"Artist Molly Murphy moves a needle and thread through wool with ease, like a champion butterfly swimmer bobbing above and below water on her way to Olympic gold.
While a swimmer might leave a trail of bubbles, Murphy leaves elaborate rows of colorful, shiny glass beads that might emerge as a single hummingbird or a whimsical courtship scene between a magnificent warrior and beautiful woman.
Whatever she's beading takes time - lots of it. But she doesn't like to clock the hours it takes to create a masterpiece.
“I don't want it to be a contest of endurance,” she said. “I'm not a patient person. Patience is for teaching small children. I'm a compulsive-obsessive person. Beading is a positive outlet for compulsive-obsessive behaviors.”
Murphy - an Oglala artist who grew up in Montana with a Salish influence - has been finishing some big projects in her studio at the Zootown Arts Community Center in Missoula. In less than two weeks, she will enter two beaded art pieces in the Heard Museum's 51st Indian Fair & Market, an art festival expected to draw 20,000 visitors and 700 artists to Phoenix on March 7-8.
This won't be Murphy's first visit to the Heard Museum's art market, where she has been awarded first place for “judge's choice” in her category. As a Northern Plains artist in a Southwest-dominated art festival, she enters her work in the “diversified arts,” which is becoming one of the largest categories in the Heard festival."
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