Coming Soon: ‘Darkest Before Dawn’
Epiphanies at the Edge
(Lire la version française.)
The piece above doesn’t exist yet. No matter…
Here’s what its little plaque might say.
“Darkest Before Dawn speaks to the fraught stillness between release and renewal, collapse and rebirth.
It recounts the following scene:
A punishing, intractable dilemma has utterly exhausted you. As you’ve endlessly scoured its options for a right way forward, you’ve exhausted those in turn. ✧ At your wits’ end, you stand at a crossroads, praying that surrender draws in the wide open mystery you’d previously branded a hostile stranger.
Trust that insight will find you at the end of this stalemate. “None of the above,” it’ll declare, your keys to the kingdom in hand. Its greatest gift to you will be that which you’d desired and rejected with equal force while doubly bound, fearful and blind. ✧ As illumination overwhelms your last defenses, you’ll recall your own shots in the dark; the deadest of ends will disintegrate in tribute to the person you were.”
‘Darkest Before Dawn’ asks,
What if this station is
where your long wished-for
epiphany-gift comes through,
breathtaking—like the rock and hard place
that first drove your gaze upward to it?
Dear reader,
The picture above, and the one that follows, are digital mock-ups of a new panel piece I’m working on: Darkest Before Dawn. Above, I’ve summarized its intention; below, I’ll outline its features, specifications and origin story in more depth.
I’m hoping to finish this 24” x 30” panel by the end of 2024.
I’ll be working on it in the weeks and months ahead. That being said…
I’d love to find a committed buyer for this piece before it’s done.
I’m hoping to find a buyer for whom the opening paragraphs really resonate.
If you know a person or organization that might like to acquire Darkest Before Dawn, would you please share this post with them?
Here’s what it’ll look like.
Notes on the mock-up above
The new piece’s color scheme, its black painted background, its landscape orientation, and the X/Y placement of its beadwork on the panel, will be as shown above. Its color fades, on the other hand, will look much smoother; I’ll explain why.
A larger, higher-resolution rendering
Darkest Before Dawn will be a scaled-up, polished final rendering of the design I developed for a piece I finished in 2022 called Je me suis vu. (I’ll discuss this piece later on.) Below, both pieces are shown at scale, for comparison.
The new piece’s beaded appliqué will be double the length (diameter) and 4 times the surface area of the earlier piece’s appliqué.
To create the mock-up above, I had to use an existing image of Je me suis vu’s 6” appliqué. In its final rendering, Darkest Before Dawn will look less “pixelated,” so to speak, than what you see on the mock-up. The new piece’s beadwork will feature a finer-looking grain and smoother fades. That’s because I’ll be enlarging Je me suis vu’s design not by using larger beads, but by using 4 times as many.
About this piece’s black background
Here’s how I mount my beadwork to a cradled panel.
1. I create a beaded appliqué by stitching thousands of beads onto a stiff felt backing.
2. When the appliqué’s done, I sew it to a large piece of canvas.
3. I then neatly wrap (glue) the canvas around my panel’s face/sides using acrylic medium.
4. Once everything’s dry, I paint the exposed canvas around the beadwork.
This technique creates a creamy, matte-black background—and the captivating illusion that the beadwork’s stitched directly into the painted surface. The final effect is quite captivating. Here’s what Darkest Before Dawn’s background will look like. (Find more pics of Segue I · Hemlock HERE.)
About Je me suis vu (I Saw Myself)
As mentioned, Darkest Before Dawn is a larger-scale reprise of this piece from 2022.
For technical/practical reasons—and also because there’s a direct thematic link between the two pieces,
I’ll be un-making Je me suis vu, and stitching virtually all of its beads back into the new work.
Darkest Before Dawn (2025) will carry the earlier piece’s imprint as well as the meditation at the top of this post.
Many of us are hoping for some sort of renaissance…
They say it’s darkest before dawn.
Je me suis vu was originally undertaken as a technical study. This piece didn’t come to me in a dream, nor did it arrive as a message in urgent need of delivery. While I was working on it, I simply saw it as an exciting, ambitious variation on previous designs I’d enjoyed making (and been happy with once they were done). In short, this project mostly had me tweaking bead color ratios to achieve a smooth 7-color gradient.
But then, as I was stitching its final outer rows, I was gifted an unexpected, impactful conversation, the memory of which is woven into this piece. (A song will remind you of a certain time and place; my finished pieces remind me of where I was while I was making them.) An acquaintance, whose struggles with substance abuse I’d been aware of, messaged me over DMs. I was soon reading about the recent spiritual awakening that was fast compelling them to, as they put it to me, “reboot their life.”
“For the first time, it was like… I saw myself. It’s hard to explain,” they said.
A massive shift was now underway, causing major ripples in this person’s day-to-day routine, career prospects and relationships, at a pace that seemed nothing short of miraculous. This was two years ago now. From what I can gather, they’ve since turned their life around completely.
I’m as grateful today as I was then to have witnessed the tail end of that epiphany.
When I first posted the picture above to Facebook, I dedicated the piece, in French, à ceux qui renaissent au fond du baril—figuratively, to those reborn at rock bottom; literally, to those reborn at the bottom of the barrel.
It’s always darkest before dawn.
The Wrap-up
There you have it—the gist of this new piece.
If you’ve read this far, know that your time is greatly appreciated.
Again, I’d love to have a patron sign on to buy this one before it’s done, so please SHARE this post with any relevant contacts.
All the essentials are listed below.
In closing, pitching this piece on Substack is an experiment. Maybe nothing will come of this post/offer; on the other hand, maybe a buyer will materialize; maybe my decision to publish this, on its own, will set something in motion. We’ll see. (You can’t win if you don’t play.) I also realize that my readers may not be in the market for something like this right now—but I’m happy to share my latest with you either way. Any constructive comments are, of course, most welcome.
All the best, and until next time,
-Ananda
✧ Darkest Before Dawn · DETAILS & SPECIFICATIONS
Type of work: mixed media panel (see mock-up below)
Materials: 11/0 Miyuki seed beads, synthetic felt, acrylic paint (background), heavy cotton canvas, acrylic medium (canvas adhesive), cradled wood panel
Dimensions: panel: 24” x 30” x 1 ⅝” · frame: 25” x 31” x ~2”
Frame: floater frame · solid wood, natural/undyed, water-based satin finish
Hardware: included and installed
Price: Please contact me at studio@flintstitch.com.
Shipping: TBD; buyer covers shipping · shipping available to Canada
Insurance, customs fees: TBD; buyer is responsible for insurance and customs fees · DM for details
✧ CONTACT INFO & MORE
Flintstitch Beadwork is based in Montréal, Canada.
✧ GENERAL QUESTIONS? Comment below.
✧ SPECIFIC QUESTIONS? EMAIL me via my WEBSITE.
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