Artist’s Statement
Everything is Govinda
Just as there is one thread
And on it are woven breadthwise
and lengthwise
Hundreds of thousands of beads
So is everything woven unto the Lord.”
from Grantha Sahib 2352
by Indian poet Nam Dev
ca. 13th-14th century AD
Close your eyes for a moment, and imagine hundreds of thousands of multicolored beads, piled high in several enormous wooden bowls. You scoop up a handful, and notice that some are nearly as small as a grain of sand, yet faceted to catch the light. Others are larger and unfaceted, yet still radiant as light travels through them. If you are a bead scholar or collector you may sort, study, and document them.You are fascinated not just by their material essence–their colors and shapes–but more importantly, by their practical or symbolic significance–in other words, by what they meant to the humans who made owned, worked with or traded them. Because, as the late Peter Francis Jr. often reminded us, 
“It’s not about the beads, it’s about the people.”
If you are a beadworker, you may share this fascination, but soon your interest takes a different trajectory. No matter the scale of your artistic vision or the level of your expertise, your purpose is simple: to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. For you, meaning resides in the linking together of chaotic little bits of color and form. Whether you know a single technique or several dozen, exhibit your work professionally or not, there is but one way to proceed: one bead at a time. You follow in the footsteps of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of beadworkers of other centuries, and anticipate those who will follow you in the centuries to come. 
In a sense, you form one small link in a vast metaphorical web of beadworkers that stretches from past to present,uniting beadworkers of the Eurasian Ice Age of ca. 25,000 years ago, to beadworkers in the early 21st century. This imaginary web, not unlike the one evoked in Nam Dev’s poem (see top of this page), unites beadworkers of all races, cultures, religions and nationalities. Each beadworker is a radiant point of light, invisibly connected to beadworkers in the immediate area, and to beadworkers in the far distance.
I am one such beadworker. To me, loose beads may be interesting or historically significant, but they are not nearly as compelling as beads that have been assembled into larger structures. I look at these structures equally from the point of view of an artist, and from the point of view of a student of the history of beadwork. For me, the most successful pieces, 
whether my own or someone else’s, express a singular aesthetic vision with a masterful use of technique. There is lushness, but it is tempered by restraint. Moreover, these pieces encapsulate seminal aspects of the culture or time period in which they were made. They communicate things that cannot be communicated in any other way. The modest pieces on this page, which I’ve collected over the last 30 or so years, embody these essentials, and it is to them, and pieces like them, that I look for guidance and inspiration in my own work. Without this dialectic of past and present, I would not know quite where to begin.
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I wrote the preceding paragraphs many years ago. They still ring true for me. But they are a product of a time before I began experimenting with a different kind of ”meaning” in my work, a time when it was enough just to engage my own and the wearer’s sense of self-expression, contemplation or beauty, maybe to remove us, momentarily, from the pressing demands of life in our 24/7 world of global commonalities. All during this time I drew inspiration from pieces of beadwork from other parts of the world, as I mentioned above, and from works of visual art from various Asian cultures, especially from China.
Around 2009-2010, things began to shift for me. The shift seems to be related to several things, among them, simply getting older—-approaching and then achieving 50—-and also, continuing to learn about China through visits and readings. I also began to feel a need to “say something” in the medium I had adopted many years ago, something that addresses, in a personal way, “man’s inhumanity to man,” as the Scottish poet Robert Burns put it.
So in early 2010 I began making a series of brooches which I think of as commemorative or elegiac ”tableaux.” These brooches can be worn, but that is not their main purpose in the world; they are in fact a bit too large and heavy to be worn comfortably. They have more to do with bearing witness, and imagining possibilities of transcendence. For the most part, written texts, not beaded ones, have been inspiring me to make these tableuax, texts that speak of human nature’s infinite complexity. I have more than enough sketches on file to keep me going on this series for the next few years. For the time being, I will not be posting images of the series on this site or anywhere else; they will exist offline. However I do display them at larger shows, as perhaps some of you have seen.
Curiously, these tableaux contain far more metalwork than beadwork. In some cases there is no beadwork at all–it just isn’t necessary. But the beadwork that does figure into these pieces is highly experimental, and it keeps pushing me into unknown territory, where ideas may or may not be willing to take the kind of visual form I envision for them. Hopefully, in time these new ideas will figure into the more purely decorative pieces I make. I so not see myself giving up my interest in beadwork as a medium worth exploring (although I’ve learned never to say never).
I will conclude by repeating the words that have for so many years ended the this artist’s statement, because they summarize how I continue to feel: 
There are still so many beads to play with, so many pieces to bring into being, so many techniques left to try, books yet to read, experiences to absorb. A hundred thousand days would not be enough, and that is a great blessing.
May you find inspiration in the images on this site, and return to your work, whatever it is, refreshed.
Thank you for your interest in my work and my world.
Valerie Hector
October, 2011
*I am grateful to Peter Francis for finding and publishing this excerpt in his article “Beadwork Beads, Parts 1-6,” in The Bead Society Newsletter 6:3- 7:7, 1980-82.