About Valerie
Valerie Hector, January, 2010
I was born in 1960 in Evanston, Illinois to two loving and generous parents. I was the second of their five children.
When I was 3, I received a very important gift from my parents: my first set of beads—giant, colorful wooden beads—and a red and white striped shoelace to string them on (see below). Recently my mother found the original brightly-colored tubular container that they came in, labelled “Playskool Jumbo Beads No. 702.” I keep it on a shelf in my studio.
According to my mother, I used to sit and play with my giant Playskool beads for hours on end, stringing them, unstringing them, and stringing them again, in different combinations each time. Wherever I went, I carried the beads with me in a little bag.
Finally my mother started to wonder if something was wrong with me. Why was I so obsessed with these beads? Should she call the doctor? (Fortunately she didn’t. She decided to wait and see.)
My parents always saved everything that their children ever made. Naturally, this encouraged us and made us feel appreciated. They also made sure we had plenty of books around the house, so that reading and learning were part of our everyday lives.
Not only did my parents save my first set of beads, or most of them, but they saved my first and only self-portrait (at right)dating to June of 1965, in which I gave myself a large barrel-shaped bead for a torso, and a small round bead for a neck. I had become one with my beads. In many ways, I suppose, I still am.
Another defining moment came in the early 1970s, when my parents gave me a modest book, Simply Beads (by Betty J. Weber and Anne Duncan, published in 1971 by Western Trimming Corporation of Culver City, California, with a cover price of $1.50), which had diagrams of basic beadworking techniques and photos of beadwork from other parts of the world.
If a book can change a life, I think this one changed mine. For the first time I understood that a whole world of beadwork was waiting to be explored, that there were many other people just like me, who wanted to work with beads. And there was a lot to learn. A new universe beckoned. Somehow this was exactly the inspiration I needed at that moment, and in the years to follow.
In later years I tried to be other things—an English major, a metal sculptor, an anthropologist—but I always came back to beads. Or more accurately, to beadwork. I opened my studio on January 1st of 1988, and since then have been equal parts maker and researcher, figuring out how to put beads together, and looking into how other people put beads together.
In 2005, my own book The Art of Beadwork was published, and it began from much the same premise as Simply Beads: that there is more to this humble medium, this curious stepchild of the textile arts, than we tend to assume.
What is so compelling about beadwork? Why have people of so many cultures practiced it, and for so many centuries? There are many answers. One is that beadwork satisfies something very basic in human nature, which is to build a coherent whole from a chaotic set of parts. It helps that those parts are, often as not, visually inviting and intellectually interesting, with origins in lands and eras far beyond our own.
If you are interested in the history of beads, you will want to take a look at Lois Sherr Dubin’s brilliant The History of Beads from 100,000 BC to the Present,” which was published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in the fall of 2009 as an updated and expanded version of a book first published in the 1980s.
These days, I am sketching out a series of pieces that will express my concerns about some of the troubling events of our era. If I do manage to bring these pieces into being, it will be a paradigm shift of sorts, a move away from a purely decorative mode, one that feels somewhat overdue.
And I continue to research mainland Chinese beadwork, with the goal of publishing the results of my research in the next few years. Nothing makes me happier than working on this project, which is both daunting and fulfilling: trying to piece together clues to the history of beadwork in China, to create a different kind of whole from a set of disparate fragments.
I hope you will enjoy looking through my website. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email me, and I will respond as soon as possible. My resume follows.
–Valerie Hector
VALERIE HECTOR ♦ RESUME
Born Evanston, IL, 1960.
Formal Education
1985-1983
University of Chicago, Department of Anthropology, Chicago, IL. Graduate fellowship program. Recipient of Title VI fellowship for graduate study of Yucatec Maya; Charles Richmond Henderson Fellowship for outstanding scholarship; and travel grant for summer fieldwork in Yucatan, Mexico.
1981 -1978
Loyola University, Chicago, IL. Bachelor of Arts, Summa cum laude, with concentration in English Literature. Recipient of Gerard Manley Hopkins Award for excellence in literary criticism.
Informal Education
2008-1997
Completion of fifteen trips to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan to locate and document evidence of mainland Chinese beadwork.
2007-1982
Independent study of European, Asian and African beaded textiles in the storage departments of the following museums:
American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
De’An County Museum, Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province, China
Etnografiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England
Guangdong Folk Art Museum, Guangzhou, China
Hong Kong Museum of History, Hong
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Museum of London, London, England
National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.
Peabody Museum, Cambridge, MA
Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden, Netherlands
Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England
Professional Experience
2009-1988
Jewelry Designer, owner of Valerie Hector Designs, Ltd., Evanston, IL.
Exhibited at several hundred juried American craft shows, including:
The Smithsonian Craft Show (1995, 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007)
The Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show (1992-2001, 2003-2008)
The American Craft Exposition, Evanston (1992-2001, 2003-2008)
2006-2007
Served as Co-Chair (with Jamey D. Allen) of the Academic Sessions Committee of the International Conference on Beads and Beadwork, which took place in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 22-25, 2007. Invited, coordinated and served as moderator for 26 international speakers on various aspects of global beadwork history during the conference.
1988-1986
Studio Assistant and subsequent Gallery Director, Eve J. Alfillé Gallery, Evanston, IL.
Selected Publications by Valerie Hector
2007
Co-Editor (with Jamey D. Allen), Proceedings of the International Conference on Beads and Beadwork. Istanbul: Kadir Has University.
2005
Author, The Art of Beadwork: Historic Inspiration, Contemporary Design.
New York: Watson-Guptill Publications.
2004
Author, “The Maturing of a Medium: Contemporary Beadwork in Europe and North
America,” in Surface Design Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 6-11.
1997
Author, “Master Class: Polygon Weave and its Variations,” in Ornament, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 67-70.
1997
Author, “Prosperity, Reverence & Protection: An Introduction to Asian Beadwork,” in Beads: The Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers, Vol. 7 (1995) pp 3-36.
Selected Research Grants
2006
Recipient of The Guido Grant for travel to Japan to study in person examples of Chinese Ming Dynasty beadwork at the Nanzenji Temple in Kyoto and the Tokyo National Museum in Tokyo; from the Bead Study Trust of Great Britain.
2006
Recipient of travel grant to study in person a complex beaded ornament from the late Southern Song Dynasty (ca. 1179 AD) housed at the De’An County Museum in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, China; and an early 11th century beadwork-embellished reliquary recovered from the Ruiguang Pagoda in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province; from the Portland Bead Society, Portland, OR.
2005
Recipient of travel grant for research on contemporary beadworkers and the development of innovative new bead polyhedra in Beijing, China.; from Alice Scherer and the Center for the Study of Beadwork, Portland, OR.
2005
Recipient of a travel grant for research on historical beadworking traditions in Fujian and Guangdong Provinces, China; from the Northwest Bead Society, Seattle, WA.
Selected Professional Affiliations
1989
Founding Member, The Bead Society of Greater Chicago.
1991-1989
Vice President and Program Chair, The Bead Society of Greater Chicago.
Selected Profiles of Valerie Hector and/or her Work by Various Writers
The History of Beads from 30,000 B.C. to the Present. Second Revised Edition.
by Lois Sherr Dubin. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
2008
“Valerie Hector” in Masters: Beadweaving, Major Works by Leading Artists, by Carol Wilcox Wells. Edited by Ray Hemachandra. Asheville: Lark Books, Inc.
2007
“An Interview with Valerie Hector,” by Michelle Mach.
www.beadingdaily.com. Published July 24, 2007.
2006
“Bead artist, bead scholar: Valerie Hector balances the demands of two callings,” by Pam O’Connor, in Bead & Button, August, pp. 110-114.
2001
“Valerie Hector,” by Deborah Krupenia, in American Craft, April/May, Vol. 61, No. 2, pp. 62-67.
2000
“The Smithsonian Craft Show 2000,” by Diane M. Bolz, in Smithsonian, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 6, 91.
1999
“The Very Fiber of Her Being,” by Lynda McDaniel, in Lapidary Journal, Vol. 03, No. 3, pp. 26-31.
1995
“Valerie Hector,” in The New Beadwork, by Kathlyn Moss and Alice Scherer. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1995: 44-45.
