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[ Artist Story-11 ] Tilda Dalunde - Crafting Memories: Bead Free-Handed without Pegboard

Crafting Memories 1


Christmas Self-Portraits: Evolution


Since I was 4 years old, I've made my grandmother a self-portrait every Christmas. The first one has a big, round, blue nose and a dress with glitter glued along the bottom edge. 


Over the years I’ve been looking for different techniques to make these portraits, and this is how I eventually stumbled upon fuse beads. 


I used a peg board for the first portrait I made, but quickly realized that I like the mixture of pixelation and more precise lines that I can get if I bead free-handed on top of a sketch or picture.

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Self-portrait, my shadow over seaweed-covered cliffs​​

Crafting Memories 2:


Home Bead Sculptures 


Usually, in my practice, I make sculpture-objects out of metal and fabric, but when the pandemic came along it didn’t feel right to go to the studio to work, so I started thinking about what I could do from home. 


The reassuring repetition of placing bead after bead became my answer and a kind of calming activity for me. 


I used objects from my apartment – a globe, a lemon a crumpled paper, a rock – and fused the beads directly against their surfaces and then removed the pieces to create hollow, pixelated copies.

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The Earth &​​ Lemon beside original lemon
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Crumpled paper & ​​Pixelated rock

Crafting Memories 3:


Foot Reliquary Remakes 



One of my favorite types of objects are reliquaries. They are such an interesting way of storing hope, wonder and memory. 


Needing more of all of those, I decided to make my own version of a foot-shaped reliquary from the 1400s that I’ve always liked for its unapologetic adornments. 


While making it, I realized that many of my own memories are stored in the clothes I wore while experiencing them, and also that the clothes that are left behind when we lose people close to us carry the memory of them.

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Preparing for an exhibition (very seriously J). Tank tops with remembered places, Daphne-statuette with coral hair, and Foot-reliquary.​​

Crafting Memories 4


Memory Knitwear Creations



The well-worn fisherman’s sweater is inspired by the sweater that was worn almost every day and then got left behind, and still hangs by the door of Tore’s old summer house. 


The tank tops are made as illustrations of places where important things have happened to me.

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Tore’s sweater & ​​A forgotten memory

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