Grape Vine Tree

I had to search back to see what I have on file that hasn't been posted yet and I found the sixth in the bead embroidery Tree of Life series by Sheila Stockton. This particular tree happens to be a grape vine, in line with when Christ said "I am the vine, you are the branches..." in John 15. With Christ as our ultimate source of life in Heaven, this would completly appropriate as a tree of life interpretation.

However, Sheila gives another scripture reference, from a new earth passage in Isaiah 62:8-9, “The LORD has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: ‘Never again will I give your grain as food for your enemies, and never again will foreigners drink the new wine for which you have toiled; but those who harvest it will eat it and praise the LORD, and those who gather the grapes will drink it in the courts of my sanctuary.’”

Either way, we don't usually think of the tree of life as a grape vine, but I think it totally works and it might have also been one of the traditional Jewish depictions, though I could be entirely confused on that one.

heaven is filled with trees

As the gallery show draws near, much is coming together, and there seems to be trees sprouting up everywhere. I have a couple of my own to share later, but today it's another tree of life from bead artist Sheila Stockton (hi Mom!) This is her "Tree of Life #5" which is depicted this time as a cherry tree. Once again, her inspiration for the series is Revelation 22:2, this time in the Contemporary English Version, "On each side of the river are trees that grow a different kind of fruit each month of the year. The fruit gives life, and the leaves are used as medicine to heal the nations."

tree of life #4

Today we're bringing you the next piece in Sheila Stockton's beaded embroidery series, "Tree of Life #4." Her scriptural inspiration comes from Revelation 22:2, "Through the middle of the broadway of the city; also, on either side of the river was the tree of life with its twelve varieties of fruit, yielding each month its fresh crop; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing and the restoration of the nations." (Amplified) You can see that this time she chose to depict an apple tree, which has so often been how the tree of life in the garden of Eden has been depicted in western tradition.

If you would like to see the rest of her series, you can click on "Sheila Stockton" at the bottom of this post. You'll get a new page with all the posts that have that label on them, which will be all of her series for this project. Also remember that to see most images in this blog larger, just click on the image itself.

more trees

Today we go back to trees - another tree of life in bead embroidery by Sheila Stockton - and watching how a beaded tree grows from the seeds of inspiration to the full growth of a finished product. The first part of inspiration comes from scripture, in this case, Sheila says, "since olive trees are such long living trees:"

They’ll build houses
and move in.
They’ll plant fields
and eat what they grow.
No more building a house
that some outsider takes over,
No more planting fields
that some enemy confiscates,
For my people will be as long-lived as trees,
my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.
Isaiah 65:16-17* (The Message)

Here you can see the seed growing into a colored pencil sketch in Sheila's journal and below it in the body of text is another scriptural reference to the tree of life in Revelation 22:2, "On each side of the river grew the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit with a fresh crop each month." Some translations specify that each fruit is a different kind of fruit, and this reference to twelve kinds of fruit is part of what has inspired Sheila to render the tree of life as different fruit bearing trees. We'll wait to see if she gets to twelve...







At this stage, you can see the pencil sketch on the cloth (including some color reference) and the embroidery in progress. We happened to catch it at a point where she had just finished a length of thread and had tied it off in the back, otherwise, you might see the very fine needle that she works with.

And finally the finished piece - I think this whole process took her about week, not counting the conceptual process and the many hours of searching for just the right beads for the work.


*On a scriptural note, the verse she chose to accompany this piece, is from a section of Isaiah specifically referring to the New Earth, when Jesus will be back on earth with his people, bringing Heaven down and restoring God's relationship to humankind.

trees of life

Many of you are aware of my own personal facination with trees, and the tree of life has to be one of the most facinating concepts for me personally, but it has also been the subject of many artists and iconographers quite literally over the millenia.

In our western society, the tree of life is an apple tree; I've never researched why that happens to be (maybe I should) but I have researched some of the Hebrew tradtitions and found that some hold the tree of life as a date palm, an olive tree, a fig tree, or even a grape vine. For an artist deciding to depict this most heavenly of trees, the options are wide open.

One artist embarking on this journey is Sheila Stockton (many of you also know her as my mother) who is using bead embroidery as her media of choice for this journey.

This is her second finished work, titled "Tree of Life #2: Date Palm." Her scriptural reference for this piece is "Blessed are those who wash their robes. They will be permitted to enter through the gates of the city and eat the fruit from the tree of life." (Revelation 22:14 NLT) You can see the river of life in this image, and the date palm tree of life growing along both sides of the river.

The detail work in these tiny artistic jewels is pretty impressive. (You can click on the image itself to get a closer view of those details.) We'll share a little more of the process that goes into those details in another post very soon...

And just so you know how these things work, if you'd like to see more artwork that relates to the work in this posting, just click on one of the labels at the bottom of the post and see what happens!