Student Orientation & Curriculum Guide 
Introduction
Letter From The Staff

The Staff welcome you to the Center for Beadwork & Jewelry Arts.    We are very excited about our program and its design, and know you are as well.   We are very committed to providing an excellent curriculum of courses through which to learn and develop beadworking or jewelry-making skills.

Beadwork and jewelry-making are not only crafts, but  arts, as well.   As art, they have definable sets of interrelated skills which can be taught, creatively applied, and further developed.   These skills can be used to create and enhance color, shape, texture, sensibility, perception, sensuousness and emotion.   They can be applied to bring meaning, cognition, culture, connectivity and wisdom to a situation.   They can be used to create the tangible from the intangible, and the object from nothingness.   

The skills of combining materials of physical and/or esthetic wealth into wearable art forms and adornment -- this is jewelry making.  

Beads, wire, jewelry findings -- they bring visual and tactile feelings and thoughts to life in the objects we create from them.   There is a sense of awe and power, esthetic feeling and historical connection.    The CBJA develops and educates its students, through its elective and progressive track courses, for joining the professions of beadworking and jewelry-making, and expanding their horizons.