2. Shape Shifter demonstrates an ingenious use of beads to evoke Heidi’s Celebrate Life panel was featured on
the texture of an owl. packages of Celestial Seasonings Tea.
T
he serenity that Heidi Kummli brings
to her daily life amid the mountain
air and natural beauty of northern
Colorado is manifest in the hand-
beaded jewelry she meticulously
creates in her off-the-grid studio
in the western U.S. Heidi’s bead-embroidered
bracelets, collars, necklaces, and handbags are
consciously created in nature’s motifs and feature
assorted glass beads, natural stones, and porcelain
totems of animals.
Like the centuries of women who have stitched
a higher purpose into their handwork, Heidi is
doing more than creating wearable objects. “I want
to be able to share these gifts with others so they
You can reach Heidi at too can feel the healing energy of the stones and
freespiritheidi@dishmail.net, my peaceful surroundings,” she says. “I hope that
and see her work online every piece I create carries a oneness with the world.”
at freespiritcollection.com
and freespiritheidi.etsy.com. Beaded backstitch and animal guides
You can order The Art of When she is creating beadwork, Heidi experiences
Bead Embroidery (co-written a flow of energy that guides her along the way to
with Sherry Serafini) at the finished piece. “I feel that I am a natural conduit
KalmbachStore.com. for the universe and this is what needs to be shared,
this is what I am here to do,” she says.
Even as other artists aim to differentiate them-
selves with the latest styles, materials, and tech-
niques, Heidi keeps her beadwork grounded in Though well known for collars, Heidi’s
its true form. “My techniques are quite boring, necklaces and bracelets are equally
actually, in the form of the basic backstitch,” imbued with spirituality.
www.BeadAndButton.com | October 2011 63
3. Among her favorite award-winning “Beadwork is a very meditative and
pieces are the stunning Shape Shifter healing practice,” she says. “I wanted to
owl collar with drop beads evoking share the healing that beadwork can
feathers that took first place in its cate- bring.” Heidi also created a colorful
gory in the 2010 Bead Dreams, and the bead-embroidered panel for Celestial
bracelet Wolf Tracks, the Bead Dreams Seasonings Tea as part of a fund-raising
first-place category winner in 2009 that promotion for breast cancer awareness.
incorporates silverware handles. She titled the piece Celebrate Life.
“Both Owl and Wolf are among my
totems,” Heidi says. “I see Owl quite Never out of touch
often on my walks in the daytime, which Even with her family’s lifestyle of living
is unusual as owls are nocturnal — they off the public-utility grid, Heidi is quite
represent the spirit world. And I used up to date technologically. She main-
to raise wolf hybrids. Such beautiful tains a website and sells her jewelry,
and loving animals, they are the teachers corresponds with people, and writes her
of the Earth.” books online — including the upcoming
The Spirit of Bead Embroidery and the
An interconnected career popular The Art of Bead Embroidery,
Heidi practices the same awareness that which she coauthored with Sherry
she utilizes in observing nature to finding Serafini. Her beadwork is appropriately
objects she can use in her work. Besides titled the Free Spirit Collection.
Heidi considers the owl one of her searching for trinkets at flea markets Heidi and her husband, Gregg, built
totems, and owls appear in several and online at Etsy.com and eBay, she their timber frame home on 12 acres in
of her pieces.
is partial to Laura Mear’s porcelain 1998. “We lived in a yurt while building,
animals and Gary Wilson’s natural until a bear broke in one weekend when
she explains. “When I need to fill in stones. “Laura brings animals to life we were gone. We came home to beads
between two stones to connect them, in an honorable way, and Gary brings and food and everything all over the
I draw in flowing lines with little swirls out the true essence of the stone in its place,” she says. “We still have beads
to add some movement. Adding another shape and cut,” Heidi says. on the ground there to this day.”
row of twisted beads on top of the She also credits other groundbreak- Solar panels and a backup generator
beaded lines gives the piece a bit more ing bead artists with the development provide all the power the couple and
dimension and helps direct the eye of her work. “The woman that really their teenage son, Benjamin, need,
where I want it to go.” changed my way of thinking about including conveniences like a television,
When she first began beading more beads was Virginia Blakelock,” she clothes washer and dryer, and even
than 35 years ago, Heidi’s pieces were says. “I had been beading for many an Xbox. They do not have landline
one-dimensional and her artistic voice years in a normal way when I saw phone service and have found life easier
wasn’t as evident as it is today. As she an article by her in Threads magazine with cell phones.
perfected her techniques and designs in 1989. Her amazing collars changed Today, Heidi is beading as she listens
through trial and error and research my bead world. I did my first collar to a CD by Eckhart Tolle. “The sun is
into the Native American beadwork and was hooked. No longer was my coming through the clouds, filling
of her ancestry, she decided that she work normal, it became art.” Heidi also the room with warmth and a feeling
could speak about her vision of life with appreciates Susan Anniskett’s pictorial of contentment and peace,” she says.
beads and stones. “Why not try to make bead embroidery, which she calls “close “As I look below to the east, I can see
a statement that can bring peace and to home” with its images of butterflies, the cloud cover. To the south, clouds are
happiness into the world — or a piece flowers, and animals. also moving down from the mountains.
that will make people become aware Now Heidi shares her knowledge My north window shows me the wonder-
of the imperfections in the world and with students who attend workshops in ful pine trees of my neighbors. I hear the
possible change,” she says. her home studio; at The Bead Lounge in birds, and I can also hear the silence.”
Heidi earned her first of more than Longmont, Colo.; the Rocky Mountain Let it bead. w
20 awards 14 years ago, just as beading Bead Society bead bazaar in Denver;
began to be acknowledged as a merit- and extracurricular programs at local Ann Dee Allen is
worthy art form. Her work has been schools. She underwent treatment for the former editor of
recognized 13 times in Bead&Button’s breast cancer in 2004, and for nearly Bead&Button magazine.
annual Bead Dreams competition, and three years has been teaching beading You can reach her at
she won first place in the coveted Saul to a local cancer support group for anndeeallen@sbcglobal.net.
Bell Awards competition for her fringed women.
Nature’s Jewels collar in 2003.
64 Bead&Button | www.BeadAndButton.com
