The artist Laurel Burch died on September 13, 2007 at the age of 61. She is survived by her husband, daughter, son, and two granddaughters. She was born in 1945 and raised in a broken home in which her father married three times and her mother twice. She left home at the age of 14 and by the time she was 20, she was the single mother of 2, taking metal from junkyards to design fanciful jewelry.She sold her work on the streets of Haight-Ashbury and was discoverd by an Indian businessman who took her to China where they were intrigued and financed her work and introduced her to cloissone. She worked with fabric, metal, wood, and color, color, color.
Here's how she described her art on her webpage, "I live within the vivid colors of my imagination...soaring with rainbow feathered birds, racing the desert winds on horseback, wrapped in ancient tribal jewels, dancing with mythical tigers in steamy jungles."
She passed because she had been living for years with a painful, dangerous, degenerative disease called osteopetrosis. She suffered over 100 bone fractures over her life. Her bone disease worsened over the past few years, and after breaking her right arm in 2005, she began to learn to paint with her left arm. She told a newspaper that despite these injuries, pains, and illnesses, if she had to choose between health and her artistic gifts, she would choose her art, "in a second, in a heartbeat."
In her very last works, she included words, with some pieces quoting a Native American proverb, "The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears."
I have one of her purses, one with fantastic dancing horses galloping across a dark night sky!
Namaste and blessings to you in the afterlife.
http://laurelburch.com/