Kelly Schweda
Kelly Schweda is a multi-media artist from Michigan and has had a very interesting career path. It began with a bachelor’s degree in fine art, concentrating in painting and metalsmithing. Although her first loves were painting and jewelry, she still took quite a few classes in ceramics, drawing and art history.
From there she soon pivoted and began to work in the field of domestic and sexual violence. While both aspects of her life pulled her into different directions, it somehow began to fit together. Kelly earned her masters degree in Women’s Studies, with concentrations in sociology and educational psychology. She continues to work in the field of domestic and sexual violence through the majority of her career.
Although her career may have drawn her in one direction, her art continued to pull her in another. Kelly’s main medium has been jewelry for quite some time. She frequently participates in Fine Art shows across Michigan. She describes her work as romantic and complicated, both reflecting her love of art history and creating something unique and empowering for people to draw strength or joy from.
While others were making sour dough bread during the pandemic, Kelly began making porcelain components as a creative challenge. This new avenue was a perfect blend of her skills as a ceramic, paint and jewelry artist. This also allows her to create unique, inspiring pieces to spark creativity and joy for other artists.
Kinga Bledsoe
Kinga Bledsoe was born in 1980, in Hungary. At 19, she packed up her life in a backpack and moved to the US where she has been residing since, albeit not at the same place. She currently lives in Michigan with her husband Jamie and dogs Nancy and Shirley and the occasional squirrel orphan. (They keep on showing up...)
One way or another Kinga has been always making things, which started turning into a career when she was painting murals at the time she lived in New York. The murals were fun, but she did not feel like painting was her calling. Eventually she picked up a Bead and Button magazine in 2007, found a bead embroidery project, and slowly but surely the obsession took over.
After that first project, she started creating her own designs and quickly found her own distinctive voice that allowed her to translate her imaginings into beadwork. Kinga is always brainstorming, and her imagination provides an endless supply of fanciful ideas that she translates into bead embroidery.
Her work first got noticed in the first Battle of the Beadsmith, quickly followed by her being a BeadDreams finalist in 2013 and getting 3rd place in the same competition in the Swarovski category in 2014, and a book feature in Marcia Decoster Presents, 2014. In 2015 she won first place in the crystal category in BeadDreams. She has done a number of instructional bead embroidery videos for Interweave publishing in 2016 and 2017, and has been featured in magazines in the US and Europe.
In 2013 she started teaching and she hopes to continue this as her chosen profession for a long time to come, not only passing on beady knowledge, but perhaps her unique way of looking at the world as a magical place filled with endless possibilities.