Lauren Dicioccio, a San Francisco-based artist known for her uncanny ability to render everyday objects in needle and thread, has developed a parallel and deeply arresting body of work in beaded portraiture, with a special focus on the human eye. These “hyperreal beaded eyes” are sculptural, shimmering, and eerily lifelike compositions that transcend traditional bead embroidery to occupy a realm between fine art, illusion, and intimate voyeurism. In Dicioccio’s hands, the eye—the most symbolically charged and visually complex feature of the human body—is meticulously recreated using thousands of glass beads, sequins, and hand-dyed threads, each one stitched with obsessive precision to emulate light, emotion, and the ineffable quality of human gaze.
The concept of “the eye” in Dicioccio’s practice is far from decorative. For her, the eye functions simultaneously as subject, medium, and metaphor. These hyperreal beaded eyes explore themes of observation, surveillance, identity, and human connection in an increasingly disembodied and screen-mediated world. The artist’s deep interest in what she calls “emotional objecthood” drives her to recreate aspects of the body that carry meaning, not merely function. In this way, the eye becomes a portal—not only into the imagined subject of the artwork but into the viewer themselves, who becomes unavoidably implicated in the act of looking.
Dicioccio’s hyperreal beaded eyes are sculptural works, typically rendered on a base of stiffened linen or felt that allows for dimensional building. The beading begins with a central pupil made of black jet seed beads or high-gloss bugles, surrounded by concentric rings of color that vary by iris shade—cerulean, hazel, jade, or a smoky mélange that defies clear categorization. She selects beads with subtle gradations in finish: matte, translucent, AB-coated, metallic, and pearlescent, applying them in meticulously charted radial stitches that mimic the fibrous striations of the iris. Around the eye, the sclera is never simply white. It features veins rendered in pink micro-beads, the slight yellowing of age or sleeplessness achieved through off-white glass, and the tear duct stitched from semi-transparent pink sequins that glisten faintly under light.
Eyelashes are fashioned with a combination of frayed silk threads, horsehair, or wire-wrapped black beads that curl delicately outward, casting real shadows across the work. The skin around the eye is beaded with flesh-toned gradients, capturing the minute creases and color shifts of the eyelid, the purplish half-moons of exhaustion, or the rosy flush of an emotional state. Each piece may take hundreds of hours to complete, not only because of the bead count—often in the tens of thousands—but due to Dicioccio’s insistence on anatomical precision and her ability to mimic the moist, liminal surface of the eye itself.
In one of her most striking works, Gaze No. 6, the beaded eye appears mounted on a velvet panel, surrounded by a minimalist white frame. The eye itself stares directly at the viewer, rendered in a pale gray-blue with such intensity that the viewer reflexively steps back. The iris has a watery depth achieved through the layering of transparent blue beads over matte gray ones, and a pinpoint of light is reflected in the pupil using a single silver bead, making the illusion complete. This direct confrontation calls attention to the dynamics of spectatorship—who is looking, who is being seen, and how perception is always a two-way mirror.
What distinguishes Dicioccio’s beaded eyes from mere technical showpieces is the emotional resonance embedded within each one. While hyperreal in appearance, they are not cold reproductions but emotionally charged representations. Each eye she creates is based not on a photograph, but on composite sketches drawn from life studies, memory, and intuitive imagining. As a result, they convey states of being: melancholy, curiosity, alertness, fatigue, or sorrow. These subtle inflections are achieved not only through color and form but through the density and rhythm of stitching—a faster, tighter stitch pattern around a furrowed brow, a looser curve to suggest the softness of relaxed skin.
Beyond their formal brilliance, these beaded eyes echo historical and cultural references. They call to mind the miniature painted eye portraits of the 18th-century Georgian period, known as “lover’s eyes,” where a single eye was framed and worn as a secret token of affection. They also resonate with the apotropaic symbolism of the evil eye amulet, common across Mediterranean cultures, which both wards off and embodies the power of looking. In a contemporary context, Dicioccio’s eyes gesture toward the omnipresence of digital surveillance, the relentless gaze of cameras and screens that document, observe, and record. In her beadwork, the gaze is both beautiful and fraught, a site of desire and discomfort.
Dicioccio’s studio practice is rooted in a tactile, contemplative rhythm that stands in opposition to the speed of visual consumption today. Each bead, selected and sewn by hand, is a rejection of mass production and an embrace of slowness. The labor-intensive nature of the work imbues it with intimacy, care, and attention that the viewer can feel—even if subconsciously. It is this sense of being seen, with precision and compassion, that makes standing before one of her beaded eyes such a disarming experience. It doesn’t feel like looking at an object. It feels like meeting a presence.
Exhibited at galleries in New York, San Francisco, and internationally at textile and craft biennials, Dicioccio’s hyperreal beaded eyes have garnered acclaim from critics and collectors alike. They challenge the boundaries between craft and fine art, portraiture and abstraction, sculpture and embroidery. They ask the viewer not only to look more closely, but to consider the implications of looking itself—to become aware of the acts of witnessing, judging, remembering, and imagining that the human gaze carries within it.
In Lauren Dicioccio’s beaded eyes, vision is rendered not as passive reception but as active, nuanced engagement. The eyes do not simply reflect—they communicate, conceal, accuse, and connect. Through her obsessive attention to material and her reverence for the intricacies of human expression, Dicioccio gives the ancient, ever-symbolic eye new form. Each is a study in seeing, in being seen, and in the infinite narratives that unfold in the glint of a bead.