Several years ago, after a long hiatus, I renewed my art practice with the aim of working representationally in some textile technique to explore the dialectic between pictorial fiction and textile materiality. Beadweaving's epistemic grid has captured my interest. Using this technique, I analyze and dissect a photographic image, then reconstruct it as a grid of bead-pixels. The work that results hybridizes material and metaphor to provide a self-reflexive, secondary experience of the "original" image. Yet, though rationality and dispassion may be inherent in the grid, the jewel-like preciousness and auto-illumination of the tiny glass beads, together with the small size of the work, evoke the intimacy and emotional intensity of contemporary icons.