Garden of the Mind — One-of-a-Kind Beaded Skull Sculpture

Before social media. Before careers and cities and the relentless noise of modern life — there was a farm.

There were quilts. There were hands that knew how to work the land, put up food, stitch something beautiful out of necessity, and take care of each other without being asked. I grew up in that world — Cherokee and Irish, farm kid, granddaughter of women who made everything by hand because that was how love was expressed. We grew food. We butchered our own meat. We sewed quilts from hand-me-down fabric and wrapped each other in them. We gardened before school and after.

I never really left that world. I just carried it quietly for forty years through a professional life that had nothing to do with it.

Garden of the Mind is my reckoning with all of it.

The quilt pattern you see across the crown of the skull comes directly from the hand-sewn blankets my grandmother and mother made — patterns passed down not purchased, stitched by women who loved you enough to sit and make something by hand. The green cabochon anchors the piece in the earth — in gardens worked at dawn, in soil that fed a family. The turquoise beading and poppy flowers that bloom along the sides are exactly what they look like: something growing. Something that refuses to stay buried.

This is a piece about what lives inside a mind that has been quiet enough, and worked hard enough, to finally grow something.

Fully hand-beaded using a heritage beaded art technique passed down through my Cherokee grandmother. Every bead placed by hand. No two will ever be identical. This is the only one.

Details:

• Size: 6 x 4.5 x 4 in
• Medium: Hand-placed seed beads, glass and ceramic, green cabochon
• Mounting: Free-standing
• Certificate of authenticity included
• Ships carefully packaged from Tallahassee, Florida
• Also available on Saatchi Art (Garden of the Mind - Hand Beaded Skull Sculpture by Debra Booth | Saatchi Art