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Painting with a Thousand Beads

When the light catches Stella Rogers’ night sky painting just right, the framed image comes alive like the best Door County night sky. Clouds sweep through a moonlit night and thousands of luminous stars sprinkle the dark sky, but unlike the true celestial delights visible only in darkness, Rogers’ creations are a permanent and spectacular display.

With hundreds of thousands of beads at her disposal and the inspiration of Door County’s landscapes as her guide, Rogers recreates the glittering waters, glowing leaves and vibrant flowers of the peninsula in what she calls “bead paintings.”

Night sky bead painting by Stella Rogers.

Night sky bead painting by Stella Rogers.

It has become her passion since she answered an open call for functional garden art from the Sturgeon Bay Visitor Center through its annual street art project a couple years ago. Rogers had been enamored with the growing Little Free Library movement, having built a lighthouse-inspired one in front of her 12th Avenue home a few years earlier, and decided to fuse her love of literature, art and community into a piece for the project.

That summer, Rogers and her husband, Rick, unveiled the project at the corner of Martin Park: a Little Free Library designed around Robert Louis Stevenson’s collection of children’s poetry, A Child’s Garden of Verses. With hand-lettered poems on its sides, Rogers was inspired to think outside the box when it came to decorating.

“They needed some illustration so having beads and having glue, I came up with the idea of illustrating them with beadwork,” Rogers said.

Dragonfly, pine tree and flower beads accented the colorful, abstract designs that surrounded some of Rogers’ favorite poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses.

Sea bead painting by Stella Rogers.

Sea bead painting by Stella Rogers.

“After I finished that I got inspired to do some paintings without the lettering,” she added.

From full-fledged paintings to mirror frames, Rogers incorporates the glass, plastic and vintage beads she has been collecting from bead stores and the annual Bead & Button Show in Milwaukee into vibrant and imaginative works of art.

As with all of her creations, viewers are rewarded by looking closely at the intricate beads that weave together to make a bright and cohesive design.

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