"Go Big or Go Home!" Suzanne Golden says about her amazing art jewelry. But Suzanne's work isn't just large in scale. It's richly colored and well designed. Not to mention, expertly executed. In this interview, Suzanne tells us how she became the artist she has become, teaching herself one beading technique after another, year after year after year.

Many of the techniques, she found in books. "I'm a technique junkie," she says. Suzanne had so many beadwork books, in fact, that she eventually shipped 700 of them to her friend Samantha Norgard, a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA while keeping the rest for herself. (A list of some of her favorite books is below). It makes Suzanne happy to know that art students at Savannah College will benefit from these books for generations to come, long after she has retired.

But Suzanne won't be retiring anytime soon. At 81, she's too busy designing new pieces, right in the heart of Manhattan. Everything she does is experimental the bolder, the better. Her favorite beads are little tubes of plastic made by Artkal. Artkal beads come in myriad colors allowing Suzanne to express her ideas in glorious technicolor.

This is the first of 23 interviews I will be doing with Suzanne. The second will be posted here in a few weeks. We will also be hosting a live Q & A session here on YouTube in the near future. Stay tuned.

When she's not beading, Suzanne spends time at the Dover Street Market, a 7story fashion emporium owned by Rei Kawakubo, the legendary designer of Comme des Garcons. At "The Rose Cafe," a small bakery inside the Market, Suzanne meets friends and other fashionforward people, who compare notes on the latest fashion design trends. Suzanne also likes to visit the only Comme des Garcons boutique in North America at 520 W. 22nd Street in New York. '

In her Instagram feed, Suzanne shares images of herself dressed for each day in imaginative outfits designed by Rei Kawakubo or her colleage, Junya Watanabe. Some the garments she models are new while others, she's had for years.

A celebrated NYC style icon, Suzanne once appeared in a photo shoot for the New York Times with legendary style icon Iris Apfel (19212024). Iris Apfel had a strong reaction to one of the bracelets Suzanne was wearing. So strong, it rendered Iris nonverbal. Suzanne tells this amusing story in our interview.

Suzanne has been photographed several times by Bill Cunningham (19292016), the famous fashion photographer who roamed the streets of Manhattan on his bicycle, looking for stylishlydressed people. For 40 years, Cunningham worked for the New York Times, documenting what people from all backgrounds were wearing in his columns "On The Street" and "Evening Hours." A YouTube search turns up quite a few videos about his life and work, including a documentary published in 2010.

In 2013, Suzanne authored a fantastic book that I highly recommend if you don't already have it:
"Suzanne Golden Presents: Interviews with 36 Artists Who Innovate with Beads."
https://search.worldcat.org/title/810...

Visit Suzanne's marvelous Instagram feed here:
  / beadygurl_duchess_of_dover  

Below: a partial list of Suzanne's most favorite beading books (in order of publication date):

Carol Wilcox Wells
Creative Bead Weaving: A Contemporary Guide to Classic OffLoom Stitches (1996)
https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=...

Carol Wilcox Wells
The Art & Elegance of Beadweaving: New Jewelry Designs with Classic Stitches (2002)
https://search.worldcat.org/title/479...

Laura McCabe
Laura McCabe's Embellished Beadweaving: Jewelry Lavished with Fringe, Fronds, Lacework and More (2010)
https://www.justletmebead.com/product...

Sabine Lippert
Beaded Fantasies: 30 Romantic Jewelry Projects (2012)
https://search.worldcat.org/title/749...

Jill Wiseman
Jill Wiseman's Beautiful Beaded Ropes: 24 Wearable Jewelry Projects in Multiple Stitches (2012)
https://search.worldcat.org/title/776...

Diane Fitzgerald
Shaped Beadwork and Beyond: Dimensional Jewelry in Peyote Stitch (2013)
https://search.worldcat.org/title/845...

Jean Power
Geometric Beadwork (2017)
https://search.worldcat.org/title/124...

Jean Power
Rivoli Beadwork (2018)
https://search.worldcat.org/title/107...

Interview timestamps coming asap.

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