SPOTLIGHT ON ... DESIGNER
August 2007
Our featured designer for this month is Eleanor Wiley
Eleanor Wiley is an artist and author, a mother, and a grandmother. Her work celebrates the universal use of beads in prayer and the practice of being present in each moment. The Sacred Wheel of Peace, designed by Eleanor in 1999, is a symbol of diversity and inclusion, representing all traditions and cultures. The wheel is being widely accepted as 'A Place to Begin' to be at peace with one another.
Eleanor has been creating Contemporary Prayer Beads since 1994.She lectures on peace, diversity, and present moment practice. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has conducted workshops at the Parliament of World Religions, Cape Town, South Africa, and Barcelona, Spain; and through the Balkan Youth Reconciliation Series, in Plovdiv, Bulgaria; Budapest, Hungary; and Timosura, Romania. She has created personal prayer beads for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Fr. L Freeman, OBS, founder of the World Community for Christian Meditation, Ram Das, Ophra, Rachel Naomi Remen MD, Larry Dossey MD, and many others.
The book A String and a Prayer: Creating and Using Contemporary Beads, Eleanor Wiley and Maggie Oman Shannon, was released in September 2002 by Red Wheel/Weiser. She is a contributing artist, Beading for the Soul, Interweave Press, 2005 and There Are No Mistakes, Becoming Comfortable with Life as it is Not as it Should Be, Conari Press April 2006.
Wiley's workshops create a bridge between spirit and craft inviting people from all traditions to come together to create personal prayer pieces. She will be teaching a class at The International Bead and Beadwork Conference in Istanbul, Turkey 22-25 November 2007 www.istanbul-boncuk.org.
Beads are an integral part of every talk and workshop Eleanor leads, sometimes one, sometimes a strand. This gives each person a tactile reminder of the information they have made their own during their time together.
