist who has parlayed her passion for color into jewelry designs.
Called Blazing Beads, the collection relies on integrating the brilliant colors of simple, single beads into complex, multi-textured works with striking appeal.
”I won`t use very elaborate crystals or handpainted Italian beads,”
says Afshar, 45. ”All you`re doing then is buying something already made and putting it together. In my jewelry, I paint with beads.”
”When I`m through,” she adds, ”it`s not the individual beads you notice, it`s the whole (piece of jewelry).”
Her palette is made up largely of translucent colored-glass beads from Czechoslovakia, although sometimes she adds beads from Germany and India.
The necklaces, earrings, bracelets and pins also include semi-precious stones, antique jewelry components, coins and fetish-style accents that she calls ”whiskers.”
Afshar works from a small home studio in Evanston, crammed with mismatched bowls and boxes overflowing with such tactile objects/beads as pastel balls in the shape of rock candy, smooth black cubed beads and cool marble-like disks shaped like donuts. She finds inspiration strikes most when she`s surrounded by these elements.
”One client told me that every necklace looks like a bowl of beads,”
Afshar says. ”I took that as a compliment. That`s what I aim for: an abundance of beads.”
Afshar began as a textile artist, having been exposed to the art at her grandmother`s weaving studio in Turkey. By age 4, she had begun doing embroidery. At 7, she took up knitting to rehabilitate a broken arm.
While attending a Swiss boarding school, she met and married an Iranian classmate. In 1966, the couple moved to Chicago, where her husband studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and Afshar began raising their twin sons, now 21.
But it wasn`t until the family returned to her husband`s native Iran seven years later that Afshar learned how to weave, taught by an expert from India. (Afshar later went to India to teach the skill to poor women, hoping to provide them with a way to develop a source of income.)
The stint in Iran lasted only six years. When the Iranian revolution heated up in 1979, the Afshars moved back to the Chicago area. (They are now divorced.) She set up shop in Evanston as a weaver and rug importer.
Though she had used some beads in her textile art, it wasn`t until a friend brought her some beads from Egypt that she ventured into jewelry.
Inspired by the interplay of colors in the beads, she began to make elaborate fabric necklaces with cascading beads for friends, but soon decided the one-of-a-kind creations were too labor-intensive to produce in quantity.
So two years ago, she simplified the designs, hired two assistants to help her make the jewelry and launched Blazing Beads.
Prices range from $40 to $300 for necklaces, which may contain up to 400 beads; $25 to $45 for earrings; $60 for bracelets; and $40 to $70 for pins.
Afshar says her longer necklaces pair well with casual clothing, and adds that some wearers drape them diagonally across the body for an unusual, offbeat accent. Her shorter necklaces, pins and earrings easily punctuate professional attire, she says.
The collection is available primarily in the Chicago area and on the East Coast, but Afshar is working on getting her designs into stores in other cities.
And later this year, she plans to expand the line`s offerings to include jewelry accented with strands of silver and gold mesh, as well as a bridal line that plays off silver, gold and pearl.
”Customers like the colors and the fun of it,” says Toby Glickman, co-owner of Elements, a Near North Side fashion store that carries Blazing Beads designs.
”Customers have been particularly enamored of Afshar`s 50-inch necklaces with tassels on the ends,” Glickman adds, noting that they like the feel and sound of the beaded clusters.
For Afshar, the satisfaction comes from fulfilling the potential that new components present to her.
”My mind is constantly working on the possibilities,” she says. ”All of a sudden it will hit me, and I`m sitting there until 5 a.m. It`s like a power that comes over me.”
Where to buy
All necklaces pictured, about $300. Blazing Beads designs available at Elements, Janis and Chicky`s Choice Boutique in Chicago; and Jordan McLanahan in Lake Forest. For information call 312-845-9115.
